The Alteration

It was'indeed almost day when Anthony, back in Tyburn Road, paid off his public and approached the house, not frontally but, to avoid inquisitive eyes, up the express-house drive in the first place. He had reached the corner of the building when he heard a loud but muffled groan from indoors, from the express-house itself. A few seconds later, he was bending over a man who lay in a very uncomfortable attitude at the foot of the staircase. Anthony did not at once recognise him, because the lower half of his face was covered with a large gag secured by tapes, but well before this had been removed he could see that it was Father Lyall who lay there, lay there in pints of his own blood, his hands fastened behind his back, his left leg broken. It was later established that he had been attacked in his room and had fallen while trying to get down the stair in search of help, but for the moment there were more important questions to be answered. The main source of the bleeding appeared to be somewhere about the lower abdomen; Anthony lifted the hem of the nightshirt. What he saw made him turn his head violently aside and drive his fists hard against his cheekbones. Then he remembered his duty and his training, felt the pulse, listened for the heart-beat. There was almost none of either. The priest's eyes were shut and his breathing was imperceptible; the flow of blood seemed to have stopped. Anthony was as sure as he could be that death was unavoidable and imminent, but training had something to say about that too. He ran at his best speed to the Cistercian hospice across Edgware Road, where a surgeon was known to be always on call. From there he was also able to inform the authorities. Not till then did he set about rousing his father.

Half an hour afterwards, Tobias Anvil sat in his library giving information to two members of the constabulary, a proctor and a serjeant. Anthony was in attendance.

The proctor, a heavy man with a massive head and neck, said slowly, as he slowly made a note, 'Very good, master. You never once inferred that he was given to offences against chastity.'

'Certainly not.' True enough: Tobias had gone to some trouble to avoid finding himself compelled to infer such a thing. 'If I had, I should have dismissed him from his post in my household.'

'Your servants brought no word of that sort.'

'No. Why do you pursue this line of inquiry, Proctor?'

'I must first pursue the obvious, master. The crime declares itself as an act of jealousy and revenge on the part of a rival, perhaps a husband, as witness the mutilations.'

Over the past nights, Margaret Anvil had slept better than at any time since she was a young girl. She had not stirred when her husband, sent for by Anthony, left her side. It was no more than a minute since she had suddenly awoken and at the same time become aware of some unusual and untoward agitation in the house. Immediately filled with fear, she had put on a breakfast-gown and gone to find her maid, who told her that Father Lyall had suffered an accident and could or would tell her nothing more. Hearing voices from the library, she entered it without knocking for the first time in her life, at just the right moment to catch the whole of the proctor's last sentence.

'What mutilations?' she asked in a steady, unexcited voice.

'There has been a terrible mishap, my dear.' Tobias had left his seat in concern. 'Father Lyall is dead. These men are—'

'What mutilations?'

The proctor was not only a slow speaker, he was also slow to adapt himself to the unexpected or unfamiliar. So he said, as he would have said to a superior, to a State official, to a magistrate, 'Certain organs were removed.'

'What organs?'

Nobody spoke. Anthony hurried over to his mother, not knowing why he did so.

Margaret screamed. Soon she was weeping too, but she continued to scream at intervals. Her hands moved in the air and over her head and body to no purpose. Someone—Anthony—put his arm round her, caught her hands and gripped them. The constabulary serjeant said an urgent word or two to the proctor and half bundled him from the room. Margaret did not take in their going nor, when at last she looked up, the fact that they had gone. This was understandable, if only because, a couple of seconds after she did look up, Tobias hit her across the side of the face with an open hand but a stiff arm, so that she lurched and fell to the floor, her head missing a corner of the oak desk by about an inch.

'Harlot,' he said in his clear tones. 'Designing adulteress. Hell and all its flames receive you.'

Anthony made the Sign of the Cross. 'The sword of Michael stand between my mother and any harm.' His mouth was now as straight and composed as hers had ever been. 'If you touch her again, father, you touch me too. Be warned.'

'I'll have her attached for unchastity, I'll see her purified, I'll... '

'Twaddle,' said Anthony, helping Margaret to her feet. 'You'll do nothing. Firstly because there are no facts. Secondly because you're a man of mark, and wherever you go—to St Mary Bourne, to Bishopsgate, to your gaming-rooms—you prize your dignity. And thirdly because you'll never allow yourself to become involved in any disturbance that touches the Church in the smallest degree.—Let me take you to your room, mama.'

'I'll turn her out of doors. It's my right.'

'Then, as before, you turn me out too.'

'Hubert will stay with me.'

'Hubert is... Hubert would go with his mother if he had the choice.'

For the first time that morning, Tobias looked Anthony straight in the eye. 'Is there nothing to be said in my favour? Nothing at all?', 'Of course there's something, papa, though less than you think. For instance, it's not in your favour that what hurts you most is damaged pride. But we'll talk later.'

The first thing Hubert saw when he woke up looked rather like a small brass lantern, but all there seemed to be inside the case was two white squares of bone or china with black numbers on them: 2 44. In an instant, and without a sound, 44 became 45. He stared, then smiled as a clock not far away struck the three-quarters. Glancing round the spacious, airy room, he remembered the previous night, or most of it: Joan and the ride, Domingo and Samuel, the train, the public, Jacob and Jack, Anthony, the sentry and the officer, himself and Anthony entering the shadowy hall, but after that came a confusion of footsteps and voices. He recognised the bed he lay in, the striped outer cover and the smooth sheets that smelt faintly and cleanly of some herb he did not know, the vividly-coloured rugs, the slender furniture, but he had never consciously seen before the great sweep of wallpaper on three sides of him, vivid as it was with its designs of birds, animals and fish in rounded square or rhomboid medallions on a green-and-grey lattice background. But he had little time for it even now, in view of the loaded tray on the night-table beside him. At the mere notion of food, hunger overwhelmed him.

Under a starched cloth were rusks, paninos, blackcurrant conserve, butterscotch squares with almonds, lime juice, milk, cheese and a bowl of soft fruit. There was also a card with a red-and-blue border and an image of the American lion, the New Englander national emblem. On it was a print-written message with a final sentence and initials added in stylus. Already eating fast, Hubert read: If you prefer cooked food, please ring. Rest as long as you wish. The bath and commodation are through the door to your left. When you are quite ready, come down to the hallway. Anyone you find there will fetch you to me. We all welcome you to our house.

Hubert stretched out for the silver hand-bell, with the idea of calling for cooked food as well as rather than instead of uncooked, then changed his mind. The cooking would take time, and his desire to see van den Haag and tell him his story was urgent, urgent enough to overcome even greed.

In five minutes, he had cleared the tray of everything but the cheese (how queer to offer it for breakfast), got out of bed to look for his clothes, failed to find them and found instead, laid out on a linen-chest, a complete set of new garments: underdress, drawers, stockings, a shirt of pale yellow silk, a darker yellow stock, black velvet jacket and breeches, black shoes with cut-steel clasps, and, not least, a pocket-napkin edged with yellow lace: whoever had done this was acute as well as kind. He went into the next room and used the com-modation, a grand affair with a seat of dark foreign wood—hickory? Next, he drew a hot bath, came across, at the basin, a tooth-cleaner still in its transparent paper, used that, and took off the blue cotton nightshirt that an unknown benefactor-a servant-lad, probably-had supplied. Lying in the warm water, he felt for a moment completely refreshed and safe, safe for the first time since deciding to run away, safe not for ever, but for the small distance he could see into the future. No agent of what he had run away from could reach him here; he had a friend who could and would absolutely prevent it. The returning thought of that friend brought him to his feet and out of the bath. He dried himself on a towel big enough to dry a horse and was soon dressed. As he had come to expect by now, there was a new hairbrush and comb on the toilet-table in the bedchamber. Before leaving, he knelt by the bed and prayed, with special mention of Decuman, Thomas, Mark, Domingo, Samuel and Anthony, and a plea to St Hubert to intercede for him in the matter of Jacob. He also begged pardon for involuntary remissness in attendance at services of the Church.

The hall, though not large, was full of marble: floor, columns, portrait busts, and urns containing sheaves of the tall grass he had noticed on his first visit to the house in Coverley. He had barely reached the foot of the stairs when an elderly Indian in livery came up and took him to a small room somewhere at the rear of the building. Here he settled down to wait for some time, but in fact it was not two minutes before the heavy white door opened and van den Haag came in, preceded by his wife.

Hubert had not expected to see her, or not at this stage, but even if he had he most likely would not have been able to do otherwise than he did, which was to hold his hands up to her and burst into tears. At once she went down on her knees, put her arms round him and stroked his head. She made soothing noises, and van den Haag told him over and over again that everything was in order and there was no cause to be troubled. He had no idea how long this went on, but when it was over he was sitting in a splendid chair of gold-painted wood and the man and woman were close to him on each side.

'My excuses,' he said, and blew his nose into the pocket-napkin, blessing again whoever had fetched it. 'I should never have had to do it if you weren't so good.'

Dame van den Haag was holding his hand. 'No excuses, Hubert dear. Something must be very wrong, we know that.'

'Yes, I think something is.'

'You have a tale to tell, haven't you? We want to hear, but you're not to tell it before you're quite ready. We'll wait.'

'Thank you, dame, but I can tell it now.'

Hubert told it. When he had finished, he saw with slight astonishment that van den Haag's blue eyes were full of tears, some of them starting to overflow down his cheeks.

'The pigs,' he said several times.

'Ach, there are pigs everywhere, Cornelius. Forget them and determine what can be done for Hubert.'

'Yes. Yes. He's safe here for a time, perhaps for a few days. No longer. A servant or a soldier will let fall at the inn that a young English boy stays with us here, and someone will attend and pass the word. Then... a mannerly threat from the Papal Cure that, unless Hubert is given up at once, a man of ours will be attached for meddling in the affairs of Church or State, and may well be condemned. I couldn't handle that.'

'All this over a truant child?'

