‘The Holy Father is appointed by God,’ said Mark, crossing himself. ‘Not by arrangements between—’
‘The Holy Father is a man,’ said Decuman, ‘and so are the members of the College of Cardinals. They plot and scheme like other men.’
‘Schismatic!’
‘Fuck a fox. Go on, Tom.’
‘I haven’t read much further. How somebody called Zwingli preached Schismaticism to the Helvetians. Rather heavisome, I thought. But there are some good grins here and there. One for you, Hubert—Mozart died in 1799, just after finishing Die Monderforschung, but your friend Beethoven lived until 1835 and wrote twenty symphonies.’
‘I don’t call that a grin.’
‘Well, the author enjoys it.’ Thomas turned a page. ‘Oh yes. There’s a famous book which proves that mankind is descended from a thing like an ape, not from Adam and Eve. Can you give me the title?’
The others shook their heads.
‘The Origin of Species!’
Even Mark joined in the laughter, which was quickly shushed by Decuman.
‘Who is the man in the high castle?’ asked Hubert.
‘He hasn’t come in yet,’ said Thomas, ‘but he must be wicked and very powerful. A sorcerer, perhaps.’
In the Abbot’s refectory, dinner was over. The servants had taken away the sixteenth-century pewter plate, piled the fires and filled the baskets with apple logs, left fresh candles and departed: only Lawrence remained on call.
Mirabilis unbuttoned his jacket and glanced ruefully down at his paunch. On its inside were rather large amounts of sorrel soup, salmon trout, Gloucestershire lamb baked with rosemary and served with new potatoes and young carrots, geranium cream and, inevitably, Stilton cheese, together with a couple of pints of audit ale. When entertaining foreign visitors, the Abbot made rather a point of providing only the best English fare. In a spirit of polite response, Mirabilis passed over the offered claret and malmsey in favour of the walnut cordial that, like the ale, was made on the premises. He sipped and looked into the delicate Waterford glass.
‘The herb is still a secret?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ The Abbot spoke with what sounded like real and deep regret, adding in alleviation, ‘It grows only in the country hereabouts.’
‘Very distinctive . . . What of his intelligence, my lord?’
‘Ah, we think highly of it, Fritz, and I trust I can say we do what we can to foster it. We’ve put him in company with three slightly older lads, one of them a confounded rogue, but all capable of thought. And his studies prosper, notably his Latin: a safe guide.’
‘He seemed to me a little . . . stolid. Not dull, but not active.’
‘That’s his looks,’ said Father Dilke. ‘Poor Hubert—when you see him it’s hard to believe that a quick mind lives in that head, but it does. If I put a point to him at practice, he grasps it before half my words are out.’
‘Oh, musically, of course, that’s obvious.’
Morley had said nothing in the last few minutes. Now he spoke up with some asperity. ‘But musical intelligence is intelligence, master. We should need only the music of Valeriani, for example, to know that he was a most unusually intelligent man. And, in what at the moment is naturally a smaller way, the same is true of Anvil. Perhaps nobody has told our distinguished guest that Anvil, apart from possessing a remarkable voice and remarkable powers of execution and interpretation, is also a composer quite out of the common. Later, perhaps, the Abbot will permit me to play you one or two of Anvil’s studies for piano-forte. They will answer all your questions about his intelligence.’
‘This at ten years old?’
‘Ten or so. He’s a prodigy, sir. Could anyone less have come to understand his way from Bach to Wagner in eighteen months?’
‘Was hat er gesagt?’ muttered Viaventosa.
‘Anvil ist ein begabter Komponist.’
‘Nein, wirklich?’
‘And at the keyboard it’s the same, Master Morley?’
‘In honesty no, sir. Serviceable and deft, deft enough to guide his compositions, little more. There’s no conflict there.’
‘But there’s conflict here, yes?’
Whether by accident or not, the form of words seemed to fit the fact. Morley looked grim, almost glowering. Dilke faced him, his long fingers pinching repeatedly at the point where his nose met his brows. The Abbot’s handsome face was watchful. (Viaventosa was fairly busy with a bunch of hothouse grapes.)
