The Alteration

The Alteration

Kingsley Amis

First Published in 1976

To Joanna and Terry Kilmartin

Chapter One

Hubert Anvil's voice rose above the sound of the choir and full orchestra, reaching the vertex of the loftiest dome in the Old World and the western doors of the longest nave in Christendom. For this was the Cathedral Basilica of St George at Coverley, the mother church of all England and of the English Empire overseas. That bright May afternoon it was as full as it had ever been in the three centuries since its consecration, and it would scarcely have held a more distinguished assembly at any time: the young King William V himself; the kings of Portugal, of Naples, of Sweden, of Lithuania and a dozen other realms; the Crown Prince of Muscovy and the Dauphin; the brother of the Emperor of Almaigne; the viceroys of India, New Spain and Brazil; the High Christian Delegate of the Sultan-Calif of Turkey; the Vicar-General of the Emperor Patriarch of Candia; the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of United England; no fewer than twelve cardinals, together with less pre-eminent clergy from all over the Catholic world-these and thousands besides had congregated for the laying-to-rest of His Most Devout Majesty, King Stephen III of England and her Empire.

He had been a good king, worthy of his distinction in matters of faith and observances, enjoying mutually-respectful relations with both Convocation and the Papal Cure, held in tender affection by the people. A large number of those attending his Requiem Mass would have been moved as much by a sense of personal loss as by simple duty or the desire to assist at a great occasion. Just as many, perhaps, were put in awe by the size and richness of the setting. Apart from Wren's magnificent dome, the most renowned of the sights to be seen was the vast Turner ceiling in commemoration of the Holy Victory, the fruit of four and a half years' virtually uninterrupted work; there was nothing like it anywhere. The western window by Gainsborough, beginning to blaze now as the sun first caught it, showed the birth of St Helena, mother of Con-stantine the Great, at Colchester. Along the south wall ran Blake's still-brilliant frescoes depicting St Augustine's progress through England. Holman Hunt's oil-painting of the martyrdom of St George was less celebrated for its merits than for the tale of the artist's journey to Palestine in the hope of securing authenticity for his setting; and one of the latest additions, the Ecce Homo mosaic by David Hockney, had attracted downright adverse criticism for its excessively traditionalist, almost archaising style. But only admiration had ever attended-to take a diverse selection-the William Morris spandrels on the transept arches, the unique chryselephantine pyx, the gift of an archbishop of Zululand, above the high altar, and Epstone's massive marble Pieta.

To few but the tone-deaf, the music must have been more immediate than any or all of these objects: Mozart's Second Requiem (K.878), the crown of his middle age and perhaps of all his choral work. Singers and musicians had just entered upon the Agnus Dei. There was a story about this too, that it had been written out of the composer's grief at the untimely death of an esteemed and beloved younger contemporary, but its celestial plangency needed no such eking-out. From its home key of D minor the piece moved through the relative major into the G minor section for solo voice and orchestra. With its long runs and jagged melodic line it made great demands on the singer, but Hubert Anvil was more than equal to them, hitting every note in the middle, moving from top to bottom of the wide tessitura with no loss of tone or power. Throughout the huge congregation all were motionless, and remained so when the section came to a close and the choir was heard again.

Some stayed still because they felt they should rather than from artistic or pious feeling. Two such were the aged representatives of the Holy Office in their black vestments symbolically piped in scarlet: Monsignor Henricus and Monsignor Lavrentius, or to give them the familiar names by which they were known in their native Almaigne and Muscovy, Himmler and Beria. Not far from them, a third man held himself rigid out of a desire not to give the smallest grounds for offence to those many of his neighbours who made no attempt to conceal from him their often hostile curiosity. The Archpresbyter of Arnoldstown was the first holder of his office ever to have crossed the threshold of St George's, and there was some resentment at the admission of a Schismatic eminence-in plainer terms, a surpliced heretic-to today's ceremony. At his side, Cornelius van den Haag, New Englander Ambassador to the Court of St Giles, had become too far immersed in the music to stir.

For Federicus Mirabilis and Lupigradus Viaventosa, what they were now listening to was a significant part of their entire reason for attendance. Mirabilis's eyes were open, though they saw nothing; Viaventosa's were lightly shut, with a tear showing at the corner of each. Both men knew Mozart's masterpiece by heart and had the skill to remove from consciousness the woodwind decorations, the solemn brass chords, the throb of the kettledrums, the surge of the strings. All that the two heeded was Hubert Anvil's performance. Neither relaxed or moved until it was complete, until the supremely difficult solo flourish in the coda had been accomplished, until indeed the final bar had passed and, at the end of some seconds of total silence, a great rustle and clearing of throats filled the nave. Then Mirabilis turned and looked questioningly at his companion. After wiping away his tears, Viaventosa nodded his head slightly several times.

Outside the basilica, thousands of the people waited in the extensive paved square formed by its western face, the archiepiscopal palace opposite and, to the north and south, the Chapter-House and the offices and residences of the Archdeacon, the Dean, the Vicar-Choral and other functionaries. These thousands had come not only from Coverley itself, but from as far away as London or even cities of the northern shires, most of them by waggon, those who could afford it by railtrack or express-omnibus. They were the early arrivals, and they waited not only for a sight of royal, ecclesiastical and noble magnificence, but also for the Archbishop's benediction, which those other thousands, now lining the way to Headington Palace, must to their spiritual hardship go without.

The sun shone down, illuminating to advantage the rather severe stone facciata of the Chapter-House, pleasantly warming the multitude, which would, however, have assembled just the same in a snowstorm. On a different sort of grand occasion-a royal wedding, an anniversary of the Holy Victory-there would have been noise and bustle and trafficking, fiddlers, jugglers, acrobats, comedians, balladiers, vendors of hot patties and ginger beer, sharpers and pickpockets too. If there were any such here today, they were not plying their trade, but stood quietly alongside the worthy men who worked in the fields, forests and mines, in the provision of food, drink, clothing or furniture, in domestic service and in that profusion and variety of humbler lay offices required by the Church. When, as expected, Great Dick began to toll, indicating that King Stephen now lay at rest among his forefathers in the cathedral vaults, a groan of grief ran through the crowd and subsided. Again they settled down to wait, until the tall bronze doors of the basilica slowly opened.

At a dignified pace, the members of the congregation began to emerge and to take up their preordained places along the broad marble steps. Above them, the sculptured figures of Vanbrugh's tympanum, a boldly inventive representation of St George and the Dragon, caught the sunlight here and there, and above everything soared the twin Brunei spires, each of them overtopping by several feet that of Ulm Cathedral in Almaigne. The Archbishop ascended his tribunal popular, but it would be some minutes yet before all were in position to receive his blessing. His snow-white vicuna pallium, and beneath it the chasuble of black velvet adorned with gold, were an emblem of the austerity to be seen almost everywhere on this day. The Royal Palatine Guard in their azure and violet, together with the carmine uniforms and capotes of the Papal Cohort, provided the only patches of vivid colour.

None could be found among the people, nothing but the dullest tones of moleskin, corduroy or hessian.

The Benediction Popular as an established Church practice was a comparatively recent innovation, dating back little more than three centuries. It was not confined to the English Isles, but flourished also in the Netherlands, in Brunswick-Brandenburg and in other northern states of Almaigne. To the learned, it symbolised the union between the two degrees of divine favour, the Twice-Blessed, in the persons of those who had received the Benediction Devotional at the conclusion of the Mass, and the Once-Blessed as represented by those who filled the square; so also the union of the two conditions of society. But to the unschooled of the lower degree and the lower condition, it was one of the most important of the very few ways in which grace could be acquired by an act of will, since it was effective upon those in a state of sin.

The Archbishop proceeded to deliver his blessing. He spoke in high ecclesiastical Latin, a language unintelligible to the great body of his hearers despite the theoretical similarity of some of its forms to phrases they heard every day. But this did not matter to them, any more than it mattered to many of those present that His Eminence's voice reached them as a faint murmur, or to very many more that they heard nothing of it whatever. To be present meant to be within sight of the source of benediction; all that was required besides was to think seriously upon Jesus Christ; on these points doctrine was firm.

The ceremony reached its end. The Archbishop vacated the tribunal, received the King's obeisance, raised him to his feet and escorted him to the royal baruch. In continuing silence—there would be no trumpets today—His Majesty took his seat, but the wheels did not turn until His Eminence was settled in the carriage immediately to the rear. The declining sun drew glaring reflections of itself from the gold leaf of both vehicles, fast-shifting points of varicoloured light from the cut-crystal with which they were embellished. Preceded by two Papal outriders, a troop of the Palatine Guard, their black-pennoned lances dipped, moved at a slow walk before the line of baruches, each drawn by black-plumed horses and hung with black streamers. Hooves, iron tires and harness made the only sound. In the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventy-six, Christendom would see nothing more mournful or more stately.

'Bring the lamp over, would you, Fritz?' asked Lupigradus Viaventosa in his squeaky voice. 'This confounded gas gives no real light.'

'Very well, but please finish your prinking.' Mirabilis's voice was as high-pitched as his friend's but turned the hearer's mind to an upper woodwind instrument, say a flute, rather than to a slate-pencil. He took the oil-lamp from its hook in the smoke-stained ceiling and put it down on the toilet-table. 'We must not be discourteous to the Abbot.'

'It would be the very depth of discourtesy for us not to appear at our best.'

'How could the state of your mustach constitute a discourtesy to the Abbot? He has never seen it before.'

'I beg you, Fritz, allow a foolish old man his vanity.'

The two spoke in the language of Almaigne, where they had been born. To do so was a mild but continuing pleasure after so many years of constant Italian diversified with Latin. Each had lived in Rome since boyhood and now held a high position in the musical hierarchy there: Viaventosa, some fifteen years the senior, was director of the Sistine Choir, Mirabilis a leading singer in the secular opera. It was the former's first visit to England; the latter had been many times before. As a renowned exponent of Purcell, he was likely to be in demand whenever the Royal Opera House at Wheatley staged a new production of Dido and Aeneas or Majorian.

Although it was not a cold evening, both men were glad of the log fire that glowed steadily and cheerfully in the grate between their beds. On the wall above these there hung in each case the statutory crucifix and devotional picture: an Annunciation and a St Jerome with a demented-looking lion. They showed some skill and taste, to be expected in a first rate bedchamber at the Inn of the Twelve Apostles, King Stephen II Street, Coverley. The room was furnished in conservative Great Empire style: the rugs and heavy silk curtains from India, the jade candlesticks from Upper Burma, the tiles of the hearth from Indo-China, the mahogany prie-dieu from the Soudhan, as, rather irreverently, was testified by the low-relief carvings of lion, crocodile, elephant and hippopotamus.

Viaventosa finished at the looking-glass. 'Have you ordered a public?' He used the English word, which, in the sense he meant, was current throughout civilisation.

'Naturally. No doubt it waits below at this moment.'

'Nonsense: we should have been informed of its arrival... Well?'

As invited, Mirabilis surveyed the controversial mustach, a sparse, fine growth now darkened with kohl so as to suggest what might sprout from an adolescent's upper lip; then took in the frilled lilac shirt, the purple velvet jacket and black breeches, deftly tailored to hide something of their wearer's plumpness, the high-heeled leather boots. 'Most commendable. You do yourself credit.'

'You also. The wig is a great success after all and those cuffs are most distinctive, though I might have preferred a little more colour at the throat. Yes, we're no disgrace, either of us, considering what we are.' Viaventosa's ample jowls shook slightly.

'My dear Wolfgang, both of us have had quite long enough to reconcile ourselves to what we are.'

'Have we? Would a lifetime be enough for that? I'm sorry, Fritz: this is foolish of me. Seeing that boy today brought so much back to me that I'd thought was safely buried.'

'I understand. I share your feeling.' Mirabilis gripped the other by the arm. 'But we must try to suppress it.'

'Yes, of course. You're wiser than I am, Fritz.'

The whistle of the speaking-tube sounded at that moment and Mirabilis, no less portly than his companion but light of foot, hurried to answer it; Viaventosa took the opportunity to dab his eyes with a white lace pocket-napkin.

'Yes?... Thank you most kindly: we will come down at once,' said Mirabilis in the excellent English his studies and visits had brought him. 'Die Public ist hier, mein Lieber.'

A public (in full, a public-express) was actually the least public of the three modes of powered public transport available, the other two being the express-omnibus and the rail-track train. All these used the method of propulsion developed by the great inventor Rudolf Diesel. The fuel was petroleum from the wells of northern Mexico, Louisiana and, in the last few years, the New Spain province of Venezuela; ignition was achieved merely by compressing petroleum vapour to a certain density, without the introduction of a spark. That suffix was vital, for the only practicable known means of producing a spark was an electrical one, and matters electrical were held in general disesteem. They were commonly regarded among the people as strange, fearful, even profane; the gentry smiled at the terms of this view while not missing its essential truth: electricity was appallingly dangerous, both as it existed and as it might be developed. No wonder that its exploration had never received official encouragement, nor that persistent rumours told of such exploration by inventors in New England.

The vehicle that waited at the portico of the inn was a typical public, squarely and stoutly built, bright with brass at its edgings, handles and lamps. Viaventosa and Mirabilis, with the aid of the driver's arm, climbed on the step and were soon settled against the soft leather upholstery. The clockwork motor whirred, the engine began its drumming and they were off. Even at forty miles an hour progress was smooth, thanks not only to the air-filled tires of Malayan rubber, but also to the level stone with which all the main streets of the capital were faced. There was some traffic on this one: other publics, an express-omnibus bound for London, several expresses. (Mirabilis had never got over his first feeling of amused irritation at the English illogic whereby a public-express was called a public and a privately-owned express an express.) And of course, the people's horse-drawn waggons and traps were everywhere.

Viaventosa had strapped down his window and was keenly attending to the buildings they passed. How different from Rome and its ordered antiquity! That theatre—its gasoliers extinguished on this day, though bills that promised a presentation of Thomas Kyd's Hamlet were to be seen-was an embarrassing survival of the Franco-Arabesque style that had been all the rage a century earlier, but at least it stood for something different from the lath-and-canvas structure beside it, a pattie-shop and all too evidently popular swill-shop in one. A little further along, a Court tailoring establishment in the latest ornate style, complete with single-window glazing, was separated by no more than a narrow passage from one of the exquisitely varicoloured brick-built churches for which middle England was famous. Two elderly clerics emerged from its portal into a passing group of young men whose dingily-hued attire proclaimed their social condition. To be sure, they moved apart to let their betters through, but with neither the alacrity nor the air of respect that would have been common form elsewhere. To Viaventosa, the tiny incident stood for much of what was to be seen and heard of England: careless, bumptious, over-liberal, negligent of order.

At some point between the outskirts of Coverley and of Headington, the public reduced speed and turned off to the left. The quality of the roadway soon deteriorated; several times the passengers braced themselves or were sent groping for the straps; but it was only a couple of minutes before progress steadied again and the two were set down outside the main gate of the Chapel of St Cecilia-not in fact a chapel at all (though needless to say it incorporated one), but the choral school that served the cathedral and provided some teaching facilities for students from other parts of England and from the Empire.

Mirabilis handed the driver eightpence, which was acknowledged with a low bow and more than perfunctory thanks. Inhaling deeply, he caught the scents of the countryside—there was no other building to be seen—but also the hint of petroleum fumes, together with something else acrid and unnatural, something else man-made: a distressful product, it must be, of the manufactories that had been springing up in the area between here and Coverley itself over the past twenty or thirty years, most of them engaged in the production of express vehicles, including, most likely, that same public which had brought him here. It seemed to him that he could recapture in full those odours, normal then to the neighbourhood of any habitation, that had reached his nostrils on his first visit to St Cecilia's in 1949, those of tallow-fat, bone-stock, horses and humanity. He was forty-six years old and an age was passing.

