The other pair were plump, dandified and unhealthy-looking. One had moist eyes and an absurd mustach that might almost have been painted or pencilled on; his companion, despite his pallor, seemed shrewd and full of life. Their names showed that they came from Rome, their accents that they had not been born there. That was normal and natural; the reason for the high pitch of their voices, if neither normal nor natural, hardly needed to be guessed at; what faintly disconcerted Clerk Anvil was the look each of these two gave him when he was brought forward to them—a considering, measuring look. He remembered being in the library at home when a painter had been starting work on a portrait of his father: the man had scrutinized his sitter in something of the same careful but unobtrusive fashion.
All four of the visitors proceeded to make laudatory remarks about Clerk Anvil’s performance in the Requiem that day. He was used to compliments on his singing, in the sense not that he was unmoved by them but that he had learned how to receive them, and so was able to make part of his mind free to observe that the most considered comments were offered by the shrewd, pale man and the warmest by the important New Englander. It was with the latter that he found himself standing slightly apart when the Abbot took the rest of the company off to admire his tapestry.
‘May I know your first name, young master?’
‘Here in this Chapel, I’m only a clerk, my lord. My Christian name is Hubert.’
‘Now it’s my turn to correct you, Hubert. I am nobody’s lord. Being the New Englander Ambassador means I’m sometimes My Excellency, and then sometimes I’m Citizen Cornelius van den Haag, but with you I reckon I can just be sir.’
‘Very well, sir. Van den Haag sounds like a Netherlander name.’
‘And so it is, or was. My ancestors were transported from that country over four hundred years ago, along with . . . But enough of my concerns; yours are far more interesting. What age have you, Hubert?’
‘What age? Oh—ten years, sir.’
To the man as he listened to it earlier, the most distinctive quality of the boy’s singing voice had been instantly noticeable but resistant to definition, hidden somewhere among pairs of antonyms: full-grown yet fresh, under total control yet spontaneous, sweet yet powerful. A close view of the owner of the voice soon suggested a word for the quality: agelessness. Hubert Anvil’s face, with its full lips, prominent straight nose and eyes deep-set under heavy brows, had no maturing to do; he would grow in height, but presumably he would retain his short neck and the ample rib-cage that must help to give his voice that power. Van den Haag felt suddenly protective; come to think of it, he had felt some such thing in the basilica, a sense of the vulnerability of art. He said,
‘I want to tell you, while we talk together, that I wasn’t paying you empty compliments just now. I meant every word.’
‘I knew it at the time, sir.’
‘Good. You intend to continue as a singer, I hope, when you’re a man?’
‘My lord the Abbot and Father Dilke would like me to. Master Morley thinks otherwise.’
‘And you yourself?’
‘I have no opinion, sir. And I need have none for some time yet. But . . . I do want to see something of the world. Rome, of course. Then Vienna, Naples, Salzburg, Barcelona. And further away—India and Indo-China. The Bishop of Hannoy told my father that it’s like the Garden of Eden there.’
‘Well, nobody is better enabled to travel around than a famous singer . . . I noticed you didn’t put anywhere in the New World on your list.’
‘Oh, I should have, sir. Mexico. Quebec, New Orleans . . . and Arnoldstown, of course.’
The New Englander chuckled, but his eyes were keen. ‘Thank you, my boy. You may not know it, but you’re right—that’s one place you have to visit. And there are plenty of others in my country: New Amsterdam, Haverford, Wyclif City . . . Enough: I mustn’t go on.’
‘Please do, sir. What’s it like in your country? We hear so many strange things of it which can’t be true. Not all of them.’
‘It’s beautiful, Hubert, which nobody believes who hasn’t seen it. And various, because it’s so extensive. Seven hundred miles from north to south, four hundred miles across in places, three times France. In the north-east in winter, everything freezes solid for three months; in the south, there are palm trees and lions and swamps and alligators . . .’
