The Alteration

'If you must... Simply, it's the most intense pleasure the human body can feel.'

'Pleasure?'

'Of course pleasure. Why so surprised?'

'I'm not surprised. At least, I've heard it said before. But I can't-'

'No mystery there at all.' Anthony spoke sharply, but Hubert recognised that the sharpness was not directed at him. 'They do their best to keep it hidden.'

'Who are they?'

'Everyone in our polity. The priests, the accursed friars and monks—though they see to it they're in no ignorance themselves. The preceptors, even the surgeons. All those set in authority over us. The whole of Church and State in every land throughout the world.'

Hubert said nothing, not wanting to prolong this unhelpful digression.

'They conduct a tyranny and call it the Kingdom of God on Earth. Oh, let it go—there's one place they can never reach. That pleasure is safe.'

'Does it happen all the time, the pleasure? During the...'

'There is some all the time, but the big pleasure's at the end. When, as you said, something comes.'

'How long does it last?'

'A few seconds.'

'Oh.'

'It seems much longer. It seems to last for an indefinite time.'

'I see.'

Anthony was brushing his hair. 'Let me try again. What's your favourite food?'

'Chocolate ice-cream,' said Hubert without hesitation.

'Can you imagine an ice-cream so wonderful that it made you call aloud?'

'I think so. And it's like that... down there.'

'Yes. Now imagine... You've played with yourself down there, haven't you?'

'Oh yes.'

'And you like girls. You want to kiss them.'

'Yes.'

'Well, think of kissing a girl while it feels like playing with yourself but it's like the wonderful ice-cream.'

'I must have done something like that before, many times. But it's so vague. I can't really think of a girl when I do that, and I can't think of that when I see a girl, even a very pretty one. I can't bring them together.'

'You must try harder. If you want what you tell me you want.' Now Anthony's manner changed, as if he was moving from what he thought he should say to what he really wanted to say. 'But there are other things that are wonderful. A woman's body, a woman's skin, is the most delightful thing to touch that was ever made. Look at Eve in that painting there.'

'Yes,' said Hubert, not doing as invited.

'That should give you a notion. And yet all this is only a kind of beginning. Something strange, something unique takes place.'

'The soul is transformed?'

'Who said so?'

'I forget. I must have found it in a book.'

'It's meaningless to me. How can what we know nothing of be transformed? No, I speak of the entirely physical. Or the super-physical: a state of bodily cognisance compared with which all other states are—how can I put it?—unsubstantial and heavisome and bloodless. The man and the woman are so close that nothing else exists for them and they become almost one creature. They're closer to each other than they can ever be to God.' Anthony paused, his dark eyes apparently vacant, his mouth a little open. 'Perhaps you think I blaspheme.'

'No, I don't think that.'

'What if I do blaspheme? They blaspheme the name of man and woman. And while we live, man and woman compose the world.'

After another pause, Hubert said, 'Thank you, Anthony.'

'For what service?'

'For doing as much as you could to answer my questions.'

'Mind this,' said Anthony in his sharp tone. 'Resign yourself to what must happen. Whatever you think or feel or discover, you're to suffer alteration. They... they'll see to that. You can do nothing.' Then his manner changed once more. 'My poor Hubert. Think of your blessings. Papa said you're to be famous. And consider that to lose what you've never had is only half a loss. And, if it signifies, I'll be with you whenever you want me.'

'It signifies, my dear.'

Hubert went over and kissed his brother on the cheek and the two held each other for a moment. Soon afterwards they parted: Anthony had an appointment (with a girl, clearly) and Hubert went back to his room. He felt that at one point in their conversation he had been only a phrase or so away from the understanding he sought, but he could no longer remember which, and now he doubted whether that feeling had been valid. He could have wished that Anthony had spent a little longer on trying to find helpful details and comparisons, but, again, it was impossible to imagine what could have been helpful. Red was the colour of blood and fire and not of trees or the sky, of the dress of soldiers and cardinals and not of monks or servants; think of the sun, not the sea, an organ, not a choir, hard work, not indolence. Yes, but what was it like to look at something red? To know nothing whatever of women or girls and to know of them what a ten-year-old boy might know were different: as different as blindness and total colour-blindness. He went over in his mind the best part of what Anthony had said, with additions of his own. Kissing a girl—kissing Hilda van den Haag—he had forgotten how it had felt to be about to kiss her, and had to imagine it—kissing Hilda with no clothes on while it felt like playing with himself but like the wonderful ice-cream and she behaved like a very friendly cat-that would have to do for now, and perhaps parts of it were right.

Anthony had said very little that could be judged true or false: indeed, only one such remark stayed in Hubert's mind. This was the statement that there was nothing that he, Hubert, could do to avoid alteration, and it was false. But the thought of doing it filled him with fear, and under that stress he could not make up his mind whether to do it or not. So he knelt beside his bed and prayed for courage.

Hubert went back to St Cecilia's Chapel by the early-morning rapid on Monday. He took with him a letter-packet from his father to the Abbot, on whom, at the ten o'clock interim, he called as instructed to deliver it. After a brief wait he was admitted to the cabinet by Lawrence, the servant. At once the Abbot dismissed his secretary, to whom he had been dictating, sent Lawrence off to fetch Father Dilke, and in a kind voice asked Hubert to sit down. Then he opened and read the letter. At one point the habitual gravity of his expression grew deeper. At last he looked up.

'Well, Qerk Anvil... Hubert, your father lets me know that you fully understand what is to befall you.'

'Yes, my lord.'

'Do you also understand that it's a sign of God's special favour for you to be able to serve Him in this way and that you must be grateful?'

'My father used almost those exact words, my lord.'

'And you understand them.'

'Yes, my lord.'

'And you believe them. You recognise God's favour and you. are grateful.'

'I think so, my lord.'

'It's not enough to think so, Hubert,' said the Abbot, still kindly. 'He who only thinks he's grateful feels gratitude with only half a heart.'

'I'm sorry, my lord. I mean...'

'Yes?'

'I know it's glorious to have God's favour and I'm as grateful for it as I can be, but I can't prevent myself from wishing it had taken another form.'

'You'd choose among God's gifts?'

'Oh no, my lord, not that. I try all I can not to wish what I wish, but it's too hard for me.'

The Abbot looked sad. He had not yet answered when there was a knock at the door and Father Dilke came in. After bowing to the Abbot with a very serious face, he gave Hubert an affectionate smile and laid his hand on his shoulder instead of just motioning to him to sit down again.

'God bless you, Hubert.'

'May He bless you besides, Father.'

'I came as soon as I could, my lord.'

'Naturally. Consider this for a moment if you will.'

Father Dilke took and quickly read the proffered letter from Tobias Anvil. His face changed in the reading, more markedly than the Abbot's had done. 'This is unfortunate,' he said.

'Or worse.'

'Oh, I think not, sir. Master Anvil's course is clear and easy.'

'We'll confer upon it later. Our excuses, Hubert—we speak of a matter that doesn't touch you in the least degree. Now, Father: it appears that Hubert, while (what shall I say?) sensible of what it signifies to be elected for God's service by the means we all know, finds it difficult to respond contentedly to everything this will entail. Is my account fair, Hubert?'

'Yes, my lord. But may I ask a question?'

'Of course.'

'Isn't it quite certain that I'm to be altered?'

'Quite certain,' said the Abbot steadily.

'Then... how can it matter what my feeling is? If I said I'd sooner be beheaded, what difference would it make?'

The Abbot's steadiness hardened into sternness. 'Creature of God, what is at stake here is not your feeling but your immortal soul. Its salvation might depend on whether you go to be altered in gladness, in free and joyful acceptance of God's will, or with contumacy of spirit and mundane vexation. Give your counsel, Father.'

Dilke blinked his eyes for some moments before he spoke. Then he said, 'My dear Hubert. You know that my lord Abbot and I love you and wish you nothing but good. Were there anything in what has been designed that might not tend to your welfare in this world and the next, you would find none more implacable in opposition to it than my lord and me. The action in itself is harmless. A part of your body will be gone, and the animal that is in all of us must shrink from that, but reason tells us it is not to be feared. Your celibacy will be absolute. Is that such a sacrifice? At least it's not a rare one. Every year thousands of young folk in England alone vow themselves to celibacy of their own free will. And in their case... What is it?'

'Forgive me, Father,' said Hubert, 'but I find there a substantial difference. A monk does indeed become a monk of his own free will. He chooses to. My celibacy is to be necessitated.'

'But you are a child.' The Abbot was patient. 'A child has no competence to choose, except whether or not to commit a sin. Such is the only choice he may make. You know that, Hubert.'

'Yes, my lord, I know it.'

'May I ask you to be so good as to continue, Father?'

'Yes, my lord. I meant to grant that there is a difference between his case and that of a monk, but to state that it's a rather different difference from the one he cites. A monk, Hubert, is subject to fleshly temptation; you can never be. And that temptation can be a dire burden; you'll never have to bear it. Weigh that.'

Hubert did as he was told. He thought of saying that there was, or would be, a third difference between himself and the generic monk: the latter could choose to break his vow of celibacy at least as freely as he had taken it. But that that monk never did break that vow was always taken for granted, except by those like Decuman, according to whom no monk did much else. It seemed wise, then, to nod sagely at Father Dilke.

'Very good. Now, all I've done so far has been to deny what might be thought contrafious. I must go on to affirm your advantages. First, those of this world. In your altered state, but only in that state, you'll become one of the foremost singers of this century, one the like of whom hasn't been known to anyone now living. Can you conceive of a more precious gift?'

Hubert could without difficulty, but had no reason to think he could ever attain it, so this time he shook his head.

'And you'll use your gift directly to the greater glory of God. That is to be given a second gift, no less rare if not rarer than the first, and infinitely more precious. Do you believe that God rewards those who glorify Him?'

'Yes, Father,' said Hubert, and meant it.

'And do you then accept to perform His will joyfully and gratefully?'

'Yes, Father.' Hubert meant that too, but would not have cared to affirm that he would still be meaning it the day after.

The Abbot gave Dilke a nod of considerable approval. 'Let us pray,' he said.

The two clerics and the boy knelt down on the scrubbed oak boards: there were no elegances here in the cabinet. All made the Sign of the Cross.

'In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.'

'Repeat after me, Hubert,' said Dilke. 'Most loving and merciful God, hear Thou the voice of Thy child.'

'Most loving and merciful God, hear Thou the voice of Thy child.'

'Implant Thou in my mind and heart the full meaning of Thy grace...'

After one or two more clauses Hubert's attention had wandered, but not into the void. It was firmly fixed on the thought that he must now after all submit to what was required of him by authority. To have refused to pray would have been terribly difficult, but to have failed to refuse meant that any scheme of defiance would amount to breaking a promise to God, and that was not only dangerous but dishonourable. Well, this way was easier: it meant an end to the search for something he would not recognise if it were put into his hand. And surely God would cherish one who kept faith with Him.

'... sitque tecum benedictio Domini,' said the Abbot.

'Amen,' said Hubert.

'So when is this to be?' asked Decuman.

'A week from this morning.'

'So soon?'

'It must be soon,' said Hubert in a blank tone. 'Father Dilke made that plain. The changes in our bodies begin before we see signs of them, and by then it's too late.'

There was silence in the little dormitory, as there had been more than once after Hubert had made his announcement. It was a still night: the two candle-flames scarcely wavered.

Decuman took his time over stuffing back into his canvas bag the considerable remains of the boys' illicit second supper: the salame and biscottos had been palatable enough, but appetite seemed to have failed. At last Thomas looked over at Hubert.

'Are you content?'

'I change from hour to hour. Sometimes I see myself being acclaimed at Chartres or St Peter's or at our own opera house. And then I think of fifteen or twenty years' time, when all of you will have children and I'll have none. But mostly I can face the prospect.'

'Face it!' Mark sat up straight in his bed. 'You're called to God's service and you're to be a celebrated man besides and you talk of being able to face it. You should be—'

'It's very well for the likes of you,' said Thomas rather fiercely. 'You cackle of God at every turn. If you were the—'

'Quiet, the two of you,' snarled Decuman, shaking his fist. 'Do you want the Prefect in here? This must be conferred on in an orderly fashion, one speaker at a time. So... say, Mark.'

'What more shall I say? Except that even if Hubert were not to be a celebrated man he should still be grateful that God has chosen him.'

Decuman curled up his mouth. 'Wish-wash. The Abbot and Father Dilke have chosen him.'

'The Abbot and Father Dilke are the mortal instruments through whom God has made His will known,' said Mark. 'Do you expect Him to send an angel with a trumpet?'

'If He did, we should at least find out for certain what His will was. As it is, we have to take the word of two men who each stand to gain considerably from bringing forward somebody who'll become a great singer.'

'Gain! How gain?'

'Not in riches, you noodle—in credit, in mark, in fame. They're men like any others.'

'Decuman, I must warn you for the sake of your soul to cease this impious cackle. My lord Abbot and the good and learned Father are not men like any others. They're priests, and one of their powers as such is that they can discover God's will.'

'You mean they've known Him longer than we have.'

'Schismatic!'

'Oh, bugger a badger.'

Thomas broke in. 'Leave God's will and consider Hubert's. I want to ask him—Hubert, can't you stay as you are and continue as singer like one of us?'

'I can, but I should be no more likely to become a great singer than any other clerk in this place.'

'And you mean to become great?'

'Well... good. As good as possible.'

'Then surely you should be glad to be altered. Already you sing wonderfully well, and to do anything wonderfully well must be wonderfully pleasant. And now you can become a great singer or as good a singer as possible or the sort of singer you must very much want to be. Would you throw that away for the sake of... being able to fuck, which you might not even like? Can anyone be sure of liking it? From what I hear of it, I'm not sure.'

Mark nodded his little head rapidly. 'Tom's right, Hubert. At least, his reason goes the same way as mine. Answer me. Are you a Christian?'

'Yes.'

'From where does your gift of singing come?'

'From God.'

'And what will He think of you if you doubt the value of his gift?'

'You talk like the Abbot.'

'Thank you, Decuman. Well, Hubert? Say.'

There was silence. Somebody in the next dormitory laughed and was immediately hushed. The cry of what might have been an animal came from far off, too far for it to be identified. Decuman leaned forward in his bed, his upper lip raised from his teeth.

'Now attend to me, Hubert,' he said. 'And you other two attend. Near my father's house in Barnet there's a monastery, at a place called Hadley a little outside the town. Last year, a monk was caught in an act of unchastity—adultery or fornication, I don't know. The Prior showed him great lenience. Instead of bringing him before the Consistory, he awarded him a summary punishment of twenty lashes and warned him that, if he offended again, nothing could save him. Four months later, the noodle did offend again and was again caught. The Consistory examined him for flagrant and incorrigible unchastity, found him guilty, and handed him over to the Secular Arm. It was quick after that; he went to the pulley.'

'Oh, Mother of God,' said Thomas.

'May She comfort his soul,' said Decuman, staring grimly at the other three as he made the Sign of the Cross. 'Attend further, you. This man knew all along the penalty he faced. Perhaps the first time he was rash or indiscreet. Not the second time. He preferred the risk of being pulled to pieces to not fucking. That tells us something, yes? We still don't truly know what it's like, but we do know how much he wanted to doit.'

'Those who are altered never want to do it,' said Hubert.

'The worse for them. From knowing how much that wretched monk wanted to do it, we know how important it is. More important than anything else.'

'Men do such things in war,' said Mark. 'I mean they face such hazards.'

'Very well, very well. This is as important as war, then, and we already know how important war is. War against the Infidel, Mark. So, Hubert, not only will you never do it, you'll never so much as want to do it. Never so much as want to do a thing of such tremendous importance. You'll live only half a life, my dear.'

