"The Alteration" - читать интересную книгу автора (Amis Kingsley)

In the dormitory at St Cecilia's, Hubert finished folding a coloured shirt and tucked it carefully away in his valigia, watched by Thomas and Mark. Thomas said in the customary after-dowse-lights undertone, 'You should go to the woods. You could find a hollow, wrap yourself in a blanket and not be cold. We'd bring you food.'

       Hubert shook his head firmly. 'You'd be missed, then seen, then followed. I won't have you suffer penance for me. My way's best.'

       'Tell us where you do mean to go.'

       'As before, Tom, I won't have you lie or be held sinfully obstinate on my account.'

       'Then-why do you go at last? After not going at first? Because of... fucking? Say, Hubert.'

       'No, because of something Master Morley told me about myself just before I was summoned to Rome. That's as much as I'll say.'

       'But weren't you tempted at all by what the Pope offered you?'

       'Oh yes, greatly, but not enough, and so my mind was made up. If something of that mark didn't signify, nothing would.'

       'I beg you not to defy the will of the Holy Father, which is also God's will.' This was Mark. 'In the name of your saint. In Our Lady's name. In Christ's name.'

       Without speaking, Hubert again shook his head.

       'You think you can continue as runaway for ever?'

       'A few months will be enough, Mark. Perhaps only a few weeks. Until I'm too old to be altered and save my voice.'

       'Fool! Apostate!'

       'Silence, Mark,' said Thomas in a hiss. Then he turned and reached under his pillow. 'Before you fasten those straps... I don't know if you'll have time to do much reading.'

       Hubert glanced at the almost intact cover of the book. 'Galliard. Keith Roberts.'

       'It's CW. What would have happened if the Schismatics' attempt to abduct Elizabeth Tudor had succeeded and they'd reared her as one of themselves.'

       'Flying machines?'

       'No, but electricity.'

       'Wonderful. Thank you, Tom.'

       'Now you must be away.'

       Thomas carefully opened the door, listened, and nodded to Hubert, who picked up his valigia.

       'Stay a moment.' Mark took from round his neck a thin chain bearing a plain silver cross and transferred it to Hubert. 'God give you His protection wherever you go.'

       'Thank you, Mark,' said Hubert, and paused. He wanted to kiss Thomas, and would not have drawn back from kissing Mark as he would then have been obliged to, but he did not dare, and shook hands with them instead. 'I'll see you both again-that I know. Good-bye.'

       'Be lucky,' said Thomas.

       Hubert went out; the door shut silently behind him. There was almost no light in the corridor, but the positions of the windows along it showed well enough to give him his bearings. With his fingertips brushing the inner wall he moved along to the stairhead, his feet in rubber-soled shoes making no sound on the tiles. The handrail guided him down to the hall and he found the outer door after only a few moments' groping; it was unlocked, as he had been told it would be. Closing it on the far side, he unguardedly let the latch fall with a loud clink and stood rigid. Nothing happened. He turned his head and there was the central statue of St Cecilia,? showing as a dark shape partly edged with pale silver under the moon, a candle or two burning inside the buttery, the window of the Abbot's parlour defined by an oil-lamp. It was in that direction that he now made his way, then through the arch into the completely unlit rear yard, past the carp-pond and towards the left-hand cluster of farm buildings. From among these, an affronted barking suddenly burst out; it died down again as suddenly when Hubert, kneeling by Smart's kennel, passed over the chunk of boiled beef he had taken out of supper for the purpose. He added some strokes and pats which brought tail-thumps in return, perhaps in recognition, and whispered a farewell.

       The going was more difficult after that, up a slanting slope broken by tussocks of long grass. After stumbling twice in a dozen yards, he halted and collected himself: he must not turn an ankle now. As he stood there, something like a joined pair of fists butted him in the small of the back, not hard enough to knock him down, though, twisting aside half in alarm, half in an attempt to strike out at whatever it was that had shoved him, he did fall on to hands and knees. There was a grunt, a quick footfall or two, and a snapping of stems, but, by the time he was up again, nothing to be seen. Just then he heard a faint whistle from under a clump of small trees, and went there as fast as he safely could.

       'So, master runaway,' said Decuman's voice. 'Have a piss before you set off. There's six hours at least till full light, so wherever you mean to go you needn't scramble. If a constable questions you, you act like a noodle. "The priest... send... for me," and if he asks where, point the way you go. He'll soon tire of you. Get your food at stalls and pattie-shops, never at an eating-house, however low. Journey by night, except through towns, and sleep in the open by day.'

       'You told me all this before.'

       'I tell you again. Now come and stand by me. There's the road. Left to Coverley and London, right to Oxford and the North. You see? Good. Mount, then. Give me your foot.'

       Hubert was quickly settled astride the pony that had been waiting almost in silence near by. It looked black, but then so would most horses in such deep shade.

       'This is old Joan,' continued Decuman. 'She's well-behaved—just let her carry you. Now in here there's cheese, bread and apples. Water. And...' He reached for Hubert's hand and put some coins into it.

       'You give me too much,' said Hubert, stowing the money away in his pocket: he did not care to count it in front of Decuman, but he could feel the milled edges of a half-crown and a shilling. 'Too much of everything. How can I ever thank you?'

       'By staying free.'

       'You put yourself in serious danger, stealing a horse.'

       'I didn't steal her-you did.'

       'The Abbot will know different.'

       'The Abbot never acts without proof. And that puts me in mind: try not to be caught with Joan. You're less than twelve, therefore they can't send you to gaol, but they can give you infants' purification. I hear that's best avoided.'

       'No doubt. Why do you do all this for me, Decuman?'

       'Because I'm safe and you're not. I'll always be safe from whatever they may try against me-I'm too crafty for them. Not you. You've plenty of wit, more than I have, but you're not crafty. And you entered my dormitory.'

       'That wasn't your choice or mine: I was allotted.'

       'You entered just the same.'

       Joan, impatient for the journey, tossed her head and blew gently down her nostrils. Hubert said, 'If I'm not crafty, how can I hope to stay free?'

       'By following what I told you, and by luck, and by their stupidity: they're well practised in the catching of felons and apostates, but where are they to look for you if not at your father's house—and you don't mean to go there, I hope?'

       'No.'

       'By God's grace too. There must be such a thing. Good-bye, Hubert.'

       'Decuman, I wish I had a hogshead of ale and a pretty young miss to give you.'

       'So do I, my dear, so do I. Now go carefully.'

       Catching the note of farewell, the pony had already started to move; the merest touch of Hubert's knee brought her round the small distance necessary to set her straight downhill. She stepped as carefully as Decuman could have wished, but without fuss or hesitation, and Hubert looked forward to an easy ride. Everything was in place: the provision-bag, the water-flask, his valigia with its carrying-strap handily looped over the pommel in front of him. He took a deep, slow breath, and all that he had left behind him faded from his thoughts. Even the Chapel itself to his left, a dark pointed bulk touched with light here and there, served only to give him his bearings. He reached the road and turned Joan towards Coverley and London.

       It was neither a warm nor a cool night: when the breeze touched his cheek, it felt to be of exactly the same temperature as himself. Patches of shadow passed briefly over him and slid away down the road ahead. He looked into the sky and saw thin rags of cloud twisting about over the face of the moon with a speed and violence whose soundlessness seemed the more unnatural for the multitude of sounds, soft but clear, that came from close by: the groan of leather, the regular thud of hoofs, Joan's occasional snorts, the scurrying of some small creature through the grasses near the road, the indignant shriek of an Athene's owl, with, further off, the notes of a bell in Coverley, the muffled beat of a manufactory machine and, rapidly approaching from behind, the unmistakable noise of a vehicle engine.

       Before he thought, Hubert had urged Joan into a canter; when he did think, it was to reason that pursuit could not be on its way so soon, then, as the noise grew nearer and lamplight began to illuminate his surroundings, to reason further that he must have been seen by now and had better behave like someone with no cause for fear. He pulled the pony back to a walk and a moment later halted her against the hedge, patting her neck and telling her gently that she was not a green young filly who would shy at anything a little out of the way. As it happened, she had been to market scores of times, felt perfectly indifferent towards all forms of transport, and did nothing more than toss her head when the express, as it proved to be, came drumming past. As before, the head-tossing showed impatience, but when Hubert indicated that they should move on again she stood her ground for some seconds, evidently to mark her disapproval of the abrupt and unjust ending of an enjoyable scamper.

       By the time the rear lamps of the express had disappeared, other lights, fixed ones, were in clear view, and it was not long before boy and horse made an upward turn on to the stone facing of the street that led to the centre of the capital. It was bright with gasoliers on poles and gantries; Hubert held off the impulse to wheel aside into the protective darkness of one alley or another. He had calculated earlier, and now told himself again, that to do so would be the act of a nitwit. The side thoroughfares were long since under curfew and patrolled by the constabulary; anyone found in them without a valid transeat (which even Decuman's resources could not have secured) would be attached at once. Far better to stay in the light with the honest folk. Hubert pulled down the peak of his cap, tried to look as tall as he could in the saddle, and quietly rehearsed the rumbling bass voice he would use if accosted.

       There seemed no likelihood of that for the moment. Publics and expresses passed to and fro; an overnight express-omnibus thundered by on its way from London to the North. From the ristorantes and caffes, still brightly lit and resounding with music, the last guests were coming out on to the footway in their many-coloured silks and velvets, laughing and talking loudly. None of them had any eyes for Hubert. Somebody who did was a young constable with whiskers, readily identifiable by his spiked helmet, but before anything was done or said an ill-clad man of the people rushed across his path out of an alley, followed by another holding aloft some sort of club, and there was no attention to spare for a nondescript figure on a quietly plodding horse. Hubert took a further deep breath.

       Soon, it seemed within a few yards, the character of the street changed. The overhead lights continued, but the buildings were mostly dark and silent: shops, theatres, extravaganza-houses, concert-halls. Only the churches were illuminated, though dimly—the churches and the doorways and curtained windows of establishments Hubert did not at once identify: he had seldom visited this part of the city, and never at night. Then he saw one of the comparatively few foot-passengers, a middle-aged man, respectably dressed, pause at such a doorway, pull the bell, and at once move apart as if to peer into the unlit front of an adjacent bottega. Just as Hubert drew level, someone answered the bell, and the man, head lowered and hand over face, hurried inside. At the same time, there drifted across a snatch of music, not of the sort heard earlier. It came to a cadence and was followed by applause and by shouts of approval that had a curious growling undertone to them. Hubert understood, and said to himself that he must tell... But he hoped never to see Decuman again.

       Here was the turning; Hubert leaned to his left and Joan followed or went with the movement. Two hundred yards away was safety, and shelter too: small drops of rain had begun to touch his face and swirl slowly under the gaslight. There was nobody to be seen, and no sound came from any of the houses he passed, none either from the house whose courtyard he entered, but a lamp was burning over the doorway. Halted close by, he took the water-flask and drained it; he was not thirsty, but he must use what it had cost Decuman trouble and risk to get for him. The same reasoning led him to transfer to his valigia the provisions, wrapped in coarse paper. This done, he dismounted, tied the pony's reins to the hitching-rail beside the steps, and wielded the door-knocker.

