Calling to Smart to follow, he walked at the same slow pace as before along the edge of the pasture and reached the foot of a long bright slope overgrown with furze and heather. Smart did follow as far as here, but no further, which was quite right, because he belonged to the farm. Hubert moved on. Every dozen paces he turned his head and found the dog in the same position as before, looking at him alertly and yet blankly, until all once he was nowhere to be seen.
At the top of the slope a wood began. It must have been there for a long time, to judge by the trunks of the trees, which were thick and bulging and quite often split, and by the fact that some of the taller trees had spread their boughs so densely as to keep out the sun in patches. This was still Chapel land, the source of fuel for the ovens, and rabbits, pigeons and partridges for the refectory tables. Hubert had no wish for company that afternoon; he settled himself in a thicket with his back against an ivy-covered stump and stared at the irregular tiers of foliage, some of them brilliant with reflected light, most of them in shadow, all of them hardly moving in the still air.
After a few minutes, what Hubert had been keeping at the back of his mind—so far back that none of it had any pitch or duration: it was more like a buried memory—rose all at once to his attention and began to gather shape. But the shape would not come right, not everywhere. There were two melodies that immediately and necessarily involved the same harmonic structure, but they would not fit within it together, and each resisted alteration to make it conform with its fellow. Both in turn proved impossible to drive out. Hubert frowned and sweated and began to feel the passing of time. What he had so nearly grasped was on the point of slipping away from him when the third melody appeared and, in the act of doing so, revealed itself as the air on which the other two were variations. The sooner, perhaps, for having been held in check by his discreditable slow-wittedness, there came to mind the outline of two further variations and a central episode in the tonic minor. Should he write out the whole piece and win Master Morley’s praise for his apparent diligence, or produce only half and save himself thought for the next half-week?
He was considering this point, not very actively, when he heard voices approaching along the path that ran within a few yards of his nest in the thicket. An instinct implanted by experience at St Cecilia’s and elsewhere made him stay where he was and keep quiet: in this deep shade, he would be likely to be seen from the path only if he were being looked for. The voices came closer, turned into a chuckle and a giggle, went past him a little way and stopped. Then, through birdsong and the hum of insects, he heard a faint rhythmical murmur as of someone pleasantly half-asleep. It ceased, and two people, bending low, came into his view twelve or fifteen feet away at the far end of a sort of accidental tunnel of greenery, and stayed there.
Hubert recognized one of them as Ned, the brewer’s boy who supplied Thomas with TR. Ned’s companion was a girl, but it was difficult to be certain of anything beyond that because, as they knelt face to face, his arm and shoulder and head were so much in the way. They were kissing, though the word seemed wrong, inadequate to their energy and singlemindedness, to the greed or desperation with which they clung to each other, as if trying to display a fear of being parted for the rest of their lives. Were they playing a game?
When Ned’s hand pushed at the girl’s bosom through her clothes, Hubert pretended to himself not to notice; when the hand went beneath the clothes, he drew in his breath with a wince; when they were gone and she was bare to the waist, he forgot about breathing. Then they both sank to where his eye could not follow them, and he panted a few times to recover air. What Decuman had described more than once to an incredulous, rather appalled Hubert was about to happen, or was already happening. Why? How could it? This was Ned, somebody he knew, somebody who had never shown the least sign of wanting to behave like this or being capable of it. Hubert was excited, aware of but not attentive to a stirring in his body, absorbed and full of guilt and dread.
Very soon, Ned rose to his feet, still fully clothed, and moved behind a bush with thick, broad leaves on it. Then the girl sat up; without being able to see, Hubert knew she had all her clothes off now. He had a clear sight of her face for the first time, and stared at it hard, eager for some clue. Whether she was beautiful or ugly or anything between quite passed him by. She was looking over at Ned with an expression Hubert strove to read. He thought he made out what he found hard to believe could be there: dejection, defeat, pleading, and a fixity that suggested to him that her mind was on other things. But that last was surely impossible.