With Viaventosa breathing heavily at his side, he set going the clapper of the gate-bell. There soon appeared a young man in the black habit of the Benedictines, presumably a lay brother.

'Salvete, magistri,' he said in his flat English accent.

'Salve, frater. We are guests to supper with the Lord Abbot. Masters Viaventosa and Mirabilis.'

'Welcome, sirs—please to follow me.'

As he stepped over the sill of the wicket, Mirabilis thought he saw a vehicle approaching, but paid it no attention. The Abbot's invitation had specifically said that there were to be no other guests tonight.

The shadows were gathering in the central courtyard, and the pale yellow of candlelight showed behind some of the little square windows. The three crossed a circle of turf, thick and beautifully taken care of, with at its centre John Bacon's piastraccia statue of the saint, one of the most famous English products of the late eighteenth-century classical revival. Apart from their footfalls, and those of a servant crossing from the buttery with two pots of ale, there was almost total silence, with complin over and all practices and lessons cancelled for the day.

Abbot Peter Thynne sat in his parlour above the arch that led from the courtyard to the stables, the brewery, the bakery, the wood-house and ultimately the small farm that supplied the Chapel. A tall, upright, handsome man of fifty, with high cheekbones and with cropped grey hair under his skullcap, he wore as always the strictest Benedictine black, a relatively unusual choice of costume at a time when clerics in his elevated position were given to luxuriating in coloured silks and velvets.

If asked, he would say that it was God Who had led him to music, which he saw in its entirety, even in its avowedly secular forms, as praise of the divine. But his style of looks and dress indicated no asceticism, were belied by the splendid Flanders tapestry that covered most of one wall, such pieces as the French writing-table of sycamore with Sevres inlay, and the presence and quality of the glass of sherry on its marble top.

He rose slowly to his feet when the lay brother showed in Mirabilis and Viaventosa.

'My dear Fritz,' he said with measured cordiality, extending his hand from the shoulder. 'Welcome back to Coverley.' (He pronounced it 'Cowley' after the old fashion.)

Mirabilis bowed and took the hand. 'I am pleased that we meet again, my lord. May I present Master Lupigradus Viaventosa?'

'This is a great honour for all of us, master.'

'Your lordship is too gracious,' said Viaventosa, producing one of his smallish stock of English phrases.

'Now-let me bring forward my Prefect of Music, Master Sebastian Morley, whom I think you'll remember, Fritz, and my Chapelmaster, Father David Dilke, who joined us last year.'

There were further salutations and compliments. Apart from his powerful square hands, Morley, with his peasant's face and broadcloth attire in sober brown, could not be said much to resemble a musician, but in fact he was one of the most eminent in the land, a brilliant performer on the pianoforte who had given up that career in order to devote himself to the teaching of musical theory and composition. His merits in these fields were such as to have overcome the natural antagonism to the preceptorial appointment of one of the laity. He was respected and liked by Mirabilis, who was not at first greatly taken with Dilke, a comparative youngster, slight, fair-haired and given to nervous twitchings of the eyelids, though he seemed amiable enough.

'Some sherry for our guests, Lawrence,' said the Abbot, but before the grey-clad servant could move the lay brother had returned.

'A thousand excuses, my lord, but there are two gentlemen who wish to speak to you.'

'Oh, merciful heaven.' The Abbot closed his eyes and lifted both hands in front of him. 'Tell them I'm engaged.'

'They are the New Englander Ambassador and the Arch-presbyter of Arnoldstown, my lord.'

'Are they so, indeed? In that case I suppose I had better not be engaged. Fetch them.'

'This is surely rather discourteous at such a time,' said the Abbot after the brother had gone, 'if my expectations are not too high. But I hear very little good of Schismatic manners.'

What he had heard proved a poor guide to the behaviour of the two New Englanders when they were admitted. The Ambassador's unaffected, manly address and direct blue eyes made an immediate good impression, while the Archpresbyter showed a quiet dignity that could not have come easily to one of his faith in his present circumstances.

'I'll take up as little of your time as is consistent with politeness, my lord,' said the Ambassador when introductions were complete. 'First, my excuses. I sent no advance notice of my wish to talk with you because I was afraid it would be rejected. I reckoned it would be difficult for you to order an ambassador off your doorstep, even one from New England.'

The Abbot gave a slight brief smile. 'Some sherry, Your Excellency.'

'Thank you, my lord. Now my request. It wasn't only my official duties that took me this afternoon to St George's, nor even my personal desire to pay my last respects to your late lamented sovereign. I went for the music too. May I say, Father Dilke, that the singing was of a quality I expect never to hear surpassed?'

Dilke blinked a great deal and glanced quickly at the Abbot. 'That's very kind of you, sir.'

'No more than just, Father. I was particularly struck, as I'm sure others were,'—the Ambassador, who seemed to know who everyone was, turned his blue eyes on the two men from Almaigne-'by the performance of the solo soprano in the Agnus Dei and elsewhere. That young man has a voice from Heaven. And he's a musician besides. Splendidly trained, to be sure, but there were things in his performance that nobody but himself could have put there-isn't that so, Father?'

'Oh yes, Your Excellency, yes.'

'Forgive me, sir,' said Morley in his harsh voice, 'but are you yourself a musician?'

'I was about to be one, sir, until I discovered my lack of capacity. All that I have now is the most cordial interest. Which brings me to my point at last, my lord Abbot. I beg the favour of a few minutes' conversation with the genius of St Cecilia's. Then I'll have something to tell my grandchildren, something worth telling, too—I say that with surety. I insisted that the Archpresbyter should come too, as a favour to him. Also to lend me moral support for my hardihood.'

'Your request is unusual, Your Excellency,' said the Abbot after consideration, 'but I can find no sufficient reason to deny it. We still have a little time before the supper-bell.' He beckoned his servant. 'Lawrence, fetch Clerk Anvil here at once. Let him know he's to meet some, uh, eminent visitors.'

'I'm most profoundly grateful, my lord,' said Cornelius van den Haag, 'but I had in mind something rather more private than this concourse, which may prove intimidating.'

The Abbot gave another small smile. 'Your sensitivity does you credit, sir, but Anvil isn't soon intimidated, as Father Dilke will tell you, and if he were he must learn to overcome such weakness. But I'll see to it that you have your private word with him.'

As the Abbot had foreseen, Hubert Anvil was not intimidated by his summons, but he was startled and, on arrival, overawed: not so much of either, however, as to restrain him from taking in what he saw and heard.

There were four strangers in the parlour. Two were New Englanders, speaking English naturally enough, but far back in the throat; the grey-haired, broad-shouldered, elderly one was some sort of bishop, but the taller, younger one with the tanned face was more important, perhaps as important as the Abbot himself. Both wore black, with white linen; in this their clothes resembled his, but in style were strict and quite foreign. Although they tried hard, neither could altogether hide a sense of constraint. The ecclesiastic, indeed, did not want to be here at all.

The other pair were plump, dandified and unhealthy-looking. One had moist eyes and an absurd mustach that might almost have been painted or pencilled on; his companion, despite his pallor, seemed shrewd and full of life. Their names showed that they came from Rome, their accents that they had not been born there. That was normal and natural; the reason for the high pitch of their voices, if neither normal nor natural, hardly needed to be guessed at; what faintly disconcerted Gerk Anvil was the look each of these two gave him when he was brought forward to them—a considering, measuring look. He remembered being in the library at home when a painter had been starting work on a portrait of his father: the man had scrutinised his sitter in something of the same careful but unobtrusive fashion.

All four of the visitors proceeded to make laudatory remarks about Clerk Anvil's performance in the Requiem that day. He was used to compliments on his singing, in the sense not that he was unmoved by them but that he had learned how to receive them, and so was able to make part of his mind free to observe that the most considered comments were offered by the shrewd, pale man and the warmest by the important New Englander. It was with the latter that he found himself standing slightly apart when the Abbot took the rest of the company off to admire his tapestry.

'May I know your first name, young master?'

'Here in this Chapel I'm only a clerk, my lord. My Christian name is Hubert.'

'Now it's my turn to correct you, Hubert. I am nobody's lord. Being the New Englander Ambassador means I'm sometimes My Excellency, and then sometimes I'm Citizen Cornelius van den Haag, but with you I reckon I can just be sir.'

'Very well, sir. Van den Haag sounds like a Netherlander name.'

'And so it is, or was. My ancestors were transported from that country over four hundred years ago, along with... But enough of my concerns; yours are far more interesting. What age have you, Hubert?'

'What age? Oh—ten years, sir.'

To the man as he listened to it earlier, the most distinctive quality of the boy's singing voice had been instantly noticeable but resistant to definition, hidden somewhere among pairs of antonyms: full-grown yet fresh, under total control yet spontaneous, sweet yet powerful. A close view of the owner of the voice soon suggested a word for the quality: agelessness. Hubert Anvil's face, with its full lips, prominent straight nose and eyes deep-set under heavy brows, had no maturing to do; he would grow in height, but presumably he would retain his short neck and the ample rib-cage that must help to give his voice that power. Van den Haag felt suddenly protective; come to think of it, he had felt some such thing in the basilica, a sense of the vulnerability of art. He said, 'I want to tell you, while we talk together, that I wasn't paying you empty compliments just now. I meant every word.'

'I knew it at the time, sir.'

'Good. You intend to continue as singer, I hope, when you're a man?'

'My lord the Abbot and Father Dilke would like me to. Master Morley thinks otherwise.'

'And you yourself?'

'I have no opinion, sir. And I need have none for some time yet. But... I do want to see something of the world. Rome, of course. Then Vienna, Naples, Salzburg, Barcelona. And further away—India and Indo-China. The Bishop of Hannoy told my father that it's like the Garden of Eden there.'

'Well, nobody is better enabled to travel around than a famous singer... I noticed you didn't put anywhere in the New World on your list.'

'Oh, I should have, sir. Mexico, Quebec, New Orl&ns... and Arnoldstown, of course.'

The New Englander chuckled, but his eyes were keen. 'Thank you, my boy. You may not know it, but you're right—that's one place you have to visit. And there are plenty of others in my country: New Amsterdam, Haverford, Wyclif City... Enough: I mustn't go on.'

'Please do, sir. What's it like in your country? We hear so many strange things of it which can't be true. Not all of them.'

'It's beautiful, Hubert, which nobody believes who hasn't seen it. And various, because it's so extensive. Seven hundred miles from north to south, four hundred miles across in places, three times France. In the north-east in winter, everything freezes solid for three months; in the south, there are palm trees and lions and swamps and. alligators...'

Hubert's inner eye saw much more than that. There passed before it a series of images drawn from story-pamphlets and the drawings in them, from photograms and facsimiles, from talk among his mates: a lake of blue water that stretched to the horizon, a tall mountain isolated on a broad plain, a river crowded with boats of all sizes, a whaling-fleet putting to sea, a city of wooden houses, a forest of enormous trees, a party of men in furs hunting a grizzly bear, a blue-uniformed cavalry squadron at the charge, a cluster of strange tents among which moved dark-haired women with babies on their backs, a farmhouse all alone in a green hollow. All this was so intense that Hubert missed some of what was being said to him, until a striking word recalled him to it.

'Our inventors are the finest in the world: not long ago, two of them...' Van den Haag stopped, then earnestly continued, 'We have no king, only a First Citizen. That man over there is the head of our Church, but by his dress and by how he lives you couldn't tell him from a village pastor. And of course we have laws, strict laws, but each of us is free to decide what to do with his life. But I go on again.'

'No, you interest me greatly, sir.'

'Another time. This place, this Chapel. Is it your school or your home or both? Or what is it to you? Forgive me, but there's nothing like it in my country. We have no need of it.'

'It's my school, sir, and it's as much my home as any school could be. My father and mother live in London, and I often go to them, but the Abbot is like a second father to me, and some of my friends are like brothers. And there's my work, and all the life here, and the farm.' Through the rear window, some moving object could be dimly seen in the distance, beyond the corn-mill, the fish-ponds, the dove-cote: a small, whitish, four-legged shape that hurried, steadied itself, hurried again and disappeared among some bushes. 'I think I'm the luckiest person I know.'

After a pause, van den Haag said, 'My embassy is in London, of course, but I have a house in Coverley. My family and I would much welcome a visit from you, Hubert. Perhaps you might care to meet my daughter, who's just your age. If you'd sing for us... Would you like to do that? Would you be allowed to?'

'Yes, sir-yes to both questions. You're very kind.'

'I'll fix it with the Abbot. To whom I must say a few more words before I take my leave.'

Later that evening, in a small dormitory he shared with three other clerks, Hubert Anvil was pressed for details of his visit to the Abbot's parlour.

'This New Englander you saw,' said Decuman, the strong boy with the thin, down-turned mouth whom the other three half-willingly accepted as their leader-'I expect he carried a pistol and smoked a cigar and spat on the floor and said "Goddam"?'

'I beg you, no blasphemy, Decuman.' This was Mark, who looked a little like a fair-haired mole.

'By St Veronica's napkin, I'll blaspheme to my heart's content in this room. And I wasn't blaspheming myself anyway—1 was talking about what somebody else might have said.'

'Oh, very well. Your soul is your own affair.'

'Let Hubert tell his tale,' said the fourth boy, Thomas, the dark, fine-featured, quietly-spoken one.

Hubert nodded gratefully. 'To answer you, Decuman—no, there was nothing of that sort. Do you think anybody would spit on the Abbot's floor?'

'A New Englander might. They have bounce enough for anything.'

'Well, this one didn't. He was a gentleman.'

'A gentleman! Shit!'

'He was very correct in his talk and manners and he loves music and he invited me to his house to meet his daughter.'

'Now we see, don't we? Little wonder he made himself popular. Hubert dreams of a young miss in a deerskin frock who'll feed him cookies and teach him the lasso and rub noses with him.'

'And a very pleasant dream it is,' said Thomas.

'And if the girl needs eyeglasses badly enough it may come true.'

'Is that a good joke, Decuman?'

'No. Hubert, did your new friend come to the Chapel just to seek you out?'

'I don't know.'

'Of course he did,' said Thomas. 'You forget that we're used to Hubert's voice. A stranger would—would hear it differently.'

'Perhaps. I grant Hubert can sometimes sing in the right key, but it still seems to me out of the common, this visit. But then, a New Englander...'

As they talked, the four boys had been undressing and putting on their nightshirts. The two candles (one the housekeeper's issue, the other illegally introduced by Decuman), the low ceiling and the proximity of other bodies kept each of them warm enough. Hubert hung up his jacket and breeches in his part of the closet and stretched his stockings over the rail at the foot of his bed. In the distance, a hand-bell sounded and a high, monotonous calling came slowly nearer.

'Down on your knees, unhappy children. Pray to God to remit some small part of your dreadful punishment. Ask His divine mercy for the grievous sins you have wrought this day. Limbs of Satan, deprecate the just wrath of God. While there is yet time, beg His indulgence with a contrite heart.'

The Prefect of Devotions (who thought he was being funny) passed along the corridor outside the room, and silence fell, broken only by small mutters and murmurs. Hubert knelt on a strip of matting worn threadbare by generations of such use.