'Dearest Anna, you haven't had to learn the ways of these Romanists as I have. To them, Hubert will be something far more and far worse than a truant child. He defies authority, he rebels against the will of God, and that mustn't be tolerated in anyone, young or old, gentry or people, layman or cleric. The only...'

Van den Haag stopped speaking and began to stare without curiosity at an elaborate flower-holder in white-painted wrought iron from which leaty stems trailed, nuoert nouceu that he was wearing some kind of formal costume, including a high-necked blue tunic frogged in red and with multi-coloured decorations: a reminder of his status and his function.

'Sir,'-Hubert remembered in time his friend's preferred style of address—'please don't let me distract you from your affairs.'

'No no,' said van den Haag, absently adjusting at his breast the miniature gold likeness of some heraldic bird; 'a reception at four and a half o'clock. The Australian High Commission. I may be late if I wish.' He nodded his head slowly, as if disposing of parts of a problem in succession; some others appeared still unresolved. 'Anna...'

'Cornelius?'

'Anna... kindly take Hubert up to your sitting-room and give him tea, show him photograms. Hilda's studies will be finished shortly and she'll come along to you. Tell her Hubert stays with us while his parents visit whoever you will. There are matters that require my attention.'

Hubert clearly saw pass between the pair a short series of unvoiced messages such as his mother and father never exchanged: an offer to do whatever else might be needed, a gentle negative coupled with an assurance that explanations would be furnished in due time, an acknowledgement that added a promise of support. Thereupon the three left the room; the Ambassador went off towards the hallway, his footsteps sounding sharply; his wife took Hubert in the other direction, and they were soon comfortably settled near an upstairs window that gave a distant view of Whitehall Palace, the King's London residence.

'Where are the photograms?'

'Do you truly want to see them?'

'Are there some of New England?'

'Yes, a great many.'

'Those I should love to see.'

So a handsome portfolio was produced, full of pictured wonders both natural and man-made: the Zachary Taylor bridge linking Manhattan Island with the Waldensia shore; the National Museum of Art in New Wittenberg; a great grassy plain overshadowed by what looked like a rain-cloud, but what was in fact (Anna van den Haag explained) million upon million of passenger pigeons; the Benedict Arnold Memorial in the city which had taken its name from his; the Hussville Opera House; a vividly beautiful autumnal scene in the woods of eastern Cranmeria—the last in particular was well captured by the new Westinghouse colour process. Then, as he turned over the pages, Hubert came upon a large photo-gram of a mountain crest, not a particularly high one, to judge from the presence of trees and tall bushes, but hung with curling strips of mist. The light was pale, casting long dim shadows.

'This looks a strange place,' he said.

'It is. They say that however bright the sun may shine just a mile off, it never touches the summit of Mount Gibson. The Indians call the spot Dawn Daughter's Leap, and they tell a tale of it. Would you like to hear?'

'Oh yes, please.'

Dame van den Haag had opened a tall quilted box beside her chair and taken from it a tray on which there were a number of small pots of different colours, some pointed sticks and a coffee-bowl of white-coated earthenware with a pattern of fruits drawn on it and partly filled in. As she talked, she used the sticks to coat other parts with green, red and malva, working slowly and accurately. 'Well, Dawn Daughter was betrothed to a chief, but she loved a young warrior named White Fox. On the night before the marriage, White Fox came to Dawn Daughter and took her up on his horse, and off they went together. But the moon was bright that night, and they were seen escaping, and the chief gave chase with all his men. Now White Fox's horse was the biggest and the strongest of all the tribe had, but with the two on his back he began to grow tired, and the chief's men began to draw near. So White Fox called to the Spirit the tribe worshipped, and asked him to send another horse. The Spirit heard him, and suddenly there was another horse running beside them, a wondrous horse with eyes that shone in the dark. He came so close that Dawn Daughter was able to climb on to his back.' There was a short pause while a fresh stick was prepared. 'They rode on together for an extent, and the chief's men fell behind, but then the Spirit's horse galloped faster and faster, and White Fox couldn't stay with him. He saw him come to the mountain and start to climb it, and he followed at the best speed he could... Pardon me a moment, Hubert.'

Hilda had entered the room, was already approaching, coming straight towards him. Her green frock was not the one she had worn when they first met, but it reminded him of it. He stood up and they shook hands; hers was warm and dry, as before. By the window, Dame van den Haag had begun to talk in low tones to a middle-aged person with eyeglasses, most likely a preceptress of some sort, who must have come in with Hilda, though he had not seen her do so. He smiled at Hilda, hoping that she could tell from that how pleased he was to see her; she smiled back, at least. She showed not the slightest surprise or curiosity at his presence: he guessed that embassy life taught one to expect what others would find unexpected.

'Your honoured mother was showing me the photograms.' She reached down to the sofa and turned the open portfolio round towards her. 'Oh yes-Dawn Daughter's Leap,' she said in her hoarse voice-how could he have forgotten that voice? She went down on her bare knees with something of a bump and, while still looking closely at the photogram of the mountain top, lifted the corner of the page as if about to turn on.

Hubert quickly knelt beside her. 'How does the tale end? The tale of Dawn Daughter and White Fox. I heard only part.'

'My mother will finish it for you. She knows it best.'

'Your mother's occupied,' he said, hoping she would continue to be. He could not have told why he so much wanted to hear the rest of the story from Hilda. 'How much did you hear yet?'

'They had just reached the foot of the mountain.'

'Oh, now...' She put her elbows on the edge of the sofa, clasped her hands and looked down at the portfolio. 'Well, they went on up. I suppose a god's horse can go anywhere, but the real horse must have found it tough. I was there that time, the time paps made the photogram. Yes, when White Fox was almost at the top a mist came down and hid the moon, so he couldn't find his way. That was the god's work. White Fox had to wait for daylight before he could do anything.'

'Where was the chief and his men?'

'I don't know. So: White Fox went right to the top and found there was a cliff below him. Just here.' She pointed. 'It doesn't show in the photogram it's a cliff, but it is. At the edge of the cliff were four hoof-marks in the rock. They don't show either in this, but they're there: I saw them.'

'Real hoof-marks? In rock?'

'Well—they surely looked real,' she said with reluctant conviction, then hurried on in the businesslike tone she had been using earlier. 'The horse had taken a leap into the sky, where the god was waiting for Dawn Daughter. He'd seen her and loved her when he sent the horse. And when she came to him he was so mightily glad he forgot to take the mist away, so it's still there.'

'What did White Fox do?'

'I don't know. White Fox. Isn't that a fool name? Dawn Daughter too.'

Hubert did not speak. To him, those were not fool names.

'What I think,' said Hilda, abruptly standing up, 'some old Indian just fancied the whole tale to explain the mist and the marks in the rock.'

'It doesn't quite explain the mist. But you said the marks looked real.'

Her manner changed again. 'Yes, they did.'

'Where is Mount Gibson?'

He had not wanted to know, only to continue the conversation. As soon as the words were out, he knew he had made a mistake, and from the way she looked past him and muttered her reply (which he failed to take in) he knew just what he should have said: that, whatever she thought, he believed the tale of Dawn Daughter and White Fox. It would have been too late now even if, having finished her conversation with the preceptress, Dame van den Haag had not been on her way to join them. But there would be another time: there must be.

The next morning, Abbot Peter Thynne sat in his parlour over a breakfast he had hardly touched. Normally he ate this meal in the refectory; he found it a useful occasion for meeting those in his charge before the day's work began and offering any necessary words of encouragement and advice. But in his present mood, the mood that had fallen upon him more than twenty-four hours earlier, when the news had been brought of Hubert's disappearance, the notion of company was distasteful to him. Within his reach lay two books delivered not long before from Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford: a new commentary on the De Existentiae Natura of Monsignor Jean-Paul Sartre, the French Jesuit, and an analysis of Count William Walton's church music. The Abbot had eagerly looked forward to the arrival of both volumes; as yet he had not had the heart to open either.

There was a knock at the door. 'Yes?' he said rather sharply.

Father Dilke came in, bowed, and said, 'Good morning, my lord. I trust your lordship slept well?'

'No. Of course not. What is it, Father?'

'I have a little news, my lord.'

At once the Abbot's demeanour altered. 'Sit down, Father. Forgive me for speaking as I did. What news?'

'The ostler advises that the mare Joan is returned.'

'At what hour?'

'Some time in the night, my lord. She was grazing near the stable when he made his early round. He further advises that she hadn't been ridden far and had been fed and watered yesterday afternoon or evening.'

'Where, I wonder? In Coverley, one would think. By whom? That's more difficult. Or it should be. I can't get free of the idea that that New Englander type is involved. Who else in Coverley has acquaintance with Hubert, pattie-shop men and such excluded?'

'But at his second visit the proctor was positive that the Ambassador is in London and that his Secretary here denies all possibility of a visit from Hubert. And surely...'

The Abbot sighed. 'Where then did the mare carry him?'

'To a train or omnibus.'

'Which might have carried him anywhere in the land.'

'But most likely to London.'

'And the New Englander Embassy, into which our constabulary can't enter.'

'I hardly think the Ambassador would shelter an English runaway, my lord. The diplomatic consequences—'

'The fellow's a New Englander, confound him,' said the Abbot, rubbing his eyes wearily and sighing again. 'I should never have allowed him across this threshold. See the proctor here is let know of the mare's return and of the other advice.'

'Yes, my lord.'

'Should we talk again to Decuman and his party?'

'I find no advantage in it, sir. They told the truth, as I think, when they denied knowledge of Hubert's goal.'

'Yes, yes. It was Decuman who took the mare at first.'

'Oh yes, my lord, and he knows we know it, but...'

'Yes.'

The Abbot was silent for a long time, but gave no signal that he wanted to end the interview. The skin over his cheekbones was stretched and shiny, and his shoulders had lost their habitual squareness. When he spoke again, it was in a thin tone Dilke had never heard him use before.

'Father, I want your help.'

'Anything, my lord.'