Hubert’s inner eye saw much more than that. There passed before it a series of images drawn from story-pamphlets and the drawings in them, from photograms and facsimiles, from talk among his mates: a lake of blue water that stretched to the horizon, a tall mountain isolated on a broad plain, a river crowded with boats of all sizes, a whaling-fleet putting to sea, a city of wooden houses, a forest of enormous trees, a party of men in furs hunting a grizzly bear, a blue-uniformed cavalry squadron at the charge, a cluster of strange tents among which moved dark-haired women with babies on their backs, a farmhouse all alone in a green hollow. All this was so intense that Hubert missed some of what was being said to him, until a striking word recalled him to it.
‘Our inventors are the finest in the world: not long ago, two of them . . .’ Van den Haag stopped, then earnestly continued, ‘We have no king, only a First Citizen. That man over there is the head of our Church, but by his dress and by how he lives you couldn’t tell him from a village pastor. And of course we have laws, strict laws, but each of us is free to decide what to do with his life. But I go on again.’
‘No, you interest me greatly, sir.’
‘Another time. This place, this Chapel. Is it your school or your home or both? Or what is it to you? Forgive me, but there’s nothing like it in my country. We have no need of it.’
‘It’s my school, sir, and it’s as much my home as any school could be. My father and mother live in London, and I often go to them, but the Abbot is like a second father to me, and some of my friends are like brothers. And there’s my work, and all the life here, and the farm.’ Through the rear window, some moving object could be dimly seen in the distance, beyond the corn-mill, the fish-ponds, the dove-cote: a small, whitish, four-legged shape that hurried, steadied itself, hurried again and disappeared among some bushes. ‘I think I’m the luckiest person I know.
After a pause, van den Haag said, ‘My embassy is in London, of course, but I have a house in Coverley. My family and I would much welcome a visit from you, Hubert. Perhaps you might care to meet my daughter, who’s just your age. If you’d sing for us . . . Would you like to do that? Would you be allowed to?’
‘Yes, sir—yes to both questions. You’re very kind.’
‘I’ll fix it with the Abbot. To whom I must say a few more words before I take my leave.’
Later that evening, in a small dormitory he shared with three other clerks, Hubert Anvil was pressed for details of his visit to the Abbot’s parlour.
‘This New Englander you saw,’ said Decuman, the strong boy with the thin, down-turned mouth whom the other three half-willingly accepted as their leader—‘I expect he carried a pistol and smoked a cigar and spat on the floor and said “Goddam”?’
‘I beg you, no blasphemy, Decuman.’ This was Mark, who looked a little like a fair-haired mole.
‘By St Veronica’s napkin, I’ll blaspheme to my heart’s content in this room. And I wasn’t blaspheming myself anyway—I was talking about what somebody else might have said.’
‘Oh, very well. Your soul is your own affair.’
‘Let Hubert tell his tale,’ said the fourth boy, Thomas, the dark, fine-featured, quietly-spoken one.
Hubert nodded gratefully. ‘To answer you, Decuman—no, there was nothing of that sort. Do you think anybody would spit on the Abbot’s floor?’
‘A New Englander might. They have bounce enough for anything.’
‘Well, this one didn’t. He was a gentleman.’
‘A gentleman! Shit!’
‘He was very correct in his talk and manners and he loves music and he invited me to his house to meet his daughter.’
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‘Now we see, don’t we? Little wonder he made himself popular. Hubert dreams of a young miss in a deerskin frock who’ll feed him cookies and teach him the lasso and rub noses with him.’
‘And a very pleasant dream it is,’ said Thomas.
‘And if the girl needs eyeglasses badly enough it may come true.’
‘Is that a good joke, Decuman?’
‘No. Hubert, did your new friend come to the Chapel just to seek you out?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Of course he did,’ said Thomas. ‘You forget that we’re used to Hubert’s voice. A stranger would—would hear it differently.’
‘Perhaps. I grant Hubert can sometimes sing in the right key, but it still seems to me out of the common, this visit. But then, a New Englander . . .’