'Singing is important,' said Hubert.

'When did a man hazard his life sooner than not sing?'

'You offer poor comfort,' said Thomas.

'I mean to offer none. And I've another story to tell. What do you know of Austell Spencer?'

Thomas acted as spokesman. 'A... an altered singer, once of this Chapel. Dead some years ago by an accident here.'

'Dead in 1964,' said Decuman, with a nod of something like satisfaction, 'at the age of twenty-one, having fallen from the belfry-tower. A rare misfortune indeed, with no reason for his presence in the tower and nobody else there at the time. Yes, I asked among the servants as soon as I heard of him, when I first entered as clerk, but I forgot the tale until now. Austell Spencer committed the unforgivable sin...'

The other three gasped and Mark crossed himself.

'... because he so much regretted that he'd been altered.'

'You guess,' said Thomas.

'I know. He left a letter to the Abbot, but not in a packet-he must have wanted everyone to hear. Someone saw the letter and told someone who told the buttery-boy, who told me for a ha'penny. Austell Spencer said that his alteration had been in vain. His voice had fallen off and he could no longer find high notes with any surety. He was about to lose his post, or that was what he thought, that was what he wrote to the Abbot. He was fit for no other function and had given away his manhood for nothing. What should he do but kill himself, Hubert?'

'This was only one man,' said Thomas before Hubert could speak. 'He might have been mad or—'

'The only one we know of,' said Decuman. After a pause, he went on, 'Now for more discomfort. Granted that your voice does hold, Hubert, what would you be at twenty-one, thirty-one, forty-one? Not merely a man who has never fucked. Not merely a man with no wife and no children: there are plenty of such and it's no shame to them. You would not be a man at all, but a human ox. Those you met would be respectful to your face, but behind your back what would they say? What would they think of you? Wait-there's one thing you might not have heard. Now an altered man doesn't change as he grows up, he gets no hair on his face, his complexion stays the same, like a boy's, and of course his voice stays like a boy's, yes? Or like a woman's. What you might not have heard, Hubert, any of you-I only heard it from somebody my brother brought to the house who keeps doubtful company in Rome-well, it seems there are certain oddities who, instead of just chasing after boys or other men, chase eunuchs because they're men who look and speak like boys or women. How that's desirable I can't tell, but to these types it is. So, Hubert, even friendship would be difficult for you. Any man you deal with might be an oddity of this sort, or be said to be. Behind your back.'

'Be quiet, Decuman,' said Thomas, who had been trying to break in for some time. 'Hubert is helpless: he must be altered. Therefore all you do is—'

'I defy that notion.' Decuman's expression now resembled a gargoyle's. 'There are a dozen things he can do, and my purpose is to encourage him to do some one of them. Hubert: you can appeal to the Cardinal-Archbishop, you can look for sanctuary, you could even tell the Abbot you've changed your mind and just see what happens, or you can run away to North-England or West-England, you can hide in the woods above the farm and we'll bring you food. You can fight, whatever happens at last. You must fight.'

'This is the Devil's counsel, Hubert,' said Mark.

'No,' said Decuman. 'No. It's the counsel of almost everyone and everything we really understand, whether we feel we understand it or not.'

'Remember your feeling as you sang in the Agnus Dei, Hubert,' said Thomas.

There was a longer silence than before. Finally Hubert said, 'Is there any TR for us?'

'Nothing new,' said Thomas. 'I must go to Ned again.'

'I'll go,' said Hubert.

Chapter Four

Brother Collam Flackerty, friar of the Augustinian Order, sat behind his cabinet desk in the Archiepiscopal Palace of Westminster, an extensive Egidian building situated half a mile up river from the Cathedral of St Peter and the House of Convocation. He was a small, narrow-framed person with carefully-combed fair hair at the fashionable shoulder length and cheeks rouged perhaps a little more than was fashionable. Today he wore an olive-green silk cassock, selvedged with the traditional black, that had cost him four and a half guineas at one of the new bottegas in Chelsea village. He also wore an expensive scent that was too delicate to contend with the emanations of the lilies of the valley, pink moss roses and reseda hanging in baskets from the blue-starred ceiling or lining the window that looked out over the Thames. Before him was an open manuscript book to which he occasionally referred or added a note. With his hands clasped against his chest and his head on one side, he said in a voice that held no trace of a West-English accent, though he had been born in Dublin, 'So let me sum. Here's the order—not easy to come by, as I expected. The Abbot goes at first to the Domestic Office of Convocation and fetches his document, his paper. When he has it signed, he takes it back to the Office and takes in return another paper. This gives the surgeon leave to act; it's a non senza. Now, the point where the order can be checked is when the first paper goes back. The Office may call it void and refuse to grant the second paper, giving no reason. The Abbot may then appeal to the Lord Intendant, who may, or may not, place a tribunal, citing whom he pleases. There's no appeal against whatever the tribunal finds.'

Father Lyall nodded and rubbed his upper lip. 'This question of the refusal of the second paper. Would the grounds I attest be sufficient?-that I and only I am qualified to sign the first one and that any other signatory must be an impostor.'

'If that other signatory is your Master Anvil's chaplain in succession to you, how is he an impostor?'

'He can't be the established confessor of the Anvil family—the word in the paper is "habitual". Can duties discharged only for a matter of days be called habitual? It must be that the provision was designed to prevent just such a contingency.'

'It might be, and it might or might not be so arguable.' Flackerty looked down at his notebook. 'Why has Anvil not sent you away before this?'

'That I've considered. He dislikes the course of replacing me by a man who'll follow his wishes. That would make me his enemy, and to have an enemy in the Church, of however little mark, would trouble him. He'd prefer me to change my mind and sign, and he hopes and believes that at last I will.'

'But you won't.'

'No.'

The Augustinian was watching his former fellow-seminarist closely. 'Why not?'

'I have my reasons.'

'Oh, merda. What reasons? If I'm to move at all I must hear them. And don't say your conscience or anything that touches the child, who for all I see will do no less well without his stones than with them.'

'It's the Abbot. Crossing him tickles me. Him and that bum-kissing choirmaster of his.'

'No doubt you are tickled, but the spite in your nature isn't strong enough to beat the sloth. I know of only one force that is. I deduce that Dame Anvil is both good to look at and strong-willed.'

Lyall grinned without replying.

'And given to whims and conceits, or she'd simply be glad at the chance for her son, no? Come on and tell me the whole tale, Matthew: we've plenty of years in common.'

'The lady's past experience of men has been small and disappointing.'

'I catch.'

'But as things now are she's set on not having the boy denied that part of his future.'

'You must indeed have pleased her.'

'It's more than that, Collam. She loves me.'

'Well, so she should.'

'No: I mean something more serious. She talks of her soul being transformed,' said Lyall in a neutral tone.

'I hope you rebuke the blasphemy as often. as you hear it. And the dire use of words. What scrawler does she read?'

'She means what she says.'

'Tanto peggio. And what of it?'

'It's this love that the boy must not miss, not the carnal pleasure alone.'

'She must give you a pot of the latter if you're used to letting her sing such airs.'

'Well, you know what women are like.'

'I hear tell,' said Flackerty, polishing against his cassock the fine emerald on his left ring finger. 'Again, what of it? How does her transformed soul bear upon you?'

'You asked me my reasons for resisting this design. That's the chief one.'

'Is your soul transformed too, or only your brains?'

'Collam, I tell you just this, that because of her love I must do all I can to help her.'

'Must? How must? You fancy you must.'

'I can't see any difference. Now say what I can do.'

'You can do nothing, my dear. You can go to the Office and lodge a suit, which is to do nothing. Even if you reach the man you need, you'll be either too soon or too late.'

'Then I beg you to act for me. No doubt in your post here you have connections with folk in the Office.'

'Some. Of no great rank or mark.'

'Great enough to cause the Abbot's first paper to be called void?'

'Perhaps. The Abbot on his side is of a certain rank and mark and has his own connections. And lately they down there aren't best pleased with us up here. There was a sharp knock over a vacant canonry when the Lord Intendant's choice was barred by His Eminence. There are always such things.'

'I believe you. But will you do what you can?'

First smoothing his hair with both hands, Flackerty got up and crossed to the window, where he sniffed at several moss roses before strolling towards the far end of the room. As he talked, he continued to move at intervals, his kangaroo-leather sandals making no sound on the thick rugs, so that Lyall could not have predicted just where the next words were to come from except by constantly turning round in his chair. The friar knew well enough that this behaviour might be called theatrical, but he thought none the less of it for that, and had found it of excellent service at interviews in compensating for his physical smallness. Even on occasions like this, it was well worth while to put the other party at a disadvantage from time to time. He spoke now without hurry or much emphasis.

'Go back no more than four hundred years or so. Over all the time since, Christendom has been a tyranny of a rare sort. By way of the soul it rules the minds of most and the acts of all. As effect, no wars throughout Europe but the one, a war with long breaks of peace, a war against a power that can never be crushed and can be held in only by standing in arms from year to year: the best possible form to draw off any will to rebel or quarrel. And, in the last fifty years, Christendom has finally drubbed a power much more awful than the Turk could ever be, one that now lives on as it can in New England among boors and savages: science. God be praised.'

'Amen,' said Lyall automatically.

'Amen to amen. It was a close thing. A little longer, and science would have abolished God and brought our world to ruin.'

'You don't mean abolish, you mean take attention from, leave on one side.'

'I mean abolish, I mean deny, I mean disprove. Come, Matthew.'

'I must rebuke your blasphemy, Collam, and call upon you to abnegate it at once.'

'Again must. You may say what you please.'

'You never showed much reverence, and I suppose your work here has—'

'Let me show you some now. I feel nothing but wonder and gratitude when I look on so many centuries of patience, hope, content, trust, constancy, restraint and certitude, so much art, letters, music, learning, all founded upon one great lie. Ah!—no words, Matthew. At first a lie nobody had the smallest need for, since become the sole necessity. Its lasting makes me wish I had someone to thank. More reverence for you. But to go back whence you switched me. With the victory over science, the tyranny begins to afford to seem a little soft. Seem, not be. Don't mistake, my dear. Today there's talk in Convocation and even in the Church that thirty years ago would have earned the scaffold. The commonest felons are no more than gaoled. A man can be known to take to his bed whom he pleases and still escape if he's wary and in good regard. But the tyranny stays. I'm obliged, because tyranny alone can let men be safe and serene. None the less, to set against it is the act of a noodle. If you do so, it'll stretch out as far as the moon or the planets to snap you.'

As he ended, Flackerty settled back behind his desk. Lyall, who had managed to sit still throughout, looked at him hard.

'You overstate.'

'I don't, Matthew, I don't. All you know is the Church, and that not far. Be assured there's more than rebukes to be faced. I ask you most gravely to sign that paper as soon as you can.'

'Or you mean you're afraid to act in my behalf.'

'No. I've held my post for nine years, and before the third of them was over I'd learned how to act at a distance in such a way that I could never be named. It's you that should be afraid.'

'I am,' said Lyall, 'but not enough to check my purpose. Will you act for me, Collam? Or not?'

'Yes, I'll act, though I promise nothing.'

'I understand. I catch. Thank you.'

'One hard condition: you must do nothing more. Make no other move. Approach no one else. Say not a word.'

'I won't.'

'Swear it.'

'To you? In the name of what you call a lie?'

'For yourself.'

Lyall made the Sign of the Cross. 'I so swear, by Almighty God.'

When his friend had gone, Brother Flackerty at once took a key from the ring at his waist and unlocked one of the bottom drawers of his desk. Opening it caused the ignition of gas-jets in its asbestos-lined interior. With a neat movement, he ripped from the manuscript book his notes on the Lyall matter and dropped them among the flames. As soon as there was nothing more to burn, he shut the drawer, thereby releasing a stream of compressed air. This blew the ashes through a fine wire mesh, so that when the tray underneath came to be removed for emptying, nothing would be left of them but a grey powder.

In the afternoon of the next day of leisure at the Chapel, Hubert went through the courtyard arch and strolled over to the brewery. From it came a steady but intermittent creaking noise. One door stood open: Hubert peered round it and saw Ned in his usual brown work-shirt and trews, a dirty kerchief knotted at his throat, his hand on what was evidently a pump-handle. After a few minutes it had become clear that the brewer himself, unless in hiding or unconscious behind one of the coppers, was either on another floor of the building or altogether absent. Hubert stepped inside; Ned nodded morosely at him and went on pumping. He gave off a powerful odour, or mixture of several, that was not actually unpleasant. His height, muscular arms and slight mustach made him seem older than fourteen.

'Where's your master?' asked Hubert.

Ned grunted and screwed up his face in such a way as to suggest that they were in no danger of being interrupted, but that he was perfectly indifferent to this state of affairs.

'What are you doing?'

'Water got to go atop or a come down again.'

'I see. Have you any of those books?'

'Ah no.'

When Hubert brought out and displayed two threepenny bits, the other, without the least change of demeanour, stopped his pumping at once and led the way to a metal ladder bolted to the wall. Up they went, through a cut-out in a wooden floor that supported a pair of large tuns, and finally to a space under the roof where there was a tank and a pile of sacks. From beneath a corner of this pile Ned produced something that had to be called a book, though it was very near returning to its constituent parts. Hubert looked at the crumpled title-page: The Orc Awakes, by J. B. Harris.

'Sixpence,' said Ned.

With no delay or objection, Hubert handed over his two coins. It seemed that Ned was surprised enough at this to show some momentary approval: his mouth twitched and he nodded several times as he released the book.

'Ned, would you tell me something?'

'What would you know?'

Hubert said quickly, 'What happens when you fuck? What do you do?'

'You don't hear nothing to that of me, you don't.' The boy's tone was startled, but not hostile. 'Nor speak and rue wasn't never my proceeding, no. That Prefect would hear.'

'Don't tell me who or where or when-just what, no more. Nothing for the Prefect to hear.'

'Find another, little sir. Ask another, eh?'

'I ask you. But I lose my time: you can tell me nothing. You haven't done it. Well, I win my sixpence back off Thomas-he wagered you had.'

'By Christ, that I have,' said Ned angrily. 'Here it is, now. I grapples her and I near kiss her bloody mouth off the face of her and I gropes the cunt of her till her's all stewed and ready, see? Then I haves the clouts of her and I lays the fusby on her back and I shove my pen all the way up her fanny artful and I bang and bang, see?' For a moment longer, he appeared to Hubert angrier than ever, the corners of his mouth drawn tightly back as he puffed out the words. 'I goes on at her cruel till my knob start to whack her tripes and her cry me mercy, see? Then I feel a start to... Christ, I could...'

Hubert, who had been watching his face, caught sight of the distension at the crotch of his trews just before Ned snatched at it and squeezed it, wincing loudly as if in pain; his body was bent at the waist. Within a couple of seconds Hubert had reached the top of the ladder and begun going down it as fast as he could. He heard Ned run across the floor above him.

'Ah, would you? Let the fucking Prefect hear, would you? I'll stop your mouth, I will. Tear your fucking head off I will, little sir. I gets my hands to you, you wish you never been born, I swear to Christ.'

With his pursuer close behind and still shouting, Hubert reached the ground and ran for the doorway. He was through it, but he would be caught in seconds. Then Ned's footfalls stopped abruptly, and at the same time Hubert saw the bulky figure of the brewer approaching from the arch that led to the courtyard, a curved piece of metal pipe balanced over his shoulder. Hubert hurried in the other direction. He only stopped gasping and trembling when he had reached the farmyard and Smart had rushed across to greet him. Today the collie had perhaps had an unusually good dinner; at any rate, he put himself out to entertain Hubert with a display of fierce growls and pretended snaps at his sleeves. When he left it was at top speed, to show that there were other tasks calling for his attention.

