'Yes.'
'From where does your gift of singing come?'
'From God.'
'And what will He think of you if you doubt the value of his gift?'
'You talk like the Abbot.'
'Thank you, Decuman. Well, Hubert? Say.'
There was silence. Somebody in the next dormitory laughed and was immediately hushed. The cry of what might have been an animal came from far off, too far for it to be identified. Decuman leaned forward in his bed, his upper lip raised from his teeth.
'Now attend to me, Hubert,' he said. 'And you other two attend. Near my father's house in Barnet there's a monastery, at a place called Hadley a little outside the town. Last year, a monk was caught in an act of unchastity—adultery or fornication, I don't know. The Prior showed him great lenience. Instead of bringing him before the Consistory, he awarded him a summary punishment of twenty lashes and warned him that, if he offended again, nothing could save him. Four months later, the noodle did offend again and was again caught. The Consistory examined him for flagrant and incorrigible unchastity, found him guilty, and handed him over to the Secular Arm. It was quick after that; he went to the pulley.'
'Oh, Mother of God,' said Thomas.
'May She comfort his soul,' said Decuman, staring grimly at the other three as he made the Sign of the Cross. 'Attend further, you. This man knew all along the penalty he faced. Perhaps the first time he was rash or indiscreet. Not the second time. He preferred the risk of being pulled to pieces to not fucking. That tells us something, yes? We still don't truly know what it's like, but we do know how much he wanted to doit.'
'Those who are altered never want to do it,' said Hubert.
'The worse for them. From knowing how much that wretched monk wanted to do it, we know how important it is. More important than anything else.'
'Men do such things in war,' said Mark. 'I mean they face such hazards.'
'Very well, very well. This is as important as war, then, and we already know how important war is. War against the Infidel, Mark. So, Hubert, not only will you never do it, you'll never so much as want to do it. Never so much as want to do a thing of such tremendous importance. You'll live only half a life, my dear.'
'Singing is important,' said Hubert.
'When did a man hazard his life sooner than not sing?'
'You offer poor comfort,' said Thomas.
'I mean to offer none. And I've another story to tell. What do you know of Austell Spencer?'
Thomas acted as spokesman. 'A... an altered singer, once of this Chapel. Dead some years ago by an accident here.'
'Dead in 1964,' said Decuman, with a nod of something like satisfaction, 'at the age of twenty-one, having fallen from the belfry-tower. A rare misfortune indeed, with no reason for his presence in the tower and nobody else there at the time. Yes, I asked among the servants as soon as I heard of him, when I first entered as clerk, but I forgot the tale until now. Austell Spencer committed the unforgivable sin...'
The other three gasped and Mark crossed himself.
'... because he so much regretted that he'd been altered.'
'You guess,' said Thomas.
'I know. He left a letter to the Abbot, but not in a packet-he must have wanted everyone to hear. Someone saw the letter and told someone who told the buttery-boy, who told me for a ha'penny. Austell Spencer said that his alteration had been in vain. His voice had fallen off and he could no longer find high notes with any surety. He was about to lose his post, or that was what he thought, that was what he wrote to the Abbot. He was fit for no other function and had given away his manhood for nothing. What should he do but kill himself, Hubert?'
'This was only one man,' said Thomas before Hubert could speak. 'He might have been mad or—'
'The only one we know of,' said Decuman. After a pause, he went on, 'Now for more discomfort. Granted that your voice does hold, Hubert, what would you be at twenty-one, thirty-one, forty-one? Not merely a man who has never fucked. Not merely a man with no wife and no children: there are plenty of such and it's no shame to them. You would not be a man at all, but a human ox. Those you met would be respectful to your face, but behind your back what would they say? What would they think of you? Wait-there's one thing you might not have heard. Now an altered man doesn't change as he grows up, he gets no hair on his face, his complexion stays the same, like a boy's, and of course his voice stays like a boy's, yes? Or like a woman's. What you might not have heard, Hubert, any of you-I only heard it from somebody my brother brought to the house who keeps doubtful company in Rome-well, it seems there are certain oddities who, instead of just chasing after boys or other men, chase eunuchs because they're men who look and speak like boys or women. How that's desirable I can't tell, but to these types it is. So, Hubert, even friendship would be difficult for you. Any man you deal with might be an oddity of this sort, or be said to be. Behind your back.'