As they talked, the four boys had been undressing and putting on their nightshirts. The two candles (one the housekeeper’s issue, the other illegally introduced by Decuman), the low ceiling and the proximity of other bodies kept each of them warm enough. Hubert hung up his jacket and breeches in his part of the closet and stretched his stockings over the rail at the foot of his bed. In the distance, a hand-bell sounded and a high monotonous calling came slowly nearer.
‘Down on your knees, unhappy children. Pray to God to remit some small part of your dreadful punishment. Ask His divine mercy for the grievous sins you have wrought this day. Limbs of Satan, deprecate the just wrath of God. While there is yet time, beg His indulgence with a contrite heart.’
The Prefect of Devotions (who thought he was being funny) passed along the corridor outside the room, and silence fell, broken only by small mutters and murmurs. Hubert knelt on a strip of matting worn threadbare by generations of such use.
‘. . . that I made no mistakes and that everybody sang well and that the band played well, for all this I heartily and humbly thank Thee. And I thank Thee too that Thou didst bring the gentleman from New England today, and I pray Thee that his daughter will like me. And I petition Thee not to let me become proud of anything I do or puffed-up when men praise me, because I know that everything I do is Thy work. And I ask Thy favour and protection for all men in this house, and for all the children too, especially Thomas . . . and Decuman and Mark, and for my father and mother and Anthony, and, oh, I pray for the peace of the soul of Thy servant King Stephen III, and I ask Thy favour and protection for myself and for my soul, through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.’
There was a sigh that seemed to come from everywhere at once, a deeper silence than before, and then again the Prefect’s bell.
‘Into your beds, miserable sinners. Dowse your lights, and if after one minute I see the smallest gleam the offender will receive a foretaste of the pains of Hell. Into your beds . . . Dowse your lights . . .’
Hubert lay under the rough blankets and waited in the dark. What happened next, whether anything happened next, was up to Decuman. Perhaps he was tired after the day’s events, which had necessitated a good deal of standing and waiting about. Hubert hoped not: he himself was still too elated to think of sleep. Minutes went by before Decuman spoke.
‘Hubert.’
It was enough; he got out of bed, rummaged sightlessly in the closet, hung the kerchief on its inconspicuous nail so that it covered the squint in the door, and prodded the rolled bolster-cover into position along the sill.
‘Done.’
He was back in bed before Decuman had relit one of the candles with a phosphorus and the other two boys had sat up.
‘Now let’s see what we have here.’ Decuman brought a small canvas bag out from somewhere under his blankets, and successively from the bag four slices of bread and four pieces of cheese. With gestures of conscious lordliness he tossed one of each to his three companions. There was a minute of eating noises. Then, still eating, he said,
‘Well, Thomas?’
In the same theatrical spirit as Decuman, Thomas looked warily over at the door, then produced from his bedding a small, battered, coverless book, which he held in the air like a trophy.
‘How did you come by it?’
‘Ned, the brewer’s boy. Of course he can’t read, so he must act as a go-between, but he refuses to say where his goods come from.’
‘Hit him,’ suggested Decuman. ‘You hit him. He’s fourteen.’
‘So. How much did you pay?’
‘Sixpence.’
‘By St George’s sacred balls! We expect something hot for that.’
‘We have it—this is as hot as shit.’
‘Read us some,’ said Hubert. ‘Think what you do,’ said Mark.
Decuman slowly clenched his fist and glared at Mark. ‘You may remain as you are and listen, or you may lie and pretend to sleep and listen, but listen you will. Read, Tom.’
‘I think it would be best if I told you the first part in short. It’s not easy and I had to go slow.’
‘Very well,’ said Decuman. ‘First let us know what it’s called.’
‘The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick.’
‘A strange name. It is TR, I suppose?’
‘If you count CW as TR.’
‘CW, is it? Yes, indeed I do. Say, then.’
‘The story starts in this year, 1976, but a great many things are different.’
‘Are they so? We all know what CW is. Get on. What things?’
