‘Oh, to be sure!’ Prince Rupert laughed spontaneously. Rising, he slapped me on the back. ‘Thank you, lad. Our venture promises success. Your nation will bless you.’
‘My wife and children might not.’
And then we were done with it, in the fashion of his day, and even of my own in certain circles. Everything had been said. The subject was over.
39
KNOWING
Minutes later the doors of the bar opened and in strode Duval’s friend Jemmy Hind. He was greeted with a cheer by the others as he stepped up to the counter. Inevitably his comrades wanted to know how he had fared.
From the capacious pockets of his greatcoat Jemmy brought out a hefty soft leather bag and tossed it on the bar. ‘That’ll pay for our ale tonight if it’s the king’s health we’re drinking. And the rest’s to pay for his health, if that’s what’s necessary to free him!’
Another cheer at this. Then Jemmy became the object of his friends’ attention as he told a story of how he’d come by the private steamer on Hounslow Heath carrying two plump churchmen on their way to Southwark to give tithe to Cromwell. There it was. Gold, all of it. He joked of the run he’d given his pursuers. Jemmy was London born and bred and had lost them at Cheapside before doubling round and making his way here, where they dared not follow.
I began to feel overwhelmed. I had done what I intended and so got up, moving towards the door. I begged Captain St Claire’s company back to the abbey. I did not expect too many answers to my other questions just yet, but I hoped he might be less cautious than Prince Rupert and his men. Not knowing what I was about to ask him, St Claire readily agreed. Once we walked towards the abbey, I asked: ‘Can you tell me what lies beyond the Sanctuary’s gates? You have come to my rescue there twice, so I thought you might have some idea. Limbo? Is that what it’s called?’
St Claire had begun to chuckle. His large brown eyes sparkled. ‘You wanted my company so you might put questions to me, eh?’
‘I’m baffled, that’s all. I’m mixed up in matters I really don’t understand, Captain.’
‘And if it were Limbo, what was its nature? An absence, maybe, of matter and time?’ His expression was almost challenging.
‘Entropy? Is that what we’re talking about?’ This was an obsession of my day with the ongoing debate over the Big Bang theory. I hated the notion of entropy. All existence dissipating. Did the Alsacia actually lie at the heart of nothingness? I knew I had created my fictional ‘multiverse’ partly out of a distinct discomfort at the notion of empty space-time. I preferred a heavily populated cosmos. Even what the monks called dark clouds—perhaps the traces of unseen worlds—was actually matter, or possibly antimatter, though I had never heard of it outside the Alsacia. But Captain St Claire replied with studied charm. A charm which made me slightly uncomfortable.
‘I’m a simple scholar and, perforce, a soldier,’ he said. ‘These are matters best discussed with clerks. And’—he paused at the abbey gates—‘here’s the place to do it.’ He grinned, saluted and was away before I could reply.
I got back to my cell, cleaned up and opened my notebook, jotting down what I remembered from that evening with the prince.
Then I heard a soft, almost hesitant knock. I opened the door. Brother Isidore stood there smiling his meek, uncertain smile. Supper was about to be served. If I wished to eat he would be glad to escort me to the dining hall. Surprisingly hungry, I let him lead me through the beautiful old building to the hall.
I was, as usual, impressed by the contrast between the monks and their surroundings. They were obviously poor and yet had an extraordinarily rich environment. I mentioned this as we filed through the chapel on our way to the dining hall. Friar Isidore told me I had as much right to ask the question as anyone, but he did not really answer.
Evidently the builders of the abbey had spent lavishly. There were almost no buildings like it left in the City. Few of our churches had survived the Blitz so well. Even St Paul’s had emerged with some damage. Many of the older churches had been burned to the ground. The abbey, of course, was much earlier than St Paul’s and had been built during the first flowering of the Gothic period. The style had fallen out of favour in the late Renaissance when many buildings, even churches, had been torn down and rebuilt in whatever the current fashion of the day was.