Ned came back with nothing on and Hubert did not look at him. In a moment, the pair had again disappeared below the level of his view, and again there was silence but for the noises of the woods. For the first time Hubert felt embarrassed, but this did not last long because his head was too full of questions without answers. He would understand when he was older, Decuman had said. Would he? Did they?
From the ground those few feet away Hubert heard a voice cry out, but so strangely that he was never able, either then or afterwards, to decide whose voice it had been. And what did it express? Relief? Astonishment? Triumph? Despair? Not despair. Pain? No, not pain. Pleasure, then. It must be pleasure: Decuman had laid great stress on that. All this would be something to tell him and the others when the candles were relit that night, something to discuss, something he had that they had not. And yet that would be wrong. Indeed (it occurred to him with sudden force), watching and listening these last ten minutes, being here at all, had been wrong, wrong enough to be a sin. He had seen earlier no alternative to remaining hidden, nor did one occur to him now, but that did not make it any less of a sin: teaching was very firm on such points. What was this a sin of ? Impurity was a safe guess. So, although he did not feel impure (in fact rather the contrary, if his desire to forget what he had seen and heard was to be considered), he muttered some words of contrition and then, more and more drowsily, an unknown number of Hail Marys.
Hubert waited for some minutes, still drowsily, until Ned and the girl had put on their clothes and moved out of earshot. Then, distant but clear, he heard the St Cecilia’s clock strike four and jumped up, startling a large grey bird which startled him with the abrupt whir of its wings. Master Morley would have to be satisfied with, at best, Theme and Variations 1 and 2. Theme . . . For a moment Hubert’s mind was quite empty. In deep dismay, he checked his stride and abruptly, without any thought, laid his hand on his chest just below the base of the throat. The moment soon passed and the piece was there again, exactly as it had been. But nothing like that had happened to him before.
He reached the edge of the wood and was at once calmed by what lay below him: the uncultivated slope, the pasture and its herd, the farm buildings, the Chapel in the form of an H with its upper half closed. What had happened in the wood was over, and had never been anything but senseless and on its own.
Chapter Two
Master Tobias Anvil’s house stood on the north side of Tyburn Road near its junction with Edgware Road. A generation ago, this had been in effect the north-western corner of London, with Bayswater Station, the railtrack departure-point for the capital, to be seen across open fields. But nowadays, with the population of the city well above the million mark, manufactories were springing up round the advantageous station site, and the dwellings of the people came with them. It was forecast that, within another generation, London would extend as far as the former villages—now the thriving small towns—of Kilburn and Shepherd’s Bush. Already, those among the gentry who felt or professed a disdain for city life had begun to settle down by the river in Fulham and on the northern heights of Hampstead.
For the moment, Master Anvil was very well content to stay where he was. The position was convenient. His express took him to the consular district round St Giles’s Palace in no more than five minutes, to his counting-house by Bishopsgate in well under fifteen. (It was alleged by his enemies that the much closer proximity of Tyburn Tree was an attraction, bu
t this must have been malice or humour, since no felon had been executed there since 1961, and the last Act of Faith dated as far back as 1940.) The house itself had many points in its favour. Separated off from the highway by wrought-iron gates and a pair of lawns on which fountains played, it was an impressive three-storey building of Kentish ragstone with window-arches and chimneys of hand-moulded Reading brick. To the rear lay two and a half acres of garden in the Danish style, with large formal lily-ponds, an orangery and a small aviary. It had been built by the present occupant’s grandfather about the year 1900 at a cost of nearly three thousand pounds, and today the whole property was valued at something not far short of three times that amount.