'I'm frightened, Father. This atrocity we learned of yesterday: the murder of Father Lyall. He was a proud and rebellious man and an unworthy priest, but no human creature deserves an end like that. Who could have done such a thing? And why?'

'Some beastly quarrel, my lord. Spiritual impropriety must show its counterpart in behaviour. There'll be a woman or a gaming-debt at the back of it. Or it might be some brush with agents of the law—they can be savage if they're provoked. I remember your lordship saying in this very room that you were surprised he'd never collided with those in authority. Well, perhaps now he has, once and for all.'

'Do you mean a constable would take a knife to a man who'd crossed him?' asked the Abbot disbelievingly and with a hint of distaste.

'Oh yes, my lord.' Dilke smiled for an instant. 'A constable or other officer. It's not probable in this case, which was, as you say, atrocious. A disfiguring slash would not be so unusual.'

'Who tells you such stuff?'

'I have some children of the people among my charges, my lord.'

'Don't listen when they feed you thieves' cackle.'

'No, my lord. I beg your lordship's forgiveness for the diversion.'

The Abbot gestured with the back of his hand. After a moment, he went on with evident difficulty, 'And yet there's the terrible fact that Lyall was killed by having worked on him the very same... deed as that resisted by him in Hubert's case. I know there was a further mutilation, but... It's as if someone said, "Obstinately and rebelliously resist alteration in another and suffer it yourself for your pains." Not revenge or quarrel. Chastisement.'

'Someone? Who, sir?'

'I dare not think.'

Dilke said gravely, 'When I told you just now, my lord, of private violence against the citizenry, I spoke indeed of constables, of the minor agents of the law, of petty authority. Such acts would meet—I'm sure they do meet—the sternest possible rebuke from those of substantial power. That Father Lyall should have died through any sort of sentence or warrant of theirs is not to be dreamed of. Our polity is imperfect, but not evil. And besides, who knew of Lyall's resistance other than ourselves here and Master Anvil—not one to proclaim differences with an ecclesiastic? No, my lord, dreadful as it is, this is a concurrence. There can be no connection. Do I relieve your mind?'

'No. That's to say no more than partly, though I thank you for it. See you, Father, it was to the purpose, all too much to the purpose, that you recalled a moment ago what I said of poor Lyall within these walls. That's what has discomposed me far more. That and what I thought of him. I wanted him removed. I prayed for his removal. But I didn't intend this kind of removal,' said the Abbot, swallowing hard.

'Oh, my lord, of course not. No one could suppose such a thing.'

'My fear is that God has taken this enormous means of rebuking my pertinacity and self-will and desire for wordly acclaim in pressing for the alteration of Hubert. Until yesterday morning, I could lay that fear aside as a sick fancy. But now that Hubert is gone, become a runaway, it returns, redoubled. I take his departure as a sign, an unmistakable sign of God's displeasure.'

Father Dilke had gone down on his knees in front of the Abbot and taken his hands between his own. 'My lord, you were not pertinacious or self-willed in what you did: you showed nothing but a proper resolve in pursuing what you took to be right. And your design was not worldly acclaim but the renown of this Chapel, Hubert's welfare and the greater glory of God. Believe me, my lord; I know you and I speak out of that knowledge.'

The Abbot gave another sigh, but this one had no impatience or fatigue in it. 'Thank you, David. You're a good friend.'

'Your lordship honours me.'

'I tell you the truth. Will you pray with me, Father?'

Unable to speak for the moment, Dilke nodded. The two knelt down side by side on the Abbot's Beauvais carpet. Together they made the Sign of the Cross.

'In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, amen,' said the Abbot.

'Most loving and merciful God,' said Dilke a little unsteadily, 'hear Thou the voice of Thy servant.'

'O God, I humbly petition Thee to remit Thy justified wrath at my sins and to forgive me and to send me comfort if in my thoughts or prayers I betrayed peevishness or animosity at what in all good faith I took to be the stubbornness of that Father Lyall whom Thou hast lately taken to Thyself. And I crave Thee most reverently that Thou have mercy on his soul and at the Last Day number him among Thine own.'

'Amen.'

'And I further humbly petition Thee to take Thy most especial care of the temporal and spiritual well-being of Thy child Hubert Anvil, wherever he may be and wherever he may go. Enter into his heart and mind, O Lord, and send him the desire to return here among those who care for him. Or, if that is not Thy purpose, bring it about in Thine own way that he forsake the path of rebellion and outlawry and be brought at last to serve Thy will.'

'Amen.'

'Give ear, I beseech Thee, O Lord...'

Just then, Lawrence arrived outside the parlour door on his way to remove the Abbot's breakfast dishes. He had already raised his hand to knock when he caught from within the familiar sound of a voice in prayer. To stay and listen would, in such a case, have been not only a breach of established procedure but also an act of profanation, and Lawrence was a very devout man. In addition, he had a warm personal attachment to his master. So he went back the way he had come, mounted to his bedroom and himself knelt down. He prayed to God to answer whatever petition the honoured and pious Abbot might have put forward, then supplicated for the personal intervention of St James the Apostle in his behalf.

His Honour Joshua Pellew, Archpresbyter of Arnoldstown, came out of the main entrance of the New Englander Embassy and moved at a dignified pace between two lines of guards standing with presented fusils. With him were his chaplain, Pastor Alan Williams, his Indian servant Abraham, the Ambassador and Ambassadress, a couple of senior diplomatic officials, and, somewhere near the middle of the party, a small brown-complexioned figure burdened with baggage, evidently a page of some sort. The group passed through the opened gates and, with due deliberation, boarded a pair of expresses drawn up beside the footway. The man who had for some hours been sweeping that part of the street ran his eyes over those outside the gates and went on sweeping, having been told to keep watch for a child of the English gentry and not having seen one. He was a very stupid man; selected for this duty because his superior, always short of non-stupid subordinates, had considered it most unlikely that a boy of ten could have made his way so far without assistance, more unlikely still that if he had he would have been allowed in, and unlikeliest of all that, once in, he would come out by the front door. (The back of the building was being watched by a slightly less stupid man.)

One after the other, the expresses pulled out and travelled at a moderate speed towards the Palace, in front of which they turned right, then, after a quarter of a mile, they turned left into St Osyth Street and were soon moving over Westminster Bridge. This, though extensively repaired and rebuilt in 1853, was still in all essentials Labelye's caisson-founded structure of a century earlier, and one of the sights of London. The vehicles on it this afternoon were as many as ever, since all cross-river traffic not using London Bridge had to go this way: the new Temple Bridge would not be open till 1978. On the south bank of the Thames, it was only a short run to Dahnang Station, named to commemorate the victory over the French in 1815 whereby the whole of Indo-China had passed under the English Crown. But, before entering the station yard, the two expresses drew in and stopped for nearly ten minutes. Accurate timing was of great importance in what was to follow.

At exactly the prearranged moment, the party halted at the outer side of a post of inspection which allowed (or withheld) access to the tracks. There were other such posts for the use of persons of lower degrees; this one, as had been calculated, offered immediate attention. On one side, two blue-uniformed recorders sat at a baize-covered table; on the other stood a railtrack constable and a man in grey who, to an educated eye, looked not quite unlike the man who had been sweeping St Edmund Street. Pastor Williams handed the nearer recorder a sheaf of documents and waited. The Ambassador and the Archpresbyter exchanged some rather weighty remarks while the others remained silent. After half a minute, the recorder conferred briefly with his colleague, then turned to Williams and said politely, 'My excuses, Father, but there's a paper lacking. It concerns your master's page... Elisha Jones. I have his sanction here, which is-'

Pastor Williams said in his gentle but resonant voice, 'The original was lost, as is explained by the temporary replacement you have, which was produced by our Embassy here in London, and is valid.'

'Yes, sir, that's entirely valid-it's the lad's moretur that's lacking.'

Every visitor to England, as to any other land in the Pope's dominions, required a moretur, a certificate of permission to stay for a prescribed period, supplied on arrival and to be shown at all posts of inspection. Since it was ultimately the Lord Intendant of the Exterior Office at Westminster who gave out these documents, even van den Haag's ingenuity had not sufficed to acquire one. He had known of the illegal trade in lost or stolen moreturs, flourishing because of their value to runaways and despite the heavy penalties attached to it, but this source had likewise failed him.

'It was missed at the same time as the sanction,' Williams told the recorder.

'No doubt, Father; for all that, it is lacking.'

'What do you suggest? That it might have been sold or given away? Of what use could it be to anyone but a ten-year-old Indian?'

'I suggest nothing, Father. I simply have plain orders that all exterior travellers passing this post are bound to lay before me a moretur.'

At an eye-blink from van den Haag, Joshua Pellew intervened. He spoke without overt impatience. 'What is this delay? Our train departs at any moment. I am the Archpresbyter of Arnoldstown, RNE, visiting England at the personal invitation of His Majesty the King. My affairs make it imperative that no check be placed on my progress.'

'My humble excuses, my lord. I...'

The man in grey had moved over to the recorders' table.

He was quite intelligent and observant enough to have uncovered the deception being attempted if he had known of its possibility, but his superior had considered it not merely most unlikely but too unlikely to be regarded, and had spared him the burden of having yet one more would-be fugitive from London to keep an eye open for. After a long look round the waiting group, designed to do little more or less than emphasise his own true mark and their lack of it, the man in grey gave the recorder a tiny nod. At once stamps thudded into ink-pads and on to papers, brief stylus entries were made in prescribed places, the documents were bundled together and handed back to Pastor Williams, the travellers were wished a fair journey, the diplomatic contingent showed their passes, and in a few seconds the post of inspection was behind them all.

Van den Haag betrayed relief at not having had to intervene himself: if needed, ambassadorial authority might have swung matters in the party's favour, but, men like the man in grey being what they were, it was almost as likely, exercised on behalf of someone as insignificant as an Indian page, to have excited suspicion. 'Good work, Your Honour,' he said. 'It was your reasonable address that did it.'