       In not much over a minute, there came the sound of bolts being withdrawn and, with a squeak and a rattle, the door opened. The man who had once before opened it to Hubert stood on the threshold. He wore a red nightgown and carried a lighted candle.

       'Yes?'

       'Are you Samuel?'

       'No, I'm Domingo.' The man held the candle-flame forward and his puzzled expression gave way to a smile, though his eyes were still alert. 'I know you, young master. You come here before. To afternoon table. And you sung after.'

       'Yes, Domingo. I give you my humblest excuses for disturbing you at this hour, but I'm in danger. I come to ask for the protection of the Ambassador.'

       'His Excellence is not here.'

       'Where is he?'

       'His Excellence is at his embassy in London. He stays there two weeks more.'

       'But I must see him,' said Hubert helplessly.

       'His Excellence is in London,' said Domingo, and started to close the door.

       'I have nowhere to go and nowhere to sleep, and if I'm caught I'll be locked up. Please let me in.'

       'No permission, no permission.'

       'Would you see your son driven from his friend's door? When Master van den Haag hears of it, he'll—'

       'I don't have no son.' After a moment, Domingo smiled again, with all his face this time, and pulled the door wide open. 'But I do have nephews, and it'll rain more soon. Please to come in, young master.'

       Hubert followed him across the spacious hall, in which the candle gave vague glimpses of paintings, flower-baskets, a looking-glass in a heavy frame, and down a passage into what must be the kitchen. Here Domingo lit a gas-lamp above the long wooden table and considered Hubert again. He looked sad when he was not smiling.

       'You want to eat?' he asked.

       'Yes. Yes, please.' Hubert had taken care to sup well that evening, but policy as well as inclination required acceptance of any offer of food.

       Very soon, Domingo had set in front of him salame, dark bread, a kind of sweet cake with chopped nuts, and a mug of milk. 'I come back quick,' said the man, and left him.

       As he ate and drank, Hubert's spirits declined. He told himself he should have taken account of what he had known perfectly well: that Coverley was the capital of the land, but London the seat of its government, and that ambassadors might be expected to spend less of their time in the one than in the other. All he had gained by coming to this house was a respite, a brief interval before he must mount Joan again and set off on a journey of almost sixty miles through rain and darkness—some of it through darkness, rather, for it would be broad day long before he could even hope to reach London. What was his chance of finding van den Haag there before he himself was found by the constables? Small: at least it felt small.

       When Domingo returned he had with him the other Indian, Samuel. The two had clearly been conferring on Hubert and what was to happen to him.

       'Please to tell Samuel and me why you come here,' said Domingo.

       'They—the Abbot at the Chapel, and the priests—they mean to have me altered and I want to escape, and Master van den Haag is the only—'

       'Altered? How altered?'

       'Act on me so that I can never be a man. Take from me what makes a man.'

       Samuel was the first to understand. He said in a horrified voice, 'What you done, little boy?'

       'Nothing. Nothing except sing. They mean me to continue to sing with a boy's voice after I should be a man.'

       'In New England, they don't do that to children, they... '

       Abruptly, Samuel stopped and looked at his companion. There was a short silent conversation carried on with facial movements and strange gestures. It ended with an exchange of nods, then turned into talk, a kind of talk that reminded Hubert of what Hilda had said when she talked like the people in New England (so she had remembered well). He followed the earlier part without much trouble: Samuel suggested that the boy should stay here while a message was sent to London, Domingo objected and mentioned some disagreeable person called the Secretary, and Samuel took his point. Thereafter intelligibility lapsed, but agreement was soon reached. Domingo turned to Hubert.

       'Do you have money?'

       Hubert brought out Decuman's gift and what had been in his own purse and counted. 'Six shillings and three farthings.'

       'Enough. Now Samuel take you in the express to the rail-track station. You go on the late rapid to London. Then you go to the Embassy. You tell Citizen van den Haag how you come.'

       'Where is the Embassy?'

       'On St Edmund Street.'

       'Where's that?'

       'By St Giles's.' Domingo hesitated. 'I... stay here; I don't go there.'

       Hubert took his meaning, that his knowledge of London was poor. 'No matter, I'll find it.'

       'Good. You go now.'

       'My horse!' said Hubert, remembering. 'I left her outside.'

       'Your horse, yes?'

       'Please would you shelter her and feed her, and take her home tomorrow? You needn't deliver her—if you set her free within half a mile of the Chapel, she'll find her way home.'

       Domingo considered, then nodded his head. 'It'll be done. Go with Samuel now or you miss the rapid.'

       'Thank you, Domingo.'

       'It's nothing, young master.'

       'But it isn't nothing. You've been good to me out of no need. I'll pray for you.'

       To Hubert's surprise, the man looked stern for a moment, even angry. When this passed, he gave another nod and a faint smile, murmured something and went out by the door that led to the hall. Samuel, now holding a lighted lantern, signed that Hubert was to follow and moved away in the other direction, through a still-room where shelves of preserves and cordials were fleetingly to be seen, and at last into the open. The rain was blowing more strongly, but seemed no thicker. Samuel locked up after them and set off again along the side of the building to what proved to be the express-house. Hubert looked on in wonder when Samuel pulled down a lever set in the wall and, with a hiss of escaping compressed air, a long door swung slowly upwards and outwards. When it had come to rest in a horizontal position, the Indian motioned towards the express, the same that had carried Hubert the previous week, or its twin.

       'May I sit by you, Samuel?'

       'Surely.'

       Hubert watched while the man lit the lamps at front and rear, then, having climbed in beside him, started the engine with the clockwork motor, shifted the gear-arm and let in the gland. The express moved slowly into a short lane that brought it to the street, where it gathered speed. Raindrops whirled against the windguard and, although the swabbers were in action, Hubert found it hard to see out and soon lost his bearings.

       'Will it disturb you if I talk?'

       'No.'

       'What did I do that offended Domingo?'

       'Not offended.'

       'There was something that didn't please him.'

       'Ah now, see, little boy, we think a man saying his prayers, that's his own matter. We don't love him to talk about it. We, I mean we at home in New England. But you don't go and think you offended that Domingo. He knew in a minute you was just thankful to him. See, it's all right.'

       'You are kind, Samuel. And Domingo too. Please tell me—the boys at the Chapel helped me, but they're my friends, they must be, but you and Domingo have met me only once before, he hardly saw me, and yet you're both so kind, out of no need, as I said. Why?'

       'Same idea. Religion. Hear this between you and me: we at home, we hate your Pope and your monks and your priests. Domingo parts from Mexico and comes to New England, the Archbishop of El Paso, he says Domingo isn't a Christian no more, what is it he done?'

       'Excommunicated him?'

       'Say so. He wants Domingo to go to hell. That don't make Domingo go to hell, but that Archbishop, he don't know that. Goddam popeling. So you come to hide from the priests, we help you. And, see, at home, anybody runs away any time, we help him.'

       'Do many folk run away in New England?'

       'Indians, they do. Now, pardon, this piece of road, I go mighty careful.'

       Hubert took the hint and said no more on the subject.

       Somewhere in the distance he noticed an irregular patch of light that might have been the station. He half-listened to the hammering of the engine and the swish of the rubber tires through the rain. His curiosity was again at work, but it was a full two minutes before he yielded to it.

       'Samuel, whom do they alter in New England?'

       'Uh?'

       'When I told you the priests meant to alter me, you said they didn't do it to children there. That shows they do it to some others.'

       'I don't remember, young master.'

       Stealthily, Hubert turned his head and scanned the exotic, handsome profile beside him. He could not make out much detail, and his experience of reading characters from faces had been necessarily brief, but he thought he could read a firm self-respect, some obstinacy, and a distinct trace of the sadness he had noticed in Domingo, a look of long-remembered disappointment. But there was humour too. Hubert said abruptly, 'I won't let the Secretary know anything.'

       Samuel gave a faint smile, but his voice was not merry when he spoke. 'A man sins too much with women, they alter him. A man sins in other ways, ways of not being pure, they alter him.'

       'A man? Surely not any man. Surely a priest.'

       'A pastor. No, any man. Like my brother. Now I take you to the train.'

       The station was crowded with travellers taking advantage of the cheap fares payable late at night: Hubert's half-price journey-tab cost him ten minutes' wait in a line and threepence-farthing. Most of the folk were pilgrims in bands of fifty or a hundred, bound for Rome, for Jerusalem (a destination unattainable for over thirty years before the Sultan-Calif, as part of his policy of detensione, had re-opened it to Christians in 1968), for the tomb of St James of Compostella in Spain, for the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury, the richest in northern Europe.

       With Samuel at his side, Hubert walked up the pavement beside the train, past the mail vans being filled with the familiar grey sacks, past the loaded cargo vans to the passenger baruches. Samuel found Hubert a passage seat in a people's baruch opposite a friendly-looking old woman who carried on her lap a closed basket of chirping and rustling small birds. He asked her please to tend to this young stable-lad on his way to visit his sick mother in London. Then he looked hard at Hubert and said in his strange accent, 'Good-bye, little boy. I hope your God take care of you.' He was gone before Hubert could reply. After a time, a shrill bell rang, doors slammed, the baruch shuddered gently and the journey started. The man next to Hubert, a hireling by the look of him, curled himself up on the wooden bench and began to snore almost at once. Dirty children ran up and down the passage; a game of dice on the bench behind aroused increasing emotions; somewhere further back, a blurred voice sang very slowly and unsteadily (and with copious ornamentation) a song from an extravaganza of the Thirties. But, despite all these and other distractions, despite having meant to share his provisions with the old woman and to encourage her to talk about her family, he fell asleep almost as soon as the train was out of the station. He dreamed he was on Joan's back again and the ground under her feet was so soft, or her gait so smooth, that the saddle did not move at all, except forwards in a straight line. In the end she stopped; he woke to find that it was the train that had stopped, and half the other passengers were already on their feet. The old woman asked him if he needed help in making his way to where his mother lived. Her speech was uncouth, but her meaning was as plain as her good intentions. He thanked her and told her he would have no difficulty.

       Nor would he, he was confident. Instead of taking an express-omnibus to the St Giles's neighbourhood and searching for St Edmund Street on foot, an exercise he had not been looking forward to, he would do what had been in his mind when he woke and be carried straight to the Embassy by public. (The drivers of London publics were famous all over Christendom for knowing their city down to its remotest alley; each had to pass the Civil Constabulary's rigorous probation in such knowledge before being granted his charter.) This obvious course had not occurred to Hubert earlier because travelling in this fashion was not expected in an unaccompanied child, even a child of the higher degree.

