A minute or so later, a questioning moo was heard from the pasture. As if by prearrangement, Hubert straightened himself and the calf trotted off; contentedly, he watched it out of sight. Only now did he remember The Orc Awakes: he must have dropped it somewhere in the brewery. Well, there was no going back for it. Should he walk on up to the woods? No: if he did, he would have to think about what he had seen there the previous week, to compare that with what he had seen just now and as much as he had understood of what he had been told, and from all this to try to imagine himself in Ned’s case, and he shied away from such a task. He would go instead to the study-room and write out the little improvvisazione he had thought of coming up in the rapid.
While the clock was striking five, he carried the completed manuscript across a corner of the quadrangle to the small concert-chamber where composition was usually taught. The ceiling and four wall-panels had been painted with scenes from the life of St Cecilia, including what was now known to be her unhistorical martyrdom in the year 230. The artist was supposed to have been a mid-eighteenth-century Prefect of Music at the Chapel, and although it was also supposed, or at least hoped, that he had been a better musician than artist, most folk enjoyed what he had painted. Hubert did; as he mounted the low platform and sat down at one of the two piano-fortes there, he gave the figure of the saint’s husband, known to generations of clerks as ‘the tipsy Roman’, an affectionate glance. Raising the lid of the instrument, he began to play the Prometheus Variations, Beethoven’s last complete keyboard work. It would never do to be caught tinkling some trash of one’s own.
Presently, Master Morley hurried in, his footfalls heavy on the wide elm boards. Hubert stopped playing and stood up.
‘My excuses, Clerk Anvil: the organer kept me at the oratory. Now what have you for me today?’
‘Here, master.’
At his work-desk to one side of the platform, Morley turned over the sheets of music-paper at a fair speed to start with, then more slowly. Twice he went to the nearer piano-forte and, without sitting down, played short passages. Halfway through a second study of the manuscript he spoke, in the voice that was as heavy as his tread.
‘How long was this in the writing, Anvil?’
‘In the writing down, master, no more than—’
‘My question was ill drawn. How long in the composing?’
‘It’s hard for me to tell, master. Six minutes or seven.’
‘It’ll be that long in the playing.’
‘Forgive me, master, of course it was much longer in the composing.’
Morley stared past Hubert at one of the wall-paintings. ‘Anvil,’ he said at last: ‘I know you meant six or seven minutes in the composing. What did you mean by composing?’
‘I . . . My mind was those minutes in going through it. Or...’ Hubert hesitated, but the Prefect still stared. ‘Or it was those minutes going through my mind.’
‘You tell me it came to you from somewhere else.’ The voice was at its harshest now.
‘No—no, master, it was inside my mind already when I . . . looked.’
‘Very well. These F naturals here.’ Morley pointed with a stubby finger. ‘And again near the end.’
‘Oh yes.’ Hubert sang a short phrase.
‘Why did you have your hands in front of you then?’
‘Did I so? I expect because it’s the clarinet—I was . . .’
‘What clarinet, Anvil? This is a keyboard piece.’
‘Yes, master, but I heard that voice as a clarinet.’
‘And the other voices too, you heard them as flutes and violas and horns and so forth?’
‘No, sir. Two oboes, two clarinets and two bassoons.’
‘So this here is a keyboard transcription of a wind-sextet movement you haven’t put on paper.’
‘Yes, master.’
‘Are all your keyboard pieces transcriptions of non-existent originals?’
‘Oh no, master: the theme and variations was for pianoforte.’
‘Indeed. Now at last to these F naturals. The key is G major, and elsewhere, here for example, we find the F sharp we expect. Well?’
‘They’re different places, master.’
‘When I protest that the leading-note of G major is F sharp, what’s your answer?’
‘That where I’ve written F natural nothing but F natural is possible.’
Morley was silent for nearly a minute. Then he said, ‘They let me know you go soon to be altered.’
‘Yes, master.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it. Oh, it means an eminent career for you and I wish you well. But it also means an end to your activities as composer.’