'Thank you, Cornelius. I hope there'll be no further such ordeal. I'm not sure I could suffer it.'

'Most unlikely, sir, as I told you. The rest should be a formality.'

No more conversation was possible for the time being. They had emerged into the main hall of the station. Here, under the soaring dome of glass and steel, the noise of an arriving train could barely be heard through the noise of humanity—vendors of food, drink or ricordos crying their wares, ballad-iers rattling their coin-bowls as they sang, touts offering a full range of services, beggars who declared their Englishness by displaying insolence rather than abasement. There were plenty of the lastmentioned to be found on the inner side of the post reserved for the passage of the rich and exalted. Pellew had the bulk and weight to shove aside even the most importunate, but he would have been at some trouble to hold his party together without the assistance of the railtrack constable and the staff he wielded. At last the struggle was over, the last huckster—a one-eyed woman putting up gaudy china replicas of Whitehall Palace—pushed out of the way, the journey-tabs slotted, and the group admitted to the pavement beside the train.

Departure-bells were already being rung. Abraham went aboard at once to see that the heavy baggage, sent ahead from the Embassy, was all in its place—though nobody had considered what to do if it were not. The others gathered round the steps of the baruch for what would have to be brief farewells. Van den Haag shook hands with Pellew and Williams, then turned to their small companion. Even here and now he dared not behave as he wanted to. All he did was say quietly, 'Good luck, Elisha. I'll let your mother know tonight. We'll meet again—perhaps sooner than you think.'

Almost as he spoke, bells pealed on a higher note than before and the train seemed to shudder all over. The three passengers climbed the steps. The wheels began to turn.

When he could no longer see the van den Haags on the pavement, Joshua Pellew made his way to the cabin and settled heavily in a padded chair by the window. He gave a yawn that ended in a long sigh. For the next hour or more, nothing could happen: no hurry, no anxiety, no decisions. Abraham appeared momentarily and reported that the baggage was complete and safe. The Archpresbyter let his eyes fall shut.

His tour of western Europe had been undertaken at the personal instance of the First Citizen of the Republic, who had excellent reasons for wanting to strengthen the still-precarious ties between their nation and the more powerful of those under the sway of Rome. It had been an arduous enterprise for a man nearing seventy, but an enjoyable and apparently successful one. The funeral of King Stephen III had been a natural and convenient starting-point; a two-day visit to the Prince-Bishop of Durham, the richest man in England and virtually a sovereign ruler within her shores, would have provided a comfortable conclusion. But Pellew had found waiting for him on his arrival at the Principal-Episcopal Palace a tachygram that summoned him urgently to the New Englander Embassy in London. Although no reason was given, he had considered his duty and set off as soon as politeness allowed. His annoyance at being asked, even more urgently, to cut short his stay and smuggle home to safety a runaway English boy, however deserving he might be, had been overtaken by astonishment: was this not excessive even for van den Haag, known as he was in Arnoldstown to be no strict observer of diplomatic nicety? Whether it was or not, Pellew had found at the end of a few minutes' talk that he had agreed in principle to do as asked; a reference to his numerous grandchildren had turned the scale, he was not quite sure how. His only objection had concerned the parents involved, or rather not involved. When the boy had said that he knew his mother would want for him what was proposed, that he would swear to it on her own head, Pellew had believed him, and the matter was settled. Since then he had suffered some anxiety, but counted himself compensated in full by the agreeable sensation of helping to give the Romanists a sore nose.

What they had intended to do to little Hubert Anvil was shocking without being surprising, considered Pellew. All their temporal over-magnificence, all their pharisaism, all their equivocation, all their ruthlessness came from one source: the celibacy of their priesthood. This made it impossible for their hierarchy to understand the family, that most directly God-ordained of all human institutions. It was of no help that that celibacy was always and everywhere broken: a mistress was not a wife and an illegitimate child brought no notion of real fatherhood. And the hierarchy's blindness meant the laity's spiritual and moral deprivation. If the Holy Family meant anything...

'We're about to arrive, Your Honour,' said Pastor Williams's gentle voice. 'Three minutes to Cholderton.'

Soon afterwards, Archpresbyter Pellew and his three companions had reached the centre of what was, the two major cities excepted, the largest mass of buildings and installations in the land. The place was an anchorage, a dockyard, a vast manufactory, a testing-tract, a fuel store, a military head-quarters and a considerable market-town rolled into one. No vessel was more prominent there than the RNEA Edgar Allan Poe, the pride of her nation and a worthy memorial to the brilliant young general who had perished at the moment of his victory over the combined invading forces of Louisiana and Mexico in the war of 1848-50. She and her sister ship, the James McNeill Whistler, were the two crack liners on the transatlantic run. They were also the largest vessels ever to have used the anchorage—each was over a thousand feet long—and some controversy had been caused when, at their coming into service in 1973, special berths were erected, even though the New Englander government had agreed to provide most of the money.

Pastor Williams looked up at the great silvery length of Edgar Allan Poe and almost caught his breath. He had travelled in her on the outward journey, but it seemed to him that a thousand crossings in such a craft would not abate his wonder. When his turn came he climbed the gangway and, once past the rail, was possessed by a new sensation, a joyful relief at being home again. The very plainness of the furnishings was a refreshment after all the mannered elaboration he had seen in the previous fortnight; the crew's voices, careless, almost rough, sounded like a favourite song to one who had had his fill of the clipped, over-precise English accent. When the purser, a solid-looking Calvinan with a windburnt complexion, welcomed the group aboard, Williams astonished him slightly with a spirited handshake.

The sleeping quarters, reserved by tachygram, were more than adequate: a double apartment for the Archpresbyter alone, another, communicating with it, for Williams and Hubert. Abraham and an anchorage porter brought in the baggage and made their exits. The pastor crossed to the porthole and looked out. Passengers were still coming up the gangway, at the foot of which stood an English soldier with fixed baionetta and a blue-clad recorder. Neither showed the least interest in the documents proffered them, merely waving their owners on, just as they had done when the Archpres-byter's party presented themselves.

Williams turned from the porthole. 'Well, Hubert, we're safe now.'

'Altogether safe?'

'Surely. We stand on New Englander soil. The English or Papal authorities may no more board this aircraft than a ship of ours at sea.' Williams brought out his pocket-watch, which was a miniature version of the clock Hubert had seen at the Embassy: the squares showed 5 33. 'We rise off at six o'clock. The time set for our descent at Arnoldstown Port is two tomorrow afternoon, but winds can advance or retard us.'

After a pause, Hubert said, 'That's very quick.' He was sitting on the cot assigned to him with his knees drawn up.

'The craft can touch 160 miles an hour through the air. But soon, quite soon, that'll be nothing. Would you like to learn a secret?'

'Yes, Father.'

'Pastor. I think I may safely tell you this, since we've intrinsically left England. Three years ago, at a place in our State of Waldensia, two scientists, the Smith brothers, launched a flying machine, one that lifts itself by means of wings, not gas.'

'I understand, Pastor.'

'It carried only one man and barely touched 90 miles an hour, but that was no more than a beginning. By 1980 a speed of 200 is promised, and more later, much more. Air travel will be transformed.'

This information did not arouse the wonder or enthusiasm Williams had expected. It was in a seemingly listless tone that Hubert said, 'Where's Abraham?'

'About his affairs, I reckon. Why do you ask?'

'Oh... no reason, Pastor. He seems a good man. A very kind man.'

'Indeed he is a good man and a kind man, for an Indian.'

'Your indulgence—I don't understand.'

'We expect less from him,' said Pastor Williams, settling his compact, middle-sized frame on his own cot. 'You see, Hubert, God created the Indians and ourselves for two different purposes and in two different ways, and he proclaimed this by making them a different colour from us. This is something everyone must accept. When you come to New England, you must accept it, so let me expound it now.' He paused and put the tips of his fingers together. 'Consider that I speak out of my proper knowledge. The Indian... is a child in many ways, very often a virtuous child, but still a child. His mind is less capable to be developed than yours or mine, because his brain is smaller, as our scientists have proved. To mingle with him truly is impossible, and no good can come of trying to. That's why, under God's guidance, we in New England have a design we call separateness: each kind keeps to itself as far as possible, which isn't always easy, because the fairer Indian will constantly try to pass as one of us—they're not all as dark as the colour you wear. Oh, by the by, we'll have that walnut-juice off your face any time. His Honour will open to the Captain that you...'

Williams's melodious voice died away. What he had just been saying had led him to do more than merely glance in Hubert's direction, and what he saw made him hurry across the apartment and look more closely. There were streaks of damp among the dye on the forehead and upper lip, and the mouth was clenched tight.

'What is it, child?'

'Please fetch... Samuel here.' Hubert spoke as if the muscles of his throat were strained.

'Samuel?'

'I mean Abraham. Please fetch him to me.'

'Hubert, what is it?'

'Oh, Father-Pastor, I've such, a pain, such a dismal pain.

'What pain? Where?'

'I think it started while we prepared at the Embassy. It's in my... there,' gasped Hubert, gesturing at the base of his abdomen.

'Let me take a look.'

'No, Pastor, you shouldn't, it's not your...'

'My dear, I'm a minister of Jesus and I have children of my own. Lie down straight. Yes, my son has eleven years, more than you, and he's a little taller, but he doesn't talk as well as you do. Raise yourself. I don't think children in New England are as well instructed as they are in your country. Not all our preceptors are... Well, Hubert, you cover yourself now and try to rest while I go to the dispensary and fetch you an opiate.'