Brother Isidore called the style ‘Frankish’ but there was no doubting its origins. It was pure Gothic. The hammer-beam ceilings were elaborately painted and gilded, with the heavens a deep blue. The stars, in familiar constellations, were picked out in gold. The beams themselves were painted green and brown, suggesting the heavens held up by sheltering trees. The beautiful windows were of the finest stained glass, with rich emerald greens, deep vermilion reds, pulsing yellows and glowing indigo blues, either in complex abstract designs or illustrating a scene from the New Testament, most of which I recognised. The green marble in the frames was similar to that used on the altar, while others were gilded or painted in a lustrous colour.
In my early career I had done a series on the cathedrals of England for Bible Story Weekly. Much of my education came from researching a subject before I could write it up. All the abbey’s features had evidently been endowed by a wealthy person at some stage in its history. Friar Isidore confirmed that Henry III and the Earl of Morn were their main benefactors. Often, too, money had been left them by men of science, including Francis Bacon. Doctor Dee, it was said, had once worked closely with members of their order.
The order had renewed vows of poverty in the early seventeenth century. At that time James I, who for some reason favoured the ‘Flete friars’, had given the Alsacia its charter in perpetuity. Some said King James needed to show his piety and his support for the Church of England, particularly to members who made no claims on his tightly clasped purse. Others thought he had baser motives, including secretly paying for a house in ‘Whitefriers’ for a favourite associated with the stage. Few people believed that. James was not known for spending lavishly. No further money was settled on the abbey. The Carmelite vow of poverty meant they lived off local charity. They received some money in rents. They had briefly published a magazine, in hopes of paying for necessary repairs. Friar Isidore sighed with pleasure when he spoke of that, for the magazine had been the cause of our acquaintance. Ultimately failing to meet its costs,The White Friar had been discontinued.
I was given a place at the centre and on the right of the long table. As soon as we were all standing beside our assigned places the abbot spoke an unfamiliar prayer. Then he told the monks why I was there. He referred to me as Brother Michael, as if I had joined the order as a novice, and explained how I had come to them to help serve the Creator. I was a little surprised. I thought I had agreed to a somewhat hairbrained plan to rescue Charles I from the scaffold! I remembered almost nothing of what I’d said on the previous day. I was indeed tempted to stay. The food was superb, as was the wine. In a previous life our Friar Ambrose had been a first-class chef!
Even now I was so dog-tired I only wanted to sleep again. I asked if I might return to my cell. Drugged by good food, wine and company, I soon fell asleep. I realised I had lost any animosity towards Prince Rupert and Molly. My anger at Helena had already faded. It was too late now to go back on my decision. I had given my word to the prince.
As the days passed, the emotional pain occasionally returned, but someone was always there to keep me company. At one point Ambrose, a cheerful, pleasant-faced monk, a little younger than the others, casually asked if I had ever experienced a miracle. For the first time in my life I couldn’t easily tell him I hadn’t. I was still profoundly confused. I even felt my identity changing as I behaved in ways I might expect from others but not from myself. I had better control of my feelings. That didn’t mean, of course, that I was wholly aware of my own motives or desires. Like many others, I was proud of my self-awareness. But of course because I understood one or two aspects of my interior world did not mean I knew everything
there was to know. As the years went by I’d learn how a little self-knowledge could be a very dangerous thing.
40
MELANCHOLY BABY
I could at last think of Molly without feeling I was going crazy. I doubted Helena would ever forgive me. I now understood what a shock Mrs Melody’s revelations had been to her. I felt numb. I wished her well. I shared my granny’s sense of freedom. Wasn’t the true test of love a willingness to have the other person do whatever they wished, whenever they wished? But shouldn’t that be reciprocal?
I hoped to learn something else from the monks and their wise abbot, but I was still a little wary, not entirely sure of their motives.