Hubert stood and looked in the direction of the ducks on and round the pond. At a now reduced rate, phrases moved through his head: Ned was mad, Ned was not mad but had only wanted to fuck when there was no girl, Ned was rude and low, Ned might be rude and low but he had been telling the truth, Ned was only a boy, Ned was indeed a boy but in the one important way he was a man too. There were other phrases besides.

A hoof sounded on dried mud. The white-and-black calf came up and halted just a few paces off; Hubert moved towards it with the utmost caution. Soon he was near enough to stretch out his hand at an inch a second and lay his fingertips on the hide of the animal's nose. It shifted its footing, but did not turn or edge away. By degrees, he moved further until he was standing at its shoulders with his hand on the back of its neck. There was an interval while he sent a hurried prayer to St Francis to see to it that no duck should quack too loudly or make a flurry in the pond. Then, after a gentle blowing through its nostrils and a few shakes of its head, the calf pressed its cheek against his chest; he lowered his own cheek on to its neck.

A minute or so later, a questioning moo was heard from the pasture. As if by prearrangement, Hubert straightened himself and the calf trotted off; contentedly, he watched it out of sight. Only now did he remember The Ore Awakes: he must have dropped it somewhere in the brewery. Well, there was no going back for it. Should he walk on up to the woods? No: if he did, he would have to think about what he had seen there the previous week, to compare that with what he had seen just how and as much as he had understood of what he had been told, and from all this to try to imagine himself in Ned's case, and he shied away from such a task. He would go instead to the study-room and write out the little improwisazione he had thought of coming up in the rapid.

While the clock was striking five, he carried the completed manuscript across a corner of the quadrangle to the small concert-chamber where composition was usually taught. The ceiling and four wall-panels had been painted with scenes from the life of St Cecilia, including what was now known to be her unhistorical martyrdom in the year 230. The artist was supposed to have been a mid-eighteenth-century Prefect of Music at the Chapel, and although it was also supposed, or at least hoped, that he had been a better musician than artist, most folk enjoyed what he had painted. Hubert did; as he mounted the low platform and sat down at one of the two piano-fortes there, he gave the figure of the saint's husband, known to generations of clerks as 'the tipsy Roman', an affectionate glance. Raising the lid of the instrument, he began to play the Prometheus Variations, Beethoven's last complete keyboard work. It would never do to be caught tinkling some trash of one's own.

Presently, Master Morley hurried in, his footfalls heavy on the wide elm boards. Hubert stopped playing and stood up.

'My excuses, Clerk Anvil: the organer kept me at the oratory. Now what have you for me today?'

'Here, master.'

At his work-desk to one side of the platform, Morley turned over the sheets of music-paper at a fair speed to start with, then more slowly. Twice he went to the nearer pianoforte and, without sitting down, played short passages. Halfway through a second study of the manuscript he spoke, in the voice that was as heavy as his tread.

'How long was this in the writing, Anvil?'

'In the writing down, master, no more than—'

'My question was ill drawn. How long in the composing?'

'It's hard for me to tell, master. Six minutes or seven.'

'It'll be that long in the playing.'

'Forgive me, master, of course it was much longer in the composing.'

Morley stared past Hubert at one of the wall-paintings. 'Anvil,' he said at last: 'I know you meant six or seven minutes in the composing. What did you mean by composing?'

'I... My mind was those minutes in going through it. Or...' Hubert hesitated, but the Prefect still stared. 'Or it was those minutes going through my mind.'

'You tell me it came to you from somewhere else.' The voice was at its harshest now.

'No—no, master, it was inside my mind already when I... looked.'

'Very well. These F naturals here.' Morley pointed with a stubby finger. 'And again near the end.'

'Oh yes.' Hubert sang a short phrase.

'Why did you have your hands in front of you then?'

'Did I so? I expect because it's the clarinet—I was...'

'What clarinet, Anvil? This is a keyboard piece.'

'Yes, master, but I heard that voice as a clarinet.'

'And the other voices too, you heard them as flutes and violas and horns and so forth?'

'No, sir. Two oboes, two clarinets and two bassoons.'

'So this here is a keyboard transcription of a wind-sextet movement you haven't put on paper.'

'Yes, master.'

'Are all your keyboard pieces transcriptions of non-existent originals?'

'Oh no, master: the theme and variations was for pianoforte.'

'Indeed. Now at last to these F naturals. The key is G major, and elsewhere, here for example, we find the F sharp we expect. Well?'

'They're different places, master.'

'When I protest that the leading-note of G major is F sharp, what's your answer?'

'That where I've written F natural nothing but F natural is possible.'

Morley was silent for nearly a minute. Then he said, 'They let me know you go soon to be altered.'

'Yes, master.'

'I'm sorry to hear it. Oh, it means an eminent career for you and I wish you well. But it also means an end to your activities as composer.'

'Surely not, sir.'

'As surely as can be. Name me six pieces of any kind that a singer of the least eminence has written. You see? Consideration will show that a singer's life is too much lived with others, too remunerating in other ways than financial, simply too full to allow of composition. So I'm a little dismal, because you're by far the best pupil I've ever had. But in any case I must lose you soon as pupil: soon I'll be able to teach you nothing more.'

'You are too gracious, master.'

Again Morley stared at the painting. 'Why is it, Anvil, do you think, that St Cecilia is the patron saint of the blind as well as of music?'

Anything Hubert might have had to say to this was never heard, because just then Lawrence came into the concert-chamber and up to the two on the platform.

'Your indulgence, master,' he said, and then, 'Clerk Anvil, my lord Abbot wishes you to come to him at once.'

'What have I done?' asked Hubert in fear, thinking of his encounter with Ned.

'Nothing ill that I know of, clerk,' said the servant, smiling slightly. 'You're to go to Rome.'

As the other two moved off, Morley sighed and nodded his head, his eyes shut.

The Eternal City Rapid pulled out of Bayswater Station, its only stop between Coverley and Rome, at 6.25 a.m., and moved slowly, through networks of points and round tight bends, across London, across the river and into the north-west corner of the county of Kent, which was still virtually coextensive with the ancient kingdom. There the track straightened itself, changing direction only in the longest and shallowest of curves, its continuously-welded rails on their cushioned sleepers moving through natural obstacles, not round them: the work of the great Harrison. The half-mile-long train—three triplex tugs, 30 passenger baruches, 38 cargo vans—accelerated steadily, but it did not attain its top speed of 195 m.p.h. until the towers of Canterbury were to be seen out of the windows on the left side. Soon came the famous moment when it emerged from the Dover cliffs and entered on to the Channel Bridge, Sopwith's masterpiece, 23 miles 644 yards of road and railtrack carried between 169 piers. Little more than half an hour's travel on the French side took the Rapid as far as Clermont, the slipping-point for Paris where it freed itself of its rearmost quarter. As mid-morning approached, tunnels became longer and more frequent, but all were left behind in a matter of seconds except the 15-odd miles of the Bognanco itself. The track ran downhill through Milan, crossed the Po on stilts 200 feet high, climbed again into Parma and moved finally towards the coastal plain. The journey ended in the Stazione S. Pietro at 1.32-nearly a quarter of an hour late. It had all impressed Hubert enough to distract him from more than one troubling or puzzling question, of which not the least was the reason for his summons to Rome. The cabin his father had hired was like several parts of a beautiful house combined into one. After the luggage had been settled, the two of them moved to a kind of parlour by the window. Here there were leather chairs with gold-braided velvet cushions, tall potted plants, lithographs of views of Rome, a row of picture-books, a locker containing a chess-set and packs of playing-cards and much else; but Hubert attended only to things on the outside. As the train went faster, nearby objects like hedges or dwellings of the people became an indifferently-coloured lengthwise blur, but he very soon learned to overlook them in favour of more distant and important things: churches, great houses, busy streets and squares, and at different times no fewer than four aircraft, mighty envelopes of gas on the long run to Africa or the Antipodes.

Breakfast was taken at a polished oval table on which the linen, china, silver and glass might have been made the previous day; the bread the Anvils ate with their hurtleberry conserve must have been baked that day, perhaps on the train itself: nothing seemed impossible. The meal was brought in (by two very polite attendants, one stern, the other timid) long after the train had reached its full speed, and Hubert noticed that, probably in consequence, the timid attendant had to take some special care when he poured the tea. The remnants being cleared away, something like a luxurious bedchamber offered itself in the form of couches shaded by silk screens, but Hubert stayed by the window to see what he had never seen before.

The passage over the Alps was like flying in a dream: the always startling burst into bright sunshine, the huge steady leap between tiers of mountains and its abrupt cessation in the darkness of the next tunnel. When the streams and rivers began again, they had changed their colour from brown or grey to blue, green or turquoise. The countryside was the same as that in the background of some very old paintings Hubert remembered seeing on a visit to the Royal Gallery in Coverley: the sloping fields, the thin dark trees, even the small clouds on their own in the sky. Then, after slowing so gradually that the process could only be seen, not felt, the train came into Rome, where every building that was not a church looked like a palace, and stopped without the slightest jar.

On the pavement beside the track, the Anvils were soon joined by one of the family servants carrying their slender overnight baggage; the man had of course travelled in the narrow cabin allotted his kind at the rear of the baruch. Hubert thought he had never seen so many folk at once: droves of pilgrims, clerics in ones and twos, officials with their staffs, men of affairs like his father, all making their way through crowds of vendors who pressed on them flowers, fruit, patties, flasks of wine, gewgaws, facsimiles of paintings and cheap-looking religious objects. After a short pause at the post of inspection, there was more of the same in the square outside, together with a great concourse of wheeled traffic; every vehicle seemed to make twice as much noise as its English counterpart, just as every Roman shouted instead of talking. The air was hot and damp. Hubert felt relieved when, after only a couple of minutes, a public was secured. Hunger, fatigue, confusion and anxiety weighed upon him. The first two yielded in due time to the excellent dinner provided by the Schola Saxonum, where rooms had been reserved for them, but in other respects he was still uncomfortable when, at ten minutes to four that afternoon, he and his father approached the Vatican Palace on the north side of St Peter's Square.

Nine great windows, each with a decorated half-dome above it, dominated the facciata of the building, the one in the centre distinguished by a balcony and an abundance of high-relief sculpture; it must be from here that the Holy Father gave his addresses to the multitude. Below the windows ran a gallery, and below that, at ground level, an arcade, both of plain stone. The main gate, thirty feet high and flanked by massive granite pillars, was at the end nearer the basilica. Next to it was an incongruously modern and undignified structure, a sort of wooden hut with a flat roof. Here Anvil senior presented himself to a cheerful young monk, produced an identifying document and was evidently found to be expected. The monk nodded to the carmine-uniformed guard who, with shouldered fusil, stood directly at the gate, and the guard opened the wicket. Hubert was stepping over the sill when he noticed a third man who seemed to be stationed at the entrance with an eye to visitors; he was in plain clothes (dark-blue jacket and straw-coloured breeches), but he wore them as if they had been chosen for him.

Inside, there was only one way to go: down the wide path that curved to and fro between masses of trees and shrubs growing so close together that, within a dozen paces, the palace itself could be seen only in stray glimpses and there was no sound except birdsong, some of it unfamiliar. The surface of the path consisted of flat-topped stones about the size of a crown piece, none regular in shape but each perfectly fitted with its neighbours, no two apparently alike in colour, any that the sun caught glinting as if wet. On either side, now and then overgrown in parts by stray foliage, and often a good deal weathered, there stood at five-yard intervals classical statues in marble or bronze, portrait busts on stone pedestals, sections of column with spiral bands of carving, fragments of colossi that included a huge sandalled foot irregularly shorn off above the ankle. Once, the path divided to accommodate an inactive fountain in a basin of some matt black substance; further on, it led straight through the considerable remains of what Hubert took to be a very ancient pagan temple, its walls, floor and low ceiling covered with designs he could not interpret. He scarcely heard his father's expressions of admiration or amazement, except to notice that they sounded genuine; he himself was more and more interested in reaching the end of their journey along the path, which oppressed him in some way.

When at last they did, they had come in sight of a stone staircase at the end of another arcade and leading up to another gallery. From the foot of the staircase, a functionary with a curved sword and a splendid purple sash beckoned the new arrivals by holding out his hand and gently curling the fingers up in the palm. They followed him down the gallery past a series of shut doors, one of which, smaller than the others, had bars across it. Halfway along they turned off at a narrower staircase with a gilded ceiling and low-relief grottescos on the walls. On the second floor they went through a circular chamber in which everything from floor to ceiling seemed to Hubert, in the couple of seconds available to him, to be made of ivory, a square chamber in which everything likewise seemed to be covered with mosiac, and an L-shaped chamber full of more classical statuary, some of which he thought he recognised from books. Next was what must be an antechamber. The further door of this was flanked by another guard in carmine uniform and another man wearing plain clothes that seemed not to belong to him. The official with the sword opened this door, or rather half of it, spoke to someone on the far side, again made his courteous beckoning gesture to the Anvils, and withdrew, shutting the door after them.

It was a lofty room with an immense window, no doubt one of the row to be seen from the square; through it, Hubert had a momentary sight of spires and roofs with statues on them, and, further off, domes and towers. Frescoes and oil paintings covered the walls. A line of padded benches in carved wood and gilt ran down the wall opposite the window; all were empty. So was the elevated golden throne at the far end. A figure robed in scarlet smiled and spoke, raising his voice as four o'clock sounded from innumerable bells.

'Salvete, magister et magistrule.'

'Salvete, Vestra Eminentia,' said Tobias Anvil, bowing low.

'Dominus vobiscum.'

'Et cum vobis.'

'I am Cardinal Berlinguer. I welcome you to Rome. I will take you to His Holiness. Please to come with me.'

Beside the door they were to leave by, there hung a picture familiar to Hubert from countless facsimiles, Tintoretto's 'Lepanto', one of the most renowned works of art in the world. Hubert did not dare to linger; he just had time for a single glance at his favourite detail, the boarding of a Turkish galley by a lone warrior who was always taken (in England and her Empire) to be Sir Richard Grenville. Then they moved out, up a steep stair, across an enclosed bridge where suits of armour stood in ranks, and finally through another door. Cardinal Berlinguer departed.

Hubert found himself in what might have been the parlour of a small English manor house, with solid oak furniture, chintz covers and what looked like trees and shrubs outside—on a roof? A broad, plumpish man of fifty or more, with eyeglasses and a rather pale complexion, made a satisfied noise as he came over from the window. He was wearing the kind of dark-grey suit that any lay visitor to the Anvil house might wear. Hubert looked about for the Pope, but his father had gone down on one knee and bowed his head, so he hastened to do the same. He kissed a plain ring with a gold cross on it, felt a hand laid on his own bowed head and heard some words in Latin spoken. They were not spoken clearly and he did not understand them all, but they calmed him.

'Ah, now, please make yourselves comfortable, the pair of you. You'll find that's a good chair, Master Anvil, and Hubert lad, you settle yourself down next to us. Our excuses for receiving you thus meanly apparelled: we're so often required to appear swaddled like a babe that we've come to take advantage of every private moment. Rome will be so hot in these months. Sometimes we feel we'd give our throne for a few breaths of a North Sea breeze. Well, tell us, what do you think of our city? You'll have been here before, no doubt, master.'

If challenged, Hubert would have said that of course he had known that Pope John XXIV was an Englishman, was a Yorkshireman; but knowledge was different from being faced with the fact. He willed himself to believe that this pleasant, homely-looking person was indeed God's representative on earth and also the most powerful man alive. His father was answering the question.