Pastor Williams walked at a measured pace across the thick carpet to the door that led to the Archpresbyter's apartment. When there was no reply to his knock, he went in and slid the door shut behind him. The dark, heavily-panelled room, its walls hung with excellent coloured photograms of urban and rural New England, was empty. So was the small cubicle, enclosed with fogged glass, that held the sluice and commod-ation. Williams went out into the passage and broke into a run. The main hall at the head of the gangway was crowded with late arrivals and departing baggage-men. The Archpresbyter was not there, nor, as it proved, in the conversazione-room, the gallery or any other public place on that deck. At last Williams remembered, chided himself for his slowness of wit and hurried to the elevator. Soon a steel cage was carrying him and others up a steel tube that ran between the massive tanks of helium to the top of the envelope. Here was the observation-lounge, its curved ceiling made of a single sheet of glass by a process unknown, or never practised, outside New England. For the amusement and possible edification of passengers, two fair-sized and several smaller telescopes were available, together with star-maps, appropriate chairs, and curtaining-systems to exclude unwanted interior light. On the voyage out, Archpresbyter Pellew had spent most of the hours of darkness gazing at the heavens, and had more than once returned to the room when, as now, there was nothing to be seen from it but daytime sky. It was under this roof that he heard Williams's stammered report.

Within three minutes, they and the ship's surgeon, a fair-haired young man with a slow Cranmerian voice and quick eyes, were standing round the cot where Hubert lay. While left alone he had managed to wipe off most of the dye from his face and hands. He was sweating freely now. The surgeon inspected the reddened swelling with its hard and sofj: regions, asked a couple of questions, spoke some words of reassurance, and took the two clergymen off with him into the next-door apartment, where he immediately pulled the bell and motioned to the others to sit down.

'We have fourteen minutes before rise-off, which should be quite enough,' said the surgeon, writing on a tablet as he talked. 'The boy must leave the ship and be taken to a hospital aground here. I'll see to it. He needs an action I haven't the skill to perform. One of his testicles has become turned over and its blood-provision thereby cut off. Maybe both are affected—I can't tell for sure. This occurs now and then among those of his age, it seems by chance, or as if by chance. And suddenly, as in this case. Enter.' The uniformed man who had been told to do so did so, was given two leaves of manuscript and some spoken instructions, and withdrew. 'Someone with the necessary deftness must try to reverse what has happened and restore the blood-provision. Otherwise the organ, or organs, will die.'

'And that would mean... ' said Joshua Pellew.

'Possible removal.'

'What are the chances?'

'I can't tell.'

'Can't we delay till we reach Arnoldstown?'

'No, Your Honour,' said the surgeon.

'We shall be there in twenty hours.'

'One hour may be too long, sir. To save the organ, at any rate.'

'Surgeon, there are reasons of great import why the boy should remain aboard. Diplomatic reasons.'

'I'm sorry, Your Honour, but I can't be persuaded by any other reasons than surgical ones, and those are quite plain. Hubert, isn't it? Well, Hubert's health is in serious danger, maybe his life. For all I know, infection is possible. But my predictions can't be expert. Any more than my deftness. Whatever the event, Hubert must go aground immediately.'

The Archpresbyter looked at his chaplain, who had been thinking hard, and who now said, 'Your Honour: go to the Captain and tell him we have a stowaway here whom of course neither of us has ever seen before. Tell him the truth if you wish, but that must be the public tale. When the stowaway goes aground to have his sickness relieved, I go with him, out of simple Christian charity, to be of comfort. I'll join you by the next aircraft, or as soon as I can.'

'I mustn't let you do it, Al. The English constabulary will attach you.'

'On what inculpation? Once Hubert's sanction from the Embassy is destroyed, there's no link between him and any of us, none they can prove. And he'll be back in their hands—their task will be done. Now you must give me leave, sir. I have to get myself and my baggage out of this ship.'

As Williams spoke, motors fore and aft set up their deep throbbing, bells were rung and voices began to be heard repeating, 'All visitors aground.' Hubert was given an opiate by the surgeon, taken from the aircraft on a litter, put into a hospital express that had been standing by for casual needs, and driven off with Williams beside him. Before the vehicle had gone more than a hundred yards, Edgar Allan Poe was slowly standing up from her berth, and, by the time the hospital had been reached, she was already distant, half a mile above the western edge of Salisbury Plain and still ascending and accelerating. Williams watched her, his eyes screwed up against the sun, till her course brought her more directly between it and him, and he could no longer see her at all. Then he turned and followed the attendants who were carrying Hubert into the contingency department of the hospital.

Chapter Six

Four days later, though he himself was not at all clear about how long it had been, Hubert awoke from a vague dream of disappointment, of having failed to meet somebody because of a mistake about the place or time. It was the latest of several or many of the same sort, hard to distinguish now from equally vague recollections of comings and goings at his bedside, of being taken from where he was and brought back, of finding himself in another room where bright lights were reflected off metal. But other things were less obscure. Two officials had wanted him to tell them how he had come to be aboard the aircraft, putting their questions in soft voices but over and over again; as Pastor Williams had instructed him before the opiate was administered, Hubert had answered that he had made his way on his own with assistance from a succession of strangers, and that he could remember very little more. Very little? How much? Nothing. How much? Nothing. Father Dilke's curiosity about such points had been easier to satisfy, or to silence, and their talk had shifted to the state of affairs at the Chapel, including the prosperity of Decuman and the others that persisted despite certain understood considerations. Anthony would of course be told the truth in full (or rather that part of it he did not already know at first hand) as soon as possible, but the opportunity had yet to arise, because so far Hubert had seen him only in the company of their parents, and they must not hear any of the truth, not until these events were finished and done with, if then.

At the news that Hubert must be considered a runaway, and on the instruction that any clue to his whereabouts must be reported, Tobias Anvil had done nothing. At the further news, the next evening, that Hubert was lying ill of an unspecified malady in Cholderton Hospital, Tobias had shared it with his wife, to whom he had not addressed a word since the previous morning, that of LyalPs death. He had proposed that the two of them put aside their own difficulties for the time being, and she had agreed at once. On arriving at the hospital, they had been introduced to a surgeon, who had nothing to tell them except that Hubert was receiving attention and that no danger to his life was foreseen as things stood, and to a priest from New England, who had not been very communicative either. It seemed that the latter had insisted on interrupting his journey home, in case Hubert, with whom he had only the most recent and accidental connection, should feel the need of spiritual or other comfort. Even now, when he might have departed with perfect propriety, and indeed with an English transatlantic aircraft near the point of rise-off, he refused to move until he should know the issue of the boy's illness, of the nature of which he said he was altogether ignorant.

They had not had very long to wait. The surgeon had come back, a small paper in his hand; on seeing his face, Pastor Williams had turned and left without a word or a look. The Anvils had started to learn about what had afflicted their son, but after the opening phrases Margaret had collapsed, and Tobias had had to hear the rest of the story alone.

'The name of it is torsion, master, in this case bilateral, which is somewhat unusual. I penetrated the scrotum and tried to untwist the cords, but with no success in the result. The swelling has increased, and one testicle begins to be necrosed, to die. The other must follow. That process would spread unless checked. I must be ready to remove them both.'

'Is there anything different to be done?'

'Believe me, master, I'd do it if there were.'

'Very well.'

'Would you sign this document, sir? It authorises the action.'

Tobias had taken out his pocket-stylus. 'You'll need a priest's signature besides,' he had said in a voice that made the surgeon look at him suddenly.

'No, this is a casualty, master. Thank you. My deep regrets.

However, with God's help your son's health will soon be fully restored.'

'Amen.'

Hubert had not been told every detail of this, but, as on a previous occasion, his father had seen to it that he understood the essentials. Once again he went over them listlessly in his mind. The division where he lay was neither crowded nor noisy, but there was enough to distract him from his thoughts: the neat rapid movements of the nursing nuns, the shuffling progress of an aged vendor of eggs and fruit, the bell and shaken bowl of a mendicant friar. Then, through the double doors at the further end of the division, Anthony appeared. Hubert felt pleased. They greeted each other, and Anthony asked after Hubert's condition, a shade perfunctorily: it seemed he had a point to come to and, explaining that he could not stay long, he soon came to it.

'There's something I must let you know.' He looked rather grim.

'About me?'

'No, my dear, not about you. About mama. When she came to you here with papa and me, did you see anything you found curious or unaccustomed?'

'Yes,' said Hubert promptly. 'She was sad at what had had to be done to me, but there was more, more in her mind than me. And papa looked at her constantly, but she wouldn't look at him.'

'Yes. This isn't agreeable, but you must hear it. If you don't, you'll be doubtful and distressed, and you may cause hurt.'

'Oh, Anthony, say, for Jesus' sake.'

Anthony took his brother's hand and brought his face close. 'Mama and Father Lyall... mated together. Then Father Lyall was murdered—I found him dying when I came home after taking you to the Embassy.'

'Oh, Mother of God.'

'As you say. When papa tells you of it, as he'll have to at last, be sure to seem to hear something altogether new.'

'Yes, Anthony.'

'There's more,' said Anthony, tightening his grip. 'Father Lyall wasn't only murdered. He'd been altered besides. That was the more that mama thought of when she was here.'

'What a dreadful concurrence.' Hubert was mildly surprised at how flat the words sounded. 'Her... and then her son.'

'Not a concurrence-not merely coincident. He tried to obstruct your alteration; perhaps mama persuaded him. That ran him foul of Church and State. So the pigs murdered him by altering him and... and seeing to it that he bled to death, as a piece of instruction and purification. I had no doubt they were vile, but I thought that the law at least-'

'How do you know, Anthony?'

'I know. I know without having to be let know. But the rest I saw. When mama was told of what had been done, she screamed and wept—she confessed by her actions that... about herself and Father Lyall. Papa saw it too, and abused her. So, when she was here, she wouldn't look at him, and he looked at her because he was—'

'Yes, I see. How could mama do that with Father Lyall?'

'You'll understand when you—when you've considered it. You mustn't hate her, Hubert.'

'I don't; I grieve for her.'

Neither spoke for a time. Irritably, Anthony tossed a farthing into the friar's bowl and hushed his blessing. Then Hubert said, 'What will papa do? Will he turn her out of doors?'

'No. Our father isn't a bad man, simply one too much given to self-love. This may even improve him. Well, now you see why I had to let you know.'

'Yes, I do. Thank you.'

