'You are too gracious, master.'
Again Morley stared at the painting. 'Why is it, Anvil, do you think, that St Cecilia is the patron saint of the blind as well as of music?'
Anything Hubert might have had to say to this was never heard, because just then Lawrence came into the concert-chamber and up to the two on the platform.
'Your indulgence, master,' he said, and then, 'Clerk Anvil, my lord Abbot wishes you to come to him at once.'
'What have I done?' asked Hubert in fear, thinking of his encounter with Ned.
'Nothing ill that I know of, clerk,' said the servant, smiling slightly. 'You're to go to Rome.'
As the other two moved off, Morley sighed and nodded his head, his eyes shut.
The Eternal City Rapid pulled out of Bayswater Station, its only stop between Coverley and Rome, at 6.25 a.m., and moved slowly, through networks of points and round tight bends, across London, across the river and into the north-west corner of the county of Kent, which was still virtually coextensive with the ancient kingdom. There the track straightened itself, changing direction only in the longest and shallowest of curves, its continuously- welded rails on their cushioned sleepers moving through natural obstacles, not round them: the work of the great Harrison. The half-mile-long train—three triplex tugs, 30 passenger baruches, 38 cargo vans—accelerated steadily, but it did not attain its top speed of 195 m.p.h. until the towers of Canterbury were to be seen out of the windows on the left side. Soon came the famous moment when it emerged from the Dover cliffs and entered on to the Channel Bridge, Sopwith's masterpiece, 23 miles 644 yards of road and railtrack carried between 169 piers. Little more than half an hour's travel on the French side took the Rapid as far as Clermont, the slipping-point for Paris where it freed itself of its rearmost quarter. As mid-morning approached, tunnels became longer and more frequent, but all were left behind in a matter of seconds except the 15-odd miles of the Bognanco itself. The track ran downhill through Milan, crossed the Po on stilts 200 feet high, climbed again into Parma and moved finally towards the coastal plain. The journey ended in the Stazione S. Pietro at 1.32-nearly a quarter of an hour late. It had all impressed Hubert enough to distract him from more than one troubling or puzzling question, of which not the least was the reason for his summons to Rome. The cabin his father had hired was like several parts of a beautiful house combined into one. After the luggage had been settled, the two of them moved to a kind of parlour by the window. Here there were leather chairs with gold-braided velvet cushions, tall potted plants, lithographs of views of Rome, a row of picture-books, a locker containing a chess-set and packs of playing-cards and much else; but Hubert attended only to things on the outside. As the train went faster, nearby objects like hedges or dwellings of the people became an indifferently-coloured lengthwise blur, but he very soon learned to overlook them in favour of more distant and important things: churches, great houses, busy streets and squares, and at different times no fewer than four aircraft, mighty envelopes of gas on the long run to Africa or the Antipodes.
Breakfast was taken at a polished oval table on which the linen, china, silver and glass might have been made the previous day; the bread the Anvils ate with their hurtleberry conserve must have been baked that day, perhaps on the train itself: nothing seemed impossible. The meal was brought in (by two very polite attendants, one stern, the other timid) long after the train had reached its full speed, and Hubert noticed that, probably in consequence, the timid attendant had to take some special care when he poured the tea. The remnants being cleared away, something like a luxurious bedchamber offered itself in the form of couches shaded by silk screens, but Hubert stayed by the window to see what he had never seen before.
The passage over the Alps was like flying in a dream: the always startling burst into bright sunshine, the huge steady leap between tiers of mountains and its abrupt cessation in the darkness of the next tunnel. When the streams and rivers began again, they had changed their colour from brown or grey to blue, green or turquoise. The countryside was the same as that in the background of some very old paintings Hubert remembered seeing on a visit to the Royal Gallery in Coverley: the sloping fields, the thin dark trees, even the small clouds on their own in the sky. Then, after slowing so gradually that the process could only be seen, not felt, the train came into Rome, where every building that was not a church looked like a palace, and stopped without the slightest jar.
On the pavement beside the track, the Anvils were soon joined by one of the family servants carrying their slender overnight baggage; the man had of course travelled in the narrow cabin allotted his kind at the rear of the baruch. Hubert thought he had never seen so many folk at once: droves of pilgrims, clerics in ones and twos, officials with their staffs, men of affairs like his father, all making their way through crowds of vendors who pressed on them flowers, fruit, patties, flasks of wine, gewgaws, facsimiles of paintings and cheap-looking religious objects. After a short pause at the post of inspection, there was more of the same in the square outside, together with a great concourse of wheeled traffic; every vehicle seemed to make twice as much noise as its English counterpart, just as every Roman shouted instead of talking. The air was hot and damp. Hubert felt relieved when, after only a couple of minutes, a public was secured. Hunger, fatigue, confusion and anxiety weighed upon him. The first two yielded in due time to the excellent dinner provided by the Schola Saxonum, where rooms had been reserved for them, but in other respects he was still uncomfortable when, at ten minutes to four that afternoon, he and his father approached the Vatican Palace on the north side of St Peter's Square.
Nine great windows, each with a decorated half-dome above it, dominated the facciata of the building, the one in the centre distinguished by a balcony and an abundance of high-relief sculpture; it must be from here that the Holy Father gave his addresses to the multitude. Below the windows ran a gallery, and below that, at ground level, an arcade, both of plain stone. The main gate, thirty feet high and flanked by massive granite pillars, was at the end nearer the basilica. Next to it was an incongruously modern and undignified structure, a sort of wooden hut with a flat roof. Here Anvil senior presented himself to a cheerful young monk, produced an identifying document and was evidently found to be expected. The monk nodded to the carmine-uniformed guard who, with shouldered fusil, stood directly at the gate, and the guard opened the wicket. Hubert was stepping over the sill when he noticed a third man who seemed to be stationed at the entrance with an eye to visitors; he was in plain clothes (dark-blue jacket and straw-coloured breeches), but he wore them as if they had been chosen for him.
Inside, there was only one way to go: down the wide path that curved to and fro between masses of trees and shrubs growing so close together that, within a dozen paces, the palace itself could be seen only in stray glimpses and there was no sound except birdsong, some of it unfamiliar. The surface of the path consisted of flat- topped stones about the size of a crown piece, none regular in shape but each perfectly fitted with its neighbours, no two apparently alike in colour, any that the sun caught glinting as if wet. On either side, now and then overgrown in parts by stray foliage, and often a good deal weathered, there stood at five-yard intervals classical statues in marble or bronze, portrait busts on stone pedestals, sections of column with spiral bands of carving, fragments of colossi that included a huge sandalled foot irregularly shorn off above the ankle. Once, the path divided to accommodate an inactive fountain in a basin of some matt black substance; further on, it led straight through the considerable remains of what Hubert took to be a very ancient pagan temple, its walls, floor and low ceiling covered with designs he could not interpret. He scarcely heard his father's expressions of admiration or amazement, except to notice that they sounded genuine; he himself was more and more interested in reaching the end of their journey along the path, which oppressed him in some way.
When at last they did, they had come in sight of a stone staircase at the end of another arcade and leading up to another gallery. From the foot of the staircase, a functionary with a curved sword and a splendid purple sash beckoned the new arrivals by holding out his hand and gently curling the fingers up in the palm. They followed him