'Be quiet, Decuman,' said Thomas, who had been trying to break in for some time. 'Hubert is helpless: he must be altered. Therefore all you do is—'
'I defy that notion.' Decuman's expression now resembled a gargoyle's. 'There are a dozen things he can do, and my purpose is to encourage him to do some one of them. Hubert: you can appeal to the Cardinal-Archbishop, you can look for sanctuary, you could even tell the Abbot you've changed your mind and just see what happens, or you can run away to North-England or West-England, you can hide in the woods above the farm and we'll bring you food. You can fight, whatever happens at last. You must fight.'
'This is the Devil's counsel, Hubert,' said Mark.
'No,' said Decuman. 'No. It's the counsel of almost everyone and everything we really understand, whether we feel we understand it or not.'
'Remember your feeling as you sang in the Agnus Dei, Hubert,' said Thomas.
There was a longer silence than before. Finally Hubert said, 'Is there any TR for us?'
'Nothing new,' said Thomas. 'I must go to Ned again.'
'I'll go,' said Hubert.
Chapter Four
Brother Collam Flackerty, friar of the Augustinian Order, sat behind his cabinet desk in the Archiepiscopal Palace of Westminster, an extensive Egidian building situated half a mile up river from the Cathedral of St Peter and the House of Convocation. He was a small, narrow-framed person with carefully-combed fair hair at the fashionable shoulder length and cheeks rouged perhaps a little more than was fashionable. Today he wore an olive-green silk cassock, selvedged with the traditional black, that had cost him four and a half guineas at one of the new bottegas in Chelsea village. He also wore an expensive scent that was too delicate to contend with the emanations of the lilies of the valley, pink moss roses and reseda hanging in baskets from the blue-starred ceiling or lining the window that looked out over the Thames. Before him was an open manuscript book to which he occasionally referred or added a note. With his hands clasped against his chest and his head on one side, he said in a voice that held no trace of a West-English accent, though he had been born in Dublin, 'So let me sum. Here's the order—not easy to come by, as I expected. The Abbot goes at first to the Domestic Office of Convocation and fetches his document, his paper. When he has it signed, he takes it back to the Office and takes in return another paper. This gives the surgeon leave to act; it's a non senza. Now, the point where the order can be checked is when the first paper goes back. The Office may call it void and refuse to grant the second paper, giving no reason. The Abbot may then appeal to the Lord Intendant, who may, or may not, place a tribunal, citing whom he pleases. There's no appeal against whatever the tribunal finds.'
Father Lyall nodded and rubbed his upper lip. 'This question of the refusal of the second paper. Would the grounds I attest be sufficient?-that I and only I am qualified to sign the first one and that any other signatory must be an impostor.'
'If that other signatory is your Master Anvil's chaplain in succession to you, how is he an impostor?'
'He can't be the established confessor of the Anvil f
amily—the word in the paper is "habitual". Can duties discharged only for a matter of days be called habitual? It must be that the provision was designed to prevent just such a contingency.'
'It might be, and it might or might not be so arguable.' Flackerty looked down at his notebook. 'Why has Anvil not sent you away before this?'
'That I've considered. He dislikes the course of replacing me by a man who'll follow his wishes. That would make me his enemy, and to have an enemy in the Church, of however little mark, would trouble him. He'd prefer me to change my mind and sign, and he hopes and believes that at last I will.'
'But you won't.'
'No.'
The Augustinian was watching his former fellow-seminarist closely. 'Why not?'
'I have my reasons.'
'Oh, merda. What reasons? If I'm to move at all I must hear them. And don't say your conscience or anything that touches the child, who for all I see will do no less well without his stones than with them.'