‘Surely not, sir.’
‘As surely as can be. Name me six pieces of any kind that a singer of the least eminence has written. You see? Consideration will show that a singer’s life is too much lived with others, too remunerating in other ways than financial, simply too full to allow of composition. So I’m a little dismal, because you’re by far the best pupil I’ve ever had. But in any case I must lose you soon as pupil: soon I’ll be able to teach you nothing more.’
‘You are too gracious, master.’
Again Morley stared at the painting. ‘Why is it, Anvil, do you think, that St Cecilia is the patron saint of the blind as well as of music?’
Anything Hubert might have had to say to this was never heard, because just then Lawrence came into the concert-chamber and up to the two on the platform.
‘Your indulgence, master,’ he said, and then, ‘Clerk Anvil, my lord Abbot wishes you to come to him at once.’
‘What have I done?’ asked Hubert in fear, thinking of his encounter with Ned.
‘Nothing ill that I know of, clerk,’ said the servant, smiling slightly. ‘You’re to go to Rome.’
As the other two moved off, Morley sighed and nodded his head, his eyes shut.
The Eternal City Rapid pulled out of Bayswater Station, its only stop between Coverley and Rome, at 6.25 a.m., and moved slowly, through networks of points and round tight bends, across London, across the river and into the north-west corner of the county of Kent, which was still virtually co-extensive with the ancient kingdom. There the track straightened itself, changing direction only in the longest and shallowest of curves, its continuously-welded rails on their cushioned sleepers moving through natural obstacles, not round them: the work of the great Harrison. The half-mile-long train—three triplex tugs, 30 passenger baruches, 38 cargo vans—accelerated steadily, but it did not attain its top speed of 195 m.p.h. until the towers of Canterbury were to be seen out of the windows on the left side. Soon came the famous moment when it emerged from the Dover cliffs and entered on to the Channel Bridge, Sopwith’s masterpiece, 23 miles 644 yards of road and railtrack carried between 169 piers. Little more than half an hour’s travel on the French side took the Rapid as far as Clermont, the slipping-point for Paris where it freed itself of its rearmost quarter. As mid-morning approached, tunnels became longer and more frequent, but all were left behind in a matter of seconds except the 15-odd miles of the Bognanco itself. The track ran downhill through Milan, crossed the Po on stilts 200 feet high, climbed again into Parma and moved finally towards the coastal plain. The journey ended in the Stazione S. Pietro at 1.32—nearly a quarter of an hour late.
It had all impressed Hubert enough to distract him from more than one troubling or puzzling question, of which not the least was the reason for his summons to Rome. The cabin his father had hired was like several parts of a beautiful house combined into one. After the luggage had been settled, the two of them moved to a kind of parlour by the window. Here there were leather chairs with gold-braided velvet cushions, tall potted plants, lithographs of views of Rome, a row of picture-books, a locker containing a chess-set and packs of playing-cards and much else; but Hubert attended only to things on the outside. As the train went faster, nearby objects like hedges or dwellings of the people became an indifferently-coloured lengthwise blur, but he very soon
learned to overlook them in favour of more distant and important things: churches, great houses, busy streets and squares, and at different times no fewer than four aircraft, mighty envelopes of gas on the long run to Africa or the Antipodes.
Breakfast was taken at a polished oval table on which the linen, china, silver and glass might have been made the previous day; the bread the Anvils ate with their hurtleberry conserve must have been baked that day, perhaps on the train itself: nothing seemed impossible. The meal was brought in (by two very polite attendants, one stern, the other timid) long after the train had reached its full speed, and Hubert noticed that, probably in consequence, the timid attendant had to take some special care when he poured the tea. The remnants being cleared away, something like a luxurious bedchamber offered itself in the form of couches shaded by silk screens, but Hubert stayed by the windows to see what he had never seen before.