'A number of times, Your Holiness. It still fills me with extreme awe. So much to be aware of. Republican Rome, Imperial Rome, medieval Rome, modern Rome, and above all-'

'Ay, there is that. For us, there's almost too much. It's more than eight years since our coronation and we still couldn't truly say we knew the place. And it's not like home. Take our church, for instance.' The Pope moved his dark head to one side, presumably to indicate St Peter's. 'You must have remarked the outside of it on your way here, Hubert. How did it impress you?'

'We saw the inside of it too, Your Holiness,' said Hubert, surprised by how easy it was to sound natural. 'It impressed me very greatly.'

'So it should, lad, so it should, considering in whose sanctified name it stands. We meant in what way did it impress you as a piece of architecture. Did it match your expectations?'

'Not quite, Your Holiness.' Hubert heard his father inhale sharply. 'I thought it rather... bare.'

'Austere, as you might say? We agree. We and you look to St George's for a notion of a cathedral basilica, a place rich with holy images testifying to the glory of God, eh? That was what St Peter's was first designed to be, but old Martin wouldn't have it so. No, Germanian I was a very severe and sober kind of customer; God's first house on earth must not be a temple of luxury, he said. He tore up the plans at last and dismissed the Italian master-builders and masons. One of them was so mortified he committed the unforgivable sin—Boonarotty or some such name. A fair number of the others had the craft to go to Coverley and settle down to their trade. There were places for them in plenty, for old Martin had sent after English artificers along with men from Almaigne and the Netherlands to make St Peter's according to his will. Out of the common, that. But enough of lessons. Now you're settled, forgive us if we show you our little cloister. We're a mite proud of it, we're afraid.'

A moment later, the three stood on the tessellated pavement of an arcade that ran all the way round the open space, which occupied perhaps half an acre. The roof was supported by slender pillars, none seemingly like another in detail. In the centre, a fountain was playing; Hubert remembered that the one in the garden below had not been. Flowers, flowering shrubs and dwarf trees of species unknown to him grew in beds of exact geometrical shapes. Between them, the turf was no less level and smooth than would be seen at a premier club-ball field in England. Three gardeners in white overalls were hard at work under the strong sun.

'A beautiful sight, Your Holiness,' said Tobias as they moved slowly round the arcade, 'and a wonderful stroke of engineering.'

'It is that, master. There are we don't know how many thousands of tons of soil up here. You wouldn't credit that it was a Frenchie who began it, would you? Old Sylvan II back in the eighteenth century. And since then every Holy Father has added a shred of his own. We brought those roses, look. Now you'll be wanting to know, the pair of you, why we asked you to pay us a visit. Well, we see it like this. Rome is the centre of Christendom.' The Pope said this with some force and nodded his head several times, as if he had recently heard the point disputed. 'So Rome should be the greatest city in the world, with the foremost and the finest of everything and everybody, a city fit to make Byzantium look like a mill-town. Ee, we don't speak of mere temporal glory, magnificence for its own secular sake. To follow after that would be a sin, and if there's one thing we can't abide at any price it's sin. We think we can safely say that.' After a reflective pause, he added, 'Yes, we think we can safely say that. What we design is all in God's praise and in the adoration of His Holy Name.

'To this end, we fetch here the best architects, the best sculptors, the best inventors, the best physicians, the best furniture-makers, the best arborists, the best masons, the best tailors on earth, wherever they might have been born. And the best singers besides. Now, we ourselves can hold no view in this province, as we have the misfortune to be tone-deaf, but we have access to prime advice. Your voice has no equal in memory and your skill is pretty fine too is what we're told.' (By the two altered men at the Chapel, thought Hubert.) 'We called you to Rome, Hubert, on purpose to offer you a post as principal, uh, soprano in the choir of our church here. Do you consent?'

Tobias Anvil checked his stride. 'Your Holiness! What an honour! I'm overwhelmed—I can think of nothing more—'

'We thought you'd be pleased, master; we assumed so. We ask what Hubert has to say.'

'I can't tell you all I have to say, Your Holiness, because I never dreamed of such a thing before. But oh yes, of course, of course I consent. But I must live in Rome, I see I must, and everyone I know is in England. But...'

'Consider that London is merely seven hours away, and we hear it's soon to be five and a half. You'll often be at leisure, your family and friends may visit you—everybody comes to Rome at last, not always to pay homage to us. You won't be lonely.'

Hubert hesitated. He saw the Pope, who had turned slightly to face the room they had left, make a curious small signal with his forefinger, a motion like that of jerking or pushing aside. When he looked in that direction himself, there was nobody to be seen. He squared his shoulders and said, 'I humbly beg Your Holiness' leave to ask a question.'

'Ask away, lad; have no fear.'

'Your Holiness called me to Rome and has just invited me to take this post. But I'm only a child and you're... Your Holiness. All that was needed was to instruct me, or instruct my father to send me. So I...'

The Pope chuckled, shook his head to and fro, rested his hand on Hubert's shoulder and resumed progress round the arcade. 'Here's an acute one, eh, master? We can see we'll have to admit you both to our counsel. Mind this, now. We can indeed do as we please throughout Christendom. We are the Holy Father.' Again there was emphasis, almost enough to suggest the undisclosed existence of a rival claimant. 'But we're not omnipotent. We can't direct men's minds. Not that we wish to, or at any rate... But just here and there, there's been some—some reluctance to accede to our wishes. Folk of this nation or that have shown themselves obstinately and perversely wishful to keep their gifted sons at home. Last year—take a case—there was some stir over a Portuguee bridge-builder whom we required here in our city. The talk in Lisbon, and not only in Lisbon, said that his care was the Tagus, not the Tiber. We were obliged to take urgent steps to remind the laical rulers there of their duty to God. Now, that sort of thing doesn't conduce to right feeling among our flock. How much better if the lad had declared that he came here freely and joyfully. He did say so after a while, of course, but after a while wasn't soon enough for our liking. After a while made it sound as if words had been put into his mouth. We must avoid that this time. So we command your help, Master Anvil.'

'Anything in my power, Your Holiness. And in Hubert's.'

'A short predication from each of you affirming your delight and gratitude at the honour we do you by our offer.'. Tobias and Hubert avowed their willingness to provide what was asked for.

'Good enough. We'll have Berlinguer, who brought you to us, agree with you on a form of words, and then he'll put it in our paper. He's a serviceable lad, is Berlinguer. Oh, and there'll be a photogram besides, so that all shall see for themselves that you were here with us. But that's not yet.'

Clocks far and near began striking the quarter. The nearest of all, though Hubert had not noticed it till then, was in the cloister itself, a splendid twenty-four-hour piece with an ultramarine face and representations of the signs of the zodiac done in gold round the dial. The Pope made the same pleased noise as when the Anvils had first arrived, and conducted them back to his parlour. Here, afternoon table was waiting: dropped scones, riddle bread, quince conserve, bloater-paste arundels.

'We fetch all our fare from England. Over these years our stomach still hasn't accustomed itself to the local muck. (Benedictus benedicat.) We mean, that's what it is. Our vicar at York is well situated to serve our taste, and he's kind enough to send us whatever we need. Shall we be mother?' The Pope picked up the teapot, an ample affair painted with very-luxuriant white roses. 'Well, we're happy our business is settled. Now we and you can take our time. We don't mean to make you scramble, Hubert. You'll have concerns to settle in England before you return here to live; we don't expect you back in Rome before the end of next month, or later. Meanwhile you must be watchful you don't grow too flushed with your fame. Two accounts of you in our paper in two days, and no doubt the English ones will copy.'

Hubert's bewilderment, already considerable, sharpened a little. 'Two accounts... in your paper, Your Holiness?'

'Ay, lad, there was one this morning: we didn't want to keep your arrival a secret, did we? Just that today we were to receive in private audience a foremost chorister from England and his reputable father. That's what we told Berlinguer to say. Of course, we don't quite know how it came out in the lingo, but such was the drift. And then, tomorrow, your and your father's predications, as we and you agreed. Now, Master Anvil, it's all too seldom we chance to receive a lay visitor from England. These clerics are too set on the Church's concerns to pay much regard to any others. How is it in England now, master?-among the people as well as the gentry.'

Tobias spoke up and the Pope showed many signs of listening until Cardinal Berlinguer reappeared, when the three men conferred on the matter of the predications. This took only a very short time, because His Eminence had seemed to know in advance just what the two Anvils would have wanted to say: he had even brought with him documents already prepared. Next, a photographist was brought in. His part in the proceedings went on longer, even though all that was wanted was a picture of the Pope standing with his hand on Hubert's head and smiling down at him while he looked up at the Pope. It was the expression on Hubert's face that proved difficult to get right: 'look grateful, lad,' the Pope kept saying—'look honoured.' When at last it was done to his satisfaction, some practical details were quickly settled, His Holiness conferred his benediction upon father and son, and the two were ceremoniously shown out, emerging into the piazza as the three-quarters began to sound. Immediately a swarthy young man with the dress and bearing of a servant came up to them.

'Salve, magister.'

'Salve, amice.'

'Maestro Anvil, per piacere? Ecco, signore.'

With great deference, the man handed over a sealed packet. Tobias broke it open and ran his eyes over the deckled sheet of paper it contained. He lowered his black eyebrows and said, 'Attend, Hubert. "Honoured Sir,-I had recently in Coverley the pleasure of becoming acquainted with your excellent son. I read today in Observator Romanus that your honoured self and he are to haveanaudience with His Holiness the Pope. I should estimate it a great favour if afterwards you and he would care to call upon me in my lodging. I send this by my valetto Giulio, who will conduct you to me if you are so minded. The distance is no more than a few minutes on foot. With the profound respects of your servant in God, honoured Sir... Federicus... Mirabilis." Well, my son?'

While Giulio, hands behind back, politely kept his eyes turned away, Hubert explained as much as he could explain. He was surprised at first when his father's frown was quickly displaced by a look of amiable tolerance, then reflected that good humour was to be expected in someone who, now that the Pope's wish had been revealed, must be feeling rather like a boy being given the largest slice of his favourite cake he had ever seen.

'What a pleasant and courteous offer.—Buono, andiamo.'

Giulio led them across a corner of the piazza and into a narrow street empty of vehicles but full of strolling foot-passengers and hung with artisans' and traders' signs. Hubert saw little of anybody or anything: he was too intent on the strange thought of living his life in this city. In time, he would own a house in it, furnish the place after his own wishes, keep servants, entertain friends, speak the language, visit England and no doubt many other places, but always return here as to his home; most likely this was where he would die and be buried. Yes, that was how it would be.

He did not start to notice his surroundings until he was crossing a cobbled yard and entering a squat marble portico. Inside, it was dark and cool, with a noise of water dripping into water. The valetto knocked at a door covered in green leather. A high-pitched voice sounded from within, and the two visitors were shown into a long narrow room with a balcony at the end of it. Polished tables on which silverwork was carefully arranged, cushioned couches, and screens covered with small pictures took up a great deal of space. There was an unfamiliar sweetish odour in the air. As Hubert had expected, the writer of the note, Mirabilis, had his friend with him. Both wore long, brightly-coloured silk gowns gathered by cords at the waist, Mirabilis brought forward the other man, Viaventosa, who seemed in rather worse physical condition than before, his skin as well as his eyes and mouth exuding moisture. Bows were exchanged. Tobias declined refreshment but accepted a seat, though not quite fully, in the sense that he stayed on its edge. His answers to questions about the journey from England, his experience of Rome and so forth were brief, if civil. There was not much left now of the geniality with which he had agreed to come here. His glance moved round the room in restless jerks. After a little, Mirabilis turned to Hubert.

'You have seen the Holy Father, then, my dear. May I know his purpose? Such audiences are somewhat out of the common.'

'His Holiness invited me to join the choir of St Peter's, master.'

Mirabilis gave Viaventosa a slow nod. 'It's a great honour, Hubert, no? You must be so joyful. And your good father too.'

'Oh yes, master,' said Hubert after a brief pause. 'May I ask you something?'

'Surely.'

'It was you and the other master here who recommended the Pope to send for me, wasn't it, sir?'

'In effect-yes.'

'Did you... was it part of the reason you were in Coverley, to hear me sing in the Requiem?'

'Not part. The whole reason. Yes, Hubert, you're of great mark already for one of your years.'

'Master: when you came to the Chapel, did you confer on me with the Abbot?'

'Yes, and also with your other preceptors.'

'Did you tell them the Pope had sent you?'

'No. I wasn't asked.'

'I see.' Hubert hesitated again. 'What did you tell them?'

'That your voice and your musician's qualities were of the finest.'

'And therefore I must be altered.'

'That did not-'

Tobias had been fidgeting: rubbing his face and twisting his feet from the ankle. Now he broke in abruptly. 'What was your authority, sir?'

'I must be clear, Master Anvil. My lord the Abbot asked Viaventosa and me to tell our opinion of your son's gifts, and for that we had the authority of our experience. To what use his lordship puts our information is not in our control. Exactly the same holds for our commission from the Holy Father.'

'I understand.'

'Thank you, master. So: may I ask you?—your honoured self and Hubert will be kind enough to sup with us this evening? I ask now because my cook—'

'Thank you, but I regret that I'm tired and we depart early tomorrow.'

'Just an hour or so—there's so much to talk of, touching Hubert's future. We can arrange his—'

'I regret...'

Viaventosa, who had followed the last few remarks with ease, pulled and pushed his bulk upright. 'Please, Master Anvil,' he squeaked, 'sup with us. It will be very good.'

Tobias stared at him for a second and jumped to his feet. 'I must go at once. Come, Hubert.'

'Also I must speak now.' Viaventosa had risen almost as quickly and was making snuffling noises. 'I say to you: no... Anderung, altering. No altering for Hubert. No no no. You see me, master, I'm altered. H'm, h'm. Not this for Hubert.'

'Sei ruhig, Wolfgang!'

Tobias, with Hubert's hand in his, was making for the door, but Viaventosa, waddling to and fro, impeded him. 'No altering, please, for your son.' His voice slid further up the scale. 'See me like this. Hear me speak, like a woman, like a child. No wife, no friend but another altered one. They see me and they hear me and they think, "Not a man, not a man." All, all, all. Always. Cberall.' He went on, louder, weeping freely, as Mirabilis tried to pull him away. 'See my face. No hair.' He made a contemptuous wiping gesture across his fuzzy upper lip. 'They laugh. I don't see them but I know. They laugh or they...' He imitated the act of vomiting. 'Think you, master, your son will be like me. Not a man. Hubert must not be altered, for the love of God.'

The green-leather door slammed. Hubert saw that there was more in his father's expression than embarrassment or revulsion. He was about to ask him not to hold his hand so tightly when something amazing happened: in a yard outside a house in Rome, while hundreds of the people passed by and others in ones and twos stopped to watch, Master Tobias Anvil of the London Chamber of Merchandry knelt down on the cobbles in his thirty-shilling breeches and clasped his son in his arms.

'What is it, papa?'

'God aid me, God send my soul tranquillity. Pray for me, Hubert. Pray to Christ to take from my memory what I have seen and heard.'

'Yes, papa. It was rather displeasing.'

Tobias's embrace grew tighter. 'Oh Christ, I pray Thee to take away from this child, Thy child, that sight and those words. Oh Hubert, how should I bear it that you should become such a creature as that?'

'He's old, papa, and he's silly, and he was piling it up—surely you could see—, and he'd most likely have looked the same whether he'd been altered or not, or much the same. The other was very different, not only in his looks.'

Releasing his son, Tobias sat back on his heels. He made no move to stand up, heedless or even unaware of the small talkative crowd that had gathered a few yards off. He seemed calmer when he said, 'What can ever make me able to drive that voice from my ears? I must find a priest tonight to pray with me. Oh God, where am I now to find the strength to endure what will be done to this child of mine?'

'Will be done?'

'Because endure it I must.'

Hubert looked down at the top of his father's bowed head.