'Are you troubled? Greatly troubled?'

'No, not greatly.'

'You must consider everything, Hubert.'

Hubert promised he would and, after Anthony had gone, tried to do so, to consider everything. That began with his mother. She had suffered what anyone could have recognised as a cruel loss, and it was no more than the truth that he grieved for her; but, as he lay there, he found that the thought of that loss was being pushed aside—not for ever, not for long—by other thoughts, ones that would not go away.

He believed, he would have had to say he believed, that his mother had had done to her what Ned had done to his girl in the woods, or she could never have borne two children, and that to have had it done to her by Father Lyall had somehow been wonderful enough to make her betray herself to her husband on learning that that would never happen again. He believed those things, but not in the way he believed her words to him in the bower concerning the love of man and woman; from them, he could imagine how she felt, even though he now knew that she had been founding them on a love in every way forbidden; he could reconcile that with all the many things he knew about her, her smile, her step, her handling of a needle or a bowl of tea. To believe both in the same way, to be able to consider both at once, was as difficult as it would be to understand how the same part of a man's mind or body could make Ned talk and behave as he had in the brewery and make de Kooning paint his picture of Eve.

He, Hubert, was going to find that too much for him: he would never fit the pieces together, just as he would never decide what he really felt about having been altered. He saw for a moment that he would never have to do either: the sight of two lovers kissing, news of a friend's marriage, a successful performance in church or opera-house, the smile of a pretty woman, contemptuous stares and whispers as he passed, going among children, praise from an admired colleague, clumsy or malicious inquiries about what it was like to be as he was, suddenly-aroused memories of St Cecilia's, of the night of his escape, of any part of the time when he had been as others were—such small events would bring up one question or the other for a time, leave unaltered his state of confusion or apathy on the point, and then be forgotten as he went on with his life. Perhaps that was how everyone found themselves going about matters, nothing ever measured or settled or understood, not even when they came to die. After all, mankind was in a state of sin.

But what about God? It must be His will that things had turned out as they had, indeed more obviously so than seemed common. That meant that He must be praised for having put an end to all rebellion on the part of His child. The grave young monk who had twice at least visited Hubert's bedside had been positive that it was not required of the sick to pray on their knees, that prayers offered, when possible, in a pious attitude-face to the ceiling, legs extended and together, hands joined-were fully valid. Hubert turned on to his back and made the Sign of the Cross under the covers. In silence, barely moving his lips, he praised God for a time and thanked Him for His favour; then he turned to others. He petitioned that God should show his mother mercy and send her comfort, that He should soften his father's heart towards her, that He should not be angry with those who had helped him when he was a runaway: he ran through the list. What now? Perhaps, though he had ceased to rebel in action, there were still scraps of rebellion in his heart. He prayed for their removal and, after that, for resignation. Let him be patient whatever might befall; let him be not cast down nor puffed up; let him...

Hubert realised suddenly that he had stopped praying for some seconds or minutes. Instead, he had been putting his mind into the undirected state in which music, music that must be his because it was nobody else's, might be found there. There was none, which was unexpected after so long an interval: he had not thought of music in this way since before his journey to Rome. This might be a result of the action: the surgeon had warned him not to hope to be altogether well at once. To exercise his abilities, then, he would hear through the Prometheus Variations. This went well enough for a few minutes, but at about the half-way point, immediately before the section in triple time, he was forced to stop, because he could not remember how to go on; the harmonic sequence stayed in his head as firmly as ever, but the flow of the notes had been checked.

At this vexatious moment, one of the nuns, little Sister Ho from Indo-China, came bustling up, all smiles as usual, and presented him with a letter-packet. On the front, his name, nothing more, was written in a hand he thought he recognised; on the red-and-blue bordered card inside, the same hand had written, My wife and I are below. We know your true state. Hilda is with us. She believes you to be recovering from a stomach ailment. May any or all of us come to visit you for a few minutes?

Hubert could not decide at once. He wanted very much to see his friends, but was afraid that doing so might cause him to feel sad. The thought that they had come nearly a hundred miles to visit him made up his mind. He sent Sister Ho to fetch the three and put the card out of sight. Very soon they were with him. Dame van den Haag kissed him on the cheek, and squeezed his shoulder to show that she would have embraced him more warmly in private. The Ambassador gave him a steady glance and a firm handshake. Hilda stayed near the end of his bed, but smiled and nodded cheerfully. She was dressed for travelling, in a coat of some short reddish-brown fur and a pointed hat of the same material.

'How do you do, Hubert?' asked van den Haag.

'Very well, sir. They tell me I may go home at the week's end.'

'Good... I was grieved to hear of your sickness.'

'Yes, it came at an unfortunate time.'

'When I think of the immensity of the chance that brought it about, I'm reduced to silence. Just then. And just that. It's as if... I don't know. Maybe a man shouldn't speculate. Well, that's an end of the matter.'

'Yes, sir. I'm heartily grateful for all you did and all the risks you ran.'

'It's nothing, Hubert.'

Van den Haag, by the look in his eyes and the way he spoke, had been trying to tell Hubert of his sorrow at what had happened. Now bitterness had entered his tone for a moment, but he quickly roused himself and asked about the hospital, the nuns, the food. His wife had questions too. Hilda was silent, gripping the bed-rail, leaning back and pulling herself upright after a fashion Hubert had seen before, but she still smiled at him now and then. Quite soon, van den Haag took out his watch and said they must think of going.

'But, sir, it's only a minute since you arrived, and to have come so far for so little...'

'We have another reason. We'd still have come without it, but we have an aircraft to take. To New England.'

'How long will you stay, sir?'

'For a long time, I think. I'll be back here next month for a few days, but my office is ended. Our First Citizen has displaced me.'

'Not for what you did on my behalf?' asked Hubert in two sorts of distress.

'No, no. Well, only partly. I'd offended the English authorities a couple of times before. This was just the finale. They knew of your visit to me in Coverley, you were discovered in the aircraft apartment of a New Englander just come from my Embassy, and, although it seems they've learned nothing of the process that took you from one place to the other, that was enough. Yes, the suspect and the guilty are the same to a Romanist-my excuses, Hubert.'

'I should never have asked you... I should never have allowed you...'

Dame van den Haag laid her hand on Hubert's head. 'Peace, Hubert. We're honoured that you trusted us and asked our help. It was only an evil dispensation that exposed us. And—in private—my husband was never a happy ambassador. For that, a man has to love ceremony, and he doesn't.'

'But to be displaced...'

'He's talked already of resigning-no, Cornelius? And we miss our country.'

'But isn't your First Citizen angry?'

'Maybe, maybe,' said van den Haag, smiling. 'He may swell up with rage till he bursts, for me. Oh, it's quite true, I'm altogether too much a Schismatic for this function. So are most of my countrymen. It amounts to a national weakness.'

Half Hubert's distress had been half relieved. 'What function will you take to, sir?'

'I'll build a concert-hall and you shall come and sing in it. We must go, Anna. Yes, Hubert, I will and you shall. I'll write to you at St Cecilia's. Well, I reckon even in England a father can kiss his son, so...'

He bent and kissed Hubert and his wife did the same.

'Good-bye, my dear. The Lord protect you.' He turned to Hilda and said severely, 'Two minutes, maid.'

'Ya ya, paps.'

When they were alone, Hubert said awkwardly, 'Your father and mother are very gracious folk.'

Hilda came a little nearer and leaned her hip against the side of the bed. She spoke not fast but with great determination, as if she had taken a wager to finish what she had to say however it was received. 'We have a farm in Latimeria with two hundred Indians on it. Sometimes in the evening we go to their huts and see them dance and play. There are cows and pigs and hens—paps has me help in the dairy. And horses—I have one to myself, named Springer. I mean when I'm there he's mine. He's all black but for a white stocking on his far hind. Some of the tracks in the hills are rough, but he never stumbles, not Springer. It's good that we're done with England and Naples: we can be at the farm much more. Do you love horses?'

'Yes.'

'But maybe you love cities more than farms.' She looked at him, frowning, then said, businesslike as before, 'Would you come to our farm?'

'Yes, but-'

'The sun shines all day long and we swim in the lake. We bring fruit and cookies to eat there, and we light a fire and make hot chocolate, because the water's all melted ice and snow from the mountain. I give you this.'

With hasty movements, she took from the pocket of her coat and passed to him a plain cross enamelled blue, not the same blue as her eyes, but blue.

'Oh, Hilda, how pretty. You must have paid shillings for it.'

'No, nothing. It was mine.'

'Thank you,' said Hubert, closing his hand round the object. 'I wish I had something to give you in return.' (He could not give her, or anyone, the cross Mark had given him.)

She smiled and shook her head, looking at him very directly. 'No need, no need. So...'

'What was that word you said in the garden that afternoon? It began with a C or a K. You said it was an Indian word.'

'Kisahkihitin?'

'Yes. What does it mean?'

'Oh, now... Well: it means "I love thee." It's Indian. It's truly what they say to each other, the Indians. But other folk say it too. Sometimes. Good-bye till we meet.'

She pointed towards the window, but it must be New England she was pointing at. Before he could speak or make any movement, she had kissed her hand to him, turning away as she did so, and was running off down the aisle of the division.

Hubert realised at once that he had failed to wish Hilda, and her parents too, any kind of divine blessing on departure, and, more slowly and dimly, that that failure had not sprung from any fear of offending Schismatic susceptibilities as he had Domingo's. He would pray to God that the omission might be remedied, but he would not do that for the moment. He could not: he could think only of how it was impossible that he should go to New England before he was twenty-one years old, because his father must by law either go too or send an accredited proxy, and his father would do neither. And after he was twenty-one, indeed much sooner, the design was even more impossible, because he could never be with Hilda after it was obvious that he had been altered. What had Master van den Haag meant by his talk of a concert-hall and singing?