‘Have you considered this as I asked you to, Sebastian?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Say, then, but in short if you will. It must be decided tonight. I should much prefer it so.’
Morley nodded. His red complexion looked redder than ever in the light from fire and candles. ‘Anvil would surely prove a composer of repute, an ornament to Coverley and to England and with a place in the history of his art. But—’
‘And a credit to you, master,’ said Dilke in a friendly tone.
‘No, Father. He was there all the time; I was merely the one who found him. Now: if it were to happen that Anvil should continue as composer, it might be that he would go beyond mere repute. He might take—he might one day have taken his place with Weber, Schumann, even Valeriani. I can’t give you chances: I’m not an operator. All I can tell you is that it would have been fully possible. Is that short enough for you, my lord?’
‘Yes, Sebastian, and thank you. But you speak as if the outcome were already resolved.’
‘So it is, my lord.’ The harshness of Morley’s voice was more than usually evident. He gave the two visitors an odd look, one in which hostility was mingled with something like compassion.
‘Are you quite yourself, old friend?’
‘A touch of melancholia, my lord—it’s my nature. Forgive me, I beg you.
‘Why, of course. What have you to say, Father?’
‘Very little out of my own mouth, my lord. Hubert is the finest boy singer I’ve ever heard as regards both musicianly and physical endowment. But my experience is rather limited. Master Morley’s word will stand of itself; mine needs support.’ Dilke spoke as one stating a fact. ‘And God has seen to it that there are those on hand who can give that support. Master Mirabilis, would you care to repeat to the company what you said to me earlier?’
‘Gladly, Father. Indeed, I’ll extend it. I state roundly that I’ve listened to the work of every singer of mark in Christendom, in most cases several or many times: I couldn’t live in Rome for twenty-five years without doing so. Your Clerk Anvil surpasses any other of his condition. He has six or seven superiors who have what only the years and experience can bring. And Wolfgang here has something to add to what I say.’
‘I heard Fritz when he was ten years old,’ squeaked Viaventosa, expressing his own sentiments in the terms his friend had coached him in, ‘and this boy is better. Not much, but he is better. I remember well and I am sure.’
‘Thank you, masters,’ said Dilke after a short silence.
The Abbot looked grave. ‘It seems,’ he said, ‘it seems to me that we have a possibility on one side and something not so far from a fact on the other.’
‘We’ll find that possibility is closed,’ said Morley, quietly now. ‘But if it had ever come to fruition, we’d have had something immense. And even if not . . . A composer belongs to the world and to posterity; a singer by comparison can reach only a few and his voice dies with him, leaving no record behind except in the words of those who heard him. My regrets, masters, but it’s true. It’s true.’ His voice tailed off.
Viaventosa had followed part of this. He nodded, frowning, his eyes shut.
‘But are we faced with a choice?’ asked Dilke. ‘Surely Anvil can be composer and singer by turns?’
Morley said, ‘An active career as singer has always in effect ruled out serious composition.’
‘But an active career with violin or piano-forte hasn’t always.’
‘Conceded. What of it?’
‘Anvil may be the first exception,’ said Dilke, with a quick glance at the Abbot. ‘Another possibility, eh?’
‘We need none of your jesuitries tonight, Father.’
‘That’ll do.’ The Abbot’s troubled look—perhaps it had never been more than a look—was gone. He poured himself claret with a small flourish. ‘You’ve put your case, Sebastian, and I commend you most strongly for your moderation. Yes, I do. But you could scarcely have argued otherwise. The decision is clear. Anvil goes to the surgeon as soon as the formalities are complete.’
Morley shrugged his broad shoulders. After a moment he said, ‘Certain of those formalities may not be simple matters of form. The boy’s father is of high condition.’
‘A London merchantman, with an older son near marrying age,’ said Dilke. ‘Uh, what of it, master?’
‘This of it: he will know, or will soon discover, that boys chosen for this treatment are normally of low parentage. He may see the proposal as a slur upon him, and his consent is of course required by law.’