'... that I made no mistakes and that everybody sang well and that the band played well, for all this I heartily and humbly thank Thee. And I thank Thee too that Thou didst bring the gentleman from New England today, and I pray Thee that his daughter will like me. And I petition Thee not to let me become proud of anything I do or puffed-up when men praise me, because I know that everything I do is Thy work. And I ask Thy favour and protection for all men in this house, and for all the children too, especially Thomas... and Decuman and Mark, and for my father and mother and Anthony, and, oh, I pray for the peace of the soul of Thy servant King Stephen III, and I ask Thy favour and protection for myself and for my soul, through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.'

There was a sigh that seemed to come from everywhere at once, a deeper silence than before, and then again the Prefect's bell.

'Into your beds, miserable sinners. Dowse your lights, and if after one minute I see the smallest gleam the offender will receive a foretaste of the pains of Hell. Into your beds... Dowse your lights..."

Hubert lay under the rough blankets and waited in the dark. What happened next, whether anything happened next, was up to Decuman. Perhaps he was tired after the day's events, which had necessitated a good deal of standing and waiting about. Hubert hoped not: he himself was still too elated to think of sleep. Minutes went by before Decuman spoke.

'Hubert.'

It was enough; he got out of bed, rummaged sightlessly in the closet, hung the kerchief on its inconspicuous nail so that it covered the squint in the door, and prodded the rolled bolster-cover into position along the sill.

'Done.'

He was back in bed before Decuman had relit one of the candles with a phosphorus and the other two boys had sat up.

'Now let's see what we have here.' Decuman brought a small canvas bag out from somewhere under his blankets, and successively from the bag four slices of bread and four pieces of cheese. With gestures of conscious lordliness he tossed one of each to his three companions. There was a minute of eating noises. Then, still eating, he said, 'Well, Thomas?'

In the same theatrical spirit as Decuman, Thomas looked warily over at the door, then produced from his bedding a small, battered, coverless book, which he held in the air like a trophy.

'How did you come by it?'

'Ned, the brewer's boy. Of course he can't read, so he must act as a go-between, but he refuses to say where his goods come from.'

'Hit him,' suggested Decuman.

'You hit him. He's fourteen.'

'So. How much did you pay?'

'Sixpence.'

'By St George's sacred balls! We expect something hot for that.'

'We have it—this is as hot as shit.'

'Read us some,' said Hubert.

'Think what you do,' said Mark.

Decuman slowly clenched his fist and glared at Mark. 'You may remain as you are and listen, or you may lie and pretend to sleep and listen, but listen you will. Read, Tom.'

'I think it would be best if I told you the first part in short. It's not easy and I had to go slow.'

'Very well,' said Decuman. 'First let us know what it's called.'

'The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick.'

'A strange name. It is TR, I suppose?'

'If you count CW as TR.'

'CW, is it? Yes, indeed I do. Say, then.'

'The story starts in this year, 1976, but a great many things are different.'

'Are they so? We all know what CW is. Get on. What things?'

'I'll tell you if you stop interrupting. Invention has been set free a long time before. Sickness is almost conquered: nobody dies of consumption or the plague. The deserts have been made fertile. The inventors are actually called scientists, and they use electricity.'

'Such profaneness,' said Mark, listening with close attention.

'They send messages all over the Earth with it. They use it to light whole cities and even to keep folk warm. There are electric flying-machines that move at two hundred miles an hour.'

'Flying-machines always appear—this is no more than ordinary TR,' growled Decuman. 'You said it was CW.'

TR, or Time Romance, was a type of fiction that appealed to a type of mind. It had readers among schoolboys, collegiates, mechanics, inventors, scribes, merchantmen, members of Convocation and even, it was whispered, those in holy orders. Though it was formally illegal, the authorities were wise enough to know that to suppress it altogether a disproportionate effort would be necessary, and contented themselves with occasional raids and confiscations. Its name was the subject of unending debate among its followers, many of whom would point to the number of stories and novels offered and accepted as TR in which time as such played no significant part. The most commonly suggested alternative, Invention Fiction, made a beguiling acronym, but was in turn vulnerable to the charge that invention was no necessary ingredient of TR. (Science was a word and idea considered only in private: who would publish a bawdy pamphlet under the heading of Disgusting Stories?) CW, or Counterfeit World, a class of tale set more or less at the present date, but portraying the results of some momentous change in historical fact, was classified as a form of TR by plenty of others besides Decuman, if on no firmer grounds than that writers of the one sometimes ventured into the other.

Thomas answered Decuman's objection. 'Wait: what has happened is first of all that the Holy Victory never took place.'

'What impiety,' said Mark, his little eyes wide.

'Prince Arthur didn't father Stephen II or anybody else on the Blessed Catherine of Aragon. When Arthur died, Henry the Abominable married her and continued the dynasty. No Holy Expedition, because there was no true heir to set at its head. No War of the English Succession and so, of course, no Holy Victory. England became altogether Schismatic under the next king, Henry IX, and so, instead of being a place of exile and punishment for Schismatics and common criminals,'—Thomas's brown eyes were fixed on Decuman-'New England was at first a colony under the English Crown, then, in 1848, declared itself an independent republic, and now, in 1976, it's the greatest Power in the world, under the name of the Union of—'

'Wish-wash!' said Decuman loudly, pulled himself up and repeated quietly, 'Wish-wash. That mean little den of thieves and savages the greatest Power in the world?'

Hubert spoke up. 'It's not so little, Decuman, even as things are. Seven hundred miles long, my friend was telling me, bigger than-'

'And as things aren't it's bigger still,' said Thomas with some firmness. 'It conquered Louisiana and Quebec and took away the top part of Mexico and it covers the whole of North America except New Muscovy and Florida. Now: the Old World is different too. As well as England, all sorts of other places become Schismatic: Brunswick-Brandenburg, Helvetia, Denmark and the Netherlands. You remember the other day we learned about the Three Northern Popes, starting with Germanian I in 1535, and how when he was elected he said he wasn't worthy, but would serve for the sake of the unity of Christendom? Well, in this type's world, he was never reconciled to Rome—he never even went there: he stayed in Almaigne for the rest of his life as plain Martin Luther. And so, of course, Hadrian VII was never anything but Sir Thomas More.'

'The Martin Luther in the story—why did he never go to Rome?' asked Hubert after a pause.

'It says here he was afraid to. He thought they might burn him as a heretic'

Decuman stroked his nose. 'The real Martin Luther had more courage and more wit. He went to Rome and said, "If you burn me you'll have to burn thousands of other folk too, not only in my country. But if you make me Pope and promise the English it's their turn next and so on, all my followers will come round—and if I have to I'll declare a Holy War on Henry and restore Prince Stephen." It must have been like that. Something like that.'

'The Holy Father is appointed by God,' said Mark, crossing himself. 'Not by arrangements between-'

'The Holy Father is a man,' said Decuman, 'and so are the members of the College of Cardinals. They plot and scheme like other men.'

'Schismatic!'

'Fuck a fox. Go on, Tom.'

'I haven't read much further. How somebody called Zwingli preached Schismaticism to the Helvetians. Rather heavisome, I thought. But there are some good grins here and there. One for you, Hubert—Mozart died in 1799, just after finishing Die Monderforschung, but your friend Beethoven lived until 1835 and wrote twenty symphonies.'

'I don't call that a grin.'

'Well, the author enjoys it.' Thomas turned a page. 'Oh yes. There's a famous book which proves that mankind is descended from a thing like an ape, not from Adam and Eve. Can you give me ths title?'

The others shook their heads.

'The Origin of Species!'

Even Mark joined in the laughter, which was quickly shushed by Decuman.

'Who is the man in the high castle?' asked Hubert.

'He hasn't come in yet,' said Thomas, 'but he must be wicked and very powerful. A sorcerer, perhaps.'

In the Abbot's refectory, dinner was over. The servants had taken away the sixteenth-century pewter plate, piled the fires and filled the baskets with apple logs, left fresh candles and departed: only Lawrence remained on call.

Mirabilis unbuttoned his jacket and glanced ruefully down at his paunch. On its inside were rather large amounts of sorrel soup, salmon trout, Gloucestershire lamb baked with rosemary and served with new potatoes and young carrots, geranium cream and, inevitably, Stilton cheese, together with a couple of pints of audit ale. When entertaining foreign visitors, the Abbot made rather a point of providing only the best English fare. In a spirit of polite response, Mirabilis passed over the offered claret and malmsey in favour of the walnut cordial that, like the ale, was made on the premises. He sipped and looked into the delicate Waterford glass.

'The herb is still a secret?'

'I'm afraid so.' The Abbot spoke with what sounded like real and deep regret, adding in alleviation, 'It grows only in the country hereabouts.'

'Very distinctive... What of his intelligence, my lord?'

'Ah, we think highly of it, Fritz, and I trust I can say we do what we can to foster it. We've put him in company with three slightly older lads, one of them a confounded rogue, but all capable of thought. And his studies prosper, notably his Latin: a safe guide.'

'He seemed to me a little... stolid. Not dull, but not active.'

'That's his looks,' said Father Dilke. 'Poor Hubert-when you first see him it's hard to believe that a quick mind lives in that head, but it does. If I put a point to him at practice, he grasps it before half my words are out.'

'Oh, musically, of course, that's obvious.'

Morley had said nothing in the last few minutes. Now he spoke up with some asperity. 'But musical intelligence is intelligence, master. We should need only the music of Valeriani, for example, to know that he was a most unusually intelligent man. And, in what at the moment is naturally a smaller way, the same is true of Anvil. Perhaps nobody has told our distinguished guest that Anvil, apart from possessing a remarkable voice and remarkable powers of execution and interpretation, is also a composer quite out of the common. Later, perhaps, the Abbot will permit me to play you one or two of Anvil's studies for piano-forte. They will answer all your questions about his intelligence.'

'This at ten years old?'

'Ten or so. He's a prodigy, sir. Could anyone less have come to understand his way from Bach to Wagner in eighteen months?'

'Was hat er gesagt?' muttered Viaventosa.

'Anvil ist ein begabter Komponist.'

'Nein, wirklich?'

'And at the keyboard it's the same, Master Morley?'

'In honesty no, sir. Serviceable and deft, deft enough to guide his compositions, little more. There's no conflict there.'

'But there's conflict here, yes?'

Whether by accident or not, the form of words seemed to fit the fact. Morley looked grim, almost glowering. Dilke faced him, his long fingers pinching repeatedly at the point where his nose met his brows. The Abbot's handsome face was watchful. (Viaventosa was fairly busy with a bunch of hothouse grapes.)

'Have you considered this as I asked you to, Sebastian?'

'Yes, my lord.'

'Say, then, but in short if you will. It must be decided tonight. I should much prefer it so.'

Morley nodded. His red complexion looked redder than ever in the light from fire and candles. 'Anvil would surely prove a composer of repute, an ornament to Coverley and to England and with a place in the history of his art. But-'

'And a credit to you, master,' said Dilke in a friendly tone.

'No, Father. He was there all the time; I was merely the one who found him. Now: if it were to happen that Anvil should continue as composer, it might be that he would go beyond mere repute. He might take—he might one day have taken his place with Weber, Schumann, even Valeriani. I can't give you chances: I'm not an operator. All I can tell you is that it would have been fully possible. Is that short enough for you, my lord?'

'Yes, Sebastian, and thank you. But you speak as if the outcome were already resolved.'

'So it is, my lord.' The harshness of Morley's voice was more than usually evident. He gave the two visitors an odd look, one in which hostility was mingled with something like compassion.

'Are you quite yourself, old friend?'

'A touch of melancholia, my lord-it's my nature. Forgive me, I beg you.'

'Why, of course. What have you to say, Father?'

'Very little out of my own mouth, my lord. Hubert is the finest boy singer I've ever heard as regards both musicianly and physical endowment. But my experience is rather limited. Master Morley's word will stand of itself; mine needs support.' Dilke spoke as one stating a fact. 'And God has seen to it that there are those on hand who can give that support. Master Mirabilis, would you care to repeat to the company what you said to me earlier?'

'Gladly, Father. Indeed, I'll extend it. I state roundly that I've listened to the work of every singer of mark in Christendom, in most cases several or many times: I couldn't live in Rome for twenty-five years without doing so. Your Clerk Anvil surpasses any other of his condition. He has six or seven superiors who have what only the years and experience can bring. And Wolfgang here has something to add to what I say.'

'I heard Fritz when he was ten years old,' squeaked Viaven-tosa, expressing his own sentiments in the terms his friend had coached him in, 'and this boy is better. Not much, but he is better. I remember well. and I am sure.'

'Thank you, masters,' said Dilke after a short silence.

The Abbot looked grave. 'It seems,' he said, 'it seems to me that we have a possibility on one side and something not so far from a fact on the other.'

'We'll find that possibility is closed,' said Morley, quietly now. 'But if it had ever come to fruition, we'd have had something immense. And even if not... A composer belongs to the world and to posterity; a singer by comparison can reach only a few and his voice dies with him, leaving no record behind except in the words of those who heard him. My regrets, masters, but it's true. It's true.' His voice tailed off.

Viaventosa had followed part of this. He nodded, frowning, his eyes shut.

'But are we faced with a choice?' asked Dilke. 'Surely Anvil can be composer and singer by turns?'

Morley said, 'An active career as singer has always in effect ruled out serious composition.'

'But an active career with violin or piano-forte hasn't always.'

'Conceded. What of it?'

'Anvil may be the first exception,' said Dilke, with a quick glance at the Abbot. 'Another possibility, eh?'

'We need none of your Jesuitries tonight, Father.'

'That'll do.' The Abbot's troubled look-perhaps it had never been more than a look-was gone. He poured himself claret with a small flourish. 'You've put your case, Sebastian, and I commend you most strongly for your moderation. Yes, I do. But you could scarcely have argued otherwise. The decision is clear. Anvil goes to the surgeon as soon as the formalities are complete.'

Morley shrugged his broad shoulders. After a moment he said, 'Certain of those formalities may not be simple matters of form. The boy's father is of high condition.'

'A London merchantman, with an older son near marrying age,' said Dilke. 'Uh, what of it, master?'

'This of it: he will know, or will soon discover, that boys chosen for this treatment are normally of low parentage. He may see the proposal as a slur upon him, and his consent is of course required by law.'

'True,' said the Abbot: 'Clerk Anvil's case is in that way somewhat exceptional, but then so are his talents. He will be celebrated and rich before very long. That should carry weight with the father. And if not, as a pious man, which I myself know him to be, he'll have in mind his duty to God. Or can easily be put in mind of it.'

'There'll be no difficulty, my lord,' said Dilke, carefully choosing a sweetmeat from the silver bowl before him.

Later the Abbot said privately to Mirabilis, 'If I may ask you, Fritz—do you think we were right?'

'In what respect?'

'The decision about Anvil's future isn't an ordinary one, you see. There can be no going back afterwards.'

'No indeed, my lord, but I still don't quite understand.'

'It's simply that not even the wisest of us is infallible. Suppose that in a few years Anvil's powers decline. There was such a case—at any rate, if it should so turn out, what do we say to ourselves then?'

'What you have just said, that none of us is infallible. Let me put your mind at peace, my lord. There are these, these declines you mention, but they're very rare, too rare to be allowed for, and your duty to music and to God is too great. No, whatever should happen, anybody who knows the full truth must see that you were right in your decision.'

'Thank you, dear Fritz, that's what I wanted to hear.'

