‘Faith of our fathers, Mary’s prayers
Shall win our country back to thee
And through the truth that comes from God
England shall then indeed be free.’
The chorus was deafening. Most of the crowd were holding their candles high above their heads. The fire was burning fiercely. Some of the banners of the Five Wounds of Christ had been stuck in the ground in front of the bonfire, swaying slightly in the light breeze.
‘Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.’
Then the trumpet sounded. At first nobody could see where the noise was coming from. Then a forest of candles pointed up to the parapet above the west front. Almost lost among the statues of saints and bishops, of Christ enthroned in glory, a young man played one short fanfare. ‘Christ, Francis,’ muttered Johnny Fitzgerald, ‘are we going to have the four horsemen of the apocalypse riding across the sky in a minute?’
‘You never know, Johnny, maybe it’s the name and number of the beast, the whole book of Revelations coming next.’
The minster door opened. Four people bearing enormous candles escorted the Archdeacon to the scaffold. He mounted very slowly. Powerscourt saw that he was wearing the regalia of a Jesuit priest. Presumably these were the clothes that had travelled to Melbury Clinton with him on his furtive and clandestine missions to celebrate Mass. At last he reached the top. Powerscourt noticed that one of his companions, carrying a large bag, had accompanied him and placed the receptacle on a tall table beside him. Really, Powerscourt thought, as the acolyte retreated towards ground level, these people leave nothing to chance. The Archdeacon would not have to grope about at his feet for whatever religious rabbit he wished to pull out of the bag. It was ready by his right hand. They leave nothing to chance. Maybe somebody should ask them to organize Edward the Seventh’s Coronation. The Archdeacon looked very slowly at the great throng beneath him. The crowd was inching closer and closer to the bonfire. He raised his hand very slowly and made the sign of the cross. Then he spoke.
‘In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti, Amen.’
He paused again. There was an enormous outbreak of cheering. Powerscourt wondered how many of this crowd came from Compton and how many had come in the special trains.
The Archdeacon raised his hand for silence. ‘Brothers and Sisters in Christ,’ he went on, ‘we are gathered here in this time and place to mark a very special anniversary.’ Powerscourt realized why the Archdeacon had been chosen for this particular assignment. He had an extremely powerful voice which carried easily right to the back of the Cathedral Green.
‘Tomorrow,’ he continued, turning slowly so that each section of the crowd could see him in turn, ‘is the one thousandth anniversary of this cathedral as a place of Christian worship.’
There were huge cheers from the crowd. Many of them punched their candles in the air.
‘For nearly six hundred and fifty years the abbey belonged in the bosom of Mother Church, a dutiful servant of Rome.’
Again a mighty roar from the crowd. Many of them were crossing themselves. One or two were kneeling on the ground, eyes closed in prayer.
‘And then, due to the political necessities of the King of England, this church was ripped from its rightful home.’
The men in the first cohort to reach the bonfire had pulled the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ out of the ground and were waving it aloft.
‘Tomorrow,’ the Archdeacon went on, his finger stabbing into the night, ‘we are going to right that wrong. Tomorrow we are going to restore this church to its rightful home in the bosom of the Holy and Apostolic Church! Tomorrow we are going to rededicate this building as a place of Catholic worship! Tomorrow we are going to make the Cathedral of Compton Catholic once again! Tomorrow we shall celebrate Mass here for the first time in three hundred and sixty years!’
At each tomorrow he had pointed dramatically at the minster, the building still dark among the ocean of candles waving at varying heights on Cathedral Green.
‘I have here,’ the Archdeacon pulled a heavy-looking package from his bag, ‘a gift for the cathedral from the Holy Father himself!’ Very slowly the Archdeacon took off the cloth that surrounded the bounty from the Pope.
‘This is an altar stone, a slab that contains the relics of a saint and martyr who gave his life that his country might come back to the true religion!’
The crowd fell silent. Powerscourt wondered if it was a relic of Sir Thomas More.