The passage over the Alps was like flying in a dream: the always startling burst into bright sunshine, the huge steady leap between tiers of mountains and its abrupt cessation in the darkness of the next tunnel. When the streams and rivers began again, they had changed their colour from brown or grey to blue, green or turquoise. The countryside was the same as that in the background of some very old paintings Hubert remembered seeing on a visit to the Royal Gallery in Coverley: the sloping fields, the thin dark trees, even the small clouds on their own in the sky. Then, after slowing so gradually that the process could only be seen, not felt, the train came into Rome, where every building that was not a church looked like a palace, and stopped without the slightest jar.
On the pavement beside the track, the Anvils were soon joined by one of the family servants carrying their slender overnight baggage; the man had of course travelled in the narrow cabin allotted his kind at the rear of the baruch. Hubert thought he had never seen so many folk at once: droves of pilgrims, clerics in ones and twos, officials with their staffs, men of affairs like his father, all making their way through crowds of vendors who pressed on them flowers, fruit, patties, flasks of wine, gewgaws, facsimiles of paintings and cheap-looking religious objects. After a short pause at the post of inspection, there was more of the same in the square outside, together with a great concourse of wheeled traffic; every vehicle seemed to make twice as much noise as its English counterpart, just as every Roman shouted instead of talking. The air was hot and damp. Hubert felt relieved when, after only a couple of minutes, a public was secured. Hunger, fatigue, confusion and anxiety weighed upon him. The first two yielded in due time to the excellent dinner provided by the Schola Saxonum, where rooms had been reserved for them, but in other respects he was still uncomfortable when, at ten minutes to four that afternoon, he and his father approached the Vatican Palace on the north side of St Peter’s Square.
Nine great windows, each with a decorated half-dome above it, dominated the facciata of the building, the one in the centre distinguished by a balcony and an abundance of high-relief sculpture; it must be from here that the Holy Father gave his addresses to the multitude. Below the windows ran a gallery, and below that, at ground level, an arcade, both of plain stone. The main gate, thirty feet high and flanked by massive granite pillars, was at the end nearer the basilica. Next to it was an incongruously modern and undignified structure, a sort of wooden hut with a flat roof. Here Anvil senior presented himself to a cheerful young monk, produced an identifying document and was evidently found to be expected. The monk nodded to the carmine-uniformed guard who, with shouldered fusil, stood directly at the gate, and the guard opened the wicket. Hubert was stepping over the sill when he noticed a third man who seemed to be stationed at the entrance with an eye to visitors; he was in plain clothes (dark-blue jacket and straw-coloured breeches), but he wore them as if they had been chosen for him.
Inside, there was only one way to go: down the wide path that curved to and fro between masses of trees and shrubs growing so close together that, within a dozen paces, the palace itself could be seen only in stray glimpses and there was no sound except birdsong, some of it unfamiliar. The surface of the path consisted of flat-topped stones about the size of a crown piece, none regular in shape but each perfectly fitted with its neighbours, no two apparently alike in colour, any that the sun caught glinting as if wet. On either side, now and then overgrown in parts by stray foliage, and often a good deal weathered, there stood at five-yard intervals classical statues in marble or bronze, portrait busts on stone pedestals, sections of column with spiral bands of carving, fragments of colossi that included a huge sandalled foot irregularly shorn off above the ankle. Once, the path divided to accommodate an inactive fountain in a basin of some matt black substance; further on, it led straight through the considerable remains of what Hubert took to be a very ancient pagan temple, its walls, floor and low ceiling covered with designs he could not interpret. He scarcely heard his father’s expressions of admiration or amazement, except to notice that they sounded genuine; he himself was more and more interested in reaching the end of their journey along the path, which oppressed him in some way.