Later yet, Lawrence escorted his master's two guests across the quadrangle to the gate and assisted them into the small four-wheeled carriage that was waiting there. Mirabilis gave the man a sixpence-he enjoyed overtipping on his travels-and watched him and his lantern disappear. All St Cecilia's, all that could be seen, was dark. The driver whipped up his horse and they moved off between the tall hedgerows. The going was quiet, quiet enough for Mirabilis to be able to hear without difficulty the little rapid snorts and sniffs coining from his companion. They held a familiar message, and experience suggested that it should be heeded without undue delay.

'A pleasant and distinguished evening,' said Mirabilis with an air of contentment.

Further sniffs and snorts.

'That young priest, Dilke: I must confess I didn't care for him at first, but he has more depth than I suspected.'

'H'm. H'm.'

'Does something trouble you, Wolfgang?' Parts of marriage must be rather like this, thought Mirabilis.

'No. Nothing.'

'Tell old Fritz about it.'

Viaventosa was a fat bewigged shape in the watery moonlight. 'There's a boy asleep somewhere in that place,' he squeaked after a moment. 'An ordinary English boy, with all his boyish dreams. No doubt he pictures himself journeying to Mexico to win the hand of the Emperor's daughter, or rescuing a Christian princess from the Turks...'

'No doubt he does, Wolfgang.'

'And steps are about to be taken which will confound those dreams for ever.'

'Really, very few English boys can hope to win the-'

'Please, Fritz. His youth is to vanish, with his manhood, and his humanity. He'll be what we are, a gelding, an ox, a wether, a capon.'

'And a singer at the summit of his profession, a—'

'Not as great as Velluti. No one could match Velluti.'

'Shame on you, Wolfgang: your grandfather could not have heard Velluti.'

'My great-grandfather did, as a young boy. I told you before.'

'Be done with your great-grandfather, and with Velluti. We talk of Anvil, and I say he'll be admired, deferred to, welcome wherever he wishes to go, above all possessed of something more valuable than any crown: to have as the centre of his life the delight that comes from the exercise of skill.'

'There are other things more valuable than crowns, and other delights.'

'How can you know?'

'I can't know, but I have eyes and ears. And feeling.'

'I share it, my dear: you know that.'

'H'm. H'm.'

Your feeling is too much for yourself at this moment, thought Mirabilis, but what he said, in a gentle tone, was, 'What did you think of the boy's piano-forte studies? Some of those modulations were too violent for me, in spite of what Morley said. Oh, the days are gone when music was supposed to sound pleasant...'

At St Cecilia's, the next day was one of leisure. According to Decuman, this was actually a device for extracting more work from the inmates than usual: morning studies began with a solid two hours of Latin during which (so he said afterwards) the preceptors behaved as if all knowledge of that tongue were about to be removed from their minds the moment the bell sounded, and they must convey everything they could before it struck. Church history was similarly accelerated, with popes, idolaters, martyrs, heretical bishops jostling one another across the scene like characters in an extravaganza. Forenoon choir-schooling sternly eschewed anything that could be called music and set the clerks to struggle with uncouth intervals or eccentric time-signatures. But, with dinner, the march of instruction halted; Hubert, for instance, was to have the afternoon to himself until his private hour with Master Morley at five o'clock.

Activity on the dormitory floor was intense but almost silent: a reckless guffaw or yell was apt to draw the attention of a monitor and lead, perhaps, to a withdrawal of leisure-privilege. So it was in a kind of bursting mutter that Thomas invited Hubert to join him, Decuman and Mark in an expedition to a pool where there were supposed to be trout, and in a similiar mode that Hubert conveyed his thanks and regrets—he had to write letters to his family, he said. But, as the other three did, he changed from chapel dress to the garb permitted for the leisure hours of leisure days: coloured cotton shirt, a furious indulgence for those limited on all occasions to white, and, in theory, to spotless white at that; loose trousers reaching to the ankle, an escape no less precious to habitual wearers of breeches and stockings; and rubber-soled canvas shoes instead of the constant polished leather.

Decuman gave Hubert a perhaps over-cordial buffet on the shoulder and led his fishing-party from the room. All the way down the tiled corridor to the stairhead, the receding swish and squeak of rubber could be heard, diversified by the recurrent bang of a door, smothered giggle and louder shushing. Soon there was silence but for a creak or two of woodwork as the building warmed up in the sun. It was a hot day for the time of year: from the dormitory window, Hubert had a view of grass and treetops, shining almost yellow in the strong light, and caught a stray sparkle from the distant spires of Oxford. For some time he stared without blinking, without looking except vaguely. The waxed windowshelf was warm and moist under his hand. His writing materials were in his desk in the day-room on the ground floor, but when at last he moved it was through the momentary coolness of the tiny stone-paved hall of that part of the building and out into the sunshine.

He crossed the courtyard and went through the arch under the Abbot's lodging. In the farrier's shop, the ring of beaten metal could be heard; otherwise, the various offices seemed asleep or empty. Hubert paused at the carp-pond and peered through the shifting glare at the mud-coloured mass that showeditself only now and then, for a moment, to be a crowd of individual fish. When the time came, each and all of them would vanish down the gullets of hungry folk at dinner or supper in the Chapel refectories. That was not shocking, or rather it ceased to be so on consideration. Human beings had absolute God-given rights over dumb creatures; it was part of the principle on which the world worked. Less extremely but no less strictly, it applied to divisions within mankind: Christians and Mahometans, clergy and laity, gentry and people, men and women, fathers and children.

At the dove-cote, Hubert paused again. Coos, flutterings and a good deal of activity on foot carried between them an air of urgency, of resources strained near their limits, though whether in the direction of disaster or triumph it was, as always, quite unclear. Then, slowly, head lowered, he entered the farmyard. The duck-pond here was far less grand than the carp-pond, being nothing but a large hole full of dirty water; on the other hand, it had ducks on it and near it, dozens of them, far too many for more than a fraction to benefit from the scraps of bread he had saved from refectory. While he was doling these out, Smart the collie bounded up to him. The growls he made meant only that here came somebody of rank and mark, and soon changed into grunting noises that meant that somebody of rank and mark was being affable to somebody less well placed. After a few moments of this, Hubert heard an uncertain step on the stretch of dried mud between him and the main pasture. He looked up and saw approaching a calf he had become slightly acquainted with over the past few weeks. It (he had not discovered the animal's sex) was mostly white, with a large black patch on one flank and two smaller ones thrown as if at random on to its face, giving it a clownish look. With many a protestation of friendship, Hubert went up to it step by step. He had not reached it when it backed, wheeled away and trotted on to the grass, but it had let him come at least a yard nearer than last time. If he had been a country lad he would have known what to offer—a carrot, a handful of hay—as a token of good will; since he was not, good will itself and patience would have to serve, but serve they surely must in the end.

Calling to Smart to follow, he walked at the same slow pace as before along the edge of the pasture and reached the foot of a long bright slope overgrown with furze and heather. Smart did follow as far as here, but no further, which was quite right, because he belonged to the farm. Hubert moved on. Every dozen paces he turned his head and found the dog in the same position as before, looking at him alertly and yet blankly, until all at once he was nowhere to be seen.

At the top of the slope a wood began. It must have been there for a long time, to judge by the trunks of the trees, which were thick and bulging and quite often split, and by the fact that some of the taller ones had spread their boughs so densely as to keep out the sun in patches. This was still Chapel land, the source of fuel for the ovens, and rabbits, pigeons and partridges for the refectory tables. Hubert had no wish for company that afternoon; he settled himself in a thicket with his back against an ivy-covered stump and stared at the irregular tiers of foliage, some of them brilliant with reflected light, most of them in shadow, all of them hardly moving in the still air.

After a few minutes, what Hubert had been keeping at the back of his mind—so far back that none of it had any pitch or duration: it was more like a buried memory—rose all at once to his attention and began to gather shape. But the shape would not come right, not everywhere. There were two melodies that immediately and necessarily involved the same harmonic structure, but they would not fit within it together, and each resisted alteration to make it conform with its fellow. Both in turn proved impossible to drive out. Hubert frowned and sweated and began to feel the passing of time. What he had so nearly grasped was on the point of slipping away from him when the third melody appeared and, in the act of doing so, revealed itself as the air on which the other two were variations. The sooner, perhaps, for having been held in check by his discreditable slow-wittedness, there came to mind the outline of two further variations and a central episode in the tonic minor. Should he write out the whole piece and win Master Morley's praise for his apparent diligence, or produce only half and save himself thought for the next half-week?

He was considering this point, not very actively, when he heard voices approaching along the path that ran within a few yards of his nest in the thicket. An instinct implanted by experience at St Cecilia's and elsewhere made him stay where he was and keep quiet: in this deep shade, he would be likely to be seen from the path only if he were being looked for. The voices came closer, turned into a chuckle and a giggle, went past him a little way and stopped. Then, through birdsong and the hum of insects, he heard a faint rhythmical murmur as of someone pleasantly half-asleep. It ceased, and two people, bending low, came into his view twelve or fifteen feet away at the far end of a sort of accidental tunnel of greenery, and stayed there.

Hubert recognised one of them as Ned, the brewer's boy who supplied Thomas with TR. Ned's companion was a girl, but it was difficult to be certain of anything beyond that because, as they knelt face to face, his arm and shoulder and head were so much in the way. They were kissing, though the word seemed wrong, inadequate to their energy and single-mindedness, to the greed or desperation with which they clung to each other, as if trying to display a fear of being parted for the rest of their lives. Were they playing a game?

When Ned's hand pushed at the girl's bosom through her clothes, Hubert pretended to himself not to notice; when the hand went beneath the clothes, he drew in his breath with a wince; when they were gone and she was bare to the waist, he forgot about breathing. Then they both sank to where his eye could not follow them, and he panted a few times to recover air. What Decuman had described more than once to an incredulous, rather appalled Hubert was about to happen, or was already happening. Why? How could it? This was Ned, somebody he knew, somebody who had never shown the least sign of wanting to behave like this or being capable of it. Hubert was excited, aware of but not attentive to a stirring in his body, absorbed and full of guilt and dread.

Very soon, Ned rose to his feet, still fully clothed, and moved behind a bush with thick, broad leaves on it. Then the girl sat up; without being able to see, Hubert knew she had all her clothes off now. He had a clear sight of her face for the first time, and stared at it hard, eager for some clue. Whether she was beautiful or ugly or anything between quite passed him by. She was looking over at Ned with an expression Hubert strove to read. He thought he made out what he found hard to believe could be there: dejection, defeat, pleading, and a fixity that suggested to him that her mind was on other things. But that last was surely impossible.

Ned came back with nothing on and Hubert did not look at him. In a moment, the pair had again disappeared below the level of his view, and again there was silence but for the noises of the woods. For the first time Hubert felt embarrassed, but this did not last long because his head was too full of questions without answers. He would understand when he was older, Decuman had said. Would he? Did they?

From the ground those few feet away Hubert heard a voice cry out, but so strangely that he was never able, either then or afterwards, to decide whose voice it had been. And what did it express? Relief? Astonishment? Triumph? Despair? Not despair. Pain? No, not pain. Pleasure, then. It must be pleasure: Decuman had laid great stress on that. All this would be something to tell him and the others when the candles were relit that night, something to discuss, something he had that they had not. And yet that would be wrong. Indeed (it occurred to him with sudden force), watching and listening these last ten minutes, being here at all, had been wrong, wrong enough to be a sin. He had seen earlier no alternative to remaining hidden, nor did one occur to him now, but that did not make it any less of a sin: teaching was very firm on such points. What was this a sin of? Impurity was a safe guess. So, although he did not feel impure (in fact rather the contrary, if his desire to forget what he had seen and heard was to be considered), he muttered some words of contrition and then, more and more drowsily, an unknown number of Hail Marys.

Hubert waited for some minutes, still drowsily, until Ned and the girl had put on their clothes and moved out of earshot. Then, distant but clear, he heard the St Cecilia's clock strike four and jumped up, startling a large grey bird which startled him with the abrupt whir of its wings. Master Morley would have to be satisfied with, at best, Theme and Variations i and 2. Theme... For a moment Hubert's mind was quite empty. In deep dismay, he checked his stride and abruptly, without any thought, laid his hand on his chest just below the base of the throat. The moment soon passed and the piece was there again, exactly as it had been. But nothing like that had happened to him before.

He reached the edge of the wood and was at once calmed by what lay below him: the uncultivated slope, the pasture and its herd, the farm buildings, the Chapel in the form of an H with its upper half closed. What had happened in the wood was over, and had never been anything but senseless and on its own.

Chapter Two

Master Tobias Anvil's house stood on the north side of Tyburn Road near its junction with Edgware Road. A generation ago, this had been in effect the north-western corner of London, with Bayswater Station, the railtrack departure-point for the capital, to be seen across open fields. But nowadays, with the population of the city well above the million mark, manufactories were springing up round the advantageous station site, and the dwellings of the people came with them. It was forecast that, within another generation, London would extend as far as the former villages-now the thriving small towns—of Kilburn and Shepherd's Bush. Already, those among the gentry who felt or professed a disdain for city life had begun to settle down by the river in Fulham and on the northern heights of Hampstead.

For the moment, Master Anvil was very well content to stay where he was. The position was convenient. His express took him to the consular district round St Giles's Palace in no more than five minutes, to his counting-house by Bishopsgate in well under fifteen. (It was alleged by his enemies that the much closer proximity of Tyburn Tree was an attraction, but this must have been malice or humour, since no felon had been executed there since 1961, and the last Act of Faith dated as far back as 1940.) The house itself had many points in its favour. Separated off from the highway by wrought-iron gates and a pair of lawns on which fountains played, it was an impressive three-storey building of Kentish ragstone with window-arches and chimneys of hand-moulded Reading brick. To the rear lay two and a half acres of garden in the Danish style, with large formal lily-ponds, an orangery and a small aviary. It had been built by the present occupant's grandfather about the year 1900 at a cost of nearly three thousand pounds, and today the whole property was valued at something not far short of three times that amount.

The breakfast-room was sited at the south-eastern corner, of the house to catch the early sun, which, one fine morning in late May, gleamed and glinted with rare brilliance on the white-and-gilt furnishings. The scent of wallflowers and azaleas, fresh-cut from the garden an hour before, mingled pleasantly with the odour of hot bread. Four persons sat at the long mahogany table: Master Anvil himself, his wife Margaret, their elder son Anthony, and Father Matthew Lyall, the family chaplain. Usually at this hour—eight o'clock—Tobias was about his business, but today he was expecting visitors, so could indulge himself with a third panino and honey, a fourth bowl of tea and an extended reading of the newspapers.

He was forty-eight years old, thin and thin-faced, with abundant black hair reaching to his shoulders after the usage of his social condition. His grave demeanour, in particular the habitual intentness of his gaze, went with his taste for a plain, almost severe style of dress to give him something of a clerical aspect. His conduct was in keeping: few merchantmen were stricter in their observances, on better terms with the clergy in general, or— as was testified by the gold candlesticks and gold-threaded altar-cloth at St Mary Bourne, his parish church—more liberal with donatives. Lowering his black brows at the front page of the London Observer, the organ of the Papal Cure, he said in his clear, rather sing-song tones, 'The Turk announces his departure from Greece in 1980. This follows his sending his High Delegate to the obsequies of his late majesty.'

'An encouraging development, master,' said Father Lyall, a chubby, youngish man whose upper lip was always dark no matter how closely he shaved.

