Hubert waited for some minutes, still drowsily, until Ned and the girl had put on their clothes and moved out of earshot. Then, distant but clear, he heard the St Cecilia's clock strike four and jumped up, startling a large grey bird which startled him with the abrupt whir of its wings. Master Morley would have to be satisfied with, at best, Theme and Variations i and 2. Theme... For a moment Hubert's mind was quite empty. In deep dismay, he checked his stride and abruptly, without any thought, laid his hand on his chest just below the base of the throat. The moment soon passed and the piece was there again, exactly as it had been. But nothing like that had happened to him before.
He reached the edge of the wood and was at once calmed by what lay below him: the uncultivated slope, the pasture and its herd, the farm buildings, the Chapel in the form of an H with its upper half closed. What had happened in the wood was over, and had never been anything but senseless and on its own.
Chapter Two
Master Tobias Anvil's house stood on the north side of Tyburn Road near its junction with Edgware Road. A generation ago, this had been in effect the north-western corner of London, with Bayswater Station, the railtrack departure-point for the capital, to be seen across open fields. But nowadays, with the population of the city well above the million mark, manufactories were springing up round the advantageous station site, and the dwellings of the people came with them. It was forecast that, within another generation, London would extend as far as the former villages-now the thriving small towns—of Kilburn and Shepherd's Bush. Already, those among the gentry who felt or professed a disdain for city life had begun to settle down by the river in Fulham and on the northern heights of Hampstead.
For the moment, Master Anvil was very well content to stay where he was. The position was convenient. His express took him to the consular district round St Giles's Palace in no more than five minutes, to his counting-house by Bishopsgate in well under fifteen. (It was alleged by his enemies that the much closer proximity of Tyburn Tree was an attraction, but this must have been malice or humour, since no felon had been executed there since 1961, and the last Act of Faith dated as far back as 1940.) The house itself had many points in its favour. Separated off from the highway by wrought-iron gates and a pair of lawns on which fountains played, it was an impressive three-storey building of Kentish ragstone with window-arches and chimneys of hand-moulded Reading brick. To the rear lay two and a half acres of garden in the Danish style, with large formal lily-ponds, an orangery and a small aviary. It had been built by the present occupant's grandfather about the year 1900 at a cost of nearly three thousand pounds, and today the whole property was valued at something not far short of three times that amount.
The breakfast-room was sited at the south-eastern corner, of the house to catch the early sun, which, one fine morning in late May, gleamed and glinted with rare brilliance on the white-and-gilt furnishings. The scent of wallflowers and azaleas, fresh-cut from the garden an hour before, mingled pleasantly with the odour of hot bread. Four persons sat at the long mahogany table: Master Anvil himself, his wife Margaret, their elder son Anthony, and Father Matthew Lyall, the family chaplain. Usually at this hour—eight o'clock—Tobias was about his business, but today he was expecting visitors, so could indulge himself with a third panino and honey, a fourth bowl of tea and an extended reading of the newspapers.
He was forty-eight years old, thin and thin-faced, with abundant black hair reaching to his shoulders after the usage of his social condition. His grave demeanour, in particular the habitual intentness of his gaze, went with his taste for a plain, almost severe style of dress to give him something of a clerical aspect. His conduct was in keeping: few merchantmen were stricter in their observances, on better terms with the clergy in general, or— as was testified by the gold candlesticks and gold-threaded altar-cloth at St Mary Bourne, his parish church—more liberal with donatives. Lowering his black brows at the front page of the London Observer, the organ of the Papal Cure, he said in his clear, rather sing-song tones, 'The Turk announces his departure from Greece in 1980. This follows his sending his High Delegate to the obsequies of his late majesty.'
'An encouraging development, master,' said Father Lyall, a chubby, youngish man whose upper lip was always dark no matter how closely he shaved.
'Is it so, Father? Never forget that our adversary isn't bound by his word as Christians are. He means us to disarm ourselves to the point at which he may safely recross the Danube. Already his policy of "pacific concomitance" has had frightening effects. You must have seen that the Papal and Patriarchal forces along the north bank are to be reduced further. And I hear talk of a Bill to be laid before Convocation intended to diminish our own navy. The argument's familiar enough: why should we English exert ourselves in that quarter when Naples and Venice and Hungary do so little? How else are we to show the spirit of detensione? Liberal cant! I should very much like to know the number of secret Mahometan agents among our governors. Oh, this battle has continued for more than six hundred years, whether the state of affairs at any one time was called war or peace, and Christendom will never be safe until the Turk is thrown back by force into Asia and the Imperial Patriarchate restored at Constantinople.'
'I'm sure many Christians share that dream,' said the priest.
'But not you yourself.'
'Oh yes, sir. Indeed, I devoutly wish it were attainable.'
'It will never be attained while there are such as you within the Church, fortifying the cause of the heathen.'
'Master Anvil, I do no such thing. I ask only that we reserve our efforts and the blood of our young men for achieving what can be achieved. And I remind you that there was One who commanded us to forgive our enemies.'
'It was He who advised the people that when a strong man in arms holdeth his palace, his goods are safe; but when one stronger than he shall come upon him, then...'
'That's an argument for continuing to be strong, for maintaining defences, not for—'
'My argument precisely, Father. I deplored our weakness and our reduced defences.'
'And went on to advocate the violent expulsion of the Turk. Now attend, sir. The true strength of our Church lies not in armies or fleets but in the souls of her children.'
'By St Peter, I'm glad you're not Secretary of the War Chamber.'
'It's my duty to instruct you as I have, master.'
'Very well, Father, very well. Have I your permission to continue reading?'
'Of course.'
The post of private chaplain to the Anvil family had had half a dozen incumbents since Tobias had been in a position to institute it. Father Lyall had already lasted in it longer than all of them put together. He had seen at once that his employer regarded himself, or wanted to be regarded, as a latter-day zealot so extreme as to satisfy the most ardent ultramontanist in the Church hierarchy and the most Romanist of politicians—so very extreme, in particular, that he needed constant doctrinal sedation to hold his missionary enthusiasm within bounds. Instead of tamely submitting to Tobias's extravagances, then, Lyall called them in question, disparaged them, rebuked them. The colloquy about the Turk had ended after the usual and preferred pattern, with the layman accepting but not embracing the advice of his spiritual counsellor and conspicuously reserving the right to return to the charge at any more or less appropriate time.