A minute or so later, a questioning moo was heard from the pasture. As if by prearrangement, Hubert straightened himself and the calf trotted off; contentedly, he watched it out of sight. Only now did he remember The Ore Awakes: he must have dropped it somewhere in the brewery. Well, there was no going back for it. Should he walk on up to the woods? No: if he did, he would have to think about what he had seen there the previous week, to compare that with what he had seen just how and as much as he had understood of what he had been told, and from all this to try to imagine himself in Ned's case, and he shied away from such a task. He would go instead to the study-room and write out the little improwisazione he had thought of coming up in the rapid.
While the clock was striking five, he carried the completed manuscript across a corner of the quadrangle to the small concert-chamber where composition was usually taught. The ceiling and four wall-panels had been painted with scenes from the life of St Cecilia, including what was now known to be her unhistorical martyrdom in the year 230. The artist was supposed to have been a mid-eighteenth-century Prefect of Music at the Chapel, and although it was also supposed, or at least hoped, that he had been a better musician than artist, most folk enjoyed what he had painted. Hubert did; as he mounted the low platform and sat down at one of the two piano-fortes there, he gave the figure of the saint's husband, known to generations of clerks as 'the tipsy Roman', an affectionate glance. Raising the lid of the instrument, he began to play the Prometheus Variations, Beethoven's last complete keyboard work. It would never do to be caught tinkling some trash of one's own.
Presently, Master Morley hurried in, his footfalls heavy on the wide elm boards. Hubert stopped playing and stood up.
'My excuses, Clerk Anvil: the organer kept me at the oratory. Now what have you for me today?'
'Here, master.'
At his work-desk to one side of the platform, Morley turned over the sheets of music-paper at a fair speed to start with, then more slowly. Twice he went to the nearer pianoforte and, without sitting down, played short passages. Halfway through a second study of the manuscript he spoke, in the voice that was as heavy as his tread.
'How long was this in the writing, Anvil?'
'In the writing down, master, no more than—'
'My question was ill drawn. How long in the composing?'
'It's hard for me to tell, master. Six minutes or seven.'
'It'll be that long in the playing.'
'Forgive me, master, of course it was much longer in the composing.'
Morley stared past Hubert at one of the wall-paintings. 'Anvil,' he said at last: 'I know you meant six or seven minutes in the composing. What did you mean by composing?'
'I... My mind was those minutes in going through it. Or...' Hubert hesitated, but the Prefect still stared. 'Or it was those minutes going through my mind.'
'You tell me it came to you from somewhere else.' The voice was at its harshest now.
'No—no, master, it was inside my mind already when I... looked.'
'Very well. These F naturals here.' Morley pointed with a stubby finger. 'And again near the end.'
'Oh yes.' Hubert sang a short phrase.
'Why did you have your hands in front of you then?'
'Did I so? I expect because it's the clarinet—I was...'
'What clarinet, Anvil? This is a keyboard piece.'
'Yes, master, but I heard that voice as a clarinet.'
'And the other voices too, you heard them as flutes and violas and horns and so forth?'
'No, sir. Two oboes, two clarinets and two bassoons.'
'So this here is a keyboard transcription of a wind-sextet movement you haven't put on paper.'
'Yes, master.'
'Are all your keyboard pieces transcriptions of non-existent originals?'
'Oh no, master: the theme and variations was for pianoforte.'
'Indeed. Now at last to these F naturals. The key is G major, and elsewhere, here for example, we find the F sharp we expect. Well?'
'They're different places, master.'
'When I protest that the leading-note of G major is F sharp, what's your answer?'
'That where I've written F natural nothing but F natural is possible.'
Morley was silent for nearly a minute. Then he said, 'They let me know you go soon to be altered.'
'Yes, master.'
'I'm sorry to hear it. Oh, it means an eminent career for you and I wish you well. But it also means an end to your activities as composer.'
'Surely not, sir.'
'As surely as can be. Name me six pieces of any kind that a singer of the least eminence has written. You see? Consideration will show that a singer's life is too much lived with others, too remunerating in other ways than financial, simply too full to allow of composition. So I'm a little dismal, because you're by far the best pupil I've ever had. But in any case I must lose you soon as pupil: soon I'll be able to teach you nothing more.'