After supper that night, as arranged earlier, Sebastian Morley and Father Dilke attended Abbot Thynne in his parlour. He offered them brown sherry, which Morley accepted and Dilke declined, then picked up a strip of newspaper from the marble top of his writing-table. His face was grave.

'This comes to me from my old friend Ayer at New College. As Professor of Dogmatic Theology he must see the Observator Romanus daily: it reaches him every afternoon. My New Latin is not of the best, I admit to you, but the core of the matter is clear. His Holiness will receive—will by now have received—Hubert and his father on purpose to confer on Hubert's future.'

'And tomorrow we'll read that Hubert, with his father's, more than willing sanction, is shortly to take up a high post in one of the choirs there, probably that of St Peter's.' Morley sounded unconcerned, almost bored. 'The Vicar of Christ is a diplomatist. This is his means of countering the complaint that he considers too little the wishes of those he calls to Rome. Nobody will be deceived, but the form's important.'

Dilke stood gazing towards the tapestry, his hands clasped in front of him. He said heavily, 'So Hubert is lost to us.'

'I'm sorry for you, Father,' said Morley in the same tone as before. 'But Hubert has been lost to us for some time.'

'Why must His Holiness do this?' The Abbot seemed not to have heard the last remark: he was as near anger as the other two had ever seen him. 'It's acknowledged that he has no ear for music, no...'

'He has an excellent ear for what folk tell him of the best performers in any craft. Anvil's going to the Vatican was inevitable as soon as the Pope heard of him. I knew it was only a question of time, and when you told me, my lord, that Mirabilis and Viaventosa were to attend our late King's funeral, I knew the time was here. Why does an opera singer come from Rome to attend a requiem mass in England? Why does an elderly chapelmaster make his first visit to our country on the same occasion? And how is it that two such men, even though foremost in their function, gain entry to St George's among princes and spiritual lords? Because they do the Pope the same service as they do you, my lord.'

'Sebastian: you said nothing of this.'

'I feared I might have said too much when the two came here to sup, and had to plead melancholia. Oh, I was bitter then. But no more. I said nothing later because I could see no purpose in speaking.'

'Did you make the same surmise, Father?'

Dilke hesitated, blinking rapidly and avoiding Morley's eye. 'I was perplexed for a little, my lord, but then my attention was diverted to matters of more immediacy.'

'I suppose I must believe it,' said the Abbot after a pause. 'I thought... Hearing that Mirabilis was in Coverley, I thought to renew an old friendship and at the same time grasp what appeared a heaven-sent opportunity to hear two such competent advisers. It grieves me that Fritz played such a part before me, before us all.'

Morley gave a short laugh. 'What would you have had him do, my lord? Tell us of his commission from the Pope, or refuse to answer your inquiry?'

'It might have been more honourable in him to decline my invitation.'

'And disappoint you, sir, and deny himself an evening in your company and at your table? For what good? Nothing would be changed. No, Mirabilis is no worse than most of us, and he has more wit than many. He sees that in our world a man does what he's told, goes where he's sent, answers what he's asked. And, after seeing that, one is free.'

There was a longer pause. A bell pealed; further off, a cow lowed; in the courtyard, three or four voices, excited and yet under restraint, moved into hearing and died away in a distant corner. Morley refilled his sherry-glass and remained standing. As gently as he could, he said, 'At any rate, my lord, this removes one difficulty. Anvil's alteration is no longer any concern of yours.'

'How not so?'

'It attaches to the Pope now. Since he must have Anvil, let him have too the task of rendering him fit to carry out his duties. It would be a remarkable obstacle that His Holiness couldn't surmount.'

'He shall not have Anvil. I'll take steps to prevent him.'

'Steps? What steps, my lord?'

'I'll form a design. More of that later. However it may fall out, at least Hubert is not to be altered in Rome. It's not to be thought of.'

Morley said with some pity and more exasperation, 'My lord, the foremost surgeons alive are in Rome.'

'I don't doubt it, Sebastian; this isn't a question of surgeons but of Hubert's feeling. Consider that alteration is a...'

'My lord Abbot means,' said Father Dilke, stepping forward, his hands still clasped, 'that Hubert's a child, and in some proportion our child too. For him to be altered in a foreign land, among foreigners, however deft and considerate, would be intolerable. Both before and after the action he'll need his family round him, his friends and fellow-clerks, and all of us. It must take place here in England, in the name of God's mercy.'

'Anvil's feeling was never mentioned before,' said Morley.

'Before, there was no occasion,' answered Dilke. 'Before, everything was to follow in due course.'

Morley nodded briefly, as one acknowledging a point of minor interest. There came a gentle tap at the door and the grey-clad figure of Lawrence entered the room. With the un-obtrusiveness of a well-trained servant, he made up the fire and replaced a guttering candle while his betters continued to talk.

'Then that difficulty of yours remains, my lord,' said Morley. 'This chaplain to Master Anvil—this Father Lyall, who refused to put his name to the document permitting the boy's alteration. The last I heard, he still refuses.'

'Indeed he does, out of nothing more admirable than obstinacy and the enjoyment of some brief influence over matters beyond his proper scope.' The Abbot was close to anger again, though he spoke with all his usual deliberation. 'Father Lyall is puffed up with pride of the most dangerous sort; I mean the sort that works in heretics and apostates, and in mutineers too. It confounds me—I might go so far as to say it outrages my sense of the fitness of things that, for all I know, he's never yet run foul of those in authority; it confounds me hardly less that so zealous a Christian as Master Anvil should hold him in his employ. I've no power to command his obedience, but if I had I should remind him of his duty in the most forcible terms.'

'Forgive me, my lord,' said Lawrence, who had finished his tasks—'do you require anything more of me?'

'No thank you, Lawrence. You may go to bed.'

Dilke turned solicitously to the Abbot. 'It'll all come right, I'm quite certain. At the worst, Master Anvil will simply eject Lyall and obtain someone less self-willed. As you say, my lord, Anvil is a zealous Christian and he knows what he's under obligation to do: he wouldn't let a wretch of that petty mark stand against him. If it goes so far. We have three clear days yet; I predict that Lyall will submit at the latest moment. And the action can after all be easily postponed. All will be well, my lord. Or rather, that much will be. Heed my forecast.'

Lawrence had long left the parlour, and he made a point of never listening at doors, so he heard nothing of this speech of Dilke's, nor of the Abbot's thanks for the reassurance it offered. He went straight to his room, which was small but perhaps surprisingly comfortable, brought out ink-stylus and paper and wrote a letter in a hand that was, again, better formed than might have been expected. After addressing the cover to The Lord Stansgate, The Holy Office, The Broad Arrow Tower, London, he sealed the packet, put on his hat, walked over to the stables, took out the horse that went with his position as the Abbot's principal servant, and rode through the moonlight across to Coverley railtrack station, arriving there in plenty of time to put his letter on the midnight rapid.

The next day was pleasantly mild, though thick clouds shut out the sun. Tobias Anvil returned home in the early afternoon, briefly divulged the news from Rome and, having eaten aboard the train, left again almost at once, in a hurry to reach his counting-house and set about undoing the errors that must have been made there in the day and a half of his absence. By that time, Hubert was three parts of the way back to Coverley, alone in the cabin he had shared with his father; the servant who had accompanied them to Rome sat at the rear of the baruch, ready to escort him to St Cecilia's. Anthony, at his hospital, was attending to instruction on the use of opiates in the treatment of cholera. Margaret Anvil and Father Matthew Lyall moved slowly round the garden at Tyburn Road. They were two or three yards apart, far enough to prevent them from falling into each other's arms without thought.

Margaret looked at the flowers and shrubs, and Lyall looked at Margaret. She seemed to him more beautiful than ever before, whether because his feeling for her had induced him to see her differently, or because her happiness had made her indeed more beautiful, or the two together, he neither knew nor cared. He studied her hands and arms, her healthy skin and straight mouth, thinking he would never tire of the sight. Recent memories, intense yet vague, ran through his mind. The question of what was to become of him and her suddenly raised itself and he shut his eyes. Though he made no other movement and no sound, she turned her head in one of her quick glances.

'Such a night it was, dearest Matthew. How many times have I said that?'

'Perhaps a hundred. A long way short of enough.'

'Will there ever be another?'

'There must be. I don't know how, but there must be.'

'When Tobias dismisses you, as he will very soon, I know it, I saw it in his eye in the few minutes he was here today—when he dismisses you, where will you go?'

'Not far. No further than I must.'

'I wish you could take me with you.'

'If I did, you'd never see Hubert again.'

'Ah, I'd forgotten poor Hubert for it must have been three minutes. What's to become of him now that he's to go to Rome? Do they mean to alter him there or...? I don't understand.'

'Nor I, in full. But, for the moment, if you saw what you thought you saw in Tobias then, it would look as if the original design is being held to; he would have no reason to dismiss me otherwise. And the Pope must prefer the action to be in England. Our overlords enjoy the appearance of humanity, so long as their ease isn't hurt. Yes, perhaps I can hold them off a little longer.'

'The three of us must escape together.'

'Escape? The ends of the earth are too near for that.'

'Nearer yet, Matthew. Only to New England.'

'That you've said more often than enough. Fine incomers we should be there: a Romish priest and his woman and her son. Oh, their discipline isn't ours, but it's strict enough. And how should we ever gain an exeat? And to try to leave without one would be lunatic. We'd be taken and shut away for ever. At best. Now please walk on. Even the pantry-boy, seeing us like this, would know that you and I are not a lady and her spiritual counsellor. Which puts me in mind. When will you visit Father Raymond?'

'Never, that I can think of. Why should I go? He'll call on me to repent and to cease from sinning. I can't repent and I won't cease from sinning. Finis.'

'Finis too to your expectation of heaven, Margaret. Like mine, your soul is in mortal danger.'

'Twaddle-I don't mean to die until the century's out. I'll repent at leisure. Of which I'm apt to have all I need. And when were you last confessed?'

'That's of" no import. You must go to Father Raymond and try to obtain absolution. You must try to repent, at least.' Something lifeless had entered Lyall's tone. 'The pleasure you take in sinning is an index of the gravity of the sin. The more irresistible the repetition of the offence, the more certainly we know that we are doing Satan's work. The act of repentance...'

He stopped speaking as if he could not go on. Her sudden look into his eyes held curiosity and a shade of horror.

'Matthew: you believe in God and His Son and Our Lady and all the saints and the blessed martyrs? And the authority of the Holy Father and the—'

'Of course. Of course I do.'

'Will you swear?'

Now the priest's gaze grew lifeless. 'No,' he said at length.

'Then you don't believe after all?'

'No. I used to, quite unquestioningly and unheedingly, until the other day.'

'What happened the other day?'

'I found I'd begun to love you as you love me. The Church holds without the slightest equivocation that everything you and I do together is a sin. I know that to be false. Therefore...', 'Oh, Matthew, I've taken your faith from you.'

'I have you instead of it. It's a fair exchange. But that won't do for you, dearest Margaret. I may be in error, and although I'll face the consequences to myself I can't permit you to come within a million miles of damnation. If there's anything to be safe from, save yourself. Go to Father Raymond.'

There was silence, apart from birdsong and the hum of bees. Whatever vehicles might have been passing along Tyburn Road, their sound did not carry to the two in the garden. Margaret reached forward and lightly grasped a red rose. Then she said, 'Love works changes, doesn't it? When they first let me know Hubert was to be altered, I was no more than a doting mother anxious to protect her child from anything that might possibly cause him the least distress. Now I mean all that I said before.'

'I know, and I understand, and my feeling is the same as yours.'

She looked at him, not in passing as she usually did, but steadily. Her breathing quickened. 'Matthew.'

'No, Margaret.'

'Yes. Nothing would bring Tobias back early from his counting-house after being away from it yesterday and this morning. Go to your room. I'll tell the steward I visit my milliner. I'll come to you in five minutes. Go now.'

Lyall went to his room. As he stood motionless by the bed, his body was filled with an excitement that was also the deepest calm he had ever known. After a minute, there was a knock at the door. He was mildly surprised.

'Come.'

Two strangers entered. They were men in their thirties dressed in black jacket and breeches, both garments piped in scarlet. The left sleeve of each carried the scarlet, black and white bracciata of the Secular Arm.

'Father Lyall?' The speaker wore eyeglasses and had a cultivated accent. His tone and manner were cold without being in the least discourteous.

'I am he, master,' said the priest, squaring his shoulders. 'How can I serve you?'

'Officer. Officer, not master. I am Officer Foot. My colleague here is Officer Redgrave.' There were appreciable, regular pauses between the sentences. 'How can you serve us? Very simply. There's a document that requires your signature. You refuse to affix it. Tell us why.'

'How can that be your concern? Officer.' As soon as the words were out, Lyall cursed his own foolishness. Bewilderment at this irruption, simple fright, and agitated speculation about who it could be that had informed the Tower of his recalcitrance (surely not Anvil?) had between them caused him to play for time when time was what he had least of: Margaret must arrive at any moment and he had, he realised, no idea how she would respond to unforeseen danger—for danger it was. If either of them were to let fall a hint of the terms they were on, both would be vulnerable to a charge of SU (Suspicion of Unchastity), which, having been close to attachment on such a charge more than once in the past, he knew carried a standard penalty of eight years' purification.

With just a hint of weariness, Redgrave had said, 'Where were you hatched, Father? Surely you must know that everything is our concern. Now do as Officer Foot tells you, and if you've any craft you'll do so at once, on the spot, rather than a little later, down at the Tower.'

The interval gave Lyall time to steady himself and to start thinking. 'Your indulgence, officers: I was surprised to see you. I expected Dame Anvil, my master's wife, whose confession I'm to hear.'

'In this room of yours?' asked Foot flatly.

'Of course. The luxury of the house doesn't conduce to the spirit of devotion that's needful.'

'I see. Answer my first question. You refuse to sign the document I spoke of. Why?'

Here Lyall was given another breathing space, though not one he would have chosen. A light step was heard on the stairs. At once, without reference to each other, the two officers moved over to the corner of the room by the chest-of-drawers, where they were out of sight from the doorway. Lyall bit at the inside of his cheek: if Margaret was going to do as she usually did, she would hurry up to him immediately the door was open, saying things that nobody should ever say to a priest. The door opened and she appeared. Although she had for the moment no ordinary way of knowing that there were others in the room (certainly not from any intended move by Lyall himself, who was under the careful gaze of both officers), she responded as fast as she had in the garden ten minutes before, stood her ground and uttered not a word. He said mildly, 'Dame Anvil, I'm well aware that I'm in your honoured husband's service, but these are my quarters, and I'd be greatly favoured if you'd knock before entering them. However, please come in. These are two gentlemen from the Tower.'

She gave them a distant nod as she walked forward, her mouth set. 'I, Father Lyall, should be greatly favoured if you'd refrain from admonishing me in the hearing of strangers. That's no way for anybody, high or low, to conduct himself.'

'My excuses, dame, I...'

'Perhaps you'll attend me in my sitting-room when your business here is done. Good-day, gentlemen.'

The door shut behind her. Redgrave looked sidelong at Foot, who shut his eyes briefly in negation. The pair approached Lyall again. He almost groaned aloud with the effort of not showing the smallest sign of relief at Margaret's successful departure, which he had done his best to round off with a shrug and a shake of the head. Officer Foot came and stood, legs apart, hands behind back, a yard from him. After staring him in the eyes for some seconds, he said as deliberately as ever, 'I ask you for the third time. You refuse your signature. Why?'

Lyall was no longer frightened. Relief still had hold of him, accompanied by a sense of triumph and, more than either, love. Until just now, he had supposed it impossible that his feeling for Margaret could grow, but in that moment it had, and this woman loved him. He was possessed by elation, though he had room also for the thought that here in front of him was about as good a representative as he would find of everything he most disliked in the world he had been born into. The priest had come to a very dangerous mood. Trying to match the other's tone, he said, 'I choose to. No more than that.'

