Then abruptly brick and plate glass gave way to mellow stone and towers and crenellations and pinacles and porticoes. Butler craned his neck and twisted in his seat like any tourist to catch the famous views, absurdly pleased that the place wasn't going to let him down after all, that the distant glimpse of spires had not been a mirage.
"Dick's, sir," said the taxi-driver.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The King's College, sir—you're looking at it."
It looked like a king's college, certainly—the richly painted escutcheons over the gatehouse gave it a properly royal appearance, and one of the shields bore the golden leopards and lilies he had seen on the Master's notepaper.
Butler fumbled for the fare—Dick's?—damned little newfangled coins already losing their freshly dummy2.htm
minted shine—had the fellow really said "Dick's"?
He stepped out on to the pavement, squared his shoulders —only a yokel would be overawed by huge, iron-bound gates and gold leaf—and strode under the archway.
"Can I help you, sir?"
The voice issued confidently from what looked like a booking-office window beside a thickly papered notice-board: the Porter's Lodge—even a yokel knew that every college had a Porter.
"My name's Butler. I believe the Master is expecting me."
The Porter lowered his eyes for a moment to a pad in front of him. "Colonel Butler, sir—yes, sir—Sir Geoffrey is expecting you, sir—he said for you to go straight to his lodging, but I don't believe he's there at the moment, sir—"
"Saw 'im go into the Chapel coupla minutes ago," another voice sounded from the bowels of the lodge.
"I think he's in the Chapel, sir," continued the Porter unfalteringly. "I'll have him told of your arrival, sir."
"No, that's not necessary," replied Butler quickly. All this was the Master's territory, but the Chapel had a neutral sound to it. Besides, in his own lodging the Master would probably want to ply him with sherry or madeira, neither of which he could abide at any time. "If you can just direct me to the Chapel—" he stopped as it occurred to him suddenly that the Master might be attending some obscure late-morning devotions "—unless, that is—"
"Oh, nothing like that, sir!" The porter hastened to reassure him. "I think Sir Geoffrey'll be looking at the East Window—I think he's a bit worried about it-if you go to the far corner of the quadrangle,sir, through the archway, and you can't miss the Chapel on your left."
Butler nodded and set out, carefully skirting the well-disciplined square of grass. This, too, was how he had imagined Oxford: this positively medieval calm. It was as though it had all been laid on for him, and because of that he ought doubly to beware of it.
He passed under the archway, one side of which was given over to Rolls of Honour of the two world wars—the first name was a Royal West Kents subaltern but the second, impossibly, was a lieutenant of Brandenburg Grenadiers. He shook his head too late to expel the thought that a Zoshchenko might not be out of place now in a foundation which had been home to a Von Alvenslaben in 1913.
The Porter's direction had been an understatement: it was quite impossible to miss the Chapel, which had clearly been built in the days when the health of the students' souls was of more consequence than dummy2.htm
the comfort of their bodies. Even to Butler's uninformed eye its proportions were noble, tower and spire, choir and transepts, stonework flowering into intricate images and patterns as though it had still been soft and malleable when the craftsmen set their hands to it.
The interior was surprisingly bare at first sight and Butler resolutely blinkered his eyes against any second look : he had not come thus far to be seduced by the architectural glories of Oxford in general and any college chapel in particular—he had come to see a live Englishman about a dead Russian, no more and no less.
And the live Englishman was standing directly ahead of him, arms folded, gazing fixedly upwards and ahead, presumably at that east window.
"Sir Geoffrey Hobson?"
Tall, grey, slightly stooping. Tired, washed-out, droop-lidded eyes. And the suggestion of a once formidable physique which had not run to seed but had simply been overtaken by the passage of time.
"My name is Butler, Sir Geoffrey."
"Ah, Colonel Butler! Delighted to meet you."
The voice too was a disappointment, high-pitched, almost querulous. But this was the voice nevertheless which had given the orders for the attack on Tilly-le-Bocage, which the official war history had called "a classic lesson in the employment of Sherman tanks against Tigers".
"I regret having to disturb you like this, but I'm afraid my business is somewhat urgent."
"Not at all, Colonel Butler. I have been expecting you, but I had no idea of your exact time of arrival so I took the opportunity of having another look at our east window. I fear its violent history is catching up with it at last, but after over three centuries I suppose we mustn't grumble."
In spite of his resolve Butler could not resist staring down the choir at the mysterious window. But like its Master's voice it was a disappointment, with plain glass filling the elaborate stone framework.
"It wasn't always like that, Colonel," said the Master, sensing his disappointment. "In its day it was one of the glories and curiosities of Oxford—it purported to illustrate the Lord God welcoming St Edward the Confessor into Heaven, but the artist was said by some people to have deliberately confused the Confessor with King Edward the Martyr, who was assassinated a century before. Not that our Royal Founder minded, of course—he always intended that it should be generally associated with his own great-grandfather, Edward II, who was in his view more of a saint and martyr than either of the other Edwards."
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"What—ah—happened to the stained glass then?" asked Butler, resigning himself to an inevitable period of small talk.
"Ah, Colonel, that was what you might call a war casualty. We've had our troubles here in Oxford, you know, down the centuries, and some of them make today's problems seem trivial."
"You see, back in the 17th century we expelled from the college a certain young man named Bradshaw—
Deuteronomy Bradshaw—for his repulsive Puritan practices. But instead of emigrating to North America,as most of the drop-outs did in those days, he turned up again at the end of the Civil War with a company of soldiers at his back. Captain Bradshaw he was by then, and he used our East Window for target practice — Musket in hand I rattled down Popish Edward's glassy bones is how he recalled the deed in his diary."
"Unfortunately his men seem to have hit the stonework as often as the glass, and I fear it will cost us a lot of money now!" He smiled ruefully at Butler. "I'm afraid we nursed a viper in our bosom in Deuteronomy Bradshaw."
"And in Neil Smith."
The Master stared at Butler in silence.
"That may be," he said softly at length. "Yes, Colonel Butler, that may be." He paused again. "Except that Smith was no more Smith than Butler, I take it, is Butler?"
Butler reached inside his pocket for his identification folder. "I am Colonel Butler, Master—" he passed the folder across "—though perhaps not the Butler you expected. Let's say that I'm a friend of a friend of Dr Freisler's. But if people think I'm an expert in Byzantine military history, then so much the better."
"I see," the Master murmured. "Or I see a little, anyway. And I must say that I'm relieved—for more than one reason, too ..."
"More than one?"
"I'm heartily relieved that you aren't the other colonel, Butler. I took the precaution of obtaining one of his—er— treatises from Blackwell's this morning, and I found it quite excruciatingly pedestrian. But chiefly I'm glad that Freisler has acted promptly on my information . . . which I presume the authorities are taking really seriously now."