'Is it so, Father? Never forget that our adversary isn't bound by his word as Christians are. He means us to disarm ourselves to the point at which he may safely recross the Danube. Already his policy of "pacific concomitance" has had frightening effects. You must have seen that the Papal and Patriarchal forces along the north bank are to be reduced further. And I hear talk of a Bill to be laid before Convocation intended to diminish our own navy. The argument's familiar enough: why should we English exert ourselves in that quarter when Naples and Venice and Hungary do so little? How else are we to show the spirit of detensione? Liberal cant! I should very much like to know the number of secret Mahometan agents among our governors. Oh, this battle has continued for more than six hundred years, whether the state of affairs at any one time was called war or peace, and Christendom will never be safe until the Turk is thrown back by force into Asia and the Imperial Patriarchate restored at Constantinople.'

'I'm sure many Christians share that dream,' said the priest.

'But not you yourself.'

'Oh yes, sir. Indeed, I devoutly wish it were attainable.'

'It will never be attained while there are such as you within the Church, fortifying the cause of the heathen.'

'Master Anvil, I do no such thing. I ask only that we reserve our efforts and the blood of our young men for achieving what can be achieved. And I remind you that there was One who commanded us to forgive our enemies.'

'It was He who advised the people that when a strong man in arms holdeth his palace, his goods are safe; but when one stronger than he shall come upon him, then...'

'That's an argument for continuing to be strong, for maintaining defences, not for—'

'My argument precisely, Father. I deplored our weakness and our reduced defences.'

'And went on to advocate the violent expulsion of the Turk. Now attend, sir. The true strength of our Church lies not in armies or fleets but in the souls of her children.'

'By St Peter, I'm glad you're not Secretary of the War Chamber.'

'It's my duty to instruct you as I have, master.'

'Very well, Father, very well. Have I your permission to continue reading?'

'Of course.'

The post of private chaplain to the Anvil family had had half a dozen incumbents since Tobias had been in a position to institute it. Father Lyall had already lasted in it longer than all of them put together. He had seen at once that his employer regarded himself, or wanted to be regarded, as a latter-day zealot so extreme as to satisfy the most ardent ultramontanist in the Church hierarchy and the most Romanist of politicians—so very extreme, in particular, that he needed constant doctrinal sedation to hold his missionary enthusiasm within bounds. Instead of tamely submitting to Tobias's extravagances, then, Lyall called them in question, disparaged them, rebuked them. The colloquy about the Turk had ended after the usual and preferred pattern, with the layman accepting but not embracing the advice of his spiritual counsellor and conspicuously reserving the right to return to the charge at any more or less appropriate time.

In itself and in its applications, the arrangement suited Lyall. After fourteen years in orders he felt no particular disapproval if a man took elaborate means to secure his position with Rome. He himself had entered the priesthood partly through motives of self-advancement. As it had turned out, his career had not prospered: he lacked both the skill and the energy to make the right friends or become known for the right opinions. When the Anvil appointment fell vacant, he had recognised it without trouble as an insurance of comfort and security. The duties were not onerous: ministering to the souls of an unremarkable household, acting as social secretary, running the kind of errand for which a servant was deemed unsuitable, keeping Dame Anvil company, and being on hand to abate her husband's fervours. The positive rewards included good food, good wine, and the occupancy of a room above the express-house where, thanks to the presence of a separate staircase, young women could be entertained in seclusion. All that troubled Father Lyall, and that not often or so far to any effect, was a resentment against those faceless and largely nameless persons whom he considered to hold the real power in and over his Church. They had not admitted him to their number; more than that, they were not true servants of God.

Rather perfunctorily, Tobias had been glancing through the English Gazette, the organ of Convocation: it came to his breakfast-table only because he felt it incumbent on men in his position to have access, at least, to both national newspapers. But again his notice was caught, perhaps more closely than before.

'Attend to this,' he said. '"The physicians and inventors who conferred on the outbreak of plague in East Runton in Norfolk last month have delivered their findings to the Secretary of the Salubrity Chamber. They state that the disease, from which 88 persons died in a single night, is of no known origin, but that consultation reveals a similarity with the sickness which, in February last, launched no souls into eternity at St Tfopez in France. In neither case, however, had the disease spread to the surrounding country, and its recurrence was not to be feared." So. Well, Anthony, what do you think of that? Is it possible?'

Since he had not so far been spoken to since the beginning of the meal, Anthony Anvil had not so far spoken. At twenty-one years old, he was a well-grown youth with a healthy skin, wide dark eyes and a full mouth which, whatever his father might and often did say, tended to fall open in repose. He wore collegiate black with white bands, since he would shortly be on his way to pursue his studies at St Clement's Hospital in the Strand. On being addressed, he shut his mouth tight, then opened it cautiously to say, 'If it's reported in the Gazette, papa, then it's possible.'

'I'm not a nitwit, sir! I ask you if you think it's possible that a sickness can strike at two such widely-separated places as these, leave no hint of its nature, and yet be altogether discounted as a future threat.'

Anthony could not for the moment see what was the required answer to this question, or series of questions, so it was with continued caution that he replied, 'The two places are widely separated in distance, but not in kind. Both are small fishing-villages.'

'But a plague of unknown origin?'

'All plagues are of unknown origin when they first appear.'

'A plague from fish? Is that what you suggest?'

'It wasn't believed for a long time that other plagues were brought by rats.'

'But rats are warm-blooded creatures like ourselves. A plague that kills in a few hours?'

'Some in the past have died in less than a day. Forgive me, papa, but you asked if it was possible and, from what I know, it is.'

'What do you say, Father?'

'I? I have no knowledge and therefore no opinion, master.'

'It would be useful,' said Anthony after a pause, 'to know whether in truth the disease has not spread to—what was it?—the surrounding country.'

Tobias lowered his brows again. 'You doubt the voice of Convocation?'

'No, sir,' lied his son: 'only that of the physicians and inventors who weighed the matter. From what you read to us, the Gazette does no more than record their words.'

'Well said, Anthony—and we know how much trust to put in them. Physicians may be all very well, but what of inventors? Half of them are no better than scientists who daren't give themselves their true name. This affair has every sign of an experiment in science. Recklessness. Disregard for human life. Above all, an inclination to usurp the power of the Qeator. Whether or not these outbreaks were indeed isolated, we must fear a recurrence. We're all in danger. And will remain so until our heads of State look to their duty of protecting Christians.'

'Yes, sir.'

The priest stroked his bluish upper lip to cover traces of a smile: he had wondered a little how his master would reach his preferred theme from such an unfamiliar starting-point.

"The case is no better with our spiritual lords,' continued Tobias. 'Some of them are positively worm-eaten with tolerance. The Holy Office must bestir itself and set out to eradicate the ulcers that afflict us. When was the last scientist examined? I think at the very least a letter to the Editor of the Gazette...'

Before long, Master Anvil had finished with science and scientists for the moment and, after grace and a word with Father Lyall, left the room. Anthony embraced his mother and also departed. The two servants who had attended all this time in total silence came forward and began to clear the table.

Margaret Anvil had likewise said nothing throughout. This was normal and, in a general sense, so regarded by her. What seemed to be exceptional about her relations with her husband was their intimacy in private. He treated her as she imagined he would a valued friend, telling her of his activities, asking about her own, sharing little jokes. In the marriage-bed itself he showed her every consideration: never once had he had his way with her against her will. He was a good man and she was proud to be his wife.

Except in the fullness of her figure, Margaret did not look her forty-two years. She had a fine natural complexion, auburn hair touched no more than lightly with grey, and excellent teeth. A man might have taken her for a countrywoman unless he observed the severe set of her mouth and the diffident glance that went oddly with it. When she rose from her chair her height was noticeable, as was also the richness of her quilted turquoise breakfast-gown against the plain black, white and grey worn by everyone else present.

As usual, Father Lyall was at the door, and as usual he said respectfully that he would attend her in due course in her sitting-room. But, not as usual, she looked up at him as she passed, and found him looking at her in a way that she could have defined only by saying that it was not respectful.

Ten minutes later, by arrangement, the priest came to his master's library on the first floor. It looked like the abode of someone distinguished for both worldliness and piety, being expensively panelled and carpeted, furnished with massive teak and leather, hung with Indian brocades and Siamese silks, and yet profuse in large canvases of scriptural scenes, devotional statuary, brassedged volumes of theology and hagiography. The two interests were most fully combined in the great solid-silver Crucifixion on the east wall and, below it, the plush-upholstered ebony prie-dieu, well placed (it had occurred to Lyall in a refractory mood) for any occupant whose spiritual needs might at any time suddenly become too urgent to allow recourse to the more than adequate chapel at the other end of the house.

Tobias was behind his vast oak desk. 'Sit down, please, Father.'

'Thank you, master,' said Lyall, deciding on an upright chair as the least unconducive to his making some show of sacerdotal austerity. 'May I know a little more about what you require of me this morning?'

'I'll tell you what little more I know myself. I await a visit from the Abbot of St Cecilia's Chapel, whom you've met, and his Chapelmaster, a certain Father Dilke, whom I think you haven't? No-well, they don't reveal their purpose, but it must be something that touches Hubert.'

'Some misdemeanour?'

'The natural inference, but I'm inclined to doubt it. A misdemeanour grave enough to bestir the Abbot would have fetched me there, not him here. Accident or other misfortune he rules out.'

He wants something from you, then, thought Lyall, but said only, 'And you need me here to...'

'To perform your usual function, my dear Father Lyall.' The momentarily heightened intentness of the glance that came from under those heavy brows suggested that some more than superficial understanding of that function might be common to both men.

'Just so, sir.'

'And the Abbot specifically requests your presence... Come.'

A servant appeared, announced the two visitors, and soon brought them in. There were greetings and the necessary introductions. Bowls of chocolate were offered and declined. First inspecting it carefully, the Abbot settled back in one of the deep chairs, and Dilke sat on the edge of another.

'I hope your journey was tolerable, my lord?'

'Oh, better than that, master. Far, far better. These new parlour-baruches are really very pleasantly appointed, and the rapid completes the journey well within the hour.'

'Impressive.'

'I think so. Let me at once open to you the matter of our interview, if I may.' The Abbot paused long enough to quench thoroughly any doubts he might have had about whether he could assume that it was indeed legitimate for him to go on. 'Your son Hubert: he's well and happy and in good favour. And more than that. Yes, more than that. It's a question of his abilities as a singer. Now you've heard me say many times in the past that these are exceptional, outstanding, prodigious, and the like—terms of the highest praise, that is, and honestly intended, but lacking in value because they lacked any fair measure or comparison. That has recently been supplied. Hubert is, simply is, the best boy singer in living memory and one of the best singers of any age to be found anywhere.'

After a silence, Tobias said, rather mechanically, 'The Lord be thanked for His gracious gift.'

'Amen,' said the Abbot. 'But that's not all I came to tell you. No. Master Anvil, I hope you see it as our sacred duty to preserve this divine gift that has been entrusted to our stewardship. Such is my own view, you understand.'

'And mine too, my lord. Of course.'

'Good. I'm pleased. Now: there's only one way whereby to bring it about that the gift we've mentioned shall be preserved. This is what it is. Surgery. An act of alteration. Simple, painless, and without danger. Then, afterwards, a glorious career in the service of music, of God and of God's Holy Church. Any other course,' said the Abbot, looking quite hard at Tobias, 'would be a positive disservice thereto. The career I spoke of is assured, as certainly as any such matter can be. I tell you altogether openly, master, I'd give much to have a son with such an opportunity before him.'

'You say Hubert's future...' Tobias's voice was less distinct than usual and he cleared his throat before going on. 'You say his future is assured.'

'I repeat, as far as it can be. If you'd like details of my information..."

'No. No. My lord—suppose for a moment that this surgery is not carried out, what then? Hubert's voice will break, yes. But couldn't he continue then as a—a male singer, a tenor or...?'

The Abbot started to turn to Father Dilke, who said rapidly, 'There are two answers to that, Master Anvil, sir. One is that a mature treble or soprano of this kind is something rather out of the common these days. There's only a handful of them in all England and perhaps a hundred and fifty in the whole world. We at St Cecilia's have had none for... some time. Most places must make shift with boys of Hubert's age or a couple of years older. But who could count the number of those you call male singers? And many of them are of great excellence, whereas Hubert will come to stand alone. An abundance of music exists that only he will be able to sing as it deserves, as (I think I can say) God would have it sung.' Dilke glanced at the Abbot, who nodded approvingly. 'Your indulgence, master, but this is my conviction.'

'I understand you, Father. Is that your two answers or only the first?'

'The second, sir, is that, if a voice like Hubert's is allowed to break, it never afterwards recovers its distinction. In my father's time there was a boy called Ernest Lough. Does the name...?'

'I know nothing of these matters, but continue.'

'Lough was a clerk at one of the London churches, where he became famous for his performance in Hear my Prayer, in effect an anthem by Bartley of no great import in itself—all the same, folk would come from Coverley and further on purpose to hear him. My father used to say he had purity rather than power... Well, later he showed himself a most accomplished musician and sang as a baritone, but he never attained the mark that he-'

'Enough, Father: I take the point.'

There was silence again. Furtively, Lyall looked from one to the other of the two visitors. The Abbot pursed his lips, leaned forward, and said with a smile, 'You give your consent, then, master?'

'What is this consent?'

'Your signature to a simple document authorising the surgery I spoke of. I have it with me here.'

'One moment, my lord, if you please. There are some circumstances I must take into account. First: has my son been told anything of what you tell me?'

'Not yet. It was felt, I felt, that you might care to let him know yourself.'

'I see. Now: this act of alteration may well be safe enough in itself, but can we be satisfied of its consequences? The chief consequence is not in doubt; I ask if there are any others we should notice. I think for instance of the physical health of such a person.'

'Oh, unimpaired. There is, I believe, a slight tendency to stoutness in later life, but reasonable moderation should forestall that. And the chief consequence you mention shouldn't trouble one such as you, with another son to continue the family name and line.'

'Quite so, quite so.' Tobias was a little abrupt; then his manner grew thoughtful or reluctant, and when he went on it was in a similar style. 'My lord Abbot: when I was a young man, there was a common saying that there were only three ways in which a man of the people could buy himself out of his condition: by letting his son go for a prizefighter, an acrobat or a singing eunuch and possessing himself of the spoils. It may not be true now, it may not have been true then, but it's still believed. Some of us have to live in the world, and it's a cruel place, and I should hate to have it said that I'd behaved like an ambitious cobbler or a greedy coal-miner or a...'

'We all have to live in the world, master,' said the Abbot rather sternly, 'and we make with it what accommodation we can. What if you should be reprehended for having sold your child? You and I know that the truth would be different, and not you and I alone. Are petty slanders so hard to bear?'

'No such consideration would sway me from my duty to God,' said Tobias.

'Or to His Holy Church,' said Father Lyall, but not aloud.

The Abbot caught Dilke's eye. 'Nobly and piously spoken.'

'Thank you, my lord.' Tobias gave a deep sigh. 'May I see your document? Most concise, isn't it? Three clauses only, and a... There seems to be space here for a second signature.'

'That of the habitual confessor of the family in question, the parish priest or, as in the present case, private chaplain. A wise and necessary precaution against fraud or folly. That's not needed between you and me, master, but there is the legal requirement. Your Father Lyall will do the office, which is why I asked for his attendance on us here, do you see.'

Tobias gave a satisfied nod and picked up an ink-stylus from the tray on his desk. 'Well, then...'

'Wait,' said Father Lyall.

'What is it, Father?' asked Tobias, frowning. 'It's all quite clear.'

'I won't sign, sir, and I advise you not to either.'

'Why?' The Abbot sat up from the depths of his chair. 'Why do you give such advice?'