'I must have more than that. Your reason for so choosing.'

'I choose not to give it.'

'Give it here and now, or elsewhere later.'

'Your indulgence, officer, but I can't take you seriously. How in the name of St Peter can why I act as I do be of import?'

'If it was on the orders of certain unlawful-' said Redgrave before Foot interrupted him.

'It's only my first question, Father.'

'Still one too many. Now I'll make a compact with you. You give me your reason for wanting to know my reason, and I'll consider giving you my reason.'

Redgrave sighed noisily. 'We don't make compacts, Father. Have you learned so little in your life?'

'Then I've nothing to tell you.'

'You first defy the wishes of your superiors, the Lord Abbot of St Cecilia's Chapel and Master Anvil, and now you defy the Holy Office,' said Foot.

'If you say so.'

'Don't be a nitwit, Father,' said Redgrave, screwing up his face. 'You ask to go to the Tower.'

Lyall had not even reached the point of dismissing this threat as idle: he simply disregarded it. 'Fuck a fox, the pair of you,' he said without warmth. 'You're mean of spirit—none who was not would lower himself to do your tasks, even so slight a one as this present errand. You're false, claiming to serve a just and merciful God and at the same time proud to wear the colour of blood on your dress. And you're dull and dismal, you're enemies of all wit. Hope at best to be laughed at, officers, with your pretty armlets like some gewgaw from a boy's motley-box. Now take yourselves back to your beloved Tower and leave me to my work.'

Foot had listened to this with close attention and total impassivity, restraining his companion's several attempts to interrupt it, one of them physical. 'Is there more?' he asked.

'You may have more.'

'No, we have enough.'

'Enough to attach you,' shouted Redgrave.

'Upon what inculpation?' Foot betrayed very slight surprise. 'It's an offence to cast a servant of the State or the Church into obloquy and disrepute, and, uttered in public, a tenth part of what we've heard would surely fetch an inculpation. But all this was in private.'

'But his gross defiance—his refusal to...'

'Our commission was only to ask questions, not to compel replies.'

'But the type outfaces our threat to remove him!'

A silent message passed from Foot to Redgrave; the latter at once stopped protesting. Foot addressed Lyall.

'Your conduct has been noted. That concludes our dealings.'

Trying to hide his puzzlement, Lyall said, 'For the moment.'

'The Holy Office has no more to say to you on this count.'

The two moved off without a word of farewell, though Redgrave looked over his shoulder with something like contempt as he reached the door. Lyall groaned and rubbed his forehead, then turned to the long narrow window that faced Tyburn Road. At the edge of the footway stood a black express, its varnished panels trimmed out in scarlet. In ones and twos, a dozen or more of the people had gathered near it, on the chance of seeing some offender, perhaps with the marks of a beating on him, flung inside and carried away. Foot and Redgrave came into LyalPs view walking down the drive from the express-house. Already, the bystanders had seen that they were unaccompanied and begun to disperse, but by degrees, staring dully up at the house as if it could tell them what man it was that had attracted the notice of the Secular Arm, whether to give orders or supply information. The driver of the vehicle came round from his place and, first jostling an old woman out of his path, opened the rear door. Redgrave got in at once; Foot paused and looked straight in the direction of Lyall, who drew back a pace even as he told himself that he could not possibly have been seen. Then the door shut after Foot, the driver took his seat and the express pulled out, causing an omnibus to brake sharply.

Lyall left the window. Could it be so easy to have beaten them off? The Tower was known to be most punctilious in adhering to the letter of its own statutes: no doubt the officers were on their way to sift its archives for material that might provide them with a firmer grip upon him. But would they not have done that before visiting him in the first place? Perhaps. Who had been the author of the citation against him? He was more than ever certain that it had not been Tobias Anvil, who had a much simpler means of overcoming him, one that could never be said, even by the most ingenious enemy, to comprehend trouble with the authorities. The Abbot? There was little enough to be said for that dignitary, except that this sort of work seemed not to be in his style. Collam Flackerty (from whom nothing had been heard since their interview)? Not at all impossible—but why?

There was no more time for questions when Margaret came back into the room. They stood with their arms round each other and did not move.

'I saw them go.'

'Outraged dignity. Like Winifred the Queen-Mother herself.'

'What did they want?'

'Blessed are the keen of apprehension, for they shall arouse desire. They—those, those two—they tried to cow me and I remained uncowed.'

'Will they return?'

'Not in the next hour. Not for long enough, if ever.'

'They made me afraid.'

'I'll take your fear away. I promise to. I can take no other fear away, but this I can, and only I.'

Chapter Five

In the dormitory at St Cecilia's, Hubert finished folding a coloured shirt and tucked it carefully away in his valigia, watched by Thomas and Mark. Thomas said in the customary after-dowse-lights undertone, 'You should go to the woods. You could find a hollow, wrap yourself in a blanket and not be cold. We'd bring you food.'

Hubert shook his head firmly. 'You'd be missed, then seen, then followed. I won't have you suffer penance for me. My way's best.'

'Tell us where you do mean to go.'

'As before, Tom, I won't have you lie or be held sinfully obstinate on my account.'

'Then-why do you go at last? After not going at first? Because of... fucking? Say, Hubert.'

'No, because of something Master Morley told me about myself just before I was summoned to Rome. That's as much as I'll say.'

'But weren't you tempted at all by what the Pope offered you?'

'Oh yes, greatly, but not enough, and so my mind was made up. If something of that mark didn't signify, nothing would.'

'I beg you not to defy the will of the Holy Father, which is also God's will.' This was Mark. 'In the name of your saint. In Our Lady's name. In Christ's name.'

Without speaking, Hubert again shook his head.

'You think you can continue as runaway for ever?'

'A few months will be enough, Mark. Perhaps only a few weeks. Until I'm too old to be altered and save my voice.'

'Fool! Apostate!'

'Silence, Mark,' said Thomas in a hiss. Then he turned and reached under his pillow. 'Before you fasten those straps... I don't know if you'll have time to do much reading.'

Hubert glanced at the almost intact cover of the book. 'Galliard. Keith Roberts.'

'It's CW. What would have happened if the Schismatics' attempt to abduct Elizabeth Tudor had succeeded and they'd reared her as one of themselves.'

'Flying machines?'

'No, but electricity.'

'Wonderful. Thank you, Tom.'

'Now you must be away.'

Thomas carefully opened the door, listened, and nodded to Hubert, who picked up his valigia.

'Stay a moment.' Mark took from round his neck a thin chain bearing a plain silver cross and transferred it to Hubert. 'God give you His protection wherever you go.'

'Thank you, Mark,' said Hubert, and paused. He wanted to kiss Thomas, and would not have drawn back from kissing Mark as he would then have been obliged to, but he did not dare, and shook hands with them instead. 'I'll see you both again-that I know. Good-bye.'

'Be lucky,' said Thomas.

Hubert went out; the door shut silently behind him. There was almost no light in the corridor, but the positions of the windows along it showed well enough to give him his bearings. With his fingertips brushing the inner wall he moved along to the stairhead, his feet in rubber-soled shoes making no sound on the tiles. The handrail guided him down to the hall and he found the outer door after only a few moments' groping; it was unlocked, as he had been told it would be. Closing it on the far side, he unguardedly let the latch fall with a loud clink and stood rigid. Nothing happened. He turned his head and there was the central statue of St Cecilia,? showing as a dark shape partly edged with pale silver under the moon, a candle or two burning inside the buttery, the window of the Abbot's parlour defined by an oil-lamp. It was in that direction that he now made his way, then through the arch into the completely unlit rear yard, past the carp-pond and towards the left-hand cluster of farm buildings. From among these, an affronted barking suddenly burst out; it died down again as suddenly when Hubert, kneeling by Smart's kennel, passed over the chunk of boiled beef he had taken out of supper for the purpose. He added some strokes and pats which brought tail-thumps in return, perhaps in recognition, and whispered a farewell.

The going was more difficult after that, up a slanting slope broken by tussocks of long grass. After stumbling twice in a dozen yards, he halted and collected himself: he must not turn an ankle now. As he stood there, something like a joined pair of fists butted him in the small of the back, not hard enough to knock him down, though, twisting aside half in alarm, half in an attempt to strike out at whatever it was that had shoved him, he did fall on to hands and knees. There was a grunt, a quick footfall or two, and a snapping of stems, but, by the time he was up again, nothing to be seen. Just then he heard a faint whistle from under a clump of small trees, and went there as fast as he safely could.

'So, master runaway,' said Decuman's voice. 'Have a piss before you set off. There's six hours at least till full light, so wherever you mean to go you needn't scramble. If a constable questions you, you act like a noodle. "The priest... send... for me," and if he asks where, point the way you go. He'll soon tire of you. Get your food at stalls and pattie-shops, never at an eating-house, however low. Journey by night, except through towns, and sleep in the open by day.'

'You told me all this before.'

'I tell you again. Now come and stand by me. There's the road. Left to Coverley and London, right to Oxford and the North. You see? Good. Mount, then. Give me your foot.'

Hubert was quickly settled astride the pony that had been waiting almost in silence near by. It looked black, but then so would most horses in such deep shade.

'This is old Joan,' continued Decuman. 'She's well-behaved—just let her carry you. Now in here there's cheese, bread and apples. Water. And...' He reached for Hubert's hand and put some coins into it.

'You give me too much,' said Hubert, stowing the money away in his pocket: he did not care to count it in front of Decuman, but he could feel the milled edges of a half-crown and a shilling. 'Too much of everything. How can I ever thank you?'

'By staying free.'

'You put yourself in serious danger, stealing a horse.'

'I didn't steal her-you did.'

'The Abbot will know different.'

'The Abbot never acts without proof. And that puts me in mind: try not to be caught with Joan. You're less than twelve, therefore they can't send you to gaol, but they can give you infants' purification. I hear that's best avoided.'

'No doubt. Why do you do all this for me, Decuman?'

'Because I'm safe and you're not. I'll always be safe from whatever they may try against me-I'm too crafty for them. Not you. You've plenty of wit, more than I have, but you're not crafty. And you entered my dormitory.'

'That wasn't your choice or mine: I was allotted.'

'You entered just the same.'

Joan, impatient for the journey, tossed her head and blew gently down her nostrils. Hubert said, 'If I'm not crafty, how can I hope to stay free?'

'By following what I told you, and by luck, and by their stupidity: they're well practised in the catching of felons and apostates, but where are they to look for you if not at your father's house—and you don't mean to go there, I hope?'

'No.'

'By God's grace too. There must be such a thing. Good-bye, Hubert.'

'Decuman, I wish I had a hogshead of ale and a pretty young miss to give you.'

'So do I, my dear, so do I. Now go carefully.'

Catching the note of farewell, the pony had already started to move; the merest touch of Hubert's knee brought her round the small distance necessary to set her straight downhill. She stepped as carefully as Decuman could have wished, but without fuss or hesitation, and Hubert looked forward to an easy ride. Everything was in place: the provision-bag, the water-flask, his valigia with its carrying-strap handily looped over the pommel in front of him. He took a deep, slow breath, and all that he had left behind him faded from his thoughts. Even the Chapel itself to his left, a dark pointed bulk touched with light here and there, served only to give him his bearings. He reached the road and turned Joan towards Coverley and London.

It was neither a warm nor a cool night: when the breeze touched his cheek, it felt to be of exactly the same temperature as himself. Patches of shadow passed briefly over him and slid away down the road ahead. He looked into the sky and saw thin rags of cloud twisting about over the face of the moon with a speed and violence whose soundlessness seemed the more unnatural for the multitude of sounds, soft but clear, that came from close by: the groan of leather, the regular thud of hoofs, Joan's occasional snorts, the scurrying of some small creature through the grasses near the road, the indignant shriek of an Athene's owl, with, further off, the notes of a bell in Coverley, the muffled beat of a manufactory machine and, rapidly approaching from behind, the unmistakable noise of a vehicle engine.

Before he thought, Hubert had urged Joan into a canter; when he did think, it was to reason that pursuit could not be on its way so soon, then, as the noise grew nearer and lamplight began to illuminate his surroundings, to reason further that he must have been seen by now and had better behave like someone with no cause for fear. He pulled the pony back to a walk and a moment later halted her against the hedge, patting her neck and telling her gently that she was not a green young filly who would shy at anything a little out of the way. As it happened, she had been to market scores of times, felt perfectly indifferent towards all forms of transport, and did nothing more than toss her head when the express, as it proved to be, came drumming past. As before, the head-tossing showed impatience, but when Hubert indicated that they should move on again she stood her ground for some seconds, evidently to mark her disapproval of the abrupt and unjust ending of an enjoyable scamper.

By the time the rear lamps of the express had disappeared, other lights, fixed ones, were in clear view, and it was not long before boy and horse made an upward turn on to the stone facing of the street that led to the centre of the capital. It was bright with gasoliers on poles and gantries; Hubert held off the impulse to wheel aside into the protective darkness of one alley or another. He had calculated earlier, and now told himself again, that to do so would be the act of a nitwit. The side thoroughfares were long since under curfew and patrolled by the constabulary; anyone found in them without a valid transeat (which even Decuman's resources could not have secured) would be attached at once. Far better to stay in the light with the honest folk. Hubert pulled down the peak of his cap, tried to look as tall as he could in the saddle, and quietly rehearsed the rumbling bass voice he would use if accosted.

There seemed no likelihood of that for the moment. Publics and expresses passed to and fro; an overnight express-omnibus thundered by on its way from London to the North. From the ristorantes and caffes, still brightly lit and resounding with music, the last guests were coming out on to the footway in their many-coloured silks and velvets, laughing and talking loudly. None of them had any eyes for Hubert. Somebody who did was a young constable with whiskers, readily identifiable by his spiked helmet, but before anything was done or said an ill-clad man of the people rushed across his path out of an alley, followed by another holding aloft some sort of club, and there was no attention to spare for a nondescript figure on a quietly plodding horse. Hubert took a further deep breath.

Soon, it seemed within a few yards, the character of the street changed. The overhead lights continued, but the buildings were mostly dark and silent: shops, theatres, extravaganza-houses, concert-halls. Only the churches were illuminated, though dimly—the churches and the doorways and curtained windows of establishments Hubert did not at once identify: he had seldom visited this part of the city, and never at night. Then he saw one of the comparatively few foot-passengers, a middle-aged man, respectably dressed, pause at such a doorway, pull the bell, and at once move apart as if to peer into the unlit front of an adjacent bottega. Just as Hubert drew level, someone answered the bell, and the man, head lowered and hand over face, hurried inside. At the same time, there drifted across a snatch of music, not of the sort heard earlier. It came to a cadence and was followed by applause and by shouts of approval that had a curious growling undertone to them. Hubert understood, and said to himself that he must tell... But he hoped never to see Decuman again.

Here was the turning; Hubert leaned to his left and Joan followed or went with the movement. Two hundred yards away was safety, and shelter too: small drops of rain had begun to touch his face and swirl slowly under the gaslight. There was nobody to be seen, and no sound came from any of the houses he passed, none either from the house whose courtyard he entered, but a lamp was burning over the doorway. Halted close by, he took the water-flask and drained it; he was not thirsty, but he must use what it had cost Decuman trouble and risk to get for him. The same reasoning led him to transfer to his valigia the provisions, wrapped in coarse paper. This done, he dismounted, tied the pony's reins to the hitching-rail beside the steps, and wielded the door-knocker.

In not much over a minute, there came the sound of bolts being withdrawn and, with a squeak and a rattle, the door opened. The man who had once before opened it to Hubert stood on the threshold. He wore a red nightgown and carried a lighted candle.

