The Alteration

       'Did you... was it part of the reason you were in Coverley, to hear me sing in the Requiem?'

       'Not part. The whole reason. Yes, Hubert, you're of great mark already for one of your years.'

       'Master: when you came to the Chapel, did you confer on me with the Abbot?'

       'Yes, and also with your other preceptors.'

       'Did you tell them the Pope had sent you?'

       'No. I wasn't asked.'

       'I see.' Hubert hesitated again. 'What did you tell them?'

       'That your voice and your musician's qualities were of the finest.'

       'And therefore I must be altered.'

       'That did not-'

       Tobias had been fidgeting: rubbing his face and twisting his feet from the ankle. Now he broke in abruptly. 'What was your authority, sir?'

       'I must be clear, Master Anvil. My lord the Abbot asked Viaventosa and me to tell our opinion of your son's gifts, and for that we had the authority of our experience. To what use his lordship puts our information is not in our control. Exactly the same holds for our commission from the Holy Father.'

       'I understand.'

       'Thank you, master. So: may I ask you?—your honoured self and Hubert will be kind enough to sup with us this evening? I ask now because my cook—'

       'Thank you, but I regret that I'm tired and we depart early tomorrow.'

       'Just an hour or so—there's so much to talk of, touching Hubert's future. We can arrange his—'

       'I regret...'

       Viaventosa, who had followed the last few remarks with ease, pulled and pushed his bulk upright. 'Please, Master Anvil,' he squeaked, 'sup with us. It will be very good.'

       Tobias stared at him for a second and jumped to his feet. 'I must go at once. Come, Hubert.'

       'Also I must speak now.' Viaventosa had risen almost as quickly and was making snuffling noises. 'I say to you: no... Anderung, altering. No altering for Hubert. No no no. You see me, master, I'm altered. H'm, h'm. Not this for Hubert.'

       'Sei ruhig, Wolfgang!'

       Tobias, with Hubert's hand in his, was making for the door, but Viaventosa, waddling to and fro, impeded him. 'No altering, please, for your son.' His voice slid further up the scale. 'See me like this. Hear me speak, like a woman, like a child. No wife, no friend but another altered one. They see me and they hear me and they think, "Not a man, not a man." All, all, all. Always. Cberall.' He went on, louder, weeping freely, as Mirabilis tried to pull him away. 'See my face. No hair.' He made a contemptuous wiping gesture across his fuzzy upper lip. 'They laugh. I don't see them but I know. They laugh or they...' He imitated the act of vomiting. 'Think you, master, your son will be like me. Not a man. Hubert must not be altered, for the love of God.'

       The green-leather door slammed. Hubert saw that there was more in his father's expression than embarrassment or revulsion. He was about to ask him not to hold his hand so tightly when something amazing happened: in a yard outside a house in Rome, while hundreds of the people passed by and others in ones and twos stopped to watch, Master Tobias Anvil of the London Chamber of Merchandry knelt down on the cobbles in his thirty-shilling breeches and clasped his son in his arms.

       'What is it, papa?'

       'God aid me, God send my soul tranquillity. Pray for me, Hubert. Pray to Christ to take from my memory what I have seen and heard.'

       'Yes, papa. It was rather displeasing.'

       Tobias's embrace grew tighter. 'Oh Christ, I pray Thee to take away from this child, Thy child, that sight and those words. Oh Hubert, how should I bear it that you should become such a creature as that?'

       'He's old, papa, and he's silly, and he was piling it up—surely you could see—, and he'd most likely have looked the same whether he'd been altered or not, or much the same. The other was very different, not only in his looks.'

       Releasing his son, Tobias sat back on his heels. He made no move to stand up, heedless or even unaware of the small talkative crowd that had gathered a few yards off. He seemed calmer when he said, 'What can ever make me able to drive that voice from my ears? I must find a priest tonight to pray with me. Oh God, where am I now to find the strength to endure what will be done to this child of mine?'

       'Will be done?'

       'Because endure it I must.'

       Hubert looked down at the top of his father's bowed head.

       After supper that night, as arranged earlier, Sebastian Morley and Father Dilke attended Abbot Thynne in his parlour. He offered them brown sherry, which Morley accepted and Dilke declined, then picked up a strip of newspaper from the marble top of his writing-table. His face was grave.

       'This comes to me from my old friend Ayer at New College. As Professor of Dogmatic Theology he must see the Observator Romanus daily: it reaches him every afternoon. My New Latin is not of the best, I admit to you, but the core of the matter is clear. His Holiness will receive—will by now have received—Hubert and his father on purpose to confer on Hubert's future.'

       'And tomorrow we'll read that Hubert, with his father's, more than willing sanction, is shortly to take up a high post in one of the choirs there, probably that of St Peter's.' Morley sounded unconcerned, almost bored. 'The Vicar of Christ is a diplomatist. This is his means of countering the complaint that he considers too little the wishes of those he calls to Rome. Nobody will be deceived, but the form's important.'

       Dilke stood gazing towards the tapestry, his hands clasped in front of him. He said heavily, 'So Hubert is lost to us.'

       'I'm sorry for you, Father,' said Morley in the same tone as before. 'But Hubert has been lost to us for some time.'

       'Why must His Holiness do this?' The Abbot seemed not to have heard the last remark: he was as near anger as the other two had ever seen him. 'It's acknowledged that he has no ear for music, no...'

       'He has an excellent ear for what folk tell him of the best performers in any craft. Anvil's going to the Vatican was inevitable as soon as the Pope heard of him. I knew it was only a question of time, and when you told me, my lord, that Mirabilis and Viaventosa were to attend our late King's funeral, I knew the time was here. Why does an opera singer come from Rome to attend a requiem mass in England? Why does an elderly chapelmaster make his first visit to our country on the same occasion? And how is it that two such men, even though foremost in their function, gain entry to St George's among princes and spiritual lords? Because they do the Pope the same service as they do you, my lord.'

       'Sebastian: you said nothing of this.'

       'I feared I might have said too much when the two came here to sup, and had to plead melancholia. Oh, I was bitter then. But no more. I said nothing later because I could see no purpose in speaking.'

       'Did you make the same surmise, Father?'

       Dilke hesitated, blinking rapidly and avoiding Morley's eye. 'I was perplexed for a little, my lord, but then my attention was diverted to matters of more immediacy.'

       'I suppose I must believe it,' said the Abbot after a pause. 'I thought... Hearing that Mirabilis was in Coverley, I thought to renew an old friendship and at the same time grasp what appeared a heaven-sent opportunity to hear two such competent advisers. It grieves me that Fritz played such a part before me, before us all.'

       Morley gave a short laugh. 'What would you have had him do, my lord? Tell us of his commission from the Pope, or refuse to answer your inquiry?'

       'It might have been more honourable in him to decline my invitation.'