Lyall felt he could not say he was not sure which of two things was harder to put up with, the Abbot's conversational style, with its bland coherence and assumption of severely limited cogitative powers in the hearer, or his recurrent look of pleased surprise as each fresh piece of evidence of his wisdom or moral worth turned up, but between them they were likely to implant in certain minds a hardy seed of revolt. There were other things Lyall felt he could not say: that he intended to enjoy using to the fullTm'sTinexpected gift of a fragment of power, a small weapon against the Church's self-perpetuating hierarchy, and, by way of a footnote, that the look Dame Anvil had sent him at the end of breakfast was an encouragement to any and every sort of assertive behaviour. And he did not say that there might be some sort of natural case against mutilating a child for the greater glory of music or God or His Church or anything else whatever, because no such thought occurred to him. So what he did say was, 'We have in our hands the mortal life of a child of God, my lord. Are we to dispose of so much of it after such little consideration?'

'What further consideration would you have us give, Father?' The Abbot sounded honestly puzzled.

'I don't know, sir. It's not five minutes since I first heard of this proposal—how can I weigh it fairly? I ask for a postponement during which I can consult my conscience.'

'I'm advised that time is pressing.'

'But Hubert isn't yet eleven years old, and surely all of us have heard boy trebles of thirteen or fourteen whose voices were still unimpaired. Must we be so precipitate?'

'Father, be so good as to give me credit for knowing something of this matter, which has arisen before in my experience. Those of thirteen or fourteen have gone beyond the age at which alteration will have the desired effect. By then, it's too late. We haven't years to spare, as you seem to imply.'

'But we must have days to spare, at least.'

'Can I be of help, my lord?' asked Dilke. 'As one in holy orders and—I hope—of good repute, well conversant with the matter in hand...'

The Abbot smiled faintly. 'You are all you say, Father, and more besides, but this provision is quite specifically laid down in the relevant Act of Convocation. The crucial word is "habitual" attached to "confessor". You've never once, I believe, had occasion to confess Master Anvil, and Hubert seldom. We must abide by the letter.'

'Yes, my lord.'

There was silence once more. Twice in quick succession the window-frames shook slightly at the passage of express-omnibuses or other large vehicles: the traffic in Tyburn Road was heavy that day. Tobias looked grim, also apprehensive, no doubt at the prospect of again being asked to sign the document and having to cross either his own spiritual guide or the Abbot. Lyall was already regretting his hardihood, and would have withdrawn his objections on the spot if offered any reasonably dignified means of escape. But the Abbot gave him a cold glance and said, 'Would a week be long enough for you to finish consulting your conscience, Father?'

'Yes, my lord, I'm sure it would.'

'Let it be a week, then.'

Nothing was said of the possibility that at the end of that time Lyail's position would be unchanged, and it might weli have seemed to be ruled out by the making of an arrangement that Hubert should visit his home at the week-end to be told what was in store for him. As soon as they were alone, Tobias said to Lyall, in wonder rather than anger, 'In Christ's name, Father, what do you mean to do?'

'No more than I said, Master Anvil.'

'Your conscience and so on. How will you deal with it?'

'Prayer and meditation are sure to guide me.'

'A week of that?'

'There are other things to be done, master.'

'What things?'

Rather than have nothing to say, Lyall said, 'Naturally I must consult Dame Anvil.'

'My wife? Consult my wife?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But'—Tobias spoke as one stating a seldom-contested fact—'a woman's opinion on a matter of this kind is of no import whatever.'

'Hubert is her son, master.'

'He's my son too: that's what signifies... But again, Father, what do you mean to do? Abbot Thynne is a very eminent man. You can't simply defy him.'

'We shall see.'

'All too clearly, perhaps. But I don't think you mean to continue to defy him. I think this is a sort of game. All you mean is to savour the thrill of defiance without any actual risk. Let me know when you've had enough of your game. You place me in a most uncomfortable posture.'

Good observation but bad policy, thought the priest, and said, with as much fervour as he could summon, short of sounding ridiculous, 'This is no game, Master Anvil.'

Tobias raised his eyebrows. 'Bravely spoken, Father Lyall.

Well, I must be about my business. When you're not praying or meditating or consulting my wife, I ask you to bear in mind who it is that employs you.'

A more than usually smart express, its walnut panels stained a dark crimson and its front and rear trimmed with placcas that bore the initials CD (Corpus Diplomaticum), was twisting its way along King Stephen II Street in Coverley through the horse-drawn traffic. Its only passenger was Hubert Anvil. He wore chapel dress with the permitted addition-since he was on extramural precept for the afternoon—of a coloured scarf, and was sitting well forward with the window down in order to see and be seen. The foot-passengers, the other vehicles, the great shops and grand public buildings were all a delight to somebody who lived most of his life within the same stone walls, but Hubert also wanted to be the subject of questioning glances, signs that it was being said or thought of him, 'Who's that young boy in the handsome express? How can he be of so much mark? What high mission of Church or State is he upon?'

Nothing of the sort showed itself. There was little to be seen of the gentry, and that only for moments at a time: the tall old man in the vermilion jacket and pink breeches entering a teahouse, the two ladies with bright bonnets and sashes halted at a jeweller's window-none could have reason to spare him a glance. As for the people, they strolled along by the thousand in their greyish or brownish tunics and trews, their glances moving over him with the same indifference they showed towards everything and everybody, even one another. They betrayed no envy of the attire or adornments of their betters, nor any resentment of the expensive inns and ristorantes they passed and would never enter or of the displays of fine goods they would never own or consume. Well, after all, they were the people, resigned to their God-appointed lot, too coarse of soul and sense to want what their betters enjoyed as a right: offer any one of them a bottle of first-harvest Chichester, say, instead of his usual mug of swipes, and he would not thank you. That, at any rate, was Hubert's father's view. Hubert himself was less sure that that was an end of the matter; and if it was not, he reflected now, there was something unworthy in his presenting himself as though for admiration, something close to a sin of pride. He sat back against the cushions of the express.

After a little, the vehicle turned off, sounding its bell and causing a drably-clad group to scatter out of its path; Hubert forgot his pieties and chuckled at the sight. This was Hadrian VII Street, where some of the most magnificent houses in the city were to be found, and it was into the paved courtyard of one of them that he was shortly driven. There were stone pillars with a blue-painted pediment, an ornamental astrolabe on a bronze pedestal, a great many flowers and some clumps of strange tall grass. The driver helped Hubert down. He was strange too, tall and muscular in trim red-and-blue livery, but narrow-eyed and dark-complexioned; his straight black hair had a blue sheen on it. He said in a strange accent, 'Please to mount the steps, young master, and to use the knocker on the door.'

'Thank you.'

'It's nothing, young master.'

The man who opened the door, though older and not so strong-looking, might have been the driver's brother, but Hubert had little time to consider him, because Cornelius van den Haag, hand outstretched, was striding across the lofty hall.

'Welcome, Hubert! So they let you out, eh? Wonderful! Let me bring forward my wife, who says she must see for herself the person I talk of so incessantly—and my daughter Hilda.'

The New Englander had managed to indicate that formal bows were not called for, so Hubert just shook hands with Dame van den Haag, a pretty, dark-haired, smiling lady in a sober but rich-looking gown, and with Hilda, who was almost exactly as beautiful as he had hoped and almost persuaded himself not to expect. She had blue eyes like her father's, a curved mouth and a very straight nose, and her hand was warm without being moist. Rather to his disappointment, she wore a green short frock cut high at the throat and made from something that could not be deerskin. But of course he was excited and happy, struck by the foreign way the New Englander family had come out into the hall to greet him instead of waiting while he was fetched in to them by a servant. It must be a result of being brought up in log cabins, and was very kind and undignified of them.

'Does this contain what I hope it contains?' asked van den Haag, taking the leather satchel that Hubert carried. 'Good. But that will come later. We have a few minutes before the other guests arrive, so we can all become acquainted. Well, Hubert, this is our home. Do you like it?'

Hubert was not used to being asked if he liked things like homes, and had had no time to notice more about the room in which they now sat than that it was cool and dark after the sunlight and that it had italian windows opening on to a garden. He looked hastily round in search of some object to praise, but saw only a painting of a bald man with eyeglasses and a thick mustach who was evidently Joseph Rudyard Kipling, First Citizen 1914-18. He murmured a few words that depended more on their sound than on their sense before curiosity, all the stronger for being pent up, had its way.

'Those men, sir, the one who drove me here and the one who let me in—what are they?'

Van den Haag said at once, 'They're Indians, Hubert. Descended from the folk who lived in the Americas before the white man came.'

'I thought they rode horses and hunted buffaloes and lived in tents.'

'They did at one time, or some of them did, but no longer. Now they work in the mills, in the fields, in the mines, in the fishing-fleet, and some as servants, like Samuel and Domingo whom you saw.'

'Domingo—isn't that an Italian name?'

'Spanish, or Mexican more truly. Yes, they come to us from all over the continent and further, from Louisiana, Cuba, Florida, even from South America and New Muscovy.'

'Why do they come from so far?'

'For the good life we offer them, Hubert, so much better than they've known. And we pay their journey costs. It makes the other countries angry-they say we steal their best folk. Only last month, the Viceroy of Brazil issued a decree forbidding any further—'

'My dear Cornelius,' broke in Dame van den Haag, 'you imagine that this is the House of Commissioners. Hubert is here to be entertained, not instructed.'

Her husband smiled. 'He knows my weakness from our first meeting. I'm in England only since a year. Soon I expect to be able to speak of more things than my country and my countrymen. Yes, Hubert?'

'Your indulgence for another question, sir, but I notice you say you're in England since a year. That must be a New Englander expression, yes?'

So it was, by van den Haag's account: one of a number of ways in which the speech of his nation had been affected by that of its French-speaking neighbour, Louisiana, whose Indians had turned out long ago to be peculiarly well fitted to serve as nursemaids to white children. Hubert was interested enough to hear this, but he had asked his question chiefly in order to help the talk follow the course it had been given. He knew that his host had started explaining about Indians in such detail not only because the subject was one of his favourites, but also in order to give him (Hubert) a chance to become accustomed to his unfamiliar situation. That was kind, and necessary too: it had been quite a shock to hear Dame van den Haag actually interrupting her husband in public, even though she had spoken amiably and he had taken no offence. No doubt that log-cabin upbringing had been at work again. What it might have done to somebody like Hilda was impossible to estimate. At the moment, her knees raised as she sat on a low stool, her glance neither seeking nor avoiding his, she seemed very much like most girls of her age, only more beautiful. But then she had not said anything yet.

Hubert tried to rectify this when the mention of languages led to a discussion of studies. Describing his own on request, he threw in several cunning phrases about different children liking different subjects, some not liking any at all, etc. To no avail: the man and his wife agreed with him, thought his studies remarkable for their scope and volume, declared that nothing of the sort would ever be attempted in their country; the daughter might have echoed all these sentiments inwardly, but all she did was sit as before and look several times at the toes of her slippers. So Hubert fell back on looking at her as often as he dared. Quite soon, he had decided that the best thing about her was the way her crisp dark hair grew out of and across her forehead, and the next best thing the tiny blue veins in her eyelids.

At about that time, he heard the front-door knocker, and the Indian who had opened to him brought in a series of other guests. Some were quite old and very serious, like bishops in lay dress; some were foreign, with French or Netherlander names and accents; some were children, and van den Haag brought each of them forward to Hubert, but did not indicate that he and they should move apart from their elders. That suited him; he stayed at Hilda's side, and then, just after a pale, curly-haired little boy of about eight had been steered up to him and mercifully steered away again, she turned and looked straight at him for the first time.

He immediately said what he had had ready for the past ten minutes. 'Do you like living in England, Hilda?'

'Yes, I do. We were in Naples before, and it's so hot and dirty there.'

Her voice was wonderfully hoarse, but he could not tell her that, so he said, what was true enough, 'You speak just like an English person.'

'Why not? I go to school in Coverley, and most of my friends are English.'

'But you've been here only a year.'

'That's enough time. My ears are quick.'

Quick or not, they were thin and slightly pointed, and seemed to Hubert more intricate than most other folk's ears. 'Did you learn the language when you were in Naples?'

'Yes, of course—some of it.'

'Say something to me as they say it there.' He was not making conversation: he wanted to hear how her voice sounded with foreign words. 'Say, "I have a pretty blue frock just like this green one."'

'Oh, no.'

'Please, it can't be difficult.'

'I don't want to.'

He thought from her demeanour that his coaxing pleased her and that she meant to yield to it in the end. 'You've forgotten how to say it.'

'Yes, I believe I have. Why oughtn't I?'

'If you've forgotten how they speak in Naples, you must surely have forgotten how they speak in New England. How the people there speak, not your father and mother.'

'Trash, I remember well. We were home after we left Naples and before we came here.'

'Then say something as they say it. Anything—whatever you choose.'

'I don't want to.'

'If you won't say something, I shan't believe you remember how to.' The smile with which Hubert accompanied this had faded by half-way through.

'Have you truly only ten years, young master?'

'Eleven in July. But I'm-'

'You don't look ten or eleven,' said Hilda van den Haag with her eyes wide open. 'You look like a little man.'

'Do I so?' Hubert felt himself flush: in one sense he did not understand her, because in his world it was childish looks that were to be scorned; in another he understood well enough and to spare. Without any volition, he added, 'I'm sorry.'

'Sorry, trash. How can you be sorry for what isn't your blame? Now I go to help my mother.'

The help turned out to have to do with the big afternoon table that had been prepared, and in particular with attending to the wants of one or two of the younger children. As she did this, Hilda looked kind in a serious way, and sweet; perhaps she really was, thought Hubert, and tried to find justification for her harsh words to him just now. However she might appear, she must be shy; he had pressed her in a way most boys would not have resented, but a girl well might. He would find her again later and do what he could to make her like him; meanwhile, there was the table.

Here two maidservants stood, not dark of skin but recognisable as Indians by their eyes and hair. By a procedure unfamiliar to Hubert, guests were served with their preferences and carried their own filled plates and glasses to seats scattered round the room. The fare, once again, was strange: Hubert perforce went by appearance and found, on inquiry, that he had chosen pecan pie, molasses cookies and Mexican bridal cake, together with a cold drink called Calvina mint tea. All were delicious. He ate and drank in a chair near the italian windows, next to a thin dark boy of twelve whose name was Louis, or Luis, and who, having soon established that Hubert had never visited Asia, told him in some detail about places in that continent. Hubert listened to quite a lot of this, though Louis seemed to have had the bad luck not to have come across much of interest on his travels, and, out of politeness towards his host, who glanced every so often in his direction, made a show of listening to it all. He was content: a careful survey had shown him earlier that there was no one present with the watchful yet withdrawn look he had come to recognise as the sign of a possible new friend or leader, and there was only one girl who appealed to him, and she was still looking after overgrown babies.

While the remains of the meal were being cleared, van den Haag came over. The boys got to their feet.

'I see you two have found plenty to talk about. Good—it doesn't always happen that way at these shows. Well now, if you'll give us leave, Louis, I must take Hubert off. We have some preparations to make.'

'Forgive me, sir,' said Hubert a moment later, 'but are you sure this is the right occasion? Your guests are here to enjoy the company and the—'

'My guests will feel mightily balked if I don't give them what I promised them, be assured of that.'

'The young children won't enjoy it, will they?'

'Any child, young or not so young, who does not will be removed into the garden: I've given instructions. So...'