'Yes?'

'Are you Samuel?'

'No, I'm Domingo.' The man held the candle-flame forward and his puzzled expression gave way to a smile, though his eyes were still alert. 'I know you, young master. You come here before. To afternoon table. And you sung after.'

'Yes, Domingo. I give you my humblest excuses for disturbing you at this hour, but I'm in danger. I come to ask for the protection of the Ambassador.'

'His Excellence is not here.'

'Where is he?'

'His Excellence is at his embassy in London. He stays there two weeks more.'

'But I must see him,' said Hubert helplessly.

'His Excellence is in London,' said Domingo, and started to close the door.

'I have nowhere to go and nowhere to sleep, and if I'm caught I'll be locked up. Please let me in.'

'No permission, no permission.'

'Would you see your son driven from his friend's door? When Master van den Haag hears of it, he'll—'

'I don't have no son.' After a moment, Domingo smiled again, with all his face this time, and pulled the door wide open. 'But I do have nephews, and it'll rain more soon. Please to come in, young master.'

Hubert followed him across the spacious hall, in which the candle gave vague glimpses of paintings, flower-baskets, a looking-glass in a heavy frame, and down a passage into what must be the kitchen. Here Domingo lit a gas-lamp above the long wooden table and considered Hubert again. He looked sad when he was not smiling.

'You want to eat?' he asked.

'Yes. Yes, please.' Hubert had taken care to sup well that evening, but policy as well as inclination required acceptance of any offer of food.

Very soon, Domingo had set in front of him salame, dark bread, a kind of sweet cake with chopped nuts, and a mug of milk. 'I come back quick,' said the man, and left him.

As he ate and drank, Hubert's spirits declined. He told himself he should have taken account of what he had known perfectly well: that Coverley was the capital of the land, but London the seat of its government, and that ambassadors might be expected to spend less of their time in the one than in the other. All he had gained by coming to this house was a respite, a brief interval before he must mount Joan again and set off on a journey of almost sixty miles through rain and darkness—some of it through darkness, rather, for it would be broad day long before he could even hope to reach London. What was his chance of finding van den Haag there before he himself was found by the constables? Small: at least it felt small.

When Domingo returned he had with him the other Indian, Samuel. The two had clearly been conferring on Hubert and what was to happen to him.

'Please to tell Samuel and me why you come here,' said Domingo.

'They—the Abbot at the Chapel, and the priests—they mean to have me altered and I want to escape, and Master van den Haag is the only—'

'Altered? How altered?'

'Act on me so that I can never be a man. Take from me what makes a man.'

Samuel was the first to understand. He said in a horrified voice, 'What you done, little boy?'

'Nothing. Nothing except sing. They mean me to continue to sing with a boy's voice after I should be a man.'

'In New England, they don't do that to children, they... '

Abruptly, Samuel stopped and looked at his companion. There was a short silent conversation carried on with facial movements and strange gestures. It ended with an exchange of nods, then turned into talk, a kind of talk that reminded Hubert of what Hilda had said when she talked like the people in New England (so she had remembered well). He followed the earlier part without much trouble: Samuel suggested that the boy should stay here while a message was sent to London, Domingo objected and mentioned some disagreeable person called the Secretary, and Samuel took his point. Thereafter intelligibility lapsed, but agreement was soon reached. Domingo turned to Hubert.

'Do you have money?'

Hubert brought out Decuman's gift and what had been in his own purse and counted. 'Six shillings and three farthings.'

'Enough. Now Samuel take you in the express to the rail-track station. You go on the late rapid to London. Then you go to the Embassy. You tell Citizen van den Haag how you come.'

'Where is the Embassy?'

'On St Edmund Street.'

'Where's that?'

'By St Giles's.' Domingo hesitated. 'I... stay here; I don't go there.'

Hubert took his meaning, that his knowledge of London was poor. 'No matter, I'll find it.'

'Good. You go now.'

'My horse!' said Hubert, remembering. 'I left her outside.'

'Your horse, yes?'

'Please would you shelter her and feed her, and take her home tomorrow? You needn't deliver her—if you set her free within half a mile of the Chapel, she'll find her way home.'

Domingo considered, then nodded his head. 'It'll be done. Go with Samuel now or you miss the rapid.'

'Thank you, Domingo.'

'It's nothing, young master.'

'But it isn't nothing. You've been good to me out of no need. I'll pray for you.'

To Hubert's surprise, the man looked stern for a moment, even angry. When this passed, he gave another nod and a faint smile, murmured something and went out by the door that led to the hall. Samuel, now holding a lighted lantern, signed that Hubert was to follow and moved away in the other direction, through a still-room where shelves of preserves and cordials were fleetingly to be seen, and at last into the open. The rain was blowing more strongly, but seemed no thicker. Samuel locked up after them and set off again along the side of the building to what proved to be the express-house. Hubert looked on in wonder when Samuel pulled down a lever set in the wall and, with a hiss of escaping compressed air, a long door swung slowly upwards and outwards. When it had come to rest in a horizontal position, the Indian motioned towards the express, the same that had carried Hubert the previous week, or its twin.

'May I sit by you, Samuel?'

'Surely.'

Hubert watched while the man lit the lamps at front and rear, then, having climbed in beside him, started the engine with the clockwork motor, shifted the gear-arm and let in the gland. The express moved slowly into a short lane that brought it to the street, where it gathered speed. Raindrops whirled against the windguard and, although the swabbers were in action, Hubert found it hard to see out and soon lost his bearings.

'Will it disturb you if I talk?'

'No.'

'What did I do that offended Domingo?'

'Not offended.'

'There was something that didn't please him.'

'Ah now, see, little boy, we think a man saying his prayers, that's his own matter. We don't love him to talk about it. We, I mean we at home in New England. But you don't go and think you offended that Domingo. He knew in a minute you was just thankful to him. See, it's all right.'

'You are kind, Samuel. And Domingo too. Please tell me—the boys at the Chapel helped me, but they're my friends, they must be, but you and Domingo have met me only once before, he hardly saw me, and yet you're both so kind, out of no need, as I said. Why?'

'Same idea. Religion. Hear this between you and me: we at home, we hate your Pope and your monks and your priests. Domingo parts from Mexico and comes to New England, the Archbishop of El Paso, he says Domingo isn't a Christian no more, what is it he done?'

'Excommunicated him?'

'Say so. He wants Domingo to go to hell. That don't make Domingo go to hell, but that Archbishop, he don't know that. Goddam popeling. So you come to hide from the priests, we help you. And, see, at home, anybody runs away any time, we help him.'

'Do many folk run away in New England?'

'Indians, they do. Now, pardon, this piece of road, I go mighty careful.'

Hubert took the hint and said no more on the subject.

Somewhere in the distance he noticed an irregular patch of light that might have been the station. He half-listened to the hammering of the engine and the swish of the rubber tires through the rain. His curiosity was again at work, but it was a full two minutes before he yielded to it.

'Samuel, whom do they alter in New England?'

'Uh?'

'When I told you the priests meant to alter me, you said they didn't do it to children there. That shows they do it to some others.'

'I don't remember, young master.'

Stealthily, Hubert turned his head and scanned the exotic, handsome profile beside him. He could not make out much detail, and his experience of reading characters from faces had been necessarily brief, but he thought he could read a firm self-respect, some obstinacy, and a distinct trace of the sadness he had noticed in Domingo, a look of long-remembered disappointment. But there was humour too. Hubert said abruptly, 'I won't let the Secretary know anything.'

Samuel gave a faint smile, but his voice was not merry when he spoke. 'A man sins too much with women, they alter him. A man sins in other ways, ways of not being pure, they alter him.'

'A man? Surely not any man. Surely a priest.'

'A pastor. No, any man. Like my brother. Now I take you to the train.'

The station was crowded with travellers taking advantage of the cheap fares payable late at night: Hubert's half-price journey-tab cost him ten minutes' wait in a line and threepence-farthing. Most of the folk were pilgrims in bands of fifty or a hundred, bound for Rome, for Jerusalem (a destination unattainable for over thirty years before the Sultan-Calif, as part of his policy of detensione, had re-opened it to Christians in 1968), for the tomb of St James of Compostella in Spain, for the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury, the richest in northern Europe.

With Samuel at his side, Hubert walked up the pavement beside the train, past the mail vans being filled with the familiar grey sacks, past the loaded cargo vans to the passenger baruches. Samuel found Hubert a passage seat in a people's baruch opposite a friendly-looking old woman who carried on her lap a closed basket of chirping and rustling small birds. He asked her please to tend to this young stable-lad on his way to visit his sick mother in London. Then he looked hard at Hubert and said in his strange accent, 'Good-bye, little boy. I hope your God take care of you.' He was gone before Hubert could reply. After a time, a shrill bell rang, doors slammed, the baruch shuddered gently and the journey started. The man next to Hubert, a hireling by the look of him, curled himself up on the wooden bench and began to snore almost at once. Dirty children ran up and down the passage; a game of dice on the bench behind aroused increasing emotions; somewhere further back, a blurred voice sang very slowly and unsteadily (and with copious ornamentation) a song from an extravaganza of the Thirties. But, despite all these and other distractions, despite having meant to share his provisions with the old woman and to encourage her to talk about her family, he fell asleep almost as soon as the train was out of the station. He dreamed he was on Joan's back again and the ground under her feet was so soft, or her gait so smooth, that the saddle did not move at all, except forwards in a straight line. In the end she stopped; he woke to find that it was the train that had stopped, and half the other passengers were already on their feet. The old woman asked him if he needed help in making his way to where his mother lived. Her speech was uncouth, but her meaning was as plain as her good intentions. He thanked her and told her he would have no difficulty.

Nor would he, he was confident. Instead of taking an express-omnibus to the St Giles's neighbourhood and searching for St Edmund Street on foot, an exercise he had not been looking forward to, he would do what had been in his mind when he woke and be carried straight to the Embassy by public. (The drivers of London publics were famous all over Christendom for knowing their city down to its remotest alley; each had to pass the Civil Constabulary's rigorous probation in such knowledge before being granted his charter.) This obvious course had not occurred to Hubert earlier because travelling in this fashion was not expected in an unaccompanied child, even a child of the higher degree.

Beside the long arcade on the east side of the station stood a long file of publics, showing as well as their road-lamps the green light indicating that they were vacant. Instinct, and a touch of chill in the air, kept Hubert in the shelter of the arcade while the couple of dozen folk waiting at the head of the file were accommodated and driven away. Then, after a quick glance to and fro, he hurried across to the vehicle that stood at the front. The driver turned and saw him, but instead of opening his window on its pivot to hear instructions, as would have been customary, the man scowled fiercely and jerked his thumb and first two fingers downwards in the 'go to hell' gesture. Hubert understood at once. His cap, trousers and corduroy jerkin effectively disguised him as one of the people, an advantage at most points in his travels, not so here: he had of course been taken for a beggar or a tout. He reached in his pocket, found a shilling and held it up. The publicman's expression showed surprise, then thought. After a moment he swung the pane of glass aside.

'Ay, well?'

'Take me to the New Englander Embassy in St Edmund Street,' said Hubert authoritatively.

More thought. 'What you want there, then?'

'The Ambassador requires me to visit him.'

'Ah, does he so? That'll do, young master. One shilling.'

It was scandalous overcharging, but Hubert had no choice. 'I accept.'

'I take you,' said the driver, thus sealing the contract, and dowsed his green light.

Very soon, the public had entered Tyburn Road and was passing the Anvil house. It was in darkness, as was nearly every other building. The gasoliers still burned, illuminating stretches of empty footway. An express, moving slowly and in a series of irregular swerves, was the only vehicle Hubert saw. Then, to his surprise, the public turned left into Apostle Andrew Street; he knew that St Giles's lay in the opposite direction.

'Why do we go here, driver?'

'Excuses, young master, I must get me more fuel. Only a minute to it.'

As he spoke, the driver took them left again, away from the gaslight down a narrow alley which, after more turns, ended in a small cobbled yard. The roadlamps showed soot-stained brick walls, two pairs of wooden doors, a shed with a broken window.

'Is this the place?' asked Hubert doubtfully.

'Oh yes,' said the driver, cutting off his engine. 'I got to wake him now. Not more nor a minute to it.'

The man leaned forward and opened some compartment in front of him; there followed a rustling noise, as of thin paper. Hubert sat and peered without success and wondered: he knew nothing of the kind of place where publics took in their fuel, but this one seemed rather remote. At last the driver left his seat and walked across to one of the sets of doors. Instead of knocking, he put his hand to his chest, swayed, and called hoarsely, 'Young master! I'm that sick! Give me your arm, for Mary's sake!'

Hubert jumped down on to the cobbles. He noticed that the moon was shining again and that a dog was barking somewhere on the far side of the yard. He reached the driver, who at once straightened himself, seized him, and slapped over his mouth and nose a piece of damp cloth with a smell like that of flowers that had been cut too long. It made his body begin to feel light and empty. There was a humming or droning sound, and the skin on his cheeks and the back of his neck first tingled, then slackened, then went numb. He remembered that he had never asked the old woman. in the train what birds she carried in her basket.

'Hear him speak, Jacob, you see I'm right.'

'I hope you are. And I hope I shall hear him speak soon. A lad that size needs no more than a whiff.'

'I gave him no more.'

'I hope not.'

The man the public-driver had called Jacob pronounced his words in an odd way, as if he had difficulty with his tongue and teeth. The air was warm and permeated with the smell of woodsmoke and damp, also with sharper, less identifiable smells. Hubert found himself lying under a blanket on a lumpy divan or day-bed. He opened his eyes a little to discover something of his surroundings while still supposedly unconscious, but could not make out much more than streaks and shadows, so he abandoned subterfuge and raised his head. Apart from severe thirst, all he felt was a dull puzzlement.

The two men left their chairs by the rusty iron fireplace and came over to him. The driver, now seen clearly for the first time, had nothing but an uncommonly loose, moist pair of lips to distinguish him from countless others of his degree. His companion—Jacob—was tall and round-backed, with a long shawl of some kind thrown over his shoulders and gathered at his breast by a curious fermaglio, so that the rest of his garments were vague; after the same fashion, a full grey beard and whiskers allowed little more of his face to be seen than a high-bridged nose and a pair of deep brown eyes. He wore a black skull-cap. After a moment, he said in his lisping voice, 'Speak, boy. Be good enough to let us know your name.'

Hubert sat up straight on the edge of the day-bed. His father's training made him say as imperatively as he could, 'I'll let you know nothing until you bring me a glass of water.'

'Eh, eh! Won't you so? Very well, very well. Jack, do as the young master requires.'

The driver hurried off into what was evidently a scullery. Aware of the scrutiny of Jacob's eyes, but ignoring it as far as he could, Hubert looked about. He was sitting in a narrow kitchen with a low ceiling and a single tiny window near a door that must lead to the front of the dwelling. The only light came from the fire and a couple of bare candles stuck on the shelf above it, though near by he noticed an elaborate candlestick with seven empty sockets. There was something curious about the walls, more than that they were discoloured with damp in places and smeared with grime: no pictures hung on them.

Soon, Jack returned with a large earthenware mug. The water in it had a stale taste, but Hubert drained it.

'You wish for more, young master?' asked Jacob, his long hands clasped in front of him.

'No thank you. Not now.'

'So... Ah, Jack, my boy, I give you my excuses for doubting you. You are right. The Embassy might have been a story, the dress is of the people, but now I hear him speak...'

'So—my drink, Jacob?'

'Of course, of course. You know where to find it.'