       Beside the long arcade on the east side of the station stood a long file of publics, showing as well as their road-lamps the green light indicating that they were vacant. Instinct, and a touch of chill in the air, kept Hubert in the shelter of the arcade while the couple of dozen folk waiting at the head of the file were accommodated and driven away. Then, after a quick glance to and fro, he hurried across to the vehicle that stood at the front. The driver turned and saw him, but instead of opening his window on its pivot to hear instructions, as would have been customary, the man scowled fiercely and jerked his thumb and first two fingers downwards in the 'go to hell' gesture. Hubert understood at once. His cap, trousers and corduroy jerkin effectively disguised him as one of the people, an advantage at most points in his travels, not so here: he had of course been taken for a beggar or a tout. He reached in his pocket, found a shilling and held it up. The publicman's expression showed surprise, then thought. After a moment he swung the pane of glass aside.

       'Ay, well?'

       'Take me to the New Englander Embassy in St Edmund Street,' said Hubert authoritatively.

       More thought. 'What you want there, then?'

       'The Ambassador requires me to visit him.'

       'Ah, does he so? That'll do, young master. One shilling.'

       It was scandalous overcharging, but Hubert had no choice. 'I accept.'

       'I take you,' said the driver, thus sealing the contract, and dowsed his green light.

       Very soon, the public had entered Tyburn Road and was passing the Anvil house. It was in darkness, as was nearly every other building. The gasoliers still burned, illuminating stretches of empty footway. An express, moving slowly and in a series of irregular swerves, was the only vehicle Hubert saw. Then, to his surprise, the public turned left into Apostle Andrew Street; he knew that St Giles's lay in the opposite direction.

       'Why do we go here, driver?'

       'Excuses, young master, I must get me more fuel. Only a minute to it.'

       As he spoke, the driver took them left again, away from the gaslight down a narrow alley which, after more turns, ended in a small cobbled yard. The roadlamps showed soot-stained brick walls, two pairs of wooden doors, a shed with a broken window.

       'Is this the place?' asked Hubert doubtfully.

       'Oh yes,' said the driver, cutting off his engine. 'I got to wake him now. Not more nor a minute to it.'

       The man leaned forward and opened some compartment in front of him; there followed a rustling noise, as of thin paper. Hubert sat and peered without success and wondered: he knew nothing of the kind of place where publics took in their fuel, but this one seemed rather remote. At last the driver left his seat and walked across to one of the sets of doors. Instead of knocking, he put his hand to his chest, swayed, and called hoarsely, 'Young master! I'm that sick! Give me your arm, for Mary's sake!'

       Hubert jumped down on to the cobbles. He noticed that the moon was shining again and that a dog was barking somewhere on the far side of the yard. He reached the driver, who at once straightened himself, seized him, and slapped over his mouth and nose a piece of damp cloth with a smell like that of flowers that had been cut too long. It made his body begin to feel light and empty. There was a humming or droning sound, and the skin on his cheeks and the back of his neck first tingled, then slackened, then went numb. He remembered that he had never asked the old woman. in the train what birds she carried in her basket.

       'Hear him speak, Jacob, you see I'm right.'

       'I hope you are. And I hope I shall hear him speak soon. A lad that size needs no more than a whiff.'

       'I gave him no more.'

       'I hope not.'

       The man the public-driver had called Jacob pronounced his words in an odd way, as if he had difficulty with his tongue and teeth. The air was warm and permeated with the smell of woodsmoke and damp, also with sharper, less identifiable smells. Hubert found himself lying under a blanket on a lumpy divan or day-bed. He opened his eyes a little to discover something of his surroundings while still supposedly unconscious, but could not make out much more than streaks and shadows, so he abandoned subterfuge and raised his head. Apart from severe thirst, all he felt was a dull puzzlement.

       The two men left their chairs by the rusty iron fireplace and came over to him. The driver, now seen clearly for the first time, had nothing but an uncommonly loose, moist pair of lips to distinguish him from countless others of his degree. His companion—Jacob—was tall and round-backed, with a long shawl of some kind thrown over his shoulders and gathered at his breast by a curious fermaglio, so that the rest of his garments were vague; after the same fashion, a full grey beard and whiskers allowed little more of his face to be seen than a high-bridged nose and a pair of deep brown eyes. He wore a black skull-cap. After a moment, he said in his lisping voice, 'Speak, boy. Be good enough to let us know your name.'

       Hubert sat up straight on the edge of the day-bed. His father's training made him say as imperatively as he could, 'I'll let you know nothing until you bring me a glass of water.'

       'Eh, eh! Won't you so? Very well, very well. Jack, do as the young master requires.'

       The driver hurried off into what was evidently a scullery. Aware of the scrutiny of Jacob's eyes, but ignoring it as far as he could, Hubert looked about. He was sitting in a narrow kitchen with a low ceiling and a single tiny window near a door that must lead to the front of the dwelling. The only light came from the fire and a couple of bare candles stuck on the shelf above it, though near by he noticed an elaborate candlestick with seven empty sockets. There was something curious about the walls, more than that they were discoloured with damp in places and smeared with grime: no pictures hung on them.

       Soon, Jack returned with a large earthenware mug. The water in it had a stale taste, but Hubert drained it.

       'You wish for more, young master?' asked Jacob, his long hands clasped in front of him.

       'No thank you. Not now.'

       'So... Ah, Jack, my boy, I give you my excuses for doubting you. You are right. The Embassy might have been a story, the dress is of the people, but now I hear him speak...'

       'So—my drink, Jacob?'

       'Of course, of course. You know where to find it.'

       Jack nodded eagerly, reached into a cupboard or other receptacle on the further side of the chair he had sat in, and brought out a tin mug and a bottle labelled Fine English Brandy: Cor done Blu. Dreamily, Hubert remembered the blazing brandy that had crowned the family pudding the previous St Lucy's Day, its flames symbolising (so his father had said) the baptism of fire prophesied for the earliest followers of Our Lord. But Jacob was speaking again.

       'Now, young master, you merit an explanation. It's all very simple. My good friend Jack here and I are in commerce together. Every time he goes out at night and takes up in his public some likely one of the gentry—an old person, a sick person, or this time a very young person, sir—he gives him that opiate of his and brings him to me. Then we send to the person's family and we ask for quite a small sum, maybe twenty pounds, maybe more, in return for the person's being set free unharmed. We hold to our word. If the money comes, well and good. If it doesn't, the person is harmed and set free, but that's rare indeed, rare indeed. Isn't it very simple, sir?'

       'Too much so.' Hubert tried to maintain his air of superiority. 'How simple is it when the constables come looking?'

       'About the same, yes. The constables in these parts, we see to it that they like us a great deal, so they don't look too closely. If the person himself and his family come looking, they never find this place: do you know just where you are, sir?—no.

       And if they did find it, we wouldn't be here. Everybody in these parts likes us a great deal, you see. And so on and so forth. It's all simple. Now, I'm sure your father will have the wit to pay the money as soon as he can. And don't think to scream or call for help now, young master. Some folk might hear you, but they won't come to Jacob's house for that, and if you continue, then I'll hurt you, I'm afraid.'

       'But you don't know who my father is or where he lives.'

       'No no, sir, but you'll tell me when I ask you.'

       'You will that, no error,' said Jack, draining his mug and refilling it. He went on genially, 'No more nor two ways it can happen—he asks you the once and you tells him quick, or he asks you and asks you and asks you till you tell him. M'm, simple it is indeed. There's that iron in the fire there. You wouldn't much care to—'

       Jacob raised his hand in a solemn gesture like a priest's. 'Enough, Jack. Leave your drink and take that public of yours to the garage. It's in the way, you see. The constables don't like that. Go, my boy.'

       Hurriedly again, Jack reached over his chair and. put his mug down on the cupboard, then went out of the room by the further door. To his great surprise, Hubert at once felt a faint but unmistakable sense of affinity with Jacob, a much reduced version of what he would have felt when Mark left him alone with Thomas, a sense that the time had come for any confidences or confessions. Perhaps Jacob felt the same: at any rate, his glance now was directly questioning. Hubert began at the one obvious point.

       'Don't you wonder that I dress like a child of the people?'

       'It's no interest of mine, young master.'

       'Attend, Jacob, I'm a runaway from—my school and from the priests. From my father too. If you send me back to him he'll punish me severely and hand me over to the priests and they'll punish me more and lock me up.'

       'Eh, eh, what have you done?'

       'Been disobedient and now run away. A sin and a crime. I'm at risk of infants' purification. Please keep me here. I'll work for you.'

       'Such a pity. Sinner and criminal. Disfavoured by both Church and State. Such a pity.'

       Jacob's stoop-shouldered figure moved slowly up the room in the direction of the little window. Under this and along the adjacent half-wall there ran (Hubert noticed for the first time) a narrow ledge on which lay a row of small objects. Some of them-a painted paper fan, a balance and set of weights, some finger-rings and necklaces, a china doll, a silver stylus-holder—were easy enough to identify; others were not, or were containers with no certain contents. Jacob touched or momentarily picked up each one, muttering gently to himself or to them, or both, like a man on some rural task, a farmhand feeding hens, a shepherd greeting as well as numbering his flock. Hubert sank back on the day-bed: nothing painful or frightening or of any importance could happen until Jack returned.

       Whatever Jacob had been doing came to an end. He turned aside to a battered press of unvarnished wood and took from it a small box, from which in turn he took a rough russet-coloured cylinder five or six inches long. Putting one end of this in his mouth, he struck a phosphorus and held it to the other. When a thin cloud of greyish smoke appeared, one of the unfamiliar smells in the room was explained. Hubert felt a mild instinctive disgust: tobacco-smoking was the practice of New Englanders and other low persons. A gentleman would as soon think of indulging in it as of eating with his fingers or appearing drunk at Mass; a thought to keep to oneself.

       Puffing smoke with signs of satisfaction, Jacob walked back, stood above Hubert and gazed down at him. After a pause, he drew his shawl away from his left sleeve, revealing a small yellow star sewn to it. He said quietly, 'You know what this is, young master?'

       'Yes.'

       'Yes, you know what it is. And you know what it means?'

       'Yes.'

       'No, you don't know what it means. Oh, maybe you know it must be there by law. Maybe you know it means I may not own land or fight the devilish Turk or serve the King or any of his ministers. Maybe. But to know all of what it means you must have led my life or the life of one of my tribe. You understand that, sir?'

       Jacob was not talking quietly now. It could never be said, thought Hubert, that a man's eyes could blaze, or said only by writers of TR, who need have no care for truth; all that could be said with truth was that eyes could be bright in colour, and bright because there was enough moisture on their surface to reflect everything else that was bright, and prominent because that was how they were, and prominent because the skin round them was stretched— but, however true, that fell short.

