down the gallery past a series of shut doors, one of which, smaller than the others, had bars across it. Halfway along they turned off at a narrower staircase with a gilded ceiling and low-relief grottescos on the walls. On the second floor they went through a circular chamber in which everything from floor to ceiling seemed to Hubert, in the couple of seconds available to him, to be made of ivory, a square chamber in which everything likewise seemed to be covered with mosiac, and an L-shaped chamber full of more classical statuary, some of which he thought he recognised from books. Next was what must be an antechamber. The further door of this was flanked by another guard in carmine uniform and another man wearing plain clothes that seemed not to belong to him. The official with the sword opened this door, or rather half of it, spoke to someone on the far side, again made his courteous beckoning gesture to the Anvils, and withdrew, shutting the door after them.
It was a lofty room with an immense window, no doubt one of the row to be seen from the square; through it, Hubert had a momentary sight of spires and roofs with statues on them, and, further off, domes and towers. Frescoes and oil paintings covered the walls. A line of padded benches in carved wood and gilt ran down the wall opposite the window; all were empty. So was the elevated golden throne at the far end. A figure robed in scarlet smiled and spoke, raising his voice as four o'clock sounded from innumerable bells.
'Salvete, magister et magistrule.'
'Salvete, Vestra Eminentia,' said Tobias Anvil, bowing low.
'Dominus vobiscum.'
'Et cum vobis.'
'I am Cardinal Berlinguer. I welcome you to Rome. I will take you to His Holiness. Please to come with me.'
Beside the door they were to leave by, there hung a picture familiar to Hubert from countless facsimiles, Tintoretto's 'Lepanto', one of the most renowned works of art in the world. Hubert did not dare to linger; he just had time for a single glance at his favourite detail, the boarding of a Turkish galley by a lone warrior who was always taken (in England and her Empire) to be Sir Richard Grenville. Then they moved out, up a steep stair, across an enclosed bridge where suits of armour stood in ranks, and finally through another door. Cardinal Berlinguer departed.
Hubert found himself in what might have been the parlour of a small English manor house, with solid oak furniture, chintz covers and what looked like trees and shrubs outside—on a roof? A broad, plumpish man of fifty or more, with eyeglasses and a rather pale complexion, made a satisfied noise as he came over from the window. He was wearing the kind of dark-grey suit that any lay visitor to the Anvil house might wear. Hubert looked about for the Pope, but his father had gone down on one knee and bowed his head, so he hastened to do the same. He kissed a plain ring with a gold cross on it, felt a hand laid on his own bowed head and heard some words in Latin spoken. They were not spoken clearly and he did not understand them all, but they calmed him.
'Ah, now, please make yourselves comfortable, the pair of you. You'll find that's a good chair, Master Anvil, and Hubert lad, you settle yourself down next to us. Our excuses for receiving you thus meanly apparelled: we're so often required to appear swaddled like a babe that we've come to take advantage of every private moment. Rome will be so hot in these months. Sometimes we feel we'd give our throne for a few breaths of a North Sea breeze. Well, tell us, what do you think of our city? You'll have been here before, no doubt, master.'
If challenged, Hubert would have said that of course he had known that Pope John XXIV was an Englishman, was a Yorkshireman; but knowledge was different from being faced with the fact. He willed himself to believe that this pleasant, homely-looking person was indeed God's representative on earth and also the most powerful man alive. His father was answering the question.
'A number of times, Your Holiness. It still fills me with extreme awe. So much to be aware of. Republican Rome, Imperial Rome, medieval Rome, modern Rome, and above all-'
'Ay, there is that. For us, there's almost too much. It's more than eight years since our coronation and we still couldn't truly say we knew the place. And it's not like home. Take our church, for instance.' The Pope moved his dark head to one side, presumably to indicate St Peter's. 'You must have remarked the outside of it on your way here, Hubert. How did it impress you?'
'We saw the inside of it too, Your Holiness,' said Hubert, surprised by how easy it was to sound natural. 'It impressed me very greatly.'
'So it should, lad, so it should, considering in whose sanctified name it stands. We meant in what way did it impress you as a piece of architecture. Did it match your expectations?'
'Not quite, Your Holiness.' Hubert heard his father inhale sharply. 'I thought it rather... bare.'
'Austere, as you might say? We agree. We and you look to St George's for a notion of a cathedral basilica, a place rich with holy images testifying to the glory of God, eh? That was what St Peter's was first designed to be, but old Martin wouldn't have it so. No, Germanian I was a very severe and sober kind of customer; God's first house on earth must not be a temple of luxury, he said. He tore up the plans at last and dismissed the Italian master- builders and masons. One of them was so mortified he committed the unforgivable sin—Boonarotty or some such name. A fair number of the others had the craft to go to Coverley and settle down to their trade. There were places for them in plenty, for old Martin had sent after English artificers along with men from Almaigne and the Netherlands to make St Peter's according to his will. Out of the common, that. But enough of lessons. Now you're settled, forgive us if we show you our little cloister. We're a mite proud of it, we're afraid.'
A moment later, the three stood on the tessellated pavement of an arcade that ran all the way round the open space, which occupied perhaps half an acre. The roof was supported by slender pillars, none seemingly like another in detail. In the centre, a fountain was playing; Hubert remembered that the one in the garden below had not been. Flowers, flowering shrubs and dwarf trees of species unknown to him grew in beds of exact geometrical shapes. Between them, the turf was no less level and smooth than would be seen at a premier club-ball field in England. Three gardeners in white overalls were hard at work under the strong sun.
'A beautiful sight, Your Holiness,' said Tobias as they moved slowly round the arcade, 'and a wonderful stroke of engineering.'
'It is that, master. There are we don't know how many thousands of tons of soil up here. You wouldn't credit that it was a Frenchie who began it, would you? Old Sylvan II back in the eighteenth century. And since then every Holy Father has added a shred of his own. We brought those roses, look. Now you'll be wanting to know, the pair of you, why we asked you to pay us a visit. Well, we see it like this. Rome is the centre of Christendom.' The Pope said this with some force and nodded his head several times, as if he had recently heard the point disputed. 'So Rome should be the greatest city in the world, with the foremost and the finest of everything and everybody, a city fit to make Byzantium look like a mill-town. Ee, we don't speak of mere temporal glory, magnificence for its own secular sake. To follow after that would be a sin, and if there's one thing we can't abide at any price it's sin. We think we can safely say that.' After a reflective pause, he added, 'Yes, we think we can safely say that. What we design is all in God's praise and in the adoration of His Holy Name.