Jack nodded eagerly, reached into a cupboard or other receptacle on the further side of the chair he had sat in, and brought out a tin mug and a bottle labelled Fine English Brandy: Cor done Blu. Dreamily, Hubert remembered the blazing brandy that had crowned the family pudding the previous St Lucy's Day, its flames symbolising (so his father had said) the baptism of fire prophesied for the earliest followers of Our Lord. But Jacob was speaking again.

'Now, young master, you merit an explanation. It's all very simple. My good friend Jack here and I are in commerce together. Every time he goes out at night and takes up in his public some likely one of the gentry—an old person, a sick person, or this time a very young person, sir—he gives him that opiate of his and brings him to me. Then we send to the person's family and we ask for quite a small sum, maybe twenty pounds, maybe more, in return for the person's being set free unharmed. We hold to our word. If the money comes, well and good. If it doesn't, the person is harmed and set free, but that's rare indeed, rare indeed. Isn't it very simple, sir?'

'Too much so.' Hubert tried to maintain his air of superiority. 'How simple is it when the constables come looking?'

'About the same, yes. The constables in these parts, we see to it that they like us a great deal, so they don't look too closely. If the person himself and his family come looking, they never find this place: do you know just where you are, sir?—no.

And if they did find it, we wouldn't be here. Everybody in these parts likes us a great deal, you see. And so on and so forth. It's all simple. Now, I'm sure your father will have the wit to pay the money as soon as he can. And don't think to scream or call for help now, young master. Some folk might hear you, but they won't come to Jacob's house for that, and if you continue, then I'll hurt you, I'm afraid.'

'But you don't know who my father is or where he lives.'

'No no, sir, but you'll tell me when I ask you.'

'You will that, no error,' said Jack, draining his mug and refilling it. He went on genially, 'No more nor two ways it can happen—he asks you the once and you tells him quick, or he asks you and asks you and asks you till you tell him. M'm, simple it is indeed. There's that iron in the fire there. You wouldn't much care to—'

Jacob raised his hand in a solemn gesture like a priest's. 'Enough, Jack. Leave your drink and take that public of yours to the garage. It's in the way, you see. The constables don't like that. Go, my boy.'

Hurriedly again, Jack reached over his chair and. put his mug down on the cupboard, then went out of the room by the further door. To his great surprise, Hubert at once felt a faint but unmistakable sense of affinity with Jacob, a much reduced version of what he would have felt when Mark left him alone with Thomas, a sense that the time had come for any confidences or confessions. Perhaps Jacob felt the same: at any rate, his glance now was directly questioning. Hubert began at the one obvious point.

'Don't you wonder that I dress like a child of the people?'

'It's no interest of mine, young master.'

'Attend, Jacob, I'm a runaway from—my school and from the priests. From my father too. If you send me back to him he'll punish me severely and hand me over to the priests and they'll punish me more and lock me up.'

'Eh, eh, what have you done?'

'Been disobedient and now run away. A sin and a crime. I'm at risk of infants' purification. Please keep me here. I'll work for you.'

'Such a pity. Sinner and criminal. Disfavoured by both Church and State. Such a pity.'

Jacob's stoop-shouldered figure moved slowly up the room in the direction of the little window. Under this and along the adjacent half-wall there ran (Hubert noticed for the first time) a narrow ledge on which lay a row of small objects. Some of them-a painted paper fan, a balance and set of weights, some finger-rings and necklaces, a china doll, a silver stylus-holder—were easy enough to identify; others were not, or were containers with no certain contents. Jacob touched or momentarily picked up each one, muttering gently to himself or to them, or both, like a man on some rural task, a farmhand feeding hens, a shepherd greeting as well as numbering his flock. Hubert sank back on the day-bed: nothing painful or frightening or of any importance could happen until Jack returned.

Whatever Jacob had been doing came to an end. He turned aside to a battered press of unvarnished wood and took from it a small box, from which in turn he took a rough russet-coloured cylinder five or six inches long. Putting one end of this in his mouth, he struck a phosphorus and held it to the other. When a thin cloud of greyish smoke appeared, one of the unfamiliar smells in the room was explained. Hubert felt a mild instinctive disgust: tobacco-smoking was the practice of New Englanders and other low persons. A gentleman would as soon think of indulging in it as of eating with his fingers or appearing drunk at Mass; a thought to keep to oneself.

Puffing smoke with signs of satisfaction, Jacob walked back, stood above Hubert and gazed down at him. After a pause, he drew his shawl away from his left sleeve, revealing a small yellow star sewn to it. He said quietly, 'You know what this is, young master?'

'Yes.'

'Yes, you know what it is. And you know what it means?'

'Yes.'

'No, you don't know what it means. Oh, maybe you know it must be there by law. Maybe you know it means I may not own land or fight the devilish Turk or serve the King or any of his ministers. Maybe. But to know all of what it means you must have led my life or the life of one of my tribe. You understand that, sir?'

Jacob was not talking quietly now. It could never be said, thought Hubert, that a man's eyes could blaze, or said only by writers of TR, who need have no care for truth; all that could be said with truth was that eyes could be bright in colour, and bright because there was enough moisture on their surface to reflect everything else that was bright, and prominent because that was how they were, and prominent because the skin round them was stretched— but, however true, that fell short.

'Ask yourself, ask yourself where goes the money that comes from the families. Not into any part of my house, that you can tell. Ah, when I began, when I got my first hundred and then my second and my third, I had brave ideas, you see. The money would go to the people, not to my tribe but to all the people, I mean all those who'd dare to do what I'd dare to do and rebel against Church and State. I'd begin-and I could only begin-to lead them out of captivity into a land where the Pope and the King could never reach them. But-at first I couldn't believe it—they preferred to stay. They preferred to be poor and hopeless and full of sin and crime, because they were afraid not to be. No no, because they'd come to need to be as they were. I was four hundred and fifty years too late. So now what do I do, what do I do with the money? I give it to my tribe, for food and medicines, and for schooling for those with wit, you see. I've led a few from the captivity of the spirit-ah, but how few.'

Out of an obscure feeling that it would be best for him if Jacob continued to talk, Hubert said, 'But what made you a rebel at first? Had you wanted to fight the Turk or serve the King?'

Jacob did not answer, or not immediately. He put his cigar down in a chipped saucer on the shelf above the fireplace; then, in another of his priest-like movements, he gripped the upper edges of his shawl each side of the fermaglio. He seemed to be inwardly rehearsing some harangue or recitation, and when he spoke his voice carried that quality.

'Have we not eyes? Have we not hands, organs, proportions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same meat, slaked with the same draughts, subject to the same diseases, healed with the same physic, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter, as you are? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you envenom us, do we not die, and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you...'

Hubert said into renewed silence, 'I still don't see—'

'You know those words? You know who wrote those words?'

'No.'

'No. Your priests burnt his playhouse and his books, and would have burnt him besides but for the King, whom he'd once made to laugh.'

'Laugh? What was his name?'

'So instead, you know what they did, those priests? They attached his goods and excommunicated him and transported him to New England. There, you may see his plays.'

'In New England.'

'Yes, in New England. So, then?'

Hubert shook his head without speaking.

A log clattered out of the fire, which had sunk low. Cigar in mouth, Jacob put the log back with a pair of tongs and added others from a basket beside the grate. Then, settling his shawl about him, he squatted down on his heels, picked up a pair of bellows and went to work with them, his attention evidently concentrated on the task. The bellows sounded cracked, but the wood must have been dry; anyway, quite soon a flame appeared and grew. Hubert wondered what time of night it was, where he was to sleep, what was to come. He sat forward and drew a shivering breath.

'I'm cold-may I move nearer the fire?'

'Yes, yes, child.'

Settled in the chair Jack had occupied, Hubert said, 'Just now you talked of captivity. What of my captivity here?'

'What of it indeed?'

'According to yourself, you began with brave ideas: you'd save not only your tribe but other folk too. Have you quite forgotten those ideas?'

'Long ago, long ago.'

'You'd send me into captivity of the body to help others out of captivity of the spirit?'

The fire in front of Jacob had become a blaze. 'Why not?'

'God forgive me.'

'For what, young master?'

Hubert's right hand darted out and shoved at the back of Jacob's neck; with his left, he threw the contents of Jack's mug, about a gill of strong spirits, into the heart of the flames. There was a puffing, roaring noise and a bright flash as the brandy ignited. Jacob screamed. Within three seconds, Hubert was in the scullery. He found the outside door at once, drew the bolts, turned the key and kept it in his hand. While he was doing this, he heard slow, heavy, irregular footfalls from the kitchen and smelt a terrible odour. He opened the door, slammed it after him, turned the key the other way, threw it over his shoulder and was off into the darkness.

Anthony Anvil lay asleep in his bed. Something seemed to him to be chipping at his sleep, like a knife-blade at an eggshell. It gave; he awoke and, with no memory of the chipping, heard instead a tapping, a steady tapping at his window. Too puzzled to be alarmed, he struck a phosphorus and was lighting the candle on his night-table when a voice he knew quietly called his name. Anthony hurried over with the candle and helped his brother across the sill. 'Hubert! What do you do here? You look-'

'I've run away. May I sit down?'

'Oh, my dear... You've climbed the wisteria.'

'I must have done, mustn't I? I've run away so as not to be altered. I came to London on the rapid. I was taken by two men called Jacob and Jack. Jack went off and I... eluded Jacob and escaped and I didn't know where I was till I saw I was almost at Edgware Road. They took my valigia with Decuman's food in it and Thomas's book, but I still have Mark's cross. Not valuable enough for them to...'

'I can't hear you.'

'Eh? I must go to Master van den Haag, but not now. May I sleep in your bed, Anthony? Or on the floor?'

'Wait a little.' Anthony considered. There were a dozen questions he would have liked to know the answer to, but for the time being he asked only one. 'Who is Master van den Haag?'

Hubert yawned like a small animal. 'Master van den Haag... is the New Englander Ambassador. He's my friend. He heard me sing and I went to his house in Coverley and sang to them. His Embassy is in St Giles's. In St Edmund Street. I shall be safe there. Tomorrow. Later. Where may I sleep?'

'When you call this van den Haag your friend, it isn't a tale or a dream? And he is the Ambassador? Say, Hubert.'

'It's all true, every word,' said Hubert with bemused indignation.

'Very well.' Anthony went to his night-table, poured a glass of water from the caraffa there and handed it to his brother. 'What will you ask him to do?'

'Keep me. Hide me. Take me away. Send me to New England.'

'But you're a runaway—to hide you is illegal, and to convey you out of the country must be...'

'He can at least hide me safely. They wouldn't think to search for me at his Embassy, and even if they did they couldn't enter there, because it doesn't belong to England—it's part of New England. Everybody knows that.'

'You forget what they are: they'd have means of persuading him to give you up... Hubert, my dear, why should van den Haag do as you ask?'

'He's my friend. No, I can't tell, but who else is there to ask?'

'No one, but that's not enough.'

'He's kind. He loves music. He doesn't like to be called my lord. He's proud of New England and pleased he's not English. I think...'

'Yes?'

'I think he doesn't like the Pope.'

'I see. So. Drink that up.'

'... No more, thank you.'

'Yes, more. Drink it and stay awake. You have a journey to finish.'

'Oh, Anthony—tomorrow. In the morning.'

'Attend, Hubert, it must be now. Before long, the first servants will be stirring. Then it'll be light. No question but that you'll be seen and fetched to papa, and that'll be the end of your escape. You can go only while it's still dark. I'll take you.' Anthony was dressing as he spoke. 'I can leave this house without making a sound: I've had practice enough coming the other way. Follow me and put your feet where I put mine and you'll be as silent as I am. We'll be in St Edmund Street within an hour.'

In the event, they were there much sooner than that, thanks to a vacant public that drove out of Apostle Andrew Street and turned west as they approached—Hubert stayed clear until he was quite certain that it was not Jack at the wheel. Soon they were passing the elegant and extraordinary structure that housed the Japanese Embassy, like Nagasaki Cathedral the product of the mature genius of Yamamoto, and recognised with it as the culmination of Oriental achievement in modern ecclesiastical architecture. Both in size and in splendour the rest of the street was outdone, not least the modest two-storey brick building proclaimed by a blue-and-white sign to be the Embassy of the Republic of New England.

Anthony ordered the publicman to wait and, with Hubert at his side, approached the entrance where, between a pair of lamps on brick pillars, a gate of tall iron railings shut off access to a paved yard and, beyond it, the Embassy itself. Reaching out, Anthony shook the gate. Within a few seconds there appeared a sentry in red-and-blue uniform with white facings, fusil at the shoulder.

'Good morning, sir. May I help you?'

'Good morning. Yes, you may. I have important business. Please fetch me your officer.'

It was after an almost imperceptible hesitation that the man turned and walked back the way he had come, and less than a minute before he reappeared accompanied by a tall, thin figure in a similar but more opulent uniform. The newcomer held himself stiffly upright and wore a fierce mustach, but he could not have been more than a year or two older than Anthony.

'Good morning, sir. I am Subaltern Reichesberg. I am let know that you have important business here. Kindly state it, sir.'

'I am Anthony Anvil and this is my brother Hubert. We are the children of Master Tobias Anvil, merchantman, of Tyburn Road and Bishopsgate. Your master, His Excellency van den Haag, has employed my brother to obtain for him some information of the highest confidence. He now has that information and is here to deliver it in person, as instructed.'

Anthony thought to himself that this speech had not run very well when he rehearsed it in the public, and sounded no better when delivered. The subaltern seemed to take the same general view, but he did glance for a moment at the sentry before replying: a hopeful sign.

'Why should His Excellency send a child on such an errand? And an English child too?'

'I don't know. A child can obviously find his way to places closed to his elders.'

'Such places as...?'

'I mean of course that folk will speak freely in his presence when they would not before an adult.'

'Ah. Of what import is this supposed information, sir?'

'Considerable, I suppose, given these circumstances. It must touch nothing less than the well-being of your country.'

'Have you no documents at all?'

Anthony had foreseen this question. He answered with well-simulated surprise, 'Naturally not, in a matter of such confidence.'

Reichesberg sighed and raised a white-gloved hand towards his mustach, but lowered it again. 'May I ask you to return at a more suitable hour?'

'That would be to run counter to the boy's instructions. He was told to present himself directly he got the information, at whatever time.'

'Why was I not told to expect you?' asked Reichesberg in a pleading tone.

'To promote safety?' Anthony shrugged his shoulders. 'But I warn you, Subaltern: unless you admit my brother without further delay, you must answer to His Excellency.'

Reichesberg looked hard at Anthony, then at Hubert. 'You, boy—you have every look of a child of the people in that rig. Account for yourself now.'

'I assumed this disguise, sir,' said Hubert at his most gentlemanlike, 'in order to penetrate the disreputable circles where my mission lay.'

There was a pause. The sentry shuffled his feet on the pavement, rolled his eyes a little and drew his index finger to and fro under his nose. Anthony raised his head and looked at the top of the lofty staff from which, its colours indistinguishable, the flag of New England fluttered.

'Goddam,' said Reichesberg without much emotion. 'Open up, Paddy.'

So Hubert stepped on to the soil of the only nation in Christendom into which the Pope's servants could not enter at will and of right. There was delay while the subaltern aroused a succession of household functionaries, each of whom had to go through his own cycle of disbelief followed by grudging acceptance, but before very long Hubert's arrival had been officially recognised; as much to the point, a bedchamber was put at his disposal pending his introduction to the Ambassador at a later stage. The brothers kissed and took their leave of each other. Reichesberg escorted Anthony to the street.

'Well, have you fooled me, sir? I can't undo now what I've done.'

'Some particulars are not as stated, but His Excellency will surely approve your decision, so your professional honour is safe.'

'That was never at risk; I'm concerned only with my powers of judgement. Thank you, sir. Good day.'