Van den Haag's gesture indicated the piano-forte by which, having mounted a low dais at the far end of the room, they now stood. It was handsomely cased in rosewood; more important to Hubert, it was one of the new six-octave instruments by Satie of Paris. Master Morley would have approved, and perhaps shown some surprise.

'This a very fine piece, sir.'

'I'm glad you think well of it, Hubert.' Van den Haag handed over the satchel Hubert had brought. 'What's your selection to be? You can hardly give us everything you have there.'

'I thought you might advise me, sir.'

'No, it must be what you yourself prefer, my boy.'

'Thank you, sir. Then... the little Mozart song, "L'alouette en haut", the Schumann, "Nun muss ich fort", and the Valeriani, "I miei sospiri". A mixture of the...'

'Of the familiar and the less familiar, just so. May I see the Mozart? Ah, of course, K.308b, the third of the set. I think I may be able to handle that. Yes, Hubert-you shouldn't stare so, it isn't very gladdening—I mean to accompany. I won't disgrace you, I undertake.'

Hubert's recital was a great success. He knew himself he had never sung better, and it was obvious to him why: he had never in the past had anybody to sing for as that afternoon he had Hilda. Yet Hilda was nowhere to be seen-perhaps she was hidden behind someone else, perhaps she was listening from outside the room. At the end of the Valeriani he bowed briefly three times, waited for the considerable applause to die away, thanked van den Haag for his accompaniments, which had indeed been deft for a dilettante, and stepped down from the dais to signal the end of his performance. There were many calls for an extra, but he knew from experience that the attention of an audience of this kind would not remain intact after fifteen minutes at the most. He received personal congratulations from a Polish dignitary, from a priest with a Scandinavian accent, from a member of the Royal Opera House Company, even from Louis; not from Hilda. Then suddenly he saw her in the sun at the threshold of the garden doorway, and without thinking started towards her. Van den Haag was quickly at his side.

'Hubert will need to relax himself after his efforts, my dear. Will you kindly conduct him round the garden? And well-minded, nay?'

Two pairs of blue eyes looked into one another for a moment. Then the girl said, 'Oh, best. Ya ya, paps.'

The garden was quite unlike the one behind the house in Tyburn Road. Except for two paved walks and a circular area partly surrounded by a clipped hedge of some yellowish shrub, it seemed almost wild, although there was colour enough. Hubert noticed a ground creeper with large purple-and-white flowers like inverted bells. He said, pointing, 'Is that a plant from New England?'

'Yes, I think so.' Hilda spoke with encouraging friendliness. 'Many of the plants here come from home.'

'Did your father put it there? It must grow quickly.'

'It was there when we came. My father says New Englanders are living here since over a hundred years. The first was a man called Jefferson Davis.'

'Oh, yes,' said Hubert sagely, and added with as much conviction as he could muster, 'This is a very pretty garden.'

'Thank you. Did the folk enjoy your singing just then?'

'I think so. Everybody was polite.'

In silence, the boy and girl crossed the circular space, which had nothing at its centre, and left it on the further side through a gap in the hedge. They were not the only two in the garden, but nobody else was near. Abruptly, and in a flat tone, Hilda said, 'I didn't hear it.'

'Forgive me?'

'I didn't hear your singing. Well, I heard it in the distance, but I didn't listen to it. One of the little children was unhappy, so I carried him out here and talked to him and told him stories and gave him flowers.'

They had reached what amounted to a small wood, mainly of young trees. One of them had suffered some minor malformation during growth such that, a yard or so from the ground, its trunk leaned over at almost forty-five degrees for another yard before resuming the vertical. Hilda went over to it, joined her hands round the inclined part and hung back at the length of her arms, looking up through the branches.

'That was kind of you,' said Hubert. 'To look after the little child.'

'It was nothing.' She began rhythmically pulling her body up so as to touch the trunk with her chest, then lowering herself again. 'Are you disappointed that I didn't listen to your singing?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Why? Surely you can see why. Singing is what I do best. If you had listened to me, you might have begun to admire me, and after that you might have begun to like me.'

Without stopping her exercise, Hilda brought her head down and looked at him. He felt in himself a kind of tension he had not known before; it was touched with bewilderment and a vague but powerful longing. As abruptly as a moment earlier, but in a different voice, she said, 'Copann a me, thart a precious honest cooly, hoke. Kisah-kihitin.'

'What? What do you say?'

'That's how the people talk in New. England. See, I haven't forgotten.'

'But when I asked you before... What does it mean?'

'That you're honest.'

'Thank you, but I understood that-it was all I did understand. But you said more than that. What was that last word? Was it a word?'

'It was Indian. Now don't ask more.' She released the tree-trunk and stood facing him a yard away or less. 'You don't look like a little man. That was trash. You simply look more than ten years.'

Hubert felt a tingling at the back of his neck. Although neither of them made any move, he was always to say to himself afterwards that they would have kissed then if no one had come along. But someone did: Louis in his frilled shirt and chequered stockings, smiling, swinging his arms.

'So you hide in the woods,' he said amiably. 'Come back to the festa, Hilda. There's to be a game of Old Mother Broomstick.'

'Oh, that I mustn't miss.'

She started for the house with Louis at her side and Hubert following.

Father Matthew Lyall struck a phosphorus and lit the gas-lamp in his room above the express-house. At first sight it was very much a priest's room: small, low-ceilinged, barely furnished, containing indeed only a bed, a chair, a writing-table, a press and a chest-of-drawers in unvarnished wood, a prie-dieu and some hundreds of books. The walls, done over with a dark wash, were bare except for the legally-required crucifix and pious picture—in this case a Virgin and Child identical with millions to be seen throughout Christendom in the habitations of the people. The bed was somewhat larger than one person might have been expected to have a use for, but Father Lyall was a restless sleeper and needed the extra space, or so he would say. The chair was unusually comfortable, but that was no more than the due of a man given to meditation. It was far less obvious that the books, except for a few dozen in unlettered bindings, never left their places on the shelves, and not obvious at all that the press hid several suits of decidedly secular clothing, a couple of bottles of old geneva, and a store of preventative sheaths.

Lyall screwed up his eyes and yawned: it was late, past ten o'clock, and supper had not been an easy occasion. That morning, Dame Anvil had responded with a violent display of passion to the news, delivered jointly by her husband and Lyall, that the alteration of her younger son was proposed. At table, Master Anvil had addressed her only on indifferent matters, and so she had had to keep her emotions to herself, or rather had not spoken of them: she had made them plain enough in other ways. Lyall took her behaviour for little more than a piece of feminine self-assertion, and it would certainly be useful to him if he were to decide to carry further his obstruction of Abbot Thynne's wishes; at the same time, it had done nothing to improve his relations with Anvil, who had made it equally plain that he saw Lyall as the instrument, if not the instigator, of the lady's capriccios.

But (the priest told himself) he must not be uncharitable towards somebody who suffered: if Dame Anvil really felt one-tenth of what she professed to feel, she was to be pitied. He would pray for her mind to be eased, not an altogether straightforward task. Praying for her had recently become apt to turn without apparent transition into thinking about her, thinking thoughts too that ill suited the occasion.

He had taken off his gown and was just unfastening his collar when he heard quiet footsteps on the steep right-angled stairway that ran up from the corner of the express-house. There was a tap at his door.

'Who is it?'

'Dame Anvil. May I come in?'

Discretion pointed two opposite ways: for her to be in his room at night was bad enough in itself, but what might she not do if refused entry in her present state? Inclination settled the matter.

'Of course,' he said.

Carrying a bare candle, she stood on the threshold as if there was nothing left of whatever impulse had brought her so far. The priest hurried over, shut the door behind her and took and blew out the candle.

'Dame, this is most unwise. What if you were discovered here?'

She smiled, showing her fine teeth. 'You're my spiritual guide, Father.'

'Much heed your husband would pay to that.'

'My husband has gone to the gaming-rooms down Tyburn Lane. He won't be back before midnight.'

'The express is below.'

'He walked. And nobody in the house knows where I am.'

'What do you want with me? Can't it wait till the morning?'

'Come now, Father, you know what I want with you, and if it could wait I should have let it.'

'Very well. My excuses, dame, but you startled me a little. Please sit down. And try to be calm.'

'I am calm. I haven't come here to say all over again what I said this morning. I've come to ask you about something I didn't know then. When my husband told me that he and all the men at St Cecilia's, that everyone concerned had agreed on this thing, you were silent. And you were silent when I called it a barbarity and an abomination and fit only for Turks and whatever else I called it. But I've since learned that you had already refused to sign the document authorising it.'

'Your husband and I had differed on the matter earlier. It would have been improper for me to continue the argument in your presence.'

'I understand that, Father. It wasn't what I meant to ask you about. There was something to the effect that you had some days to decide finally whether or not to give your consent. You will of course persist in withholding it?'

'I've not yet had time to consider the issues fully.'

'But what is there to consider?'

'The... interests of the child, your own feelings...'

'You know what they are, the interests and the feelings and everything else. What could induce you to change your mind and sign? What made you refuse at the outset?'

The answer to the first of her questions was easy to formulate but hard to deliver. The true answer to the second was in the same case, but false answers could at least be attempted. With the best show of firmness he could put on, Lyall said, 'The first concern of us all, as ever, is our duty to God. We speak of that as of a simple and obvious thing, and sometimes indeed it is so. But at other times we have to walk with caution and seek for guidance. That guidance may come—'

'Oh, is that all?'

He did not need to look at her to feel the weight of her disappointment.

'You must allow me to know more of these matters than you, my child.'

'Yes, I suppose I must. One last question, Father. If at the end of this period you were to remain steadfast in your refusal, what then?'

'Then,' he said, with real firmness this time, 'I should soon be removed from the office which gives import to my refusal, and a more pliant person would be substituted.'

'My husband would be compelled to dismiss you and to appoint...?'

'No compulsion would be necessary. Master Anvil is an exceedingly devout Christian, and is known to be one. A word from the right quarter acquainting him with the divine will in this business, and that would be an end of it.'

She nodded without speaking. After a moment she said in a lifeless tone, 'There must be some right of appeal, to the Archbishop or Convocation.'

'Right of appeal, well and good, but no surety that an appeal will not be dismissed without even being heard. No substantial grounds for appeal that I can discern in this case. And unsuccessful appellants are not well regarded in our polity.'

'In other words, you'll do nothing.'

'If I thought I could be of the least-'

'Enough.'

There were tears on Dame Anvil's face as she left the chair and made slowly for the door. Father Lyall barred her way, taking her gently by the upper arms. She lowered her forehead on to his chest.

'My child,' he said several times. To begin with he said it like a priest, but only to begin with. When she lifted her face in one of her brief timid glances, he kissed her. Her lips shook, then steadied, then responded, then withdrew.

'But you're... '

'A sinner,' he said, smoothing her tears away with his fingertips. 'That's nothing so terrible, I promise you. There are plenty of us in this world.'

Some time later, a voice rose in what sounded like, but was not, a theatrical prelude to a sneeze, followed by what sounded like, but was not, a long cry of grief. 'Blessed Lord Jesus,' said Margaret Anvil without much clarity. 'What happened to me then?'

Holding her in his arms on the bed, Lyall made an instant deduction, one that called for no great cleverness or insight, merely for some experience of married women of the higher social condition. 'It was love,' he said.

'Love? But love is what we...'

He put his mouth on hers. They lay there a few more minutes in the dim light from the lowered gas-lamp. The tower clock struck eleven.

'Father, something troubles me.'

'I see no bar to your calling me Matthew now.'

'Yes, Matthew. Something troubles me.'

'Don't begin to repent just yet. Have your sin out. It will have lasted such a short time.'

'It isn't the sin,' she said urgently, pulling away from him. 'God will take care of that. What you think of me is important too.'

'Of course it is. I think you're beautiful.'

'Oh, Matthew, do you? But you distract me. What I must say to you is this.'

For the moment, however, Margaret did not say what she must say, presumably because, in one quick movement, Lyall had thrown the bed-covers aside, altogether exposing her naked form. Her right hand flew to cover her crotch; her left forearm went across her breasts. Without touching her, without stirring, Lyall looked her in the eyes. Her head jerked away, then slowly came back till she could glance down at her own body. Another jerk, another return, this time to Lyall's face and away again. After a minute of this, she was looking straight back at him, eye to eye, and her arms were at her sides.

'I must make sure you are beautiful, all of you,' said Lyall. 'I may have spoken too lightly, out of nothing more than instinct... Well, if so, it was sound enough. You are entirely beautiful. But your most beautiful part... is here.'

He reached out and stroked her temple and cheek. She caught his hand, kissed it, and said in a shaky voice, 'Nobody has ever looked at me like that before.'

'You haven't allowed it?'

'No, just—nobody has ever looked at me.'

'I'm glad I was the first.'

'So am I.'

After putting back the covers and waiting for a moment, he said, 'Well?'

'Forgive me?'

'There was something you must say to me, I thought.'

'Oh. Oh yes. But it seems of less import now.'

'Since you were distracted from whatever it is by my telling you you were beautiful, you may forget it for ever and not ruffle me.'

'No. No, I must say. Here it is. Matthew, it may seem to you that all my talk of Hubert and the document was a pretext, and I called on you only to come to your bed.'

'That is not so.'

'No, it's not so, but do you believe it's not so?'

'I believe it.'

'Swear that you do. Swear by Almighty God.'

'I so swear,' said the priest, making the Sign of the Cross as he lay naked on his back. Nor was this a false oath: it was a quarter of an hour or more since he had discarded the view he had just denied. 'Now, is that better?'

'Half better. Only half better, because I must talk to you again of Hubert and the document; I must try again to persuade you to help me. And this may make you believe something different, but still bad. Matthew, I didn't come to your bed to make it harder for you not to be persuaded.'

Both manners and policy dictated his answer to that. 'No, Margaret, I'm sure you didn't.'

'Are you? Your voice isn't the same. This time you're thinking. You spoke without thought before. Now, you consider whether you've heard the truth or not. Isn't that so, Matthew?'

'Yes.' Lyall had indeed been thinking, to the effect that only a bold and devious woman would have ventured to raise openly the point about persuasion, let alone press it, and that Margaret Anvil was not bold and very likely was not devious either.

'Say, then.'

'I swear by Almighty God that I truly believe that you came to my bed out of no ulterior motive.'

She sighed but said nothing.

'Where's your persuasion?' he asked after a time.

'Here it is, now that you ask—to begin it at once would have been too vulgar. As Hubert's mother I have a duty to protect him, a duty laid on me by God and nature. But, in this world, what can a woman do? I must have a man by me who will-'

'You have a man. I'll help you, so far as I'm able. That may not be far, but there's something in the wording of that document which gives room for debate, and two years ago a friend of mine was in the Archbishop's directorate. I must discover if he's still there.'

'You said nothing of this before. All was hopeless.'

'That was before.'

'And now you see things differently.'

'Yes.'

This was broadly true. What he did not see differently was Hubert's interests: fame, money, position, divine favour and—hardly less important-ecclesiastical favour were surely a rather better than fair exchange for the sexual and parental functions: the one would in this case never be missed, and the other, to judge by the families one came across, brought no great joy to anybody. It was now clear, however, that the feelings of the boy's mother, reasonable or not, extravagantly expressed or not, were as near genuine as most feelings were. This and the fact that he was in bed with her had done something to Father Lyall's hitherto lukewarm, half-whimsical desire to flout the Abbot and what stood behind the Abbot.

'When I...' Margaret stopped and tried again. 'You said it was love then. You remember.'

'Yes, of course.'

'I don't understand, Father.'