When at last they did, they had come in sight of a stone staircase at the end of another arcade and leading up to another gallery. From the foot of the staircase, a functionary with a curved sword and a splendid purple sash beckoned the new arrivals by holding out his hand and gently curling the fingers up in the palm. They followed him down the gallery past a series of shut doors, one of which, smaller than the others, had bars across it. Halfway along they turned off at a narrower staircase with a gilded ceiling and low-relief grottescos on the walls. On the second floor they went through a circular chamber in which everything from floor to ceiling seemed to Hubert, in the couple of seconds available to him, to be made of ivory, a square chamber in which everything likewise seemed to be covered with mosaic, and an L-shaped chamber full of more classical statuary, some of which he thought he recognized from books. Next was what must be an ante-chamber. The further door of this was flanked by another guard in carmine uniform and another man wearing plain clothes that seemed not to belong to him. The official with the sword opened this door, or rather half of it, spoke to someone on the far side, again made his courteous beckoning gesture to the Anvils, and withdrew, shutting the door after them.
It was a lofty room with an immense window, no doubt one of the row to be seen from the square; through it, Hubert had a momentary sight of spires and roofs with statues on them, and, further off, domes and towers. Frescos and oil paintings covered the walls. A line of padded benches in carved wood and gilt ran down the wall opposite the window; all were empty. So was the elevated golden throne at the far end. A figure robed in scarlet smiled and spoke, raising his voice as four o’clock sounded from innumerable bells.
‘Salvete, magister et magistrule.’
‘Salvete, Vestra Eminentia,’ said Tobias Anvil, bowing low. ‘Dominus vobiscum.’
‘Et cum vobis.’
‘I am Cardinal Berlinguer. I welcome you to Rome. I will take you to His Holiness. Please to come with me.’
Beside the door they were to leave by, there hung a picture familiar to Hubert from countless facsimiles, Tintoretto’s ‘Lepanto’, one of the most renowned works of art in the world. Hubert did not dare to linger; he just had time for a single glance at his favourite detail, the boarding of a Turkish galley by a lone warrior who was always taken (in England and her Empire) to be Sir Richard Grenville. Then they moved out, up a steep stair, across an enclosed bridge where suits of armour stood in ranks, and finally through another door. Cardinal Berlinguer departed.
Hubert found himself in what might have been the parlour of a small English manor house, with solid oak furniture, chintz covers and what looked like trees and shrubs outside—on a roof ? A broad, plumpish man of fifty or more, with eyeglasses and a rather pale complexion, made a satisfied noise as he came over from the window. He was wearing the kind of dark-grey suit that any lay visitor to the Anvil house might wear. Hubert looked about for the Pope, but his fa
ther had gone down on one knee and bowed his head, so he hastened to do the same. He kissed a plain ring with a gold cross on it, felt a hand laid on his own bowed head and heard some words in Latin spoken. They were not spoken clearly and he did not understand them all, but they calmed him.
‘Ah, now, please make yourselves comfortable, the pair of you, You’ll find that’s a good chair, Master Anvil, and Hubert lad, you settle yourself down next to us. Our excuses for receiving you thus meanly apparelled: we’re so often required to appear swaddled like a babe that we’ve come to take advantage of every private moment. Rome will be so hot in these months. Sometimes we feel we’d give our throne for a few breaths of a North Sea breeze. Well, tell us, what do you think of our city? You’ll have been here before, no doubt, master.’
If challenged, Hubert would have said that of course he had known that Pope John XXIV was an Englishman, was a Yorkshireman; but knowledge was different from being faced with the fact. He willed himself to believe that this pleasant, homely-looking person was indeed God’s representative on earth and also the most powerful man alive. His father was answering the question.
‘A number of times, Your Holiness. It still fills me with extreme awe. So much to be aware of. Republican Rome, Imperial Rome, medieval Rome, modern Rome, and above all—’
‘Ay, there is that. For us, there’s almost too much. It’s more than eight years since our coronation and we still couldn’t truly say we knew the place. And it’s not like home. Take our church, for instance.’ The Pope moved his dark head to one side, presumably to indicate St Peter’s. ‘You must have remarked the outside of it on your way here, Hubert. How did it impress you?’
‘We saw the inside of it too, Your Holiness,’ said Hubert, surprised by how easy it was to sound natural. ‘It impressed me very greatly.’
‘So it should, lad, so it should, considering in whose sanctified name it stands. We meant in what way did it impress you as a piece of architecture. Did it match your expectations?’