       'Ask yourself, ask yourself where goes the money that comes from the families. Not into any part of my house, that you can tell. Ah, when I began, when I got my first hundred and then my second and my third, I had brave ideas, you see. The money would go to the people, not to my tribe but to all the people, I mean all those who'd dare to do what I'd dare to do and rebel against Church and State. I'd begin-and I could only begin-to lead them out of captivity into a land where the Pope and the King could never reach them. But-at first I couldn't believe it—they preferred to stay. They preferred to be poor and hopeless and full of sin and crime, because they were afraid not to be. No no, because they'd come to need to be as they were. I was four hundred and fifty years too late. So now what do I do, what do I do with the money? I give it to my tribe, for food and medicines, and for schooling for those with wit, you see. I've led a few from the captivity of the spirit-ah, but how few.'

       Out of an obscure feeling that it would be best for him if Jacob continued to talk, Hubert said, 'But what made you a rebel at first? Had you wanted to fight the Turk or serve the King?'

       Jacob did not answer, or not immediately. He put his cigar down in a chipped saucer on the shelf above the fireplace; then, in another of his priest-like movements, he gripped the upper edges of his shawl each side of the fermaglio. He seemed to be inwardly rehearsing some harangue or recitation, and when he spoke his voice carried that quality.

       'Have we not eyes? Have we not hands, organs, proportions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same meat, slaked with the same draughts, subject to the same diseases, healed with the same physic, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter, as you are? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you envenom us, do we not die, and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you...'

       Hubert said into renewed silence, 'I still don't see—'

       'You know those words? You know who wrote those words?'

       'No.'

       'No. Your priests burnt his playhouse and his books, and would have burnt him besides but for the King, whom he'd once made to laugh.'

       'Laugh? What was his name?'

       'So instead, you know what they did, those priests? They attached his goods and excommunicated him and transported him to New England. There, you may see his plays.'

       'In New England.'

       'Yes, in New England. So, then?'

       Hubert shook his head without speaking.

       A log clattered out of the fire, which had sunk low. Cigar in mouth, Jacob put the log back with a pair of tongs and added others from a basket beside the grate. Then, settling his shawl about him, he squatted down on his heels, picked up a pair of bellows and went to work with them, his attention evidently concentrated on the task. The bellows sounded cracked, but the wood must have been dry; anyway, quite soon a flame appeared and grew. Hubert wondered what time of night it was, where he was to sleep, what was to come. He sat forward and drew a shivering breath.

       'I'm cold-may I move nearer the fire?'

       'Yes, yes, child.'

       Settled in the chair Jack had occupied, Hubert said, 'Just now you talked of captivity. What of my captivity here?'

       'What of it indeed?'

       'According to yourself, you began with brave ideas: you'd save not only your tribe but other folk too. Have you quite forgotten those ideas?'

       'Long ago, long ago.'

       'You'd send me into captivity of the body to help others out of captivity of the spirit?'

       The fire in front of Jacob had become a blaze. 'Why not?'

       'God forgive me.'

       'For what, young master?'

       Hubert's right hand darted out and shoved at the back of Jacob's neck; with his left, he threw the contents of Jack's mug, about a gill of strong spirits, into the heart of the flames. There was a puffing, roaring noise and a bright flash as the brandy ignited. Jacob screamed. Within three seconds, Hubert was in the scullery. He found the outside door at once, drew the bolts, turned the key and kept it in his hand. While he was doing this, he heard slow, heavy, irregular footfalls from the kitchen and smelt a terrible odour. He opened the door, slammed it after him, turned the key the other way, threw it over his shoulder and was off into the darkness.

       Anthony Anvil lay asleep in his bed. Something seemed to him to be chipping at his sleep, like a knife-blade at an eggshell. It gave; he awoke and, with no memory of the chipping, heard instead a tapping, a steady tapping at his window. Too puzzled to be alarmed, he struck a phosphorus and was lighting the candle on his night-table when a voice he knew quietly called his name. Anthony hurried over with the candle and helped his brother across the sill. 'Hubert! What do you do here? You look-'

       'I've run away. May I sit down?'

       'Oh, my dear... You've climbed the wisteria.'

       'I must have done, mustn't I? I've run away so as not to be altered. I came to London on the rapid. I was taken by two men called Jacob and Jack. Jack went off and I... eluded Jacob and escaped and I didn't know where I was till I saw I was almost at Edgware Road. They took my valigia with Decuman's food in it and Thomas's book, but I still have Mark's cross. Not valuable enough for them to...'

       'I can't hear you.'

       'Eh? I must go to Master van den Haag, but not now. May I sleep in your bed, Anthony? Or on the floor?'

       'Wait a little.' Anthony considered. There were a dozen questions he would have liked to know the answer to, but for the time being he asked only one. 'Who is Master van den Haag?'

       Hubert yawned like a small animal. 'Master van den Haag... is the New Englander Ambassador. He's my friend. He heard me sing and I went to his house in Coverley and sang to them. His Embassy is in St Giles's. In St Edmund Street. I shall be safe there. Tomorrow. Later. Where may I sleep?'

       'When you call this van den Haag your friend, it isn't a tale or a dream? And he is the Ambassador? Say, Hubert.'

       'It's all true, every word,' said Hubert with bemused indignation.

       'Very well.' Anthony went to his night-table, poured a glass of water from the caraffa there and handed it to his brother. 'What will you ask him to do?'

       'Keep me. Hide me. Take me away. Send me to New England.'

       'But you're a runaway—to hide you is illegal, and to convey you out of the country must be...'

       'He can at least hide me safely. They wouldn't think to search for me at his Embassy, and even if they did they couldn't enter there, because it doesn't belong to England—it's part of New England. Everybody knows that.'

       'You forget what they are: they'd have means of persuading him to give you up... Hubert, my dear, why should van den Haag do as you ask?'

       'He's my friend. No, I can't tell, but who else is there to ask?'

       'No one, but that's not enough.'

       'He's kind. He loves music. He doesn't like to be called my lord. He's proud of New England and pleased he's not English. I think...'

       'Yes?'

       'I think he doesn't like the Pope.'

       'I see. So. Drink that up.'

       '... No more, thank you.'

       'Yes, more. Drink it and stay awake. You have a journey to finish.'

       'Oh, Anthony—tomorrow. In the morning.'

       'Attend, Hubert, it must be now. Before long, the first servants will be stirring. Then it'll be light. No question but that you'll be seen and fetched to papa, and that'll be the end of your escape. You can go only while it's still dark. I'll take you.' Anthony was dressing as he spoke. 'I can leave this house without making a sound: I've had practice enough coming the other way. Follow me and put your feet where I put mine and you'll be as silent as I am. We'll be in St Edmund Street within an hour.'

       In the event, they were there much sooner than that, thanks to a vacant public that drove out of Apostle Andrew Street and turned west as they approached—Hubert stayed clear until he was quite certain that it was not Jack at the wheel. Soon they were passing the elegant and extraordinary structure that housed the Japanese Embassy, like Nagasaki Cathedral the product of the mature genius of Yamamoto, and recognised with it as the culmination of Oriental achievement in modern ecclesiastical architecture. Both in size and in splendour the rest of the street was outdone, not least the modest two-storey brick building proclaimed by a blue-and-white sign to be the Embassy of the Republic of New England.

       Anthony ordered the publicman to wait and, with Hubert at his side, approached the entrance where, between a pair of lamps on brick pillars, a gate of tall iron railings shut off access to a paved yard and, beyond it, the Embassy itself. Reaching out, Anthony shook the gate. Within a few seconds there appeared a sentry in red-and-blue uniform with white facings, fusil at the shoulder.

       'Good morning, sir. May I help you?'

       'Good morning. Yes, you may. I have important business. Please fetch me your officer.'

       It was after an almost imperceptible hesitation that the man turned and walked back the way he had come, and less than a minute before he reappeared accompanied by a tall, thin figure in a similar but more opulent uniform. The newcomer held himself stiffly upright and wore a fierce mustach, but he could not have been more than a year or two older than Anthony.

       'Good morning, sir. I am Subaltern Reichesberg. I am let know that you have important business here. Kindly state it, sir.'

       'I am Anthony Anvil and this is my brother Hubert. We are the children of Master Tobias Anvil, merchantman, of Tyburn Road and Bishopsgate. Your master, His Excellency van den Haag, has employed my brother to obtain for him some information of the highest confidence. He now has that information and is here to deliver it in person, as instructed.'

       Anthony thought to himself that this speech had not run very well when he rehearsed it in the public, and sounded no better when delivered. The subaltern seemed to take the same general view, but he did glance for a moment at the sentry before replying: a hopeful sign.

       'Why should His Excellency send a child on such an errand? And an English child too?'

       'I don't know. A child can obviously find his way to places closed to his elders.'

       'Such places as...?'

       'I mean of course that folk will speak freely in his presence when they would not before an adult.'

       'Ah. Of what import is this supposed information, sir?'

       'Considerable, I suppose, given these circumstances. It must touch nothing less than the well-being of your country.'

       'Have you no documents at all?'

       Anthony had foreseen this question. He answered with well-simulated surprise, 'Naturally not, in a matter of such confidence.'

       Reichesberg sighed and raised a white-gloved hand towards his mustach, but lowered it again. 'May I ask you to return at a more suitable hour?'

       'That would be to run counter to the boy's instructions. He was told to present himself directly he got the information, at whatever time.'

       'Why was I not told to expect you?' asked Reichesberg in a pleading tone.

       'To promote safety?' Anthony shrugged his shoulders. 'But I warn you, Subaltern: unless you admit my brother without further delay, you must answer to His Excellency.'

       Reichesberg looked hard at Anthony, then at Hubert. 'You, boy—you have every look of a child of the people in that rig. Account for yourself now.'

       'I assumed this disguise, sir,' said Hubert at his most gentlemanlike, 'in order to penetrate the disreputable circles where my mission lay.'

       There was a pause. The sentry shuffled his feet on the pavement, rolled his eyes a little and drew his index finger to and fro under his nose. Anthony raised his head and looked at the top of the lofty staff from which, its colours indistinguishable, the flag of New England fluttered.

       'Goddam,' said Reichesberg without much emotion. 'Open up, Paddy.'

       So Hubert stepped on to the soil of the only nation in Christendom into which the Pope's servants could not enter at will and of right. There was delay while the subaltern aroused a succession of household functionaries, each of whom had to go through his own cycle of disbelief followed by grudging acceptance, but before very long Hubert's arrival had been officially recognised; as much to the point, a bedchamber was put at his disposal pending his introduction to the Ambassador at a later stage. The brothers kissed and took their leave of each other. Reichesberg escorted Anthony to the street.

       'Well, have you fooled me, sir? I can't undo now what I've done.'

       'Some particulars are not as stated, but His Excellency will surely approve your decision, so your professional honour is safe.'

       'That was never at risk; I'm concerned only with my powers of judgement. Thank you, sir. Good day.'