He waited for her to correct the appellation, but she did not. When he put his arm round her shoulders, she looked nervously into his eyes and away again at once, but turned towards him.

'You must be patient, my child,' he said.

Chapter Three

'Will it hurt?' asked Hubert.

Tobias Anvil shook his head emphatically. 'You will feel nothing. You'll be deeply asleep when it takes place, and afterwards—soft bandages, soothing ointments... For just a few days. Then you may leave your bed and never think of it again. The surgeons will be the most skilful in the land. I talked to one yesterday: an old friend of mine. In these times it's not regarded as a serious action: they have so much experience. There's no risk, even of pain.'

'Where does their experience come from, papa? You told me this was rarely done.'

'With children it is. It's sometimes necessary with... others, for their own good.'

'Their own good?'

'And that of the State. You needn't concern yourself with them. Have you any more questions, my boy?'

'When will it happen?'

'Within a fortnight or so. By then you'll be quite used to the idea.'

'Yes, papa, I expect I shall.'

'Good... Well, Hubert, you may leave me now, and consider what I've said to you. When you've done so, you may find there are other things you want to ask. Come to me and I'll answer them.'

Tobias patted his son's head affectionately and saw him to the library door. Outside, Hubert was at once approached by a servant, no doubt set there for the purpose, and asked to attend his mother in the bower at the end of the garden. He thanked the man and, with lowered head, went slowly down the curving staircase, across the hall, through the parlour and into the open. He was trying to think, and finding it hard. His father had been at great pains to make himself understood; Hubert believed everything he had been told, but he had not been told anything about the most important part of what was to happen, about how the world would seem to him when he was a man in years. There seemed to be no words for that part, only for what it was like: to be living in a country of which nothing was known except its position.

Hubert passed the orangery and the aviary, went down the walk between the lily-ponds and reached the bower, a recess in a grassy bank under a hooped wrought-iron framework entwined with climbing plants. Here his mother sat in a canvas chair with Father Lyall standing beside her. Not for the first time since arriving home that morning, Hubert was struck by how pretty she looked, how much like his earliest memories of her. Although he had left her barely half an hour before, he put his arms round her neck and kissed her.

'Your father told you everything, dearest?'

'Yes, mama: everything he could. I followed it.'

'What did he say?'

He sat down at her feet on a three-legged wooden stool. 'That I had been chosen by God and it was a most notable honour and I must be grateful and it was for the glory of God and of His Holy Church. And I should be admired and respected all over the world. But I couldn't have a wife or children. But it wouldn't hurt, being altered. But I...'

There were no words again. His mother drew in her breath sharply, as if startled. Father Lyall said in a grating voice, 'I'll leave you together.'

'No, Father, please stay, I beg you.'

Hubert was glad that the priest, whom he thought amusing and intelligent, had not left: at the moment, he would have welcomed the company of almost anyone he knew. But he wondered why the two had arranged beforehand their piece of talk about leaving and staying.

'Papa said'—he found he could go on now—'that it was a pity I couldn't have a wife, but that there were very many men without a wife, like priests and monks and friars, and I should be better off than they, because I should never want a wife and they often do, papa said. Do you ever want a wife, Father?'

'Yes, Hubert, sometimes.'

'Does it make you unhappy, that you mustn't have one?'

'Again sometimes, but then I remember my promises to God, and I pray to Him to comfort me, and then I... But there are priests and others who are often unhappy, I believe.'

'I knew papa was right. Another thing he said was that he was very happy with you, mama, but that he knew men who were very unhappy with their wives, and they must simply go on being unhappy unless they could have an annulment, and that's only possible for very pious servants of the Church. I expect I knew something like that, but I never thought of it before. Oh, and he spoke of the sins of...'

'Go on, Hubert,' said Father Lyall gravely. 'You may say whatever you please to your mother and to me. God won't be angry with you.'

'Fornication and adultery. I shall never commit those, and I shall never want to, and wanting to is another sin, isn't it, Father?'

'Yes, my child.'

'What else had papa to say, dearest?'

'He talked of love, mama. He said there were many kinds of love: love of friends, love of brothers and sisters, love of parents, love of children-I shall be able to love children, the children of others. And there's the love of virtue and the love of God, the highest kind. And of course the love of men and women, which is not the highest kind, papa said. He was right, wasn't he?'

'He was quite right, Hubert.'

'Forgive me, Father, but I must know what mama thinks.'

'Papa was right,' said Margaret, and looked down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap.

Hubert gazed at her. 'Tell me the truth, mama.'

'It is the truth.'

'In the name of God, mama.'

'In the name of God and of the Blessed Virgin and of all the saints, it is the truth. The love of men and women is not the highest kind of love and that's the truth.'

'Then why do you say it as if it's a lie?'

'Your mother means that there are—'

'My mother will tell me what my mother means.'

'Hubert, dearest, I can't tell you anything more.'

'But there is more to tell, isn't there? I must know what it is.'

'You could not understand it.'

'Tell me and I'll see whether I do.'

'Very well. The love we speak of is not the highest but it is the strongest and the most wonderful, and it transforms the soul, and nothing else is like it.'

'You talk to the wrong tune again, mama. This time you try to make something very interesting sound silly and heavi-some. But I understand just the same: that's easy enough. You mean that what I shall miss by being altered is so important that it would be quite wrong to alter me.'

Hubert's mother burst into tears faster than he would have believed possible. He was not too agitated at this to notice Father Lyall laying his hand gently on her shoulder, nor to find something in the way she responded that, just for the moment, made him think she was used to being touched in that sort of way. But this was soon driven from his head by puzzlement and concern.

'Why do you cry, mama? Please stop.'

'I tried so hard not to tell you, but I couldn't help it. I wanted you to believe it was right that you should be altered, but then you asked me for the truth and I told it you, God forgive me. I tried to hide it...'

'Why must God forgive you for telling the truth?'

'There are some truths it can be better not to know. You would have been happier if I hadn't spoken.'

'I think not.' Hubert held out his hand and his mother grasped it. 'You mean I might never have known what I shall miss by being altered. But there would be so many other ways for me to hear of it, and other folk to tell me. And after all, mama, I shall never know, shall I?' Getting no answer, he went on, 'It is decided, is it? I must be altered?'

'Yes, Hubert,' said the priest at once. 'Your mother is against it, as you hear, but nothing can—'

'Are you against it, Father?'

'It's better that I don't answer that. But if I were against it ten times over, it would make no difference. Neither of us, nobody at all, has any power to resist what has been decided.'

'I understand.'

'Say nothing of this to your father.'

'I understand that too,' said Hubert, and went on directly, 'I think I should like to be alone now.'

'Pray to God, dearest, and to your saint.'

'Yes, mama, I want to, but I don't know what to pray for.'

'For God's favour.'

'I already have that, as papa said. It might be better to pray for His protection.'

Hubert turned and walked slowly back the way he had come. As soon as he was out of hearing, Lyall said, 'Don't blame yourself, Margaret. You could have done nothing else.'

'If only Tobias hadn't talked of love to the boy. Why did he? There was no need.'

'Your husband is a very fair-minded man in his way.'

'Yes, he is. You did better than I, my love, not to raise Hubert's hopes that we might still prevent this from happening.'

'His hopes? I wonder what they are.'

Margaret waited until Hubert had disappeared into the parlour; then, reaching furtively behind her, she took Lyall's hand. 'It was strange, his saying that he already had God's favour. Was that irony, do you think?'

'No. Only a man could be ironical in such a case, and Hubert is wise enough for his years, but he isn't a man yet. Now I must go and pray too.'

'For Hubert.'

'For Hubert first.'

Hubert's prayers were fairly brief, though they took him a little while to deliver. Even at the best of times, with his mind set on some simple objective like begging pardon for having blasphemed or petitioning to be made to grow tall, the words would slip away from him and become sounds, displaced most often by sounds of a different order, his own music or another's. There was no music in his head this afternoon, and as he felt at the moment there might never be again, but he could still offer real prayer only piece by piece. He asked God's guardianship against harm, then found himself deprecating the artifices of the Devil, who surely had no discoverable part in the matter in hand; he had no sooner pleaded for a stout heart than he began to solicit a serene conscience, not his most pressing requirement. He did rather better with St Hubert, who had been chosen for him out of a so far vain paternal hope that he would interest himself in hunting, but whom he had come to see quite clearly as a grey-bearded, good-hearted old man leading a horse with gentle eyes and a curly tail.

What did God's protection mean? It was not to be regarded (he had been taught) as any assurance against physical harm, though not to invoke it on the battlefield or in a region struck by plague would be the direst folly. The more important meaning, as always, had to do with the fortunes of the soul. God answered prayers of this sort in the same way as He rewarded pious meditations and virtuous deeds: by elevating the status of the soul concerned and preparing a place for it among the ranks of the blessed. Neglect of prayers, sinful thought or action, worked to the soul's eventual disadvantage. But, in the meantime, while it was on the way to its destination, its owner had no idea of what would happen to it, whether it was secure or in danger, what direction the various agencies bearing upon it had caused it to take. Anyone who knew where his soul was going must be a sort of god himself.

Hubert got up from his knees and wandered idly round the small room, gazing at and handling objects of past or present interest: his once-beloved dandle-monkey in real skin, a totum of carved bone that had belonged to his grandmother as a little girl in India, a pair of child's foils and masks, a tennis-racket, a model railtrack-tug and four cargo vans hand-painted in the black and crimson of the Coverley and North-England Line, a set of Turks and Christians in ebony and ivory (the gift of his rich second cousin, now Bailiff of Estates to the Bishop of Liverpool), an old-fashioned book-cupboard with sliding shelves. His eye passed over St Lemuel's Travels and The Wind in the Cloisters, slowed down at a collection of Father Bond stories, and rested finally on Lord of the Chalices. But instead of reaching for the volume he moved to the corner window, which looked out to the south and west and gave a view of the side entrance to the house.

From here, too, he could see the tops of the inn, the Cistercian hospice and the other buildings on the west side of Edgware Road. The road had been there many times as long as the buildings, since the days when the Romans had linked Dover with St Albans and Chester. This part of it ran along the firm ground between the valleys of the Tyburn—finally covered over from the Thames up to St Mary Bourne Parish in 1925—and the Westburn. Once, it had skirted the great Middlesex forest, of which little now remained except the hundred square miles or so between Harrow and the outskirts of Staines. There the wild boar was— at some trouble— preserved for the King to hunt.

What Hubert had been waiting for happened: the foreshortened figure of his brother Anthony came in at the side gate and passed out of view below. Hubert waited a little longer, until he heard a neighbouring door shut, then moved towards the sound.

The walls of Anthony's room were covered with pictures, mostly expensive facsimiles of works of the modern graphic school. Their subjects, or professed subjects, were orthodox in the extreme: scenes from Holy Writ or the lives of the saints, with here and there one of the more familiar mythological incidents. The treatment of these matters, on the other hand, often seemed inappropriate, even perverse, showing Salome in the back seat of an express-omnibus with the head of John the Baptist on her lap in a market-bag, filling two-thirds of the space with a caterpillar on one of the roses in St Elizabeth's apron. The case was different with the large, colourful and popular Adam and Eve by the illustrious Netherlander, de Kooning. Here the artist had plainly not tried to furnish anything that might be called a portrayal of our First Parents; what he had tried to do, with great success, could be seen in the relegation of Adam to a dim shape half-obscured by grasses and, more positively, in the treatment of Eve's flesh at the bosom and other parts. The band of hair above her crotch, or rather above the serviceable poppy that just hid her crotch, was said to have been decisive in inducing the Archbishop of Amsterdam to attach the original under a writ of non permit-timus. It was of course not known exactly why or how the writ had fallen, but the fact of that fall was enough to cause Master Tobias Anvil to content himself with glowering at the facsimile whenever he saw it instead of ordering its immediate destruction. Now, as always, Hubert looked at Eve with sly enjoyment and wonder, but that afternoon he quickly looked away again.

Anthony had taken off his jacket and bands and was washing at the china basin. He gave an unsmiling glance that was not at all unwelcoming. Without knowing him very well, Hubert like and trusted his brother enough to feel as little constraint as possible at what was in prospect; he hoped only that Anthony would not do as he sometimes did and say things he had just thought of and did not mean.

'May I talk to you a little?'

'You may continue to. About your alteration, yes?'

Hubert was surprised. 'Papa told you?'

First glancing at his brother and away again, Anthony said, 'I think he wanted reassurance that the action is as safe and as painless as he'd been led to believe. He must regard my learning more highly than would seem. Well, I could tell him in conscience what he wanted to hear. As I can you. You'll feel nothing and be in no danger.'

'But what happens? Oh, I know what the action consists of, and how my voice won't change, and I shan't be able to have children, or do what's done to make children...'

'Did papa describe to you in full what's done?'

'No, but he went on until he could be sure from what I said that I knew enough. Not everything, but enough.'

Now buttoning a silk shirt, Anthony nodded slowly. 'That's his way. You ask what happens. You mean inside your body?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'It may be easier to describe what, because of your alteration, will not happen. Elements in your blood we call conductors would in time cause your voice to become deeper, hair to grow on your face and body, and your private parts to render you capable of mating. These elements come from what will be removed from you.'

'And the same elements would keep me thin and healthy unless I ate too much.'

'Why do you say that?'

'The other day at the Chapel I saw two men who'd been altered. They were fat and they didn't seem well. They...'

'Yes?'

Hubert had remembered how the two had looked at him, and understood now that they had been considering him as someone intended to share their condition, understood, too what the Abbot must have wanted from them that evening. But there was no reason to explain this to Anthony. 'Just that they seemed sickly. Unsound, not...'

'That's no consequence of their alteration. Their fatness may have indeed come from overeating. It must be a temptation to them.'

'Why?'

'My dear Hubert, do please forgive me and sit down. Now, may I tell you anything more?'

'Yes, Anthony, if you will. I want to know about mating.'

'You said you knew enough.'

'Enough for papa, not for me.'

'Very well. Say how I can—'

'What happens? I said that about the alteration, didn't I? This is not so different. I've been told what goes where, and that something comes, and that the something will make a baby. But what I don't understand is why-I mean, why folk do it, why they want to do it. I see that they must if the human race shall continue, which is God's will. But then, as every-body knows, they'll mate even when they must wish as hard as they can that there'll be no baby.'

'True.' Anthony looked up from the drawerful of cravattas he was turning over. 'It's an instinct from our nature, and wonderfully strong. It doesn't touch our reason, so we can't talk of why as we do in other matters. Consider that we eat because if we fail to we die, but it isn't that that makes us eat, it's hunger, a feeling in us.'

'Is this like hunger, a feeling in us that makes us uncomfortable? Like thirst?'

'Well...'

'Does it grow until we can think of nothing else?'

'No.'

'I shall never understand.'

'I'm sorry, my dear, but I might as easily explain the colour red to a blind man.'

'So it appears. We might do better with what else I have to ask, if you're not tired of questions.'

'Of course not. Say, then.'

'You've done it, haven't you, Anthony? You've mated? Let's be straight—you've fucked a girl? I'll say nothing to papa, by Our Lady's crown.'

'See you keep your oath. Yes, I have.'

'So. Try to explain to me how it is.'

Anthony had been carefully tying a pale green cravatta at the looking-glass on his toilet-table; now he stopped doing this and turned to face his brother. 'Isn't it best that I don't?' he asked gently. 'It's a part of life that you can never meet with.'

'Then I must discover as much as I can from one who has met with it.'

'In Heaven's name, why? It could only—'

'I want to know where I'm placed. As far as I can. I beg you, dear Anthony.'