'It's the Abbot. Crossing him tickles me. Him and that bum-kissing choirmaster of his.'
'No doubt you are tickled, but the spite in your nature isn't strong enough to beat the sloth. I know of only one force that is. I deduce that Dame Anvil is both good to look at and strong-willed.'
Lyall grinned without replying.
'And given to whims and conceits, or she'd simply be glad at the chance for her son, no? Come on and tell me the whole tale, Matthew: we've plenty of years in common.'
'The lady's past experience of men has been small and disappointing.'
'I catch.'
'But as things now are she's set on not having the boy denied that part of his future.'
'You must indeed have pleased her.'
'It's more than that, Collam. She loves me.'
'Well, so she should.'
'No: I mean something more serious. She talks of her soul being transformed,' said Lyall in a neutral tone.
'I hope you rebuke the blasphemy as often. as you hear it. And the dire use of words. What scrawler does she read?'
'She means what she says.'
'Tanto peggio. And what of it?'
'It's this love that the boy must not miss, not the carnal pleasure alone.'
'She must give you a pot of the latter if you're used to letting her sing such airs.'
'Well, you know what women are like.'
'I hear tell,' said Flackerty, polishing against his cassock the fine emerald on his left ring finger. 'Again, what of it? How does her transformed soul bear upon you?'
'You asked me my reasons for resisting this design. That's the chief one.'
'Is your soul transformed too, or only your brains?'
'Collam, I tell you just this, that because of her love I must do all I can to help her.'
'Must? How must? You fancy you must.'
'I can't see any difference. Now say what I can do.'
'You can do nothing, my dear. You can go to the Office and lodge a suit, which is to do nothing. Even if you reach the man you need, you'll be either too soon or too late.'
'Then I beg you to act for me. No doubt in your post here you have connections with folk in the Office.'
'Some. Of no great rank or mark.'
'Great enough to cause the Abbot's first paper to be called void?'
'Perhaps. The Abbot on his side is of a certain rank and mark and has his own connections. And lately they down there aren't best pleased with us up here. There was a sharp knock over a vacant canonry when the Lord Intendant's choice was barred by His Eminence. There are always such things.'
'I believe you. But will you do what you can?'
First smoothing his hair with both hands, Flackerty got up and crossed to the window, where he sniffed at several moss roses before strolling towards the far end of the room. As he talked, he continued to move at intervals, his kangaroo-leather sandals making no sound on the thick rugs, so that Lyall could not have predicted just where the next words were to come from except by constantly turning round in his chair. The friar knew well enough that this behaviour might be called theatrical, but he thought none the less of it for that, and had found it of excellent service at interviews in compensating for his physical smallness. Even on occasions like this, it was well worth while to put the other party at a disadvantage from time to time. He spoke now without hurry or much emphasis.
'Go back no more than four hundred years or so. Over all the time since, Christendom has been a tyranny of a rare sort. By way of the soul it rules the minds of most and the acts of all. As effect, no wars throughout Europe but the one, a war with long breaks of peace, a war against a power that can never be crushed and can be held in only by standing in arms from year to year: the best possible form to draw off any will to rebel or quarrel. And, in the last fifty years, Christendom has finally drubbed a power much more awful than the Turk could ever be, one that now lives on as it can in New England among boors and savages: science. God be praised.'
'Amen,' said Lyall automatically.
'Amen to amen. It was a close thing. A little longer, and science would have abolished God and brought our world to ruin.'
'You don't mean abolish, you mean take attention from, leave on one side.'
'I mean abolish, I mean deny, I mean disprove. Come, Matthew.'
'I must rebuke your blasphemy, Collam, and call upon you to abnegate it at once.'
'Again must. You may say what you please.'
