him. 'No altering, please, for your son.' His voice slid further up the scale. 'See me like this. Hear me speak, like a woman, like a child. No wife, no friend but another altered one. They see me and they hear me and they think, 'Not a man, not a man.' All, all, all. Always. Cberall.' He went on, louder, weeping freely, as Mirabilis tried to pull him away. 'See my face. No hair.' He made a contemptuous wiping gesture across his fuzzy upper lip. 'They laugh. I don't see them but I know. They laugh or they...' He imitated the act of vomiting. 'Think you, master, your son will be like me. Not a man. Hubert must not be altered, for the love of God.'
The green-leather door slammed. Hubert saw that there was more in his father's expression than embarrassment or revulsion. He was about to ask him not to hold his hand so tightly when something amazing happened: in a yard outside a house in Rome, while hundreds of the people passed by and others in ones and twos stopped to watch, Master Tobias Anvil of the London Chamber of Merchandry knelt down on the cobbles in his thirty-shilling breeches and clasped his son in his arms.
'What is it, papa?'
'God aid me, God send my soul tranquillity. Pray for me, Hubert. Pray to Christ to take from my memory what I have seen and heard.'
'Yes, papa. It was rather displeasing.'
Tobias's embrace grew tighter. 'Oh Christ, I pray Thee to take away from this child, Thy child, that sight and those words. Oh Hubert, how should I bear it that you should become such a creature as that?'
'He's old, papa, and he's silly, and he was piling it up—surely you could see—, and he'd most likely have looked the same whether he'd been altered or not, or much the same. The other was very different, not only in his looks.'
Releasing his son, Tobias sat back on his heels. He made no move to stand up, heedless or even unaware of the small talkative crowd that had gathered a few yards off. He seemed calmer when he said, 'What can ever make me able to drive that voice from my ears? I must find a priest tonight to pray with me. Oh God, where am I now to find the strength to endure what will be done to this child of mine?'
'Will be done?'
'Because endure it I must.'
Hubert looked down at the top of his father's bowed head.
After supper that night, as arranged earlier, Sebastian Morley and Father Dilke attended Abbot Thynne in his parlour. He offered them brown sherry, which Morley accepted and Dilke declined, then picked up a strip of newspaper from the marble top of his writing-table. His face was grave.
'This comes to me from my old friend Ayer at New College. As Professor of Dogmatic Theology he must see the Observator Romanus daily: it reaches him every afternoon. My New Latin is not of the best, I admit to you, but the core of the matter is clear. His Holiness will receive—will by now have received—Hubert and his father on purpose to confer on Hubert's future.'
'And tomorrow we'll read that Hubert, with his father's, more than willing sanction, is shortly to take up a high post in one of the choirs there, probably that of St Peter's.' Morley sounded unconcerned, almost bored. 'The Vicar of Christ is a diplomatist. This is his means of countering the complaint that he considers too little the wishes of those he calls to Rome. Nobody will be deceived, but the form's important.'
Dilke stood gazing towards the tapestry, his hands clasped in front of him. He said heavily, 'So Hubert is lost to us.'
'I'm sorry for you, Father,' said Morley in the same tone as before. 'But Hubert has been lost to us for some time.'
'Why must His Holiness do this?' The Abbot seemed not to have heard the last remark: he was as near anger as the other two had ever seen him. 'It's acknowledged that he has no ear for music, no...'
'He has an excellent ear for what folk tell him of the best performers in any craft. Anvil's going to the Vatican was inevitable as soon as the Pope heard of him. I knew it was only a question of time, and when you told me, my lord, that Mirabilis and Viaventosa were to attend our late King's funeral, I knew the time was here. Why does an opera singer come from Rome to attend a requiem mass in England? Why does an elderly chapelmaster make his first visit to our country on the same occasion? And how is it that two such men, even though foremost in their function, gain entry to St George's among princes and spiritual lords? Because they do the Pope the same service as they do you, my lord.'
'Sebastian: you said nothing of this.'
'I feared I might have said too much when the two came here to sup, and had to plead melancholia. Oh, I was bitter then. But no more. I said nothing later because I could see no purpose in speaking.'
'Did you make the same surmise, Father?'
Dilke hesitated, blinking rapidly and avoiding Morley's eye. 'I was perplexed for a little, my lord, but then my attention was diverted to matters of more immediacy.'
'I suppose I must believe it,' said the Abbot after a pause. 'I thought... Hearing that Mirabilis was in Coverley, I thought to renew an old friendship and at the same time grasp what appeared a heaven-sent opportunity to hear two such competent advisers. It grieves me that Fritz played such a part before me, before us all.'
Morley gave a short laugh. 'What would you have had him do, my lord? Tell us of his commission from the Pope, or refuse to answer your inquiry?'
'It might have been more honourable in him to decline my invitation.'
'And disappoint you, sir, and deny himself an evening in your company and at your table? For what good? Nothing would be changed. No, Mirabilis is no worse than most of us, and he has more wit than many. He sees that in our world a man does what he's told, goes where he's sent, answers what he's asked. And, after seeing that, one is free.'
There was a longer pause. A bell pealed; further off, a cow lowed; in the courtyard, three or four voices, excited and yet under restraint, moved into hearing and died away in a distant corner. Morley refilled his sherry- glass and remained standing. As gently as he could, he said, 'At any rate, my lord, this removes one difficulty. Anvil's alteration is no longer any concern of yours.'