Here, the reasoning part of Hubert's mind shut down. He turned on to his side and pulled the covers up almost over his head, so that only a little light came through. With the blue cross still in his fist, he pretended that he and Hilda were riding horses, side by side. Then he found he could pretend that her horse was running faster and faster, but that his horse did the same, and, even when the ground began to slope upwards and the track became rough, they stayed near each other.

Pope John XXIV was nearly at the end of his day's business in the cabinet of his summer quarter: the documents on the porphyry work-table had been reduced to three, and only three persons remained in attendance. These were Count Paolo Maserati, Inventor-General to the Papacy, Father Gregory Satterthwaite, SJ, the privy secretary who had served His Holiness since eight years before his coronation, and Cardinal Berlinguer. Curtains of Swedish ermine kept out the late-afternoon sun and moved now and then in the slight breeze. At this hour, the plain, the City still scorched in the heat, but it was no more than pleasantly warm two and a half thousand feet up among the Alban hills, and, thanks to clever siting and careful building, the air seemed always fresh in the spacious apartments of the Castel Alto.

The one who evidently found it not quite fresh enough at the moment was Count Maserati. Despite the thinness of his biscotto-coloured woodman style suit, he was sweating a little. He said now in careful English, the mode and language in which the present Pope greatly preferred to be addressed, 'The size of the assay was determined by the Chamber after due process, Your Holiness.'

'On your advice, Count.' The Pope stared heavily through his eyeglasses. 'And, as we and you have just been let know, it was too small.'

'But no assay can ever be large enough to guarantee—'

'We're struck dumb by you. We don't know what to say, we're sure. There's no lack of subjects, after all. Over a hundred and fifty thousand without having to look outside Italy. And what are they? Heretics, apostates, runaways, New Englander spies, Turkish spies—grievous sinners every mother's soil. They mean to defy our authority, Count. Do you understand? They're-they're bad folk.'

'Yes, Your Holiness,' said Maserati with conviction.

'And what do you do? You take two hundred of them, a measly two hundred, and have them fornicate their heads off in between doses of Crick's Conductor. Ee, what a shocking fate! What do they care if they do lose their fertility?—they're inside again at the year's end, and they'll never need it there. Why did you not take two thousand? Four thousand? Then the deformities must have appeared, would have been ten or twenty times more likely to appear. Eh?'

'Our facilities would not have allowed so many, Your Holiness.' Maserati spoke with less conviction than before.

'Fuck your facilities! If they lack anything it's your blame and you know it. You are the Inventor-General, we believe.'

There was silence but for the faint sound of cicadas. Frowning, the Pope stared at the nearest wall. It was fifty feet away and, like those adjacent to it, was hung from top to bottom with olive-green velvet. The purpose of this was to rest the eye and to conceal from it the beautiful travertine stone of which the room was built. The ceiling, painted with an awe-inspiring Creation by Tiepolo, was likewise hidden by an immense sheet of white linen. No object was visible, not even a clock or a candlestick, that might show signs of more than the absolute minimum in the way of craftsmanship: not an inch of floor showed between the plain rugs, the table bore a thin but opaque cloth and the chairs were of some black-painted wood with tie'd-on cushions covered in white silk. It was not (so he often said) that John XXIV disliked art, simply that he saw enough of it at other times to make its absence refreshing when he was at work. Throughout the rest of the building, as throughout the Vatican palaces except for the various cabinets there, art flourished unchecked, indeed perceptibly added to in one room and another by the reigning Pope himself, who knew that this was one ready method of furthering his very settled ambition to be remembered with exceptional vividness as long as the Papacy should last.

The Vicar of Christ let Maserati wait for it a few moments longer, then said with some curiosity, 'How old are you, Count?'

'Fifty-seven, Your Holiness.' Maserati spoke as if the fact singled him out for special and favourable notice, which was what he always tried to do when the Pope asked him this question.

'Well, that's not truly old as men go today. Some reach the zenith of their powers at such an age.' (The Pope was fifty-four.) 'And then again some... begin... to decline. Do you feel that you begin to decline?'

'No, Your Holiness.'

'Another error of half this proportion and out go you. Further than that door into the bargain.'

'Yes, Your Holiness,' said Maserati, trying this time to hide his relief.

Here, Cardinal Berlinguer broke in. His English was not nearly as good as the Count's, but then it did not need to be: he had got his red hat two years earlier than the Pope and was second only to him in power. 'May I speak?'

'Oh, we suppose so,' said the Pope impatiently. 'There are two matters still to be conferred upon.'

'I will be short. Consider these numbers. The children we expect in the year is eight thousand and some more. The children who are born is six thousand and some more. This is just the... denatalita...'

'Fall in the birth-rate,' supplied the Jesuit.

'Yes, which we want, exact. The deformed children is one per centum and some more. This is almost seventy. Corsica is three thousand three hundred... square miles and some more. This is one deformed child in fourty-seven square miles and some more. This is nearly the same as the English island of Jersey. This morning I study it. Is this... so bad?'

The Jesuit, a pale, thin-lipped man of fifty, said without expression, 'The design was to run at first for ten years. What do you say to ten deformed children in Jersey, Your Eminence? And some more.'

'It is not so good,' agreed Berlinguer, nodding seriously. 'But I ask is it so bad.'

'We'll be buggered!' The Pope sounded incredulous. 'Here you are, two grown men, and you talk of Jersey, where all they do is farm or idle. We and you don't intend to work our design only in such parts, leave alone dirty little savage places like Corsica. Consider not the square miles but the number of folk. There are almost twelve hundred thousand in London. If Crick's Conductor goes into the drinking-water there, in ten years we have...' The point of his stylus moved quickly over the tablet in front of him. 'We have almost three thousand children with this particular deformity, and in all England... over a hundred thousand.'

Cardinal Berlinguer spread his hands. 'But—'

'Yes, it is so bad! There'd be ill feeling among our flock, and if there's one thing we can't abide it's that. There'd be talk of divine displeasure, special pilgrimages to us and all manner of nuisance. And don't forget the matter of safety. Ay, that's what we said—safety. Do you think that no one in Corsica, even in Corsica, has remarked or will ever remark that the year of the deformities was also the year when officers were uncommonly interested in records touching births, and when the births themselves were uncommonly few?'

'Shoot them,1 said Berlinguer.

'Why, you... You go too fast, our lad. We're all for a bit of shooting when it's needed, but to shoot the guilty folk means rinding them, and rinding them means questioning, and questioning means a further threat to safety. We won't have it, do you hear? Crick's Conductor must not be applied again as it now stands.' The Pope turned to Father Satterthwaite. 'Have London let Crick know and order him to continue his trials. No, fetch him here to us... Now, as to our plague,' he went on, with a glance at the second remaining document, 'we need say very little to you. Our Inventor-General was right at first and at last, as he so often is.'

None of the other three showed the smallest surprise at this change of tenor, certainly not Maserati, who knew quite well that the last phrases were intended to harrow his companions for talking of Jersey, not to mollify him in the least.

'Yes, the indications were plain enough after the provings at East Runton and, uh, that Frenchie spot. The principle was too deadly to be transmitted. By which we mean'—the Pope gave a series of weighty nods at this point-'that the bastards awoke to life immortal before they could pass it on to their neighbours. The Sitges proving wasn't really needed, but we like to be on the safe side, as you know. We're afraid you'll just have to bear with us. We know we can rely on you to do that. Well, that's nearly four hundred souls the fewer, anyhow. And at least they didn't die in vain. To be reminded that the wrath of God can be strange and terrible and sudden does folk a power of good. Cease all trials of deadly principles,' he added abruptly to the Jesuit.

'All?' asked Berlinguer.

'Ay, all.' His Holiness gave a long sigh. 'Safety again. See, if we were a canny sod in a village on the coast and we learned of these incidents, do you know what we'd do? We'd conduct a design of night sentinels to watch for strangers, for anything out of the common coming by sea or land. That's what we'd do. And then...'

'I said we were wrong to publish these things.'

'Worse to let rumour do its work. Now, we graciously thank the honoured Inventor-General for his attendance and give him our blessing.'

There was more silence when Maserati had taken his leave.

The Pope, neatly-brushed head lowered, gazed at the final paper on the tablecloth before him. His expression was very grim indeed. Berlinguer and Satterthwaite exchanged looks of foreboding.

'It's all too slow,' said the Pope finally. 'Try this, try that, try the other damned thing, give it time and it'll sort itself out. But time's what we and you are short of. Time runs out. We blame these medical inventors. For ever on the go saving life, extending life, protecting life and we don't know what all. Are you aware, Father Satterthwaite,' he demanded with an air of challenge, 'that at this pace there'll be eighty million folk in England by the year of Our Lord 2000?'

'Yes, Your Holiness,' said the Jesuit, who was well enough aware, having himself supplied the figure to his master. 'Too many to feed.'

'Too many to rule,' said Berlinguer.

'There's nought else for it,' said the Pope.

'War,' said Berlinguer.

If we could only have it our way, it'd be simplicity itself. The English clobbering the bloody Frenchies, that's how it ought to go. But it can't be done. We'd have to intervene, quickly and decisively, else our authority would be weakened, and to our way of thinking that's out of the question. Ah well. Fetch us the Secretary of the War Chamber, the Captain-General, the High Admiral, the Superintendent of Aircraft and the comandantes in the Active Sphere. By the week's end, Father. Eh, it'll be a right cordial to give old Abdul a sore nose. We're afraid we don't take kindly to Mahometans. All those wives. And disputing our authority as the Almighty's vice-regent. He wouldn't much care to have Bulgaria pinched off him, wouldn't our Abdul. Not but what he won't live to thank us at last. After all, he has an excess of folk himself, or will have inside a generation. But we must admit we'd as soon there was some other way.'