‘Compton will be graced,’ the Archdeacon went on, ‘with a relic of one of the most illustrious servants of the Church in England. Edmund Campion!’
He waved the slab in the air. There were gasps from the crowd. Powerscourt wondered how many of them knew who Edmund Campion was. He rather suspected that most of them did.
‘At this time of renewal, of rebirth, of Resurrection, it is fitting that we should make a symbolic rupture with the past that deprived England of its true faith and Compton of its true religion! I have here some of the heretical Acts of Parliament that drove an unwilling Compton into the arms of heresy!’
The Archdeacon fished about in his bag once more and produced an ancient scroll, the paper on the front yellow with age.
‘The Act of Annates of 1532 which stole from the Pope the revenue due to him from the bishops of England!’
The Archdeacon held it aloft, turning slowly so that all sections of the crowd could see it properly. Then he hurled it on to the fire. There was a quiet splutter at first, then a brief blaze of light as the Act was turned to ashes. For a second or two the crowd were completely silent. Then there was an enormous cheer.
The Archdeacon was back in his bag again. ‘The Act in Restraint of Appeals of 1533 which ratified the sovereignty and independence of the Church of England!’ Another vital piece of Reformation legislation was cast into the flames of hell. There was another burst of applause as the act caught fire.
‘The Second Act of Annates of 1534 which proclaimed the heresy that the King and not the Pope selected the bishops of the Church!’
Again the Archdeacon hurled the scroll into the bonfire. The crowd had found a word they could chant now. Shouts of Heresy! Heresy! rang around Cathedral Green.
Now he was bringing laws out two at a time. The Archdeacon held two acts aloft, inciting the crowd with the cry of ‘Further heresy! The Act of Succession of 1534 which pronounced Henry the Eighth’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon null and void! Further heresy! The Act of Supremacy of 1534 which proclaimed that Henry was the only supreme head of the Church of England!’
The Archdeacon held the second act high above his head. ‘This was the Act that led to the death of saint and martyr Sir Thomas More!’
Then he threw the two Acts on to the pyre to join the earlier cornerstones of Henry’s Reformation. A great chant of Heresy! Heresy! Heresy! rang out among the crowd. Powerscourt wondered if they might get out of control. Lady Lucy was holding on to him very tightly. But the Archdeacon wasn’t finished yet. He pulled another ancient scroll out of his bag.
‘Yet further heresy!’ he called out to the crowd. ‘The Act for the Dissolution of the Smaller Monasteries of 1536! The Act that destroyed hundreds of faithful Christian houses, devoted to the service of their communities and to the worship of God! To the flames with it!’
Again he cast it into the fire. This time the Act stuck at the very top of the pyre. For a moment or two nothing happened. The crowd held their breath. Was this a sign from God? Was this one not going to burn? Then there was a loud whoosh as the flames took hold. Once more the shout of Heresy! Heresy!, sounding rather like a battle cry now, rose above Cathedral Green.
The Archdeacon had one Act left. He held it aloft and turned slowly on his scaffold so that the entire throng could have a chance to see it.
‘And this!’ he shouted, waving it in the air. ‘This is the Act that saw the dissolution of our own abbey here in Compton! The Act for the Dissolut
ion of the Greater Monasteries of 1538! This was the Act that tore the people of Compton from their mother church!’ Still he held it high above his head. The crowd stared, mesmerized. ‘Let it share, in part . . .’ The Archdeacon was at full volume now. Powerscourt wondered briefly if his voice was carrying as far as Fairfield Park. Or heaven itself. ‘Let it share, in part,’ the Archdeacon repeated himself for greater emphasis, ‘the fate of the blessed saints and martyrs who gave their lives to God in opposing it.’ He brought it down to chest level and ripped the Act in two. ‘Those martyrs were hung drawn and quartered, their bodies cut into four pieces.’ He ripped the Act into four. ‘This dismembered Act, cut into four pieces, I now commit to the fire!’ The Archdeacon knelt down and placed each part separately into a flaming section of the bonfire. He rose to his feet once more. An enormous cheer erupted from the crowd, their candles held aloft, their eyes fixed on four little scraps of paper that had once been yellow and were now turning into wafer thin sections of black, then crumbling into ash.