'You never showed much reverence, and I suppose your work here has—'
'Let me show you some now. I feel nothing but wonder and gratitude when I look on so many centuries of patience, hope, content, trust, constancy, restraint and certitude, so much art, letters, music, learning, all founded upon one great lie. Ah!—no words, Matthew. At first a lie nobody had the smallest need for, since become the sole necessity. Its lasting makes me wish I had someone to thank. More reverence for you. But to go back whence you switched me. With the victory over science, the tyranny begins to afford to seem a little soft. Seem, not be. Don't mistake, my dear. Today there's talk in Convocation and even in the Church that thirty years ago would have earned the scaffold. The commonest felons are no more than gaoled. A man can be known to take to his bed whom he pleases and still escape if he's wary and in good regard. But the tyranny stays. I'm obliged, because tyranny alone can let men be safe and serene. None the less, to set against it is the act of a noodle. If you do so, it'll stretch out as far as the moon or the planets to snap you.'
As he ended, Flackerty settled back behind his desk. Lyall, who had managed to sit still throughout, looked at him hard.
'You overstate.'
'I don't, Matthew, I don't. All you know is the Church, and that not far. Be assured there's more than rebukes to be faced. I ask you most gravely to sign that paper as soon as you can.'
'Or you mean you're afraid to act in my behalf.'
'No. I've held my post for nine years, and before the third of them was over I'd learned how to act at a distance in such a way that I could never be named. It's you that should be afraid.'
'I am,' said Lyall, 'but not enough to check my purpose. Will you act for me, Collam? Or not?'
'Yes, I'll act, though I promise nothing.'
'I understand. I catch. Thank you.'
'One hard condition: you must do nothing more. Make no other move. Approach no one else. Say not a word.'
'I won't.'
'Swear it.'
'To you? In the name of what you call a lie?'
'For yourself.'
Lyall made the Sign of the Cross. 'I so swear, by Almighty God.'
When his friend had gone, Brother Flackerty at once took a key from the ring at his waist and unlocked one of the bottom drawers of his desk. Opening it caused the ignition of gas-jets in its asbestos-lined interior. With a neat movement, he ripped from the manuscript book his notes on the Lyall matter and dropped them among the flames. As soon as there was nothing more to burn, he shut the drawer, thereby releasing a stream of
compressed air. This blew the ashes through a fine wire mesh, so that when the tray underneath came to be removed for emptying, nothing would be left of them but a grey powder.
In the afternoon of the next day of leisure at the Chapel, Hubert went through the courtyard arch and strolled over to the brewery. From it came a steady but intermittent creaking noise. One door stood open: Hubert peered round it and saw Ned in his usual brown work-shirt and trews, a dirty kerchief knotted at his throat, his hand on what was evidently a pump-handle. After a few minutes it had become clear that the brewer himself, unless in hiding or unconscious behind one of the coppers, was either on another floor of the building or altogether absent. Hubert stepped inside; Ned nodded morosely at him and went on pumping. He gave off a powerful odour, or mixture of several, that was not actually unpleasant. His height, muscular arms and slight mustach made him seem older than fourteen.
'Where's your master?' asked Hubert.
Ned grunted and screwed up his face in such a way as to suggest that they were in no danger of being interrupted, but that he was perfectly indifferent to this state of affairs.
'What are you doing?'
'Water got to go atop or a come down again.'
'I see. Have you any of those books?'
'Ah no.'
When Hubert brought out and displayed two threepenny bits, the other, without the least change of demeanour, stopped his pumping at once and led the way to a metal ladder bolted to the wall. Up they went, through a cut-out in a wooden floor that supported a pair of large tuns, and finally to a space under the roof where there was a tank and a pile of sacks. From beneath a corner of this pile Ned produced something that had to be called a book, though it was very near returning to its constituent parts. Hubert looked at the crumpled title-page: The Orc Awakes, by J. B. Harris.
'Sixpence,' said Ned.
With no delay or objection, Hubert handed over his two coins. It seemed that Ned was surprised enough at this to show some momentary approval: his mouth twitched and he nodded several times as he released the book.
'Ned, would you tell me something?'
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