‘True,’ said the Abbot: ‘Clerk Anvil’s case is in that way somewhat exceptional, but then so are his talents. He will be celebrated and rich before very long. That should carry weight with the father. And if not, as a pious man, which I myself know him to be, he’ll have in mind his duty to God. Or can easily be put in mind of it.’
‘There’ll be no difficulty, my lord,’ said Dilke, carefully choosing a sweetmeat from the silver bowl before him.
Later the Abbot said privately to Mirabilis, ‘If I may ask you, Fritz—do you think we were right?’
‘In what respect?’
‘The decision about Anvil’s future isn’t an ordinary one, you see. There can be no going back afterwards.’
‘No indeed, my lord, but I still don’t quite understand.’
‘It’s simply that not even the wisest of us is infallible. Suppose that in a few years Anvil’s powers decline. There was such a case—at any rate, if it should so turn out, what do we say to ourselves then?’
‘What you have just said, that none of us is infallible. Let me put your mind at peace, my lord. There are these, these declines you mention, but they’re very rare, too rare to be allowed for, and your duty to music and to God is too great. No, whatever should happen, anybody who knows the full truth must see that you were right in your decision.’
‘Thank you, dear Fritz, that’s what I wanted to hear.’
Later yet, Lawrence escorted his master’s two guests across the quadrangle to the gate and assisted them into the small four-wheeled carriage that was waiting there. Mirabilis gave the man a sixpence—he enjoyed overtipping on his travels—and watched him and his lantern disappear. All St Cecilia’s, all that could be seen, was dark. The driver whipped up his horse and they moved off between the tall hedgerows. The going was quiet, quiet enough for Mirabilis to be able to hear without difficulty the little rapid snorts and sniffs coming from his companion. They held a familiar message, and experience suggested that it should be heeded without undue delay.
‘A pleasant and distinguished evening,’ said Mirabilis with an air of contentment.
Further sniffs and snorts.
‘That young priest, Dilke: I must confess I didn’t care for him at first, but he has more depth than I suspected.’
‘H’m. H’m.’
‘Does something trouble you, Wolfgang?’ Parts of marriage must be rather like this, thought Mirabilis.
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Tell old Fritz about it.’
Viaventosa was a fat bewigged shape in the watery moonlight. ‘There’s a boy asleep somewhere in that place,’ he squeaked after a moment. ‘An ordinary English boy, with all his boyish dreams. No doubt he pictures himself journeying to Mexico to win the hand of the Emperor’s daughter, or rescuing a Christian princess from the Turks . . .’
‘No doubt he does, Wolfgang.’
‘And steps are about to be taken which will confound those dreams for ever.’
‘Really, very few English boys can hope to win the—’
‘Please, Fritz. His youth is to vanish, with his manhood, and his humanity. He’ll be what we are, a gelding, an ox, a wether, a capon.’
‘And a singer at the summit of his profession, a—’
‘Not as great as Velluti. No one could match Velluti.’
‘Shame on you, Wolfgang: your grandfather could not have heard Velluti.’
‘My great-grandfather did, as a young boy. I told you before.’
‘Be done with your great-grandfather, and with Velluti. We talk of Anvil, and I say he’ll be admired, deferred to, welcome wherever he wishes to go, above all possessed of something more valuable than any crown: to have as the centre of his life the delight that comes from the exercise of skill.’
‘There are other things more valuable than crowns, and other delights.’
‘How can you know?’
‘I can’t know, but I have eyes and ears. And feeling.’
‘I share it, my dear: you know that.’
‘H’m. H’m.’
Your feeling is too much for yourself at this moment, thought Mirabilis, but what he said, in a gentle tone, was, ‘What did you think of the boy’s piano-forte studies? Some of those modulations were too violent for me, in spite of what Morley said. Oh, the days are gone when music was supposed to sound pleasant . . .’