‘Francis,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, nudging him gently in the ribs, ‘do you think those Acts were the real thing? Or did he just pick up a few bits of aged paper in an old bookshop?’
‘They might have come from Rome for all I know, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m sure Propaganda could rustle you up a forgery or two if you asked them nicely.’
The crowd were still cheering. Powerscourt wondered how the Archdeacon was going to bring them down from their ecstasy. He noticed that it was very close to midnight. He saw too that people were on the move. A new procession was forming with all the banners of the Five Wounds of Christ at the front. Then the four choirs that had sung in the marches to the bonfire swung into line behind them. They moved off into a new position in front of the cathedral doors.
Still the crowd cheered. Loud shouts of Heresy! Heresy! rang out towards the darkened minster. The candles were still flickering brightly all across Cathedral Green. The Archdeacon was holding both arms aloft, turning very slowly through three hundred and sixty degrees. He looked, Powerscourt thought, like one of those Old Testament prophets appealing for calm among the unruly Israelites as they hankered after the golden calf or graven images rather than the God of their fathers. Gradually silence returned. All eyes were on the tall figure on top of his scaffold. Only when total silence had been restored did he speak. And then he astounded every single person at the scene.
‘Please extinguish all candles,’ he said. There were gasps of astonishment. People had become attached to their candles, seeing them by now as friends and companions on this very special night. Powerscourt saw that the Archdeacon’s shock troops, the choirs and the bodies who had marched together to the fire obeyed without question. Maybe that’s Catholic discipline, he suggested to himself. Then he corrected himself. Jesuit discipline. With mutterings of regret and a great deal of blowing all the candles went out. There was not a single light to be seen across Cathedral Green. It was five minutes to midnight.
The Archdeacon began to address the faithful once again. ‘On this day of all days, at this time so close to midnight and Easter Sunday,’ he said, ‘we value the dark. The cathedral is dark. Christ’s tomb, the sepulchre where he lies is dark. The darkness is the darkness of sin, of error, waiting for redemption from the light of Christ’s Resurrection. The Gospel of St Mark: “And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?”’ Heads were bowed everywhere. The Archdeacon continued: ‘“And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away for it was great. And entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man sitting on the right side and he saith unto them: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is not here: he is risen.”’
The Archdeacon crossed himself. So did most of the crowd.
‘On the last stroke of midnight,’ the Archdeacon’s voice was beginning to show signs of its labours during the night. It cracked ever so slightly on the word midnight, ‘it will be Easter Sunday. I invite you all to take your candles into the church and leave them there. Stewards will show you the way. The paschal candles are by the door for you to relight your own. The light in the church will be the light of Christ’s glory The light in the church will be the symbol of the church’s victory over its enemies.’ Powerscourt wondered who he meant. Luther? Calvin? Thomas Cromwell, the architect of the Dissolution of the Monasteries? Henry the Eighth? ‘People of Compton,’ the Archdeacon held his arms aloft for the last time, ‘I commend to you the words of the prophet Isaiah: the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.’
The Archdeacon paused. ‘Dominus vobiscum.’
There was nearly a minute of almost total silence. Some of the choirs were trying to clear their throats. Some of the crowd were retrieving their candles from the ground. Then the trumpet sounded once again, the young man on top of the west front enjoying his second moment of glory As the last note died away, the Cathedral clock began to toll the hour of midnight. Great Tom, cast in Bristol in 1258, who had spoken every day for centuries, gave forth once more. This was his six hundred and forty-third Easter Sunday. One, two, three. People began to shuffle forward from the back. The Archdeacon was still aloft on his scaffold, waving graciously to the people who passed beneath. Four, five, six. Powerscourt was holding Lady Lucy very tight, hoping she wasn’t too cold. Patrick Butler had disappeared on another of his forays into the crowd. Seven, eight, nine. Powerscourt wondered if the Lord Lieutenant had abandoned his port to come into Compton for the bonfire. He tried to remember who the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed for on Sundays. Murderers? Heretics? Ten, eleven, twelve.
