Powerscourt had hoped for more information about Civitas Dei, but suspected that Talbot was being faithful to its principles of secrecy to the last.
Single human lives, the Dean went on, had little meaning to him in comparison with the glory of the enterprise and the reclamation for the Catholic Church of a cathedral that had been stolen from it at the Reformation. He had, throughout, acted entirely alone. He hoped and prayed that the events of Saturday and Sunday would mark the sounding of the tocsin, a trumpet call that would signal the beginnings of the return of the people of England to the Holy and Apostolic Church, that the lives of the isles would once more be carried out to the slow rhythm of the Church’s calendar and the central mystery of the Mass.
John Eustace had changed his mind about making the journey to Rome. So had Arthur Rudd, who had referred extensively to his doubts in the diaries he had kept which had perished with him in the flames. Edward Gillespie had been overheard telling a colleague that he proposed to tell Powerscourt in person all about the conspiracy. He had, the Dean went on, deliberately echoed the deaths in Compton at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries as a tribute, a memorial to those faithful Catholics who had given their lives for the true religion in 1539 and 1540. He reminded Powerscourt that as a gesture to a more squeamish age he had killed all his victims before the burning and the disembowelment. He had no regrets, for he was the servant of a higher Truth, the pupil of a greater authority, the handmaiden of the only true faith.
‘Let me conclude, Powerscourt,’ the Dean’s letter ended, ‘with the words of Thomas Babington Macaulay which have been an inspiration to me for years: “The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the furthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustine, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul’s.”’
Powerscourt read the letter twice. Then he folded it up and put it into his suit pocket. He felt numb before the Dean’s diatribe, sad that his life had ended in such a terrible fashion. Then he thought of the families of John Eustace and Arthur Rudd and Edward Gillespie and grew suddenly very angry that one man could think he had the right to play God, to take away human lives, to leave behind broken families who would mourn for years. Not only mad, he said to himself, but bad. He wondered about the people the Dean had betrayed, the baptized he christened in one faith while believing in another, the young couples he had married in his deception, the funerals and burials of those who believed they were under the care of a Protestant priest and going to a Protestant destination.
Two days later Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were making their way once again across the Cathedral Green. The sun was still shining but there was a bitter wind. They were going to say their farewells to the minster at Evensong. They would both be back, in a month’s time, for the wedding of Patrick Butler and Anne Herbert. Patrick had threatened to expose him in the pages of the Mercury if they failed to turn up.
Johnny Fitzgerald was recovering fast in the upstairs room of Anne Herbert’s cottage, entertaining her children with tales of four-eyed giants who lived in caves in the Punjab and six-legged horses who galloped at incredible speed across the veldt in South Africa. The Bishop of Exeter had arrived to take charge of the ecclesiastical proceedings. The Catholic Bishop from Rome and his party were sent back to the eternal city, escorted by the police as far as the Dover boat. The Bishop and the other members of the Chapter who had converted were to be dispersed around the Catholic churches of England and Wales. The Chief Constable was preparing a report for His Majesty’s law officers on the strange events at Compton. Patrick Butler had scarcely been seen since the service of dedication, working around the clock on a special edition of his paper. Powerscourt had written again to Mrs Augusta Cockburn, naming her brother’s murderer and telling her that he had been brought to a kind of justice. There would, he said, be no trial with its attendant publicity. He passed on the opinion of Mr Drake, the Compton solicitor, that it was unlikely that the legal wrangling about the will would be complete before Christmas. In Drake’s view maybe even next Easter would be too soon.
‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee O Lord,’ Canon Gill and Richard Hooper were taking the service, spoken not sung in the absence of the choir, ‘and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.’ The two old ladies who had attended all the earlier services were back in position. Powerscourt looked at Lady Lucy, now fully recovered from her ordeal in the crypt. Tonight, over dinner at Fairfield Park, he was going to propose an expedition to St Petersburg, a place as remote from Compton as he could imagine. In the morning they were to return to London.
Richard Hooper was reading the Nunc Dimittis. ‘Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.’ His clear tenor voice rang out across the wooden angels and the wooden instrumentalists that adorned the choir stalls. Powerscourt was drawn once more to the names on the back. Fordington and Writhington. Grantham Borealis. Alton Australis. Yetminster Secunda.
‘May the Lord bless you and keep you.’ Canon Gill’s soft voice caressed the great cathedral as he spoke the closing prayer. ‘May the Lord make the light of his countenance shine upon you and be gracious unto you and give you his peace.’
Hurstbourne and Burbage. Minor Pars Altaris. Netherbury in Terra. Shipton in Ecclesia.
‘In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.’
Perhaps they’re a message, Powerscourt thought, a message from the distant past into the unknowable future, inscribed here on the wood of centuries. Beminster Secunda. Lyme and Halstock. Wilsford and Woolford.
And their names liveth for evermore.
Winterbourne Earle. Gillingham Minor. Chardstock. Teynton Regis. Bishopstone.
Death of a Chancellor Page 37