“Lector Mason? Not quite the harbour at Cooktown, is it? Nevertheless I hope you’ve had a satisfactory voyage.”
She turned. “Father Brazel?”
Xavier Brazel was the Jesuit who had coordinated her invitation and passage. He was tall, slim, elegant; he wore a modest black suit with a white clerical collar. He was a good bit younger than she was, maybe thirty. He smiled, blessed her with two fingers making a cross sign in the air, and shook her hand. “Call me Xavier. I’m delighted to meet you, truly. We’re privileged you’ve agreed to participate in the trial, and I’m particularly looking forward to hearing you speak at St Paul’s. Come, I have a carriage to the rail station…” Nodding at the porter, he led her away. “The trial of Alicia Darwin and her many-times-great-uncle starts tomorrow.”
“Yes. The ship was delayed a couple of days.”
“I’m sorry there’s so little time to prepare, or recover.”
“I’ll be fine.”
The carriage was small but sturdy, pulled by a pair of patient horses. It clattered away through crowded, cobbled streets.
“And I apologise for the security measures,” Xavier said. “A tiresome welcome to the country. It’s been like this since the 29 May attacks.”
“That was six years ago. They caught the Vatican bombers, didn’t they?” Pinprick attacks by Muslim zealots who had struck to commemorate the 550th anniversary of the Islamic conquest of Constantinople — and more than 120 years after a Christian coalition had taken the city back from the Ottomans.
He just smiled. “Once you have surrounded yourself with a ring of steel, it’s hard to tear it down.”
They reached the station where the daily train to London was, fortuitously, waiting. Xavier already had tickets. Xavier helped load Mary’s luggage, and led her to an upper-class carriage. Aside from Mary everybody in here seemed to be a cleric of some kind, the men in black suits, the few women in nuns’ wimples.
The train pulled away. Clouds of sooty steam billowed past the window.
A waiter brought coffees. Xavier sipped his with relish. “Please, enjoy.”
Mary tasted her coffee. “That’s good.”
“French, from their American colonies. The French do know how to make good coffee. Speaking of the French — have you visited Britain before? As it happens this rail line follows the track of the advance of Napoleon’s Grande Armee in 1807, through Maidstone to London. You may see the monuments in the towns we pass through. Are you all right, Lector? You don’t seem quite comfortable.”
“I’m not used to having so many clerics around me. Terra Australis is a Christian country, even if it followed the Marxist Reformation. But I feel like the only sinner on the train.”
He smiled and spoke confidentially. “If you think this is a high density of dog-collars you should try visiting Rome.”
She found herself liking him for his humour and candour. But, she had learned from previous experience, Jesuits were always charming and manipulative. “I don’t need to go to Rome to see the Inquisition at work, however, do I?”
“We prefer not to use that word,” he said evenly. “The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, newly empowered under Cardinal Ratzinger since the 29 May attacks, has done sterling work in the battle against Ottoman extremists.”
“Who just want the freedom of faith they enjoyed up until the 1870s Crusade.”
He smiled. “You know your history. But of course that’s why you’re here. The presence of unbiased observers is important; the Congregation wants to be seen to give Darwin a fair hearing. I have to admit we had refusals to participate from philosophers with specialities in natural selection—”
“So you had to settle for a historian of natural philosophy?”
“We are grateful for your help. The Church as a whole is keen to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings. The purpose of the Congregation’s hearings is to clarify the relationship between theology and natural philosophy, not to condemn. You’ll see. And frankly,” he said, “I hope you’ll think better of us after you’ve seen us at work.”
She shrugged. “I guess I’m here for my own purposes too.” As a historian she’d hope to gather some good material on the centuries-long tension between Church and natural philosophy, and maybe she could achieve more at the trial itself than contribute to some kind of Inquisition propaganda stunt. But now she was here, in the heart of the theocracy, she wasn’t so sure.
She’d fallen silent. Xavier studied her with polite concern. “Are you comfortable? Would you like more coffee?”
“I think I’m a little over-tired,” she said. “Sorry if I snapped.” She dug her book out of her bag. “Maybe I’ll read a bit and leave you in peace.”
He glanced at the spine. “H. G. Wells. The War of the Celestial Spheres.”
“I’m trying to immerse myself in all things English.”
“It’s a fine read, and only marginally heretical.” He actually winked at her.
She had to laugh, but she felt a frisson of unease.
So she read, and dozed a little, as the train clattered through the towns of Kent, Ashford and Charing and others. The towns and villages were cramped, the buildings uniformly stained black with soot. The rolling country was cluttered with small farms where people in mud-coloured clothes laboured over winter crops. The churches were squat buildings like stone studs pinning down the ancient green of the countryside. She’d heard there was a monument to Wellington at Maidstone, where he’d fallen as he failed to stop Napoleon crossing the Medway river. But if it existed at all it wasn’t visible from the train.
By the time the train approached London, the light of the short English day was already fading.
As a guest of the Church she was lodged in one of London’s best hotels. But her room was lit by smoky oil lamps. There seemed to be electricity only in the lobby and dining room — why, even the front porch of her own home outside Cooktown had an electric bulb. And she noticed that the telegraph they used to send a message home to her husband and son was an Australian Maxwell design.
Still, in the morning she found she had a terrific view of the Place de Louis XVI, and of Whitehall and the Mall beyond. The day was bright, and pigeons fluttered around the statue of Bonaparte set atop the huge Christian cross that dominated the square. For a historian this was a reminder of the Church’s slow but crushing reconquest of Protestant England. In the eighteenth century a Catholic league had cooperated with the French to defeat Britain’s imperial ambitions in America and India, and then in 1807 the French King’s Corsican attack-dog had been unleashed on the homeland. By the time Napoleon withdrew, England was once more a Catholic country under a new Bourbon king. Looking up at Napoleon’s brooding face, she was suddenly glad her own home was 12,000 miles away from all this history.
Father Xavier called for her at nine. They travelled by horse-drawn carriage to St Paul’s Cathedral, where the trial of Charles Darwin was to be staged.
St Paul’s was magnificent. Xavier had sweetened her trip around the world by promising her she would be allowed to give a guest sermon to senior figures in London’s theological and philosophical community from the cathedral’s pulpit. Now she was here she started to feel intimidated at the prospect.
But she had no time to look around. Xavier, accompanied by an armed Inquisition guard, led her straight through to the stairs down to the crypt, which had been extended to a warren of dark corridors with rows of hefty locked doors. In utter contrast to the glorious building above, this was like a prison, or a dungeon.
Xavier seemed to sense her mood. “You’re doing fine, Lector.”
“Yeah. I’m just memorizing the way out.”
They arrived at a room that was surprisingly small and bare, for such a high-profile event, with plain plastered walls illuminated by dangling electrical bulbs. The centrepiece was a wooden table behind which sat a row of Inquisition examiners, Mary presumed, stern men all of late middle age wearing funereal black and clerical collars. Their chairman sat in an elaborate throne-like seat, elevated above the rest.