       It was'indeed almost day when Anthony, back in Tyburn Road, paid off his public and approached the house, not frontally but, to avoid inquisitive eyes, up the express-house drive in the first place. He had reached the corner of the building when he heard a loud but muffled groan from indoors, from the express-house itself. A few seconds later, he was bending over a man who lay in a very uncomfortable attitude at the foot of the staircase. Anthony did not at once recognise him, because the lower half of his face was covered with a large gag secured by tapes, but well before this had been removed he could see that it was Father Lyall who lay there, lay there in pints of his own blood, his hands fastened behind his back, his left leg broken. It was later established that he had been attacked in his room and had fallen while trying to get down the stair in search of help, but for the moment there were more important questions to be answered. The main source of the bleeding appeared to be somewhere about the lower abdomen; Anthony lifted the hem of the nightshirt. What he saw made him turn his head violently aside and drive his fists hard against his cheekbones. Then he remembered his duty and his training, felt the pulse, listened for the heart-beat. There was almost none of either. The priest's eyes were shut and his breathing was imperceptible; the flow of blood seemed to have stopped. Anthony was as sure as he could be that death was unavoidable and imminent, but training had something to say about that too. He ran at his best speed to the Cistercian hospice across Edgware Road, where a surgeon was known to be always on call. From there he was also able to inform the authorities. Not till then did he set about rousing his father.

       Half an hour afterwards, Tobias Anvil sat in his library giving information to two members of the constabulary, a proctor and a serjeant. Anthony was in attendance.

       The proctor, a heavy man with a massive head and neck, said slowly, as he slowly made a note, 'Very good, master. You never once inferred that he was given to offences against chastity.'

       'Certainly not.' True enough: Tobias had gone to some trouble to avoid finding himself compelled to infer such a thing. 'If I had, I should have dismissed him from his post in my household.'

       'Your servants brought no word of that sort.'

       'No. Why do you pursue this line of inquiry, Proctor?'

       'I must first pursue the obvious, master. The crime declares itself as an act of jealousy and revenge on the part of a rival, perhaps a husband, as witness the mutilations.'

       Over the past nights, Margaret Anvil had slept better than at any time since she was a young girl. She had not stirred when her husband, sent for by Anthony, left her side. It was no more than a minute since she had suddenly awoken and at the same time become aware of some unusual and untoward agitation in the house. Immediately filled with fear, she had put on a breakfast-gown and gone to find her maid, who told her that Father Lyall had suffered an accident and could or would tell her nothing more. Hearing voices from the library, she entered it without knocking for the first time in her life, at just the right moment to catch the whole of the proctor's last sentence.

       'What mutilations?' she asked in a steady, unexcited voice.

       'There has been a terrible mishap, my dear.' Tobias had left his seat in concern. 'Father Lyall is dead. These men are—'

       'What mutilations?'

       The proctor was not only a slow speaker, he was also slow to adapt himself to the unexpected or unfamiliar. So he said, as he would have said to a superior, to a State official, to a magistrate, 'Certain organs were removed.'

       'What organs?'

       Nobody spoke. Anthony hurried over to his mother, not knowing why he did so.

       Margaret screamed. Soon she was weeping too, but she continued to scream at intervals. Her hands moved in the air and over her head and body to no purpose. Someone—Anthony—put his arm round her, caught her hands and gripped them. The constabulary serjeant said an urgent word or two to the proctor and half bundled him from the room. Margaret did not take in their going nor, when at last she looked up, the fact that they had gone. This was understandable, if only because, a couple of seconds after she did look up, Tobias hit her across the side of the face with an open hand but a stiff arm, so that she lurched and fell to the floor, her head missing a corner of the oak desk by about an inch.

       'Harlot,' he said in his clear tones. 'Designing adulteress. Hell and all its flames receive you.'

       Anthony made the Sign of the Cross. 'The sword of Michael stand between my mother and any harm.' His mouth was now as straight and composed as hers had ever been. 'If you touch her again, father, you touch me too. Be warned.'

       'I'll have her attached for unchastity, I'll see her purified, I'll... '

       'Twaddle,' said Anthony, helping Margaret to her feet. 'You'll do nothing. Firstly because there are no facts. Secondly because you're a man of mark, and wherever you go—to St Mary Bourne, to Bishopsgate, to your gaming-rooms—you prize your dignity. And thirdly because you'll never allow yourself to become involved in any disturbance that touches the Church in the smallest degree.—Let me take you to your room, mama.'

       'I'll turn her out of doors. It's my right.'

       'Then, as before, you turn me out too.'

       'Hubert will stay with me.'

       'Hubert is... Hubert would go with his mother if he had the choice.'

       For the first time that morning, Tobias looked Anthony straight in the eye. 'Is there nothing to be said in my favour? Nothing at all?', 'Of course there's something, papa, though less than you think. For instance, it's not in your favour that what hurts you most is damaged pride. But we'll talk later.'

       The first thing Hubert saw when he woke up looked rather like a small brass lantern, but all there seemed to be inside the case was two white squares of bone or china with black numbers on them: 2 44. In an instant, and without a sound, 44 became 45. He stared, then smiled as a clock not far away struck the three-quarters. Glancing round the spacious, airy room, he remembered the previous night, or most of it: Joan and the ride, Domingo and Samuel, the train, the public, Jacob and Jack, Anthony, the sentry and the officer, himself and Anthony entering the shadowy hall, but after that came a confusion of footsteps and voices. He recognised the bed he lay in, the striped outer cover and the smooth sheets that smelt faintly and cleanly of some herb he did not know, the vividly-coloured rugs, the slender furniture, but he had never consciously seen before the great sweep of wallpaper on three sides of him, vivid as it was with its designs of birds, animals and fish in rounded square or rhomboid medallions on a green-and-grey lattice background. But he had little time for it even now, in view of the loaded tray on the night-table beside him. At the mere notion of food, hunger overwhelmed him.

       Under a starched cloth were rusks, paninos, blackcurrant conserve, butterscotch squares with almonds, lime juice, milk, cheese and a bowl of soft fruit. There was also a card with a red-and-blue border and an image of the American lion, the New Englander national emblem. On it was a print-written message with a final sentence and initials added in stylus. Already eating fast, Hubert read: If you prefer cooked food, please ring. Rest as long as you wish. The bath and commodation are through the door to your left. When you are quite ready, come down to the hallway. Anyone you find there will fetch you to me. We all welcome you to our house.

       Hubert stretched out for the silver hand-bell, with the idea of calling for cooked food as well as rather than instead of uncooked, then changed his mind. The cooking would take time, and his desire to see van den Haag and tell him his story was urgent, urgent enough to overcome even greed.

       In five minutes, he had cleared the tray of everything but the cheese (how queer to offer it for breakfast), got out of bed to look for his clothes, failed to find them and found instead, laid out on a linen-chest, a complete set of new garments: underdress, drawers, stockings, a shirt of pale yellow silk, a darker yellow stock, black velvet jacket and breeches, black shoes with cut-steel clasps, and, not least, a pocket-napkin edged with yellow lace: whoever had done this was acute as well as kind. He went into the next room and used the com-modation, a grand affair with a seat of dark foreign wood—hickory? Next, he drew a hot bath, came across, at the basin, a tooth-cleaner still in its transparent paper, used that, and took off the blue cotton nightshirt that an unknown benefactor-a servant-lad, probably-had supplied. Lying in the warm water, he felt for a moment completely refreshed and safe, safe for the first time since deciding to run away, safe not for ever, but for the small distance he could see into the future. No agent of what he had run away from could reach him here; he had a friend who could and would absolutely prevent it. The returning thought of that friend brought him to his feet and out of the bath. He dried himself on a towel big enough to dry a horse and was soon dressed. As he had come to expect by now, there was a new hairbrush and comb on the toilet-table in the bedchamber. Before leaving, he knelt by the bed and prayed, with special mention of Decuman, Thomas, Mark, Domingo, Samuel and Anthony, and a plea to St Hubert to intercede for him in the matter of Jacob. He also begged pardon for involuntary remissness in attendance at services of the Church.

       The hall, though not large, was full of marble: floor, columns, portrait busts, and urns containing sheaves of the tall grass he had noticed on his first visit to the house in Coverley. He had barely reached the foot of the stairs when an elderly Indian in livery came up and took him to a small room somewhere at the rear of the building. Here he settled down to wait for some time, but in fact it was not two minutes before the heavy white door opened and van den Haag came in, preceded by his wife.

       Hubert had not expected to see her, or not at this stage, but even if he had he most likely would not have been able to do otherwise than he did, which was to hold his hands up to her and burst into tears. At once she went down on her knees, put her arms round him and stroked his head. She made soothing noises, and van den Haag told him over and over again that everything was in order and there was no cause to be troubled. He had no idea how long this went on, but when it was over he was sitting in a splendid chair of gold-painted wood and the man and woman were close to him on each side.

       'My excuses,' he said, and blew his nose into the pocket-napkin, blessing again whoever had fetched it. 'I should never have had to do it if you weren't so good.'

       Dame van den Haag was holding his hand. 'No excuses, Hubert dear. Something must be very wrong, we know that.'

       'Yes, I think something is.'

       'You have a tale to tell, haven't you? We want to hear, but you're not to tell it before you're quite ready. We'll wait.'

       'Thank you, dame, but I can tell it now.'

       Hubert told it. When he had finished, he saw with slight astonishment that van den Haag's blue eyes were full of tears, some of them starting to overflow down his cheeks.

       'The pigs,' he said several times.

       'Ach, there are pigs everywhere, Cornelius. Forget them and determine what can be done for Hubert.'

       'Yes. Yes. He's safe here for a time, perhaps for a few days. No longer. A servant or a soldier will let fall at the inn that a young English boy stays with us here, and someone will attend and pass the word. Then... a mannerly threat from the Papal Cure that, unless Hubert is given up at once, a man of ours will be attached for meddling in the affairs of Church or State, and may well be condemned. I couldn't handle that.'

       'All this over a truant child?'

       'Dearest Anna, you haven't had to learn the ways of these Romanists as I have. To them, Hubert will be something far more and far worse than a truant child. He defies authority, he rebels against the will of God, and that mustn't be tolerated in anyone, young or old, gentry or people, layman or cleric. The only...'

       Van den Haag stopped speaking and began to stare without curiosity at an elaborate flower-holder in white-painted wrought iron from which leaty stems trailed, nuoert nouceu that he was wearing some kind of formal costume, including a high-necked blue tunic frogged in red and with multi-coloured decorations: a reminder of his status and his function.

       'Sir,'-Hubert remembered in time his friend's preferred style of address—'please don't let me distract you from your affairs.'

       'No no,' said van den Haag, absently adjusting at his breast the miniature gold likeness of some heraldic bird; 'a reception at four and a half o'clock. The Australian High Commission. I may be late if I wish.' He nodded his head slowly, as if disposing of parts of a problem in succession; some others appeared still unresolved. 'Anna...'

       'Cornelius?'

       'Anna... kindly take Hubert up to your sitting-room and give him tea, show him photograms. Hilda's studies will be finished shortly and she'll come along to you. Tell her Hubert stays with us while his parents visit whoever you will. There are matters that require my attention.'