At St Cecilia’s, the next day was one of leisure. According to Decuman, this was actually a device for extracting more work from the inmates than usual: morning studies began with a solid two hours of Latin during which (so he said afterwards) the preceptors behaved as if all knowledge of that tongue were about to be removed from their minds the moment the bell sounded, and they must convey everything they could before it struck. Church history was similarly accelerated, with popes, idolators, martyrs, heretical bishops jostling one another across the scene like characters in an extravaganza. Forenoon choir-schooling sternly eschewed anything that could be called music and set the clerks to struggle with uncouth intervals or eccentric time-signatures. But, with dinner, the march of instruction halted; Hubert, for instance, was to have the afternoon to himself until his private hour with Master Morley at five o’clock.
Activity on the dormitory floor was intense but almost silent: a reckless guffaw or yell was apt to draw the attention of a monitor and lead, perhaps, to a withdrawal of leisure-privilege. So it was in a kind of bursting mutter that Thomas invited Hubert to join him, Decuman and Mark in an expedition to a pool where there were supposed to be trout, and in a similar mode that Hubert conveyed his thanks and regrets—he had to write letters to his family, he said. But, as the other three did, he changed from the chapel dress to the garb permitted for the leisure hours of leisure days: coloured cotton shirt, a furious indulgence for those limited on all occasions to white, and, in theory, to spotless white at that; loose trousers reaching to the ankle, an escape no less precious to habitual wearers of breeches and stockings; and rubber-soled canvas shoes instead of the constant polished leather.
Decuman gave Hubert a perhaps over-cordial buffet on the shoulder and led his fishing-party from the room. All the way down the tiled corridor to the stairhead, the receding swish and squeak of rubber could be heard, diversified by the recurrent bang of a door, smothered giggle and louder shushing. Soon there was silence but for a creak or two of woodwork as the building warmed up in the sun. It was a hot day for the time of year: from the dormitory window, Hubert had a view of grass and treetops, shining almost yellow in the strong light, and caught a stray sparkle from the distant spires of Oxford. For some time he stared without blinking, without looking except vaguely. The waxed windowshelf was warm and moist under his hand. His writing materials were in his desk in the day-room on the ground floor, but when at last he moved it was through the momentary coolness of the tiny stone-paved hall of that part of the building and out into the sunshine.
He crossed the courtyard and went through the arch under the Abbot
’s lodging. In the farrier’s shop, the ring of beaten metal could be heard; otherwise, the various offices seemed asleep or empty. Hubert paused at the carp-pond and peered through the shifting glare at the mud-coloured mass that showed itself only now and then, for a moment, to be a crowd of individual fish. When the time came, each and all of them would vanish down the gullets of hungry folk at dinner or supper in the Chapel refectories. That was not shocking, or rather it ceased to be so on consideration. Human beings had absolute God-given rights over dumb creatures; it was part of the principle on which the world worked. Less extremely but no less strictly, it applied to divisions within mankind: Christians and Mahometans, clergy and laity, gentry and people, men and women, fathers and children.
At the dove-cote, Hubert paused again. Coos, flutterings and a good deal of activity on foot carried between them an air of urgency, of resources strained near their limits, though whether in the direction of disaster or triumph it was, as always, quite unclear. Then, slowly, head lowered, he entered the farmyard. The duck-pond here was far less grand than the carp-pond, being nothing but a large hole full of dirty water; on the other hand, it had ducks on it and near it, dozens of them, far too many for more than a fraction to benefit from the scraps of bread he had saved from refectory. While he was doling these out, Smart the collie bounded up to him. The growls he made meant only that here came somebody of rank and mark, and soon changed into grunting noises that meant that somebody of rank and mark was being affable to somebody less well placed. After a few moments of this, Hubert heard an uncertain step on the stretch of dried mud between him and the main pasture. He looked up and saw approaching a calf he had become slightly acquainted with over the past few weeks. It (he had not discovered the animal’s sex) was mostly white, with a large black patch on one flank and two smaller ones thrown as if at random on to its face, giving it a clownish look. With many a protestation of friendship, Hubert went up to it step by step. He had not reached it when it backed, wheeled away and trotted on to the grass, but it had let him come at least a yard nearer than last time. If he had been a country lad he would have known what to offer—a carrot, a handful of hay—as a token of good will; since he was not, good will itself and patience would have to serve, but serve they surely must in the end.