The great doors of the cathedral swung open. The inside was completely dark but at the door two stewards were holding out the paschal candles, large enough and broad enough to rekindle all those which had burned so brightly on Cathedral Green. The choirs processed slowly through the doors, preceded by men carrying the banners of The Five Wounds of Christ, and made their way up the nave towards the stalls. They were singing from the Resurrection section of the Messiah: ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors and the King of Glory shall come in.’
Sconces to hold the candles had been placed all over the cathedral, in the aisles and the ambulatories, on the great pillars of the nave, in the north and south transepts, in the presbytery and the choir. Great empty stacks were waiting in the Lady Chapel and the side chapels to receive the surplus. Two orderly queues had formed outside the doors, shuffling forward to cast their light into the darkness.
‘Who is the King of Glory? Who is the King of Glory?’
Patrick Butler reappeared as suddenly as he had vanished. He took Anne Herbert by the hand and led her off towards the cathedral, both of them clutching their candles. Powerscourt thought suddenly that they might prefer to be alone but he did make one request before they left.
‘Could you see if you can find Chief Inspector Yates for me, Patrick? He must be about somewhere. I’d very much like to speak to him.’
The candles were beginning to have an impact now. The first arrivals were all instructed to leave theirs at the bottom of the nave. The lower section of the minster became incandescent with candles that flickered, candles that burned straight up, candles that burnt quickly, candles that looked as though they would burn for ever. It was a glacier of light, inching its way up the cathedral as the pilgrims left their tribute.
‘Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.’
‘You must be feeling very annoyed, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘You told everybody this was going to happen and it has.’
‘Well, there’s one consolation, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You always believed in me. I can’t tell you what a help that has been. Come, we’d better bring our candles. I think
I’d feel incomplete if we didn’t.’
The Archdeacon had finally come down from his scaffold. He inspected the remains of the bonfire carefully as if trying to make sure all the Acts had been properly consumed. Inside the glacier of light had reached the top of the nave. The pillars and the soaring tracery were bathed in a golden light, glowing and glimmering as they had seldom glowed before in all their long history.
‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.’
Patrick Butler found Powerscourt and Johnny and Lady Lucy very near the front of the queue. The editor of the Grafton Mercury was more than usually excited. ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ he said, panting slightly, ‘I’ve been making inquiries as to where all these people came from. They’ve come from all over southern England, London, Bristol, Reading, Southampton. And they’ve all known about it for months. The thing’s been organized like a military operation. The local Compton people think they’ve been invaded. They’ve all gone home. They’re just going to wait until things quieten down.’
‘Have you had time, Patrick,’ said Lady Lucy in her sweetest voice, ‘to think of a headline for tonight’s proceedings?’ Lady Lucy had grown rather attached to Patrick’s headlines.
‘Well,’ said the young man, drawing Anne Herbert even closer to him, ‘I’ve known what the headline should be for some time, but I’m not sure all my readers will understand it.’
‘Share it with us, Patrick,’ Lady Lucy smiled, ‘we’ll do our best to grasp it.’
Patrick looked sheepish all of a sudden. ‘You’re teasing me,’ he said. ‘I shan’t tell you about my headline at all. You’ll never get to hear about the Bonfire of the Vanities.’ ‘Who is the King of Glory? Who is the King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory.’
Powerscourt was dazzled as he and his companions finally entered the cathedral, their candles rekindled by the paschal candle at the door. The glacier had reached the bottom of the choir. Looking back down the nave he thought he had seldom seen anything so beautiful. He transposed Wordsworth’s daffodils into the candles of Compton in his mind.
Death of a Chancellor Page 33