       Hubert clearly saw pass between the pair a short series of unvoiced messages such as his mother and father never exchanged: an offer to do whatever else might be needed, a gentle negative coupled with an assurance that explanations would be furnished in due time, an acknowledgement that added a promise of support. Thereupon the three left the room; the Ambassador went off towards the hallway, his footsteps sounding sharply; his wife took Hubert in the other direction, and they were soon comfortably settled near an upstairs window that gave a distant view of Whitehall Palace, the King's London residence.

       'Where are the photograms?'

       'Do you truly want to see them?'

       'Are there some of New England?'

       'Yes, a great many.'

       'Those I should love to see.'

       So a handsome portfolio was produced, full of pictured wonders both natural and man-made: the Zachary Taylor bridge linking Manhattan Island with the Waldensia shore; the National Museum of Art in New Wittenberg; a great grassy plain overshadowed by what looked like a rain-cloud, but what was in fact (Anna van den Haag explained) million upon million of passenger pigeons; the Benedict Arnold Memorial in the city which had taken its name from his; the Hussville Opera House; a vividly beautiful autumnal scene in the woods of eastern Cranmeria—the last in particular was well captured by the new Westinghouse colour process. Then, as he turned over the pages, Hubert came upon a large photo-gram of a mountain crest, not a particularly high one, to judge from the presence of trees and tall bushes, but hung with curling strips of mist. The light was pale, casting long dim shadows.

       'This looks a strange place,' he said.

       'It is. They say that however bright the sun may shine just a mile off, it never touches the summit of Mount Gibson. The Indians call the spot Dawn Daughter's Leap, and they tell a tale of it. Would you like to hear?'

       'Oh yes, please.'

       Dame van den Haag had opened a tall quilted box beside her chair and taken from it a tray on which there were a number of small pots of different colours, some pointed sticks and a coffee-bowl of white-coated earthenware with a pattern of fruits drawn on it and partly filled in. As she talked, she used the sticks to coat other parts with green, red and malva, working slowly and accurately. 'Well, Dawn Daughter was betrothed to a chief, but she loved a young warrior named White Fox. On the night before the marriage, White Fox came to Dawn Daughter and took her up on his horse, and off they went together. But the moon was bright that night, and they were seen escaping, and the chief gave chase with all his men. Now White Fox's horse was the biggest and the strongest of all the tribe had, but with the two on his back he began to grow tired, and the chief's men began to draw near. So White Fox called to the Spirit the tribe worshipped, and asked him to send another horse. The Spirit heard him, and suddenly there was another horse running beside them, a wondrous horse with eyes that shone in the dark. He came so close that Dawn Daughter was able to climb on to his back.' There was a short pause while a fresh stick was prepared. 'They rode on together for an extent, and the chief's men fell behind, but then the Spirit's horse galloped faster and faster, and White Fox couldn't stay with him. He saw him come to the mountain and start to climb it, and he followed at the best speed he could... Pardon me a moment, Hubert.'

       Hilda had entered the room, was already approaching, coming straight towards him. Her green frock was not the one she had worn when they first met, but it reminded him of it. He stood up and they shook hands; hers was warm and dry, as before. By the window, Dame van den Haag had begun to talk in low tones to a middle-aged person with eyeglasses, most likely a preceptress of some sort, who must have come in with Hilda, though he had not seen her do so. He smiled at Hilda, hoping that she could tell from that how pleased he was to see her; she smiled back, at least. She showed not the slightest surprise or curiosity at his presence: he guessed that embassy life taught one to expect what others would find unexpected.

       'Your honoured mother was showing me the photograms.' She reached down to the sofa and turned the open portfolio round towards her. 'Oh yes-Dawn Daughter's Leap,' she said in her hoarse voice-how could he have forgotten that voice? She went down on her bare knees with something of a bump and, while still looking closely at the photogram of the mountain top, lifted the corner of the page as if about to turn on.

       Hubert quickly knelt beside her. 'How does the tale end? The tale of Dawn Daughter and White Fox. I heard only part.'

       'My mother will finish it for you. She knows it best.'

       'Your mother's occupied,' he said, hoping she would continue to be. He could not have told why he so much wanted to hear the rest of the story from Hilda. 'How much did you hear yet?'

       'They had just reached the foot of the mountain.'

       'Oh, now...' She put her elbows on the edge of the sofa, clasped her hands and looked down at the portfolio. 'Well, they went on up. I suppose a god's horse can go anywhere, but the real horse must have found it tough. I was there that time, the time paps made the photogram. Yes, when White Fox was almost at the top a mist came down and hid the moon, so he couldn't find his way. That was the god's work. White Fox had to wait for daylight before he could do anything.'

       'Where was the chief and his men?'

       'I don't know. So: White Fox went right to the top and found there was a cliff below him. Just here.' She pointed. 'It doesn't show in the photogram it's a cliff, but it is. At the edge of the cliff were four hoof-marks in the rock. They don't show either in this, but they're there: I saw them.'

       'Real hoof-marks? In rock?'

       'Well—they surely looked real,' she said with reluctant conviction, then hurried on in the businesslike tone she had been using earlier. 'The horse had taken a leap into the sky, where the god was waiting for Dawn Daughter. He'd seen her and loved her when he sent the horse. And when she came to him he was so mightily glad he forgot to take the mist away, so it's still there.'

       'What did White Fox do?'

       'I don't know. White Fox. Isn't that a fool name? Dawn Daughter too.'

       Hubert did not speak. To him, those were not fool names.

       'What I think,' said Hilda, abruptly standing up, 'some old Indian just fancied the whole tale to explain the mist and the marks in the rock.'

       'It doesn't quite explain the mist. But you said the marks looked real.'

       Her manner changed again. 'Yes, they did.'

       'Where is Mount Gibson?'

       He had not wanted to know, only to continue the conversation. As soon as the words were out, he knew he had made a mistake, and from the way she looked past him and muttered her reply (which he failed to take in) he knew just what he should have said: that, whatever she thought, he believed the tale of Dawn Daughter and White Fox. It would have been too late now even if, having finished her conversation with the preceptress, Dame van den Haag had not been on her way to join them. But there would be another time: there must be.

       The next morning, Abbot Peter Thynne sat in his parlour over a breakfast he had hardly touched. Normally he ate this meal in the refectory; he found it a useful occasion for meeting those in his charge before the day's work began and offering any necessary words of encouragement and advice. But in his present mood, the mood that had fallen upon him more than twenty-four hours earlier, when the news had been brought of Hubert's disappearance, the notion of company was distasteful to him. Within his reach lay two books delivered not long before from Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford: a new commentary on the De Existentiae Natura of Monsignor Jean-Paul Sartre, the French Jesuit, and an analysis of Count William Walton's church music. The Abbot had eagerly looked forward to the arrival of both volumes; as yet he had not had the heart to open either.

       There was a knock at the door. 'Yes?' he said rather sharply.

       Father Dilke came in, bowed, and said, 'Good morning, my lord. I trust your lordship slept well?'

       'No. Of course not. What is it, Father?'

       'I have a little news, my lord.'

       At once the Abbot's demeanour altered. 'Sit down, Father. Forgive me for speaking as I did. What news?'

       'The ostler advises that the mare Joan is returned.'

       'At what hour?'

       'Some time in the night, my lord. She was grazing near the stable when he made his early round. He further advises that she hadn't been ridden far and had been fed and watered yesterday afternoon or evening.'

       'Where, I wonder? In Coverley, one would think. By whom? That's more difficult. Or it should be. I can't get free of the idea that that New Englander type is involved. Who else in Coverley has acquaintance with Hubert, pattie-shop men and such excluded?'

       'But at his second visit the proctor was positive that the Ambassador is in London and that his Secretary here denies all possibility of a visit from Hubert. And surely...'

       The Abbot sighed. 'Where then did the mare carry him?'

       'To a train or omnibus.'

       'Which might have carried him anywhere in the land.'

       'But most likely to London.'

       'And the New Englander Embassy, into which our constabulary can't enter.'

       'I hardly think the Ambassador would shelter an English runaway, my lord. The diplomatic consequences—'

       'The fellow's a New Englander, confound him,' said the Abbot, rubbing his eyes wearily and sighing again. 'I should never have allowed him across this threshold. See the proctor here is let know of the mare's return and of the other advice.'

       'Yes, my lord.'

       'Should we talk again to Decuman and his party?'

       'I find no advantage in it, sir. They told the truth, as I think, when they denied knowledge of Hubert's goal.'

       'Yes, yes. It was Decuman who took the mare at first.'

       'Oh yes, my lord, and he knows we know it, but...'

       'Yes.'

       The Abbot was silent for a long time, but gave no signal that he wanted to end the interview. The skin over his cheekbones was stretched and shiny, and his shoulders had lost their habitual squareness. When he spoke again, it was in a thin tone Dilke had never heard him use before.

       'Father, I want your help.'

       'Anything, my lord.'

       'I'm frightened, Father. This atrocity we learned of yesterday: the murder of Father Lyall. He was a proud and rebellious man and an unworthy priest, but no human creature deserves an end like that. Who could have done such a thing? And why?'

       'Some beastly quarrel, my lord. Spiritual impropriety must show its counterpart in behaviour. There'll be a woman or a gaming-debt at the back of it. Or it might be some brush with agents of the law—they can be savage if they're provoked. I remember your lordship saying in this very room that you were surprised he'd never collided with those in authority. Well, perhaps now he has, once and for all.'

       'Do you mean a constable would take a knife to a man who'd crossed him?' asked the Abbot disbelievingly and with a hint of distaste.

       'Oh yes, my lord.' Dilke smiled for an instant. 'A constable or other officer. It's not probable in this case, which was, as you say, atrocious. A disfiguring slash would not be so unusual.'

       'Who tells you such stuff?'

       'I have some children of the people among my charges, my lord.'

       'Don't listen when they feed you thieves' cackle.'

       'No, my lord. I beg your lordship's forgiveness for the diversion.'

       The Abbot gestured with the back of his hand. After a moment, he went on with evident difficulty, 'And yet there's the terrible fact that Lyall was killed by having worked on him the very same... deed as that resisted by him in Hubert's case. I know there was a further mutilation, but... It's as if someone said, "Obstinately and rebelliously resist alteration in another and suffer it yourself for your pains." Not revenge or quarrel. Chastisement.'

       'Someone? Who, sir?'

       'I dare not think.'

       Dilke said gravely, 'When I told you just now, my lord, of private violence against the citizenry, I spoke indeed of constables, of the minor agents of the law, of petty authority. Such acts would meet—I'm sure they do meet—the sternest possible rebuke from those of substantial power. That Father Lyall should have died through any sort of sentence or warrant of theirs is not to be dreamed of. Our polity is imperfect, but not evil. And besides, who knew of Lyall's resistance other than ourselves here and Master Anvil—not one to proclaim differences with an ecclesiastic? No, my lord, dreadful as it is, this is a concurrence. There can be no connection. Do I relieve your mind?'