There were just eight friars and the abbot. The monastery had been built for sixty or more. Each monk had a distinct personality and corresponding specific duties. Brother Balthazar ran the pharmacy and was their doctor. Brothers Isidore and Erasmus had worked on the magazine and now occupied the library. They devoted as much time to illuminating manuscripts as they had in the past. I spent long periods with them. I had a free run of the place. They had almost as many manuscripts as printed books. Brothers Theodore and Sholto looked after the large kitchen garden which was enclosed by the other buildings on the other side of the chapel and the cloisters. Brothers Aylwyn, Eldred and Ambrose were in charge of food preparation, housework and so on. I joined in their routines, some of which involved prayers in unfamiliar languages. A few were in Latin or Greek, others in Hebrew, though none of them seemed to involve a bible with which I was familiar. In spite of that, whenever I felt like it, I took part in their meetings and found the rhythms and rituals very comforting. Ultimately, however, I could not help becoming just a little bit bored and wanted to get back to the chaos of Ladbroke Grove just to be with the children.
I began to wonder if the Alsacia were some form of giant time machine, capable of visiting relatively few periods. Maybe in some sort of orbit. The orreries might actually navigate the whole thing. There was another mystery. All those people in the Alsacia were now of pretty much the same period. The first time I came, the people had belonged to at least three different centuries. Duval, for instance, was from the seventeenth, Turpin from the eighteenth and Cody from the nineteenth. Now everyone was dressed in seventeenth-century clothes. And there was no sign of Turpin and his contempories, nor of Cody, Carson and the rest. Nobody would tell me anything very revealing. Perhaps the Alsacia was a hub which somehow rotated according to different rules to the rest of the planet, stopping at different bits of London’s past. Or maybe they were alternatives to history. My own historical past didn’t contain big electric trams being robbed by highwaymen in cocked hats!
Now that my anger had subsided I was worrying about my family, of course. There was plenty of money due in for Helena and the kids. I always made sure of that. And if I died, they’d be well taken care of thanks to my obsessive buying of life insurance because I had seen so many authors’ families ruined by premature death and illness. Even if they never found my body, my family would be fine.
Meanwhile, I had resolved, if everything worked out and I survived this adventure, to stop writing pulp fiction. My ambitions were being threatened by my own facility. I invented new formulas for pulp fiction with lazy ease when I could as readily be inventing new ways of looking at the world—or trying to. So I resolved to work out my Jerry Cornelius stories and a planned novel called Breakfast in the Ruins, which would mark the end of my pulp career and the beginning of serious ambition. I tried to take advantage of the peace and order at the abbey yet somehow I could only write Meg Midnight stuff! A bit of an irony. I decided I was forcing myself too hard. I should relax for a while and regroup.
I did make an effort, one evening, to drop in at the Swan, to meet my friends and share a shant of ale. Almost at once Prince Rupert stood up from a booth at the back of the saloon bar and waved me over. The crowd had fallen a little quieter. I pushed through it, shook his hand and sat down across from him. Not everyone had heard we had buried the hatchet. I knew there were eyes on us but none openly.
Prince Rupert asked after my health, I after his. He bought a round. I bought another. We discussed the health of various friends and acquaintances. He told a story of meeting Colonel Clitch and Corporal Love near the gates and how they had engaged him, how he had been forced to fight them again, aided in the end by Captain St Claire. I said that they probably hung about there all the time, hoping to catch the odd royalist alone. I told him my own experiences. But St Claire was a mystery. The prince had heard he wrote poetry, that he was hunted by redcoats for some Puritan transgression. He quoted Shakespeare, whom his uncle claimed to have seen in the flesh, performing at the Globe. He narrated a couple of good stories. And soon he was charming me again, though on a deeper level than St Claire. Since we were now allies it wasn’t especially difficult for us to bond. Some people naturally strike alliances. Now I wondered: Had he from the start actually conspired with Friar Isidore and Father Grammaticus to hypnotise me? Was I now a character in someone else’s fiction? The idea was too weird for me. But I was beginning to get used to weird.