The breakfast-room was sited at the south-eastern corner of the house to catch the early sun, which, one fine morning in late May, gleamed and glinted with rare brilliance on the white-and-gilt furnishings. The scent of wallflowers and azaleas, fresh-cut from the garden an hour before, mingled pleasantly with the odour of hot bread. Four persons sat at the long mahogany table: Master Anvil himself, his wife Margaret, their elder son Anthony, and Father Matthew Lyall, the family chaplain. Usually at this hour—eight o’clock—Tobias was about his business, but today he was expecting visitors, so could indulge himself with a third panino and honey, a fourth bowl of tea and an extended reading of the newspapers.
He was forty-eight years old, thin and thin-faced, with abundant black hair reaching to his shoulders after the usage of his social condition. His grave demeanour, in particular the habitual intentness of his gaze, went with his taste for a plain, almost severe style of dress to give him something of a clerical aspect. His conduct was in keeping: few merchantmen were stricter in their observances, on better terms with the clergy in general, or—as was testified by the gold candlesticks and gold-threaded altar-cloth at St Mary Bourne, his parish church—more liberal with donatives. Lowering his black brows at the front page of the London Observer, the organ of the Papal Cure, he said in his clear, rather sing-song tones,
‘The Turk announces his departure from Greece in 1980. This follows his sending his High Delegate to the obsequies of his late majesty.’
‘An encouraging development, master,’ said Father Lyall, a chubby, youngish man whose upper lip was always dark no matter how closely he shaved.
‘Is it so, Father? Never forget that our adversary isn’t bound by his word as Christians are. He means us to disarm ourselves to the point at which he may safely recross the Danube. Already his policy of “pacific concomitance” has had frightening effects. You must have seen that the Papal and Patriarchial forces along the north bank are to be reduced further. And I hear talk of a Bill to be laid before Convocation intended to diminish our own navy. The argument’s familiar enough: why should we English exert ourselves in that quarter when Naples and Venice and Hungary do so little? How else are we to show the spirit of detensione? Liberal cant! I should very much like to know the number of secret Mahometan agents among our governors. Oh, this battle has continued for more than six hundred years, whether the state of affairs at any one time was called war or peace, and Christendom will never be safe until the Turk is thrown back by force into Asia and the Imperial Patriarchate restored at Constantinople.’
‘I’m sure many Christians share that dream,’ said the priest.
‘But not you yourself.’
‘Oh yes, sir. Indeed, I devoutly wish it were attainable.’
‘It will never be attained while there are such as you within the Church, fortifying the cause of the heathen.’
‘Master Anvil, I do no such thing. I ask only that we reserve our efforts and the blood of our young men for achieving what can be achieved. And I remind you that there was One who commanded us to forgive our enemies.’
‘It was He who advised the people that when a strong man in arms holdeth his palace, his goods are safe; but when one stronger than he shall come upon him, then . . .’
‘That’s an argument for continuing to be strong, for maintaining defences, not for—’
‘My argument precisely, Father. I deplored our weakness and our reduced defences.’
‘And went on to advocate the violent expulsion of the Turk. Now attend, sir. The true strength of our Church lies not in armies or fleets but in the souls of her children.’
‘By St Peter, I’m glad you’re not Secretary of the War Chamber.’
‘It’s my duty to instruct you as I have, master.’
‘Very well, Father, very well. Have I your permission to continue reading?’
‘Of course.’
The post of private chaplain to the Anvil family had had half a dozen incumbents since Tobias had been in a position to institute it. Father Lyall had already lasted in it longer than all of them put together. He had seen at once that his employer regarded himself, or wanted to be regarded, as a latter-day zealot so extreme as to satisfy the most ardent ultramontanist in the Church hierarchy and the most Romanist of politicians—so very extreme, in particular, that he needed constant doctrinal sedation to hold his missionary enthusiasm within bounds. Instead of tamely submitting to Tobias’s extravagances, then, Lyall called them in question, disparaged them, rebuked them. The colloquy about the Turk had ended after the usual and preferred pattern, with the layman accepting but not embracing the advice of his spiritual counsellor and conspicuously reserving the right to return to the charge at any more or less appropriate time.