       'No. That's to say no more than partly, though I thank you for it. See you, Father, it was to the purpose, all too much to the purpose, that you recalled a moment ago what I said of poor Lyall within these walls. That's what has discomposed me far more. That and what I thought of him. I wanted him removed. I prayed for his removal. But I didn't intend this kind of removal,' said the Abbot, swallowing hard.

       'Oh, my lord, of course not. No one could suppose such a thing.'

       'My fear is that God has taken this enormous means of rebuking my pertinacity and self-will and desire for wordly acclaim in pressing for the alteration of Hubert. Until yesterday morning, I could lay that fear aside as a sick fancy. But now that Hubert is gone, become a runaway, it returns, redoubled. I take his departure as a sign, an unmistakable sign of God's displeasure.'

       Father Dilke had gone down on his knees in front of the Abbot and taken his hands between his own. 'My lord, you were not pertinacious or self-willed in what you did: you showed nothing but a proper resolve in pursuing what you took to be right. And your design was not worldly acclaim but the renown of this Chapel, Hubert's welfare and the greater glory of God. Believe me, my lord; I know you and I speak out of that knowledge.'

       The Abbot gave another sigh, but this one had no impatience or fatigue in it. 'Thank you, David. You're a good friend.'

       'Your lordship honours me.'

       'I tell you the truth. Will you pray with me, Father?'

       Unable to speak for the moment, Dilke nodded. The two knelt down side by side on the Abbot's Beauvais carpet. Together they made the Sign of the Cross.

       'In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, amen,' said the Abbot.

       'Most loving and merciful God,' said Dilke a little unsteadily, 'hear Thou the voice of Thy servant.'

       'O God, I humbly petition Thee to remit Thy justified wrath at my sins and to forgive me and to send me comfort if in my thoughts or prayers I betrayed peevishness or animosity at what in all good faith I took to be the stubbornness of that Father Lyall whom Thou hast lately taken to Thyself. And I crave Thee most reverently that Thou have mercy on his soul and at the Last Day number him among Thine own.'

       'Amen.'

       'And I further humbly petition Thee to take Thy most especial care of the temporal and spiritual well-being of Thy child Hubert Anvil, wherever he may be and wherever he may go. Enter into his heart and mind, O Lord, and send him the desire to return here among those who care for him. Or, if that is not Thy purpose, bring it about in Thine own way that he forsake the path of rebellion and outlawry and be brought at last to serve Thy will.'

       'Amen.'

       'Give ear, I beseech Thee, O Lord...'

       Just then, Lawrence arrived outside the parlour door on his way to remove the Abbot's breakfast dishes. He had already raised his hand to knock when he caught from within the familiar sound of a voice in prayer. To stay and listen would, in such a case, have been not only a breach of established procedure but also an act of profanation, and Lawrence was a very devout man. In addition, he had a warm personal attachment to his master. So he went back the way he had come, mounted to his bedroom and himself knelt down. He prayed to God to answer whatever petition the honoured and pious Abbot might have put forward, then supplicated for the personal intervention of St James the Apostle in his behalf.

       His Honour Joshua Pellew, Archpresbyter of Arnoldstown, came out of the main entrance of the New Englander Embassy and moved at a dignified pace between two lines of guards standing with presented fusils. With him were his chaplain, Pastor Alan Williams, his Indian servant Abraham, the Ambassador and Ambassadress, a couple of senior diplomatic officials, and, somewhere near the middle of the party, a small brown-complexioned figure burdened with baggage, evidently a page of some sort. The group passed through the opened gates and, with due deliberation, boarded a pair of expresses drawn up beside the footway. The man who had for some hours been sweeping that part of the street ran his eyes over those outside the gates and went on sweeping, having been told to keep watch for a child of the English gentry and not having seen one. He was a very stupid man; selected for this duty because his superior, always short of non-stupid subordinates, had considered it most unlikely that a boy of ten could have made his way so far without assistance, more unlikely still that if he had he would have been allowed in, and unlikeliest of all that, once in, he would come out by the front door. (The back of the building was being watched by a slightly less stupid man.)

       One after the other, the expresses pulled out and travelled at a moderate speed towards the Palace, in front of which they turned right, then, after a quarter of a mile, they turned left into St Osyth Street and were soon moving over Westminster Bridge. This, though extensively repaired and rebuilt in 1853, was still in all essentials Labelye's caisson-founded structure of a century earlier, and one of the sights of London. The vehicles on it this afternoon were as many as ever, since all cross-river traffic not using London Bridge had to go this way: the new Temple Bridge would not be open till 1978. On the south bank of the Thames, it was only a short run to Dahnang Station, named to commemorate the victory over the French in 1815 whereby the whole of Indo-China had passed under the English Crown. But, before entering the station yard, the two expresses drew in and stopped for nearly ten minutes. Accurate timing was of great importance in what was to follow.

       At exactly the prearranged moment, the party halted at the outer side of a post of inspection which allowed (or withheld) access to the tracks. There were other such posts for the use of persons of lower degrees; this one, as had been calculated, offered immediate attention. On one side, two blue-uniformed recorders sat at a baize-covered table; on the other stood a railtrack constable and a man in grey who, to an educated eye, looked not quite unlike the man who had been sweeping St Edmund Street. Pastor Williams handed the nearer recorder a sheaf of documents and waited. The Ambassador and the Archpresbyter exchanged some rather weighty remarks while the others remained silent. After half a minute, the recorder conferred briefly with his colleague, then turned to Williams and said politely, 'My excuses, Father, but there's a paper lacking. It concerns your master's page... Elisha Jones. I have his sanction here, which is-'

       Pastor Williams said in his gentle but resonant voice, 'The original was lost, as is explained by the temporary replacement you have, which was produced by our Embassy here in London, and is valid.'

       'Yes, sir, that's entirely valid-it's the lad's moretur that's lacking.'

       Every visitor to England, as to any other land in the Pope's dominions, required a moretur, a certificate of permission to stay for a prescribed period, supplied on arrival and to be shown at all posts of inspection. Since it was ultimately the Lord Intendant of the Exterior Office at Westminster who gave out these documents, even van den Haag's ingenuity had not sufficed to acquire one. He had known of the illegal trade in lost or stolen moreturs, flourishing because of their value to runaways and despite the heavy penalties attached to it, but this source had likewise failed him.

       'It was missed at the same time as the sanction,' Williams told the recorder.

       'No doubt, Father; for all that, it is lacking.'

       'What do you suggest? That it might have been sold or given away? Of what use could it be to anyone but a ten-year-old Indian?'

       'I suggest nothing, Father. I simply have plain orders that all exterior travellers passing this post are bound to lay before me a moretur.'

       At an eye-blink from van den Haag, Joshua Pellew intervened. He spoke without overt impatience. 'What is this delay? Our train departs at any moment. I am the Archpresbyter of Arnoldstown, RNE, visiting England at the personal invitation of His Majesty the King. My affairs make it imperative that no check be placed on my progress.'

       'My humble excuses, my lord. I...'

       The man in grey had moved over to the recorders' table.

       He was quite intelligent and observant enough to have uncovered the deception being attempted if he had known of its possibility, but his superior had considered it not merely most unlikely but too unlikely to be regarded, and had spared him the burden of having yet one more would-be fugitive from London to keep an eye open for. After a long look round the waiting group, designed to do little more or less than emphasise his own true mark and their lack of it, the man in grey gave the recorder a tiny nod. At once stamps thudded into ink-pads and on to papers, brief stylus entries were made in prescribed places, the documents were bundled together and handed back to Pastor Williams, the travellers were wished a fair journey, the diplomatic contingent showed their passes, and in a few seconds the post of inspection was behind them all.

       Van den Haag betrayed relief at not having had to intervene himself: if needed, ambassadorial authority might have swung matters in the party's favour, but, men like the man in grey being what they were, it was almost as likely, exercised on behalf of someone as insignificant as an Indian page, to have excited suspicion. 'Good work, Your Honour,' he said. 'It was your reasonable address that did it.'

       'Thank you, Cornelius. I hope there'll be no further such ordeal. I'm not sure I could suffer it.'

       'Most unlikely, sir, as I told you. The rest should be a formality.'

       No more conversation was possible for the time being. They had emerged into the main hall of the station. Here, under the soaring dome of glass and steel, the noise of an arriving train could barely be heard through the noise of humanity—vendors of food, drink or ricordos crying their wares, ballad-iers rattling their coin-bowls as they sang, touts offering a full range of services, beggars who declared their Englishness by displaying insolence rather than abasement. There were plenty of the lastmentioned to be found on the inner side of the post reserved for the passage of the rich and exalted. Pellew had the bulk and weight to shove aside even the most importunate, but he would have been at some trouble to hold his party together without the assistance of the railtrack constable and the staff he wielded. At last the struggle was over, the last huckster—a one-eyed woman putting up gaudy china replicas of Whitehall Palace—pushed out of the way, the journey-tabs slotted, and the group admitted to the pavement beside the train.

       Departure-bells were already being rung. Abraham went aboard at once to see that the heavy baggage, sent ahead from the Embassy, was all in its place—though nobody had considered what to do if it were not. The others gathered round the steps of the baruch for what would have to be brief farewells. Van den Haag shook hands with Pellew and Williams, then turned to their small companion. Even here and now he dared not behave as he wanted to. All he did was say quietly, 'Good luck, Elisha. I'll let your mother know tonight. We'll meet again—perhaps sooner than you think.'

       Almost as he spoke, bells pealed on a higher note than before and the train seemed to shudder all over. The three passengers climbed the steps. The wheels began to turn.

       When he could no longer see the van den Haags on the pavement, Joshua Pellew made his way to the cabin and settled heavily in a padded chair by the window. He gave a yawn that ended in a long sigh. For the next hour or more, nothing could happen: no hurry, no anxiety, no decisions. Abraham appeared momentarily and reported that the baggage was complete and safe. The Archpresbyter let his eyes fall shut.

       His tour of western Europe had been undertaken at the personal instance of the First Citizen of the Republic, who had excellent reasons for wanting to strengthen the still-precarious ties between their nation and the more powerful of those under the sway of Rome. It had been an arduous enterprise for a man nearing seventy, but an enjoyable and apparently successful one. The funeral of King Stephen III had been a natural and convenient starting-point; a two-day visit to the Prince-Bishop of Durham, the richest man in England and virtually a sovereign ruler within her shores, would have provided a comfortable conclusion. But Pellew had found waiting for him on his arrival at the Principal-Episcopal Palace a tachygram that summoned him urgently to the New Englander Embassy in London. Although no reason was given, he had considered his duty and set off as soon as politeness allowed. His annoyance at being asked, even more urgently, to cut short his stay and smuggle home to safety a runaway English boy, however deserving he might be, had been overtaken by astonishment: was this not excessive even for van den Haag, known as he was in Arnoldstown to be no strict observer of diplomatic nicety? Whether it was or not, Pellew had found at the end of a few minutes' talk that he had agreed in principle to do as asked; a reference to his numerous grandchildren had turned the scale, he was not quite sure how. His only objection had concerned the parents involved, or rather not involved. When the boy had said that he knew his mother would want for him what was proposed, that he would swear to it on her own head, Pellew had believed him, and the matter was settled. Since then he had suffered some anxiety, but counted himself compensated in full by the agreeable sensation of helping to give the Romanists a sore nose.