Next, even as Prince Rupert drew me into his plot to rescue King Charles from the scaffold, Molly started writing me letters care of the abbey. She was coming back to the Alsacia. She could not keep away from me. She told me I mustn’t believe what anyone else said about her. She would explain it all. We should meet, perhaps at the Swan. I was confused. If this was a cunning plan to embroil me in some complicated amour it was pretty pathetic. Her letters were full of contradiction and revisionism.
I met you on the rebound and you met me on the rebound, she wrote. I’d just split up with you-know-who—my ‘cavalier’—and you’d just split up with Helena.
No I hadn’t.
You talked me into living with you …
No I didn’t.
… you asked me to marry you …
No I hadn’t.
I fell in love with you slowly. But deeply. I love you so much. I want you to have the best of me.
I was prepared to let her rewrite her own history. Most of it was sentimental nonsense. I was clinging as tightly as possible to my own reality, my memory. If I didn’t I felt I was done for. Memory is the foundation of identity. Through our sense of identity, we act. We determine our moral judgments. We rewrite our own memories, of course, all the time. We create fresh narratives to use in our survival. We agree on fresh histories enabling us to take action. It is part of what makes us such flawed creatures. Creatures of narrative fiction creating cause and effect. In the main I was prepared to go along with my friends’ versions of events even when our memories varied enormously. We are protagonists in our own novels.
I told Father Grammaticus about the letters. ‘She must have sent fifty!’
He was a little surprised. ‘I suspect she does loves you,’ he said. ‘Or you reflect something in herself that she loves. Why else would she not let you go? Money? You are not especially rich. Power? What else?’ He cleared his throat and looked up at me, his eyes sparkling. ‘Have you considered that you were meant to be together?’
‘Not a day passes I do not think that,’ I said. ‘But I think the same of Helena. And she’s my children’s mother…’ I could feel the tears returning to my eyes.
‘Our Creator might have chosen to bring you all together, perhaps.’ I think he was teasing me a little.
I laughed, but decided to change the subject to something less personal. ‘What part does God play in any of our petty schemes and ambitions? You must have thought about it, Father Abbot.’
‘None,’ he replied quickly.
‘He plays no part?’
‘For He has given us free will.’
‘And if that free will results in our self-destruction?’
‘So be it.’
‘And so it hardly matters if God does or doesn’t exist?’
‘He has given us the means of achieving His plan for us. He will not help us should that plan g
o wrong after so many attempts. But He is a patient and a loving Creator.’
‘Why should He care if we fail Him, if we fail to realise His plans for us?’ I was uncomfortable with the idea of such total authority.
‘I think he cares profoundly how we act. When we pray, He sometimes intervenes to help.’
‘What is God, Father?’
‘God is Nature. And all else is Nature, too. That is why we must strive to know Him,’ said Father Grammaticus.
‘But why?’
The abbot lifted his ancient shoulders in a gentle shrug. ‘Perhaps He’s lonely?’
41
PURITAN CLOTHING
Molly continued to send letters. Several a day for a while. I was tempted to reply, then I was tempted not to read them. I was still very conflicted. Were all her preferred relationships with powerful older men? Had she only become attracted to me because of my power? I was only a few years older, of course, but I had known quite a bit of power for that time. When I first met her I had been a pretty powerful seventeen year old. Had that made me attractive to a girl with a mysterious father? That was when she was breaking up with a father figure. When she came to live with me was it because she had left him and didn’t trust herself not to go back? She would have had to live alone. I remember the first time she told me she loved me. I had been so relieved. I could tell her I felt the same. Now, of course, I was pretty certain that she had never loved me much. In another letter she said how she had ‘come to love’ me. Which meant she had other motives for being with me initially. What had they been? And I thought I was confused!
I love you, she wrote. I want to stay with you forever and look after you. Iron your shirts, make your lunch …
She’d got the wrong bloke, of course. I really did enjoy equality. I wanted her to fulfill herself, become the painter she could be. I had never felt such deep sadness. I should have known better. I had taken advantage of a girl looking for the unobtainable in an older man. My anger was being replaced with painful melancholy. And a sense that I had betrayed her. I had failed her. All that sadness. Nobody deserves to be lonely.