‘I’ll tell you if you stop interrupting. Invention has been set free a long time before. Sickness is almost conquered: nobody dies of consumption or the plague. The deserts have been made fertile. The inventors are actually called scientists, and they use electricity.’
‘Such profaneness,’ said Mark, listening with close attention. ‘They send messages all over the Earth with it. They use it to light whole cities and even to keep folk warm. There are electric flying-machines that move at two hundred miles an hour.’
‘Flying-machines always appear—this is no more than ordinary TR,’ growled Decuman. ‘You said it was CW.’
TR, or Time Romance, was a type of fiction that appealed to a type of mind. It had readers among schoolboys, collegiates, mechanics, inventors, scribes, merchantmen, members of Convocation and even, it was whispered, those in holy orders. Though it was formally illegal, the authorities were wise enough to know that to suppress it altogether a disproportionate effort would be necessary, and contented themselves with occasional raids and confiscations. Its name was the subject of unending debate among its followers, many of whom would point to the number of stories and novels offered and accepted as TR in which time as such played no significant part. The most commonly suggested alternative, Invention Fiction, made a beguiling acronym, but was in turn vulnerable to the charge that invention was no necessary ingredient of TR. (Science was a word and idea considered only in private: who would publish a bawdy pamphlet under the heading of Disgusting Stories?) CW, or Counterfeit World, a class of tale set more or less at the present date, but portraying the results of some momentous change in historical fact, was classified as a form of TR by plenty of others besides Decuman, if on no firmer grounds than that writers of the one sometimes ventured into the other.
Thomas answered Decuman’s objection. ‘Wait: what has happened is first of all that the Holy Victory never took place.’
‘What impiety,’ said Mark, his little eyes wide.
‘Prince Arthur didn’t father Stephen II or anybody else on the Blessed Catherine of Aragon. When Arthur died, Henry the Abominable married her and continued the dynasty. No Holy Expedition, because there was no true heir to set at its head. No War of the English Succession and so, of course, no Holy Victory. England became altogether Schismatic under the next king, Henry IX, and so, instead of being a place of exile and punishment for Schismatics and common criminals,’—Thomas’s brown eyes were fixed on Decuman—‘New England was at first a colony under the English Crown, then, in 1848, declared itself an independent republic, and now, in 1976, it’s the greatest Power in the world, under the name of the Union of
—’
‘Wish-wash!’ said Decuman loudly, pulled himself up and repeated quietly, ‘wish-wash. That mean little den of thieves and savages the greatest Power in the world?’
Hubert spoke up. ‘It’s not so little, Decuman, even as things are. Seven hundred miles long, my friend was telling me, bigger than—’
‘And as things aren’t it’s bigger still,’ said Thomas with some firmness. ‘It conquered Louisiana and Quebec and took away the top part of Mexico and it covers the whole of North America except New Muscovy and Florida. Now: the Old World is different too. As well as England, all sorts of other places become Schismatic: Brunswick-Brandenburg, Helvetia, Denmark and the Netherlands. You remember the other day we learned about the Three Northern Popes, starting with Germanian I in 1535, and how when he was elected he said he wasn’t worthy, but would serve for the sake of the unity of Christendom? Well, in this type’s world, he was never reconciled to Rome—he never even went there: he stayed in Almaigne for the rest of his life as plain Martin Luther. And so, of course, Hadrian VII was never anything but Sir Thomas More.’
‘The Martin Luther in the story—why did he never go to Rome?’ asked Hubert after a pause.
‘It says here he was afraid to. He thought they might burn him as a heretic.’
Decuman stroked his nose. ‘The real Martin Luther had more courage and more wit. He went to Rome and said, “If you burn me you’ll have to burn thousands of other folk too, not only in my country. But if you make me Pope and promise the English it’s their turn next and so on, all my followers will come round—and if I have to I’ll declare a Holy War on Henry and restore Prince Stephen.” It must have been like that. Something like that.’