In itself and in its applications, the arrangement suited Lyall. After fourteen years in orders he felt no particular disapproval if a man took elaborate means to secure his position with Rome. He himself had entered the priesthood partly through motives of self-advancement. As it had turned out, his career had not prospered: he lacked both the skill and the energy to make the right friends or become known for the right opinions. When the Anvil appointment fell vacant, he had recognized it without trouble as an insurance of comfort and security. The duties were not onerous: ministering to the souls of an unremarkable household, acting as social secretary, running the kind of errand for which a servant was deemed unsuitable, keeping Dame Anvil company, and being on hand to abate her husband’s fervours. The positive rewards included good food, good wine, and the occupancy of a room above the express-house where, thanks to the presence of a separate staircase, young women could be entertained in seclusion. All that troubled Father Lyall, and that not often or so far to any effect, was a resentment against those faceless and largely nameless persons whom he considered to hold the real power in and over his Church. They had not admitted him to their number; more than that, they were not true servants of God.
Rather perfunctorily, Tobias had been glancing through the English Gazette, the organ of Convocation: it came to his breakfast-table only because he felt it incumbent on men in his position to have access, at least, to both national newspapers. But again his notice was caught, perhaps more closely than before.
‘Attend to this,’ he said. ‘“The physicians and inventors who conferred on the outbreak of plague in East Runton in Norfolk last month have delivered their findings to the Secretary of the Salubrity Chamber. They state that the disease, from which 88 persons died in a single night, is of no known origin, but that consultation reveals a similarity with the sickness which, in February last, launched 110 souls into eternity at St Tropez in France. In neither case, however, had the disease spread to the surrounding country, and its recurrence was not to be feared.” So. Well, Anthony, what do you think of that? Is it possible?’
Since he had not so far been spoken to since the beginning of the meal, Anthony Anvil had not so far spoken. At twenty-one years old, he was a well-grown youth with a healthy skin, wide dark eyes and a full mouth which, whatever his father might and often did say, tended to fall open in repose. He wore collegiate black with white bands, since he would shortly be on his way to pursue his studies at St Clement’s Hospital in the Strand. On being addressed, he shut his mouth tight, then opened it cautiously to say,
‘If
it’s reported in the Gazette, papa, then it’s possible.’
‘I’m not a nitwit, sir! I ask you if you think it’s possible that a sickness can strike at two such widely-separated places as these, leave no hint of its nature, and yet be altogether discounted as a future threat.’
Anthony could not for the moment see what was the required answer to this question, or series of questions, so it was with continued caution that he replied, ‘The two places are widely separated in distance, but not in kind. Both are small fishing-villages.’
‘But a plague of unknown origin?’
‘All plagues are of unknown origin when they first appear.’
‘A plague from fish? Is that what you suggest?’
‘It wasn’t believed for a long time that other plagues were brought by rats.’
‘But rats are warm-blooded creatures like ourselves. A plague that kills in a few hours?’
‘Some in the past have died in less than a day. Forgive me, papa, but you asked if it was possible and, from what I know, it is.’
‘What do you say, Father?’
‘I? I have no knowledge and therefore no opinion, master.’
‘It would be useful,’ said Anthony after a pause, ‘to know whether in truth the disease has not spread to—what was it?—the surrounding country.’
Tobias lowered his brows again. ‘You doubt the voice of Convocation?’
‘No, sir,’ lied his son: ‘only that of the physicians and inventors who weighed the matter. From what you read to us, the Gazette does no more than record their words.’
‘Well said, Anthony—and we know how much trust to put in them. Physicians may be all very well, but what of inventors? Half of them are no better than scientists who daren’t give themselves their true name. This affair has every sign of an experiment in science. Recklessness. Disregard for human life. Above all, an inclination to usurp the power of the Creator. Whether or not these outbreaks were indeed isolated, we must fear a recurrence. We’re all in danger. And will remain so until our heads of State look to their duty of protecting Christians.’