This theme was resumed when, Berlinguer having departed to his own castello down the valley, the Pope and his secretary stood on the long terrace that overlooked the plain and, in the furthest distance, the Tyrrhenian Sea. Only a little nearer, it seemed from here, lay Rome, still bright in the declining sun with tints of honey, pale rose, sienna and terracotta; by comparison, the two men were no more than a step from the ruins of the Castel Gandolfo, a Papal abode from early in the seventeenth century until the fatal night in 1853 on which a certain Percy Shelley, excommunicate English runaway and minor versifier, had set fire to it before perishing by his own hand. And the vineyard of the Castel Alto ran up almost to its walls, the source of a wine highly esteemed all over Latium but altogether disregarded by its proprietor, who now clutched a pewter mug of the Yorkshire stingo he regularly imported in bottle by aircraft.

'It's a cruel shame, Greg, truly it is,' said the Pope, munching his lips together as he drank. 'All those men doomed to die. In the cause of Christ, we know. It's the wrong way on, look. The folk to go for are the females. What we mean—a hundred females and one male, suppositional limit to pregnancies in any given stretch of time, one hundred; a hundred males and one female, suppositional limit, one. Our word, if only we could put the women in the field, like in that book of Burgess's. Interesting lad, Burgess. It's a mortal pity he had to go and... Well, as we said, we do what we must do. But if we could just go about it differently...'

'Aside from artificial regulation.' Only Satterthwaite was on such terms with the Pope as to be able even to utter this phrase in his presence.

'That bugger Innocent XVII. We'd give him innocent. A Switzer, he was, and you can't whack them for contrariness. As soon as folk start to really believe-we're not talking about perishing inventors and suchlike, but sensible folk like us and you—as soon as they start to believe that the birth-rate desperately needs control, they go and put it to Innocent that he must sanction artificial regulation in some form. And what does he do? He ups and publishes a Bull declaring any such practice to be murder and its perpetrators to be subject to immediate excommunication. Do you follow us, Greg?'

'Oh yes, Your Holiness,' said the Jesuit, understating the case, in the sense that after all these years he was ahead of the Pope as well.

'Good. Now you see where that lands us and all the Supreme Pontiffs between us and Innocent. To revoke a Bull of an import like that, even to moot it, would lay any Holy Father open to a charge of heresy; at the very best, he must abdicate. Well, we say any: we mean any who's not so powerful that he hasn't a single enemy or rival in the whole Sacred College. In other words, more powerful than us, which we flatter ourselves is saying something. Yes, friend Berlinguer and his merry men would be at us like a pack of wolves and we'd have a Council on our hands before we knew where we were. We've not the slightest intention of landing up like our unfortunate predecessor and namesake in fourteen-whatever-it-was, thank you very much. That's that. And, as you may have heard us mention before, the only other design, to tacitly condone artificial regulation, to turn a blind eye, like Nelson at Lipari—that would be just as fatal. Mortal sin flourishing unrebuked by the Vicar of Christ? Don't make us laugh. See, it's already flourishing as much as we dare permit from Iceland to Cape Town.'

The Pope lifted his mug and a manservant hurried forward to pour a fresh bottle of stingo. Father Satterthwaite declined an offer of more white wine.

'Well, Greg, we and you mustn't take on. There are bright spots. One comes up tonight, when young Hubertus Incus commences in Rome. A notable occasion.'

'I'd thought that music wasn't among Your Holiness's keenest pleasures.'

'You know bloody well it isn't, but appearing in the character of the foremost of all lovers of art is. You know that too. And this time there'll be a mite added. Now and then our thoughts will turn to Abbot Thynne, once the lad's principal. He's a right gowk, is Thynne. Someone lets him know-he'd never have guessed it himself-that we require Hubertus in our city. And what does he do? He goes and petitions his Cardinal Archbishop to intercede for him with the King. We ask you! What could the King have done, a mere babe, new to the post, not yet crowned even? His father might have made a good show, but'—the Pope shook his head slowly—'no more than a show. As it is, of course, young William hears not a word of the matter, and... How does Thynne suppose a man's given Canterbury under an English Pope? As we said, he's a gowk. Well, we trust he soon settles down nicely in Madras. It's a fine city, we hear, though a touch hot in summer.'

The great bells began to sound in the tower above their heads.

'We say, is it that already? We must go and make ourselves beautiful for our guest. And you, Greg, hop to the transmitter and forewarn the Captain-General and the others of our design. No time like the present-that's our motto.'

Over fifteen years afterwards, in the first week of December, a new production of Valeriani's L'Arkcchinata was put on at the Teatro Nuovo dell' Opera. The recent alterations and additions to the building, designed to fit it for performances of of works using the largest forces, such as the present one, Wagner's Kreuz and the Butterworth trilogy, had been the occasion of an impressive architectural feat. The opera-house now dominated the southern side of the Piazza Venezia, but by far the greater part of the medieval and ancient structures at the site had been preserved: in particular, the remnants of the tomb of Publius Bibulus, a landmark dating back to the first century BC, had been skilfully incorporated into the eastern end of the ridotto. To stand at that spot was to feel the continuance of all the centuries of Roman history as a living thing; so, at least, Pope John XXIV, now in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, had declared in a public letter to the principal mason.

On a great chord, sounded by seventy voices and more than a hundred and fifty instruments, including two piano-fortes and organ, the first of the two acts ended. A couple of minutes later, Hubertus Incus was stretched on a silk-covered day-bed in his private green-room, eyes closed and body relaxed. His wig and outer costume hung near by; letters and tachygrams, flowers, fruit and confectionery covered a large marquetry table-top and overflowed on to the floor. Now and then, he sipped at the glass of still mineral water which, by invariable custom, was to be his only refreshment until after the performance. There came a tap at the door and his dresser answered it. A liveried usher handed over two name-cards, turning his head aside and raising his eyes to heaven in a way that told of much pressure or reward. The dresser gave a shrug and approached his master.

'No, Ettore, nessuno.'

'Ma e dui gentiluomi inglesi, maestro—ecco.'

'Madre de Dio! By St George's sacred... Well. Si si, Ettore, subito.'

Very soon the usher had admitted two well-attired young men in their later twenties. The shorter of them was an ordinary-looking priest in clerical black and grey, the taller a handsome dark-haired fellow in slashed velvet with pink lace at throat and wrists. What followed was an interval of happy shouts, embraces and hand-wringings.

'Hubert, my dear! It's truly you, then!'

'Thomas! Mark! After so long!'

'You look not a day older, Hubert,' said Mark. 'Quite unchanged.'

'Oh, taller,' said Thomas. 'Grander. And far richer!'

Upon that came more laughter and an offer of wine, which both visitors accepted readily.

'You surprise me, Mark-I remember you as one likely to grow into a famous abstinent.'

'Oh, Hubert, was I so dismal? Tom and Decuman must have improved me after you left us.'

'Do you hear of Decuman? Where is he now?'

Thomas grinned. 'At this moment, most likely in the parlour or bedchamber of some Bulgarian miss. He serves in the troops of occupancy there. Before, he was at the taking of Adrianople and won a cordon for valour.'

'I can well believe it. By St Peter, what a war that was.'

'Thirty million Christians dead, men, women and children.'

'Well, at least we won,' said Thomas, trying to restore a light tone. 'When the Turk entered Brussels I thought we were done for, and then... Strange that he should come so far and be dislodged so fast. Enough. Hubert, your voice is a miracle still. Mark and I have been in raptures.'

'Thank you both, I'm pleased.'

'What a career you've had,' said Mark. 'It must be a great satisfaction to you—the practising of the art, I mean.'

'What do you do in Rome, the pair of you? You didn't come all these miles to hear me sing.'

'Wrong,' said Thomas. 'In my case, wrong. I am here on just that purpose. Oh, for the rest of the presentation too, and the state of the theatre. Let me explain. I have a post with a weekly journal called the Onlooker. They sent me to write of this occasion and of you especially.'

'I knew you'd be a writer of some kind.'

Mark said with a smile, 'He's a writer of another kind as well, though he's too modest to let you know himself. Of a most particular kind.'

'Not TR?'

'Certainly TR,' said Thomas. 'Oh yes, it's grown respectable since the war, some say because of the war. Even Mark will read it quite openly.'

'I never see it now. By the look of you, it must reward you well enough.'

'Nothing ever seems enough to a man with a wife and a child and another on the way.'

'I can imagine. You're in Rome about Church affairs, Mark?'

'Like Tom, to hear you. Or not altogether like Tom: I needed to make a pilgrimage, and I wanted to see the Vatican, but it wasn't till I found he was to come that I needed and wanted pressingly. And you've justified me, Hubert. Such music. Such a prodigious work.'

'Yes.'

'You speak as if you could do better,' said Thomas jocularly.

'Not now.'

'Do you still compose? Old Master Morley asked me, if ever I saw you, to ask you that.'

'No. Tell him he was right: there's never time. Oh, don't mistake me-of course this is a prodigious work, but some of that is in its size. Too much. Valeriani couldn't or wouldn't see that what he must do was simply abandon the whole system of...'

'We'll leave you now, my dear,' said Thomas, breaking the silence. 'Will you sup with us later?'

'Yes! Wonderful! But I must be host. Come back here afterwards and we'll go in my express.'

When the time came, Hubertus Incus moved in front of the long glass to be dressed. His eye fell on the reflection of the two crosses he wore round his neck. One of them was Mark's gift; he would produce it at supper and tell of all that had happened from when he received it till his capture aboard the Edgar Allan Poe—to talk of it as a simple capture was easiest and best. The other cross, the blue one, would probably excite inquiry; he would say as usual that it was his mother's gift. That too was easiest and best.

His wig was fitted; his paint was freshened; he was ready. Soon he stood in the wings, about to launch 'Che e migliore?', by common consent the aria of Valeriani's that made the heaviest demands on skill and musicianship. The double-basses began their pedal and he advanced on to the stage.

Two corpulent old men sat in the second row of the royal tier. Neither moved so much as a finger until the voice had ceased and the great auditory was filled with applause that quite blotted out the orchestral postlude. Then they turned to each other. Tears covered the face of the older of the two, who nodded his head slowly.

'Deo gratia,' said Viaventosa.

'Amen,' said Mirabilis.

THE END