The Alteration

       'Do you have money?'

       Hubert brought out Decuman's gift and what had been in his own purse and counted. 'Six shillings and three farthings.'

       'Enough. Now Samuel take you in the express to the rail-track station. You go on the late rapid to London. Then you go to the Embassy. You tell Citizen van den Haag how you come.'

       'Where is the Embassy?'

       'On St Edmund Street.'

       'Where's that?'

       'By St Giles's.' Domingo hesitated. 'I... stay here; I don't go there.'

       Hubert took his meaning, that his knowledge of London was poor. 'No matter, I'll find it.'

       'Good. You go now.'

       'My horse!' said Hubert, remembering. 'I left her outside.'

       'Your horse, yes?'

       'Please would you shelter her and feed her, and take her home tomorrow? You needn't deliver her—if you set her free within half a mile of the Chapel, she'll find her way home.'

       Domingo considered, then nodded his head. 'It'll be done. Go with Samuel now or you miss the rapid.'

       'Thank you, Domingo.'

       'It's nothing, young master.'

       'But it isn't nothing. You've been good to me out of no need. I'll pray for you.'

       To Hubert's surprise, the man looked stern for a moment, even angry. When this passed, he gave another nod and a faint smile, murmured something and went out by the door that led to the hall. Samuel, now holding a lighted lantern, signed that Hubert was to follow and moved away in the other direction, through a still-room where shelves of preserves and cordials were fleetingly to be seen, and at last into the open. The rain was blowing more strongly, but seemed no thicker. Samuel locked up after them and set off again along the side of the building to what proved to be the express-house. Hubert looked on in wonder when Samuel pulled down a lever set in the wall and, with a hiss of escaping compressed air, a long door swung slowly upwards and outwards. When it had come to rest in a horizontal position, the Indian motioned towards the express, the same that had carried Hubert the previous week, or its twin.

       'May I sit by you, Samuel?'

       'Surely.'

       Hubert watched while the man lit the lamps at front and rear, then, having climbed in beside him, started the engine with the clockwork motor, shifted the gear-arm and let in the gland. The express moved slowly into a short lane that brought it to the street, where it gathered speed. Raindrops whirled against the windguard and, although the swabbers were in action, Hubert found it hard to see out and soon lost his bearings.

       'Will it disturb you if I talk?'

       'No.'

       'What did I do that offended Domingo?'

       'Not offended.'

       'There was something that didn't please him.'

       'Ah now, see, little boy, we think a man saying his prayers, that's his own matter. We don't love him to talk about it. We, I mean we at home in New England. But you don't go and think you offended that Domingo. He knew in a minute you was just thankful to him. See, it's all right.'

       'You are kind, Samuel. And Domingo too. Please tell me—the boys at the Chapel helped me, but they're my friends, they must be, but you and Domingo have met me only once before, he hardly saw me, and yet you're both so kind, out of no need, as I said. Why?'

       'Same idea. Religion. Hear this between you and me: we at home, we hate your Pope and your monks and your priests. Domingo parts from Mexico and comes to New England, the Archbishop of El Paso, he says Domingo isn't a Christian no more, what is it he done?'

       'Excommunicated him?'

       'Say so. He wants Domingo to go to hell. That don't make Domingo go to hell, but that Archbishop, he don't know that. Goddam popeling. So you come to hide from the priests, we help you. And, see, at home, anybody runs away any time, we help him.'

       'Do many folk run away in New England?'

       'Indians, they do. Now, pardon, this piece of road, I go mighty careful.'

       Hubert took the hint and said no more on the subject.

       Somewhere in the distance he noticed an irregular patch of light that might have been the station. He half-listened to the hammering of the engine and the swish of the rubber tires through the rain. His curiosity was again at work, but it was a full two minutes before he yielded to it.

       'Samuel, whom do they alter in New England?'

       'Uh?'

       'When I told you the priests meant to alter me, you said they didn't do it to children there. That shows they do it to some others.'

       'I don't remember, young master.'

       Stealthily, Hubert turned his head and scanned the exotic, handsome profile beside him. He could not make out much detail, and his experience of reading characters from faces had been necessarily brief, but he thought he could read a firm self-respect, some obstinacy, and a distinct trace of the sadness he had noticed in Domingo, a look of long-remembered disappointment. But there was humour too. Hubert said abruptly, 'I won't let the Secretary know anything.'

       Samuel gave a faint smile, but his voice was not merry when he spoke. 'A man sins too much with women, they alter him. A man sins in other ways, ways of not being pure, they alter him.'

       'A man? Surely not any man. Surely a priest.'

       'A pastor. No, any man. Like my brother. Now I take you to the train.'

       The station was crowded with travellers taking advantage of the cheap fares payable late at night: Hubert's half-price journey-tab cost him ten minutes' wait in a line and threepence-farthing. Most of the folk were pilgrims in bands of fifty or a hundred, bound for Rome, for Jerusalem (a destination unattainable for over thirty years before the Sultan-Calif, as part of his policy of detensione, had re-opened it to Christians in 1968), for the tomb of St James of Compostella in Spain, for the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury, the richest in northern Europe.

       With Samuel at his side, Hubert walked up the pavement beside the train, past the mail vans being filled with the familiar grey sacks, past the loaded cargo vans to the passenger baruches. Samuel found Hubert a passage seat in a people's baruch opposite a friendly-looking old woman who carried on her lap a closed basket of chirping and rustling small birds. He asked her please to tend to this young stable-lad on his way to visit his sick mother in London. Then he looked hard at Hubert and said in his strange accent, 'Good-bye, little boy. I hope your God take care of you.' He was gone before Hubert could reply. After a time, a shrill bell rang, doors slammed, the baruch shuddered gently and the journey started. The man next to Hubert, a hireling by the look of him, curled himself up on the wooden bench and began to snore almost at once. Dirty children ran up and down the passage; a game of dice on the bench behind aroused increasing emotions; somewhere further back, a blurred voice sang very slowly and unsteadily (and with copious ornamentation) a song from an extravaganza of the Thirties. But, despite all these and other distractions, despite having meant to share his provisions with the old woman and to encourage her to talk about her family, he fell asleep almost as soon as the train was out of the station. He dreamed he was on Joan's back again and the ground under her feet was so soft, or her gait so smooth, that the saddle did not move at all, except forwards in a straight line. In the end she stopped; he woke to find that it was the train that had stopped, and half the other passengers were already on their feet. The old woman asked him if he needed help in making his way to where his mother lived. Her speech was uncouth, but her meaning was as plain as her good intentions. He thanked her and told her he would have no difficulty.