       What they had intended to do to little Hubert Anvil was shocking without being surprising, considered Pellew. All their temporal over-magnificence, all their pharisaism, all their equivocation, all their ruthlessness came from one source: the celibacy of their priesthood. This made it impossible for their hierarchy to understand the family, that most directly God-ordained of all human institutions. It was of no help that that celibacy was always and everywhere broken: a mistress was not a wife and an illegitimate child brought no notion of real fatherhood. And the hierarchy's blindness meant the laity's spiritual and moral deprivation. If the Holy Family meant anything...

       'We're about to arrive, Your Honour,' said Pastor Williams's gentle voice. 'Three minutes to Cholderton.'

       Soon afterwards, Archpresbyter Pellew and his three companions had reached the centre of what was, the two major cities excepted, the largest mass of buildings and installations in the land. The place was an anchorage, a dockyard, a vast manufactory, a testing-tract, a fuel store, a military head-quarters and a considerable market-town rolled into one. No vessel was more prominent there than the RNEA Edgar Allan Poe, the pride of her nation and a worthy memorial to the brilliant young general who had perished at the moment of his victory over the combined invading forces of Louisiana and Mexico in the war of 1848-50. She and her sister ship, the James McNeill Whistler, were the two crack liners on the transatlantic run. They were also the largest vessels ever to have used the anchorage—each was over a thousand feet long—and some controversy had been caused when, at their coming into service in 1973, special berths were erected, even though the New Englander government had agreed to provide most of the money.

       Pastor Williams looked up at the great silvery length of Edgar Allan Poe and almost caught his breath. He had travelled in her on the outward journey, but it seemed to him that a thousand crossings in such a craft would not abate his wonder. When his turn came he climbed the gangway and, once past the rail, was possessed by a new sensation, a joyful relief at being home again. The very plainness of the furnishings was a refreshment after all the mannered elaboration he had seen in the previous fortnight; the crew's voices, careless, almost rough, sounded like a favourite song to one who had had his fill of the clipped, over-precise English accent. When the purser, a solid-looking Calvinan with a windburnt complexion, welcomed the group aboard, Williams astonished him slightly with a spirited handshake.

       The sleeping quarters, reserved by tachygram, were more than adequate: a double apartment for the Archpresbyter alone, another, communicating with it, for Williams and Hubert. Abraham and an anchorage porter brought in the baggage and made their exits. The pastor crossed to the porthole and looked out. Passengers were still coming up the gangway, at the foot of which stood an English soldier with fixed baionetta and a blue-clad recorder. Neither showed the least interest in the documents proffered them, merely waving their owners on, just as they had done when the Archpres-byter's party presented themselves.

       Williams turned from the porthole. 'Well, Hubert, we're safe now.'

       'Altogether safe?'

       'Surely. We stand on New Englander soil. The English or Papal authorities may no more board this aircraft than a ship of ours at sea.' Williams brought out his pocket-watch, which was a miniature version of the clock Hubert had seen at the Embassy: the squares showed 5 33. 'We rise off at six o'clock. The time set for our descent at Arnoldstown Port is two tomorrow afternoon, but winds can advance or retard us.'

       After a pause, Hubert said, 'That's very quick.' He was sitting on the cot assigned to him with his knees drawn up.

       'The craft can touch 160 miles an hour through the air. But soon, quite soon, that'll be nothing. Would you like to learn a secret?'

       'Yes, Father.'

       'Pastor. I think I may safely tell you this, since we've intrinsically left England. Three years ago, at a place in our State of Waldensia, two scientists, the Smith brothers, launched a flying machine, one that lifts itself by means of wings, not gas.'

       'I understand, Pastor.'

       'It carried only one man and barely touched 90 miles an hour, but that was no more than a beginning. By 1980 a speed of 200 is promised, and more later, much more. Air travel will be transformed.'

       This information did not arouse the wonder or enthusiasm Williams had expected. It was in a seemingly listless tone that Hubert said, 'Where's Abraham?'

       'About his affairs, I reckon. Why do you ask?'

       'Oh... no reason, Pastor. He seems a good man. A very kind man.'

       'Indeed he is a good man and a kind man, for an Indian.'

       'Your indulgence—I don't understand.'

       'We expect less from him,' said Pastor Williams, settling his compact, middle-sized frame on his own cot. 'You see, Hubert, God created the Indians and ourselves for two different purposes and in two different ways, and he proclaimed this by making them a different colour from us. This is something everyone must accept. When you come to New England, you must accept it, so let me expound it now.' He paused and put the tips of his fingers together. 'Consider that I speak out of my proper knowledge. The Indian... is a child in many ways, very often a virtuous child, but still a child. His mind is less capable to be developed than yours or mine, because his brain is smaller, as our scientists have proved. To mingle with him truly is impossible, and no good can come of trying to. That's why, under God's guidance, we in New England have a design we call separateness: each kind keeps to itself as far as possible, which isn't always easy, because the fairer Indian will constantly try to pass as one of us—they're not all as dark as the colour you wear. Oh, by the by, we'll have that walnut-juice off your face any time. His Honour will open to the Captain that you...'

       Williams's melodious voice died away. What he had just been saying had led him to do more than merely glance in Hubert's direction, and what he saw made him hurry across the apartment and look more closely. There were streaks of damp among the dye on the forehead and upper lip, and the mouth was clenched tight.

       'What is it, child?'

       'Please fetch... Samuel here.' Hubert spoke as if the muscles of his throat were strained.

       'Samuel?'

       'I mean Abraham. Please fetch him to me.'

       'Hubert, what is it?'

       'Oh, Father-Pastor, I've such, a pain, such a dismal pain.

       'What pain? Where?'

       'I think it started while we prepared at the Embassy. It's in my... there,' gasped Hubert, gesturing at the base of his abdomen.

       'Let me take a look.'

       'No, Pastor, you shouldn't, it's not your...'

       'My dear, I'm a minister of Jesus and I have children of my own. Lie down straight. Yes, my son has eleven years, more than you, and he's a little taller, but he doesn't talk as well as you do. Raise yourself. I don't think children in New England are as well instructed as they are in your country. Not all our preceptors are... Well, Hubert, you cover yourself now and try to rest while I go to the dispensary and fetch you an opiate.'

       Pastor Williams walked at a measured pace across the thick carpet to the door that led to the Archpresbyter's apartment. When there was no reply to his knock, he went in and slid the door shut behind him. The dark, heavily-panelled room, its walls hung with excellent coloured photograms of urban and rural New England, was empty. So was the small cubicle, enclosed with fogged glass, that held the sluice and commod-ation. Williams went out into the passage and broke into a run. The main hall at the head of the gangway was crowded with late arrivals and departing baggage-men. The Archpresbyter was not there, nor, as it proved, in the conversazione-room, the gallery or any other public place on that deck. At last Williams remembered, chided himself for his slowness of wit and hurried to the elevator. Soon a steel cage was carrying him and others up a steel tube that ran between the massive tanks of helium to the top of the envelope. Here was the observation-lounge, its curved ceiling made of a single sheet of glass by a process unknown, or never practised, outside New England. For the amusement and possible edification of passengers, two fair-sized and several smaller telescopes were available, together with star-maps, appropriate chairs, and curtaining-systems to exclude unwanted interior light. On the voyage out, Archpresbyter Pellew had spent most of the hours of darkness gazing at the heavens, and had more than once returned to the room when, as now, there was nothing to be seen from it but daytime sky. It was under this roof that he heard Williams's stammered report.

       Within three minutes, they and the ship's surgeon, a fair-haired young man with a slow Cranmerian voice and quick eyes, were standing round the cot where Hubert lay. While left alone he had managed to wipe off most of the dye from his face and hands. He was sweating freely now. The surgeon inspected the reddened swelling with its hard and sofj: regions, asked a couple of questions, spoke some words of reassurance, and took the two clergymen off with him into the next-door apartment, where he immediately pulled the bell and motioned to the others to sit down.

       'We have fourteen minutes before rise-off, which should be quite enough,' said the surgeon, writing on a tablet as he talked. 'The boy must leave the ship and be taken to a hospital aground here. I'll see to it. He needs an action I haven't the skill to perform. One of his testicles has become turned over and its blood-provision thereby cut off. Maybe both are affected—I can't tell for sure. This occurs now and then among those of his age, it seems by chance, or as if by chance. And suddenly, as in this case. Enter.' The uniformed man who had been told to do so did so, was given two leaves of manuscript and some spoken instructions, and withdrew. 'Someone with the necessary deftness must try to reverse what has happened and restore the blood-provision. Otherwise the organ, or organs, will die.'

       'And that would mean... ' said Joshua Pellew.

       'Possible removal.'

       'What are the chances?'

       'I can't tell.'

       'Can't we delay till we reach Arnoldstown?'

       'No, Your Honour,' said the surgeon.

       'We shall be there in twenty hours.'

       'One hour may be too long, sir. To save the organ, at any rate.'

       'Surgeon, there are reasons of great import why the boy should remain aboard. Diplomatic reasons.'

       'I'm sorry, Your Honour, but I can't be persuaded by any other reasons than surgical ones, and those are quite plain. Hubert, isn't it? Well, Hubert's health is in serious danger, maybe his life. For all I know, infection is possible. But my predictions can't be expert. Any more than my deftness. Whatever the event, Hubert must go aground immediately.'

       The Archpresbyter looked at his chaplain, who had been thinking hard, and who now said, 'Your Honour: go to the Captain and tell him we have a stowaway here whom of course neither of us has ever seen before. Tell him the truth if you wish, but that must be the public tale. When the stowaway goes aground to have his sickness relieved, I go with him, out of simple Christian charity, to be of comfort. I'll join you by the next aircraft, or as soon as I can.'

       'I mustn't let you do it, Al. The English constabulary will attach you.'

       'On what inculpation? Once Hubert's sanction from the Embassy is destroyed, there's no link between him and any of us, none they can prove. And he'll be back in their hands—their task will be done. Now you must give me leave, sir. I have to get myself and my baggage out of this ship.'

       As Williams spoke, motors fore and aft set up their deep throbbing, bells were rung and voices began to be heard repeating, 'All visitors aground.' Hubert was given an opiate by the surgeon, taken from the aircraft on a litter, put into a hospital express that had been standing by for casual needs, and driven off with Williams beside him. Before the vehicle had gone more than a hundred yards, Edgar Allan Poe was slowly standing up from her berth, and, by the time the hospital had been reached, she was already distant, half a mile above the western edge of Salisbury Plain and still ascending and accelerating. Williams watched her, his eyes screwed up against the sun, till her course brought her more directly between it and him, and he could no longer see her at all. Then he turned and followed the attendants who were carrying Hubert into the contingency department of the hospital.