'What did I do that offended Domingo?'
'Not offended.'
'There was something that didn't please him.'
'Ah now, see, little boy, we think a man saying his prayers, that's his own matter. We don't love him to talk about it. We, I mean we at home in New England. But you don't go and think you offended that Domingo. He knew in a minute you was just thankful to him. See, it's all right.'
'You are kind, Samuel. And Domingo too. Please tell me—the boys at the Chapel helped me, but they're my friends, they must be, but you and Domingo have met me only once before, he hardly saw me, and yet you're both so kind, out of no need, as I said. Why?'
'Same idea. Religion. Hear this between you and me: we at home, we hate your Pope and your monks and your priests. Domingo parts from Mexico and comes to New England, the Archbishop of El Paso, he says Domingo isn't a Christian no more, what is it he done?'
'Excommunicated him?'
'Say so. He wants Domingo to go to hell. That don't make Domingo go to hell, but that Archbishop, he don't know that. Goddam popeling. So you come to hide from the priests, we help you. And, see, at home, anybody runs away any time, we help him.'
'Do many folk run away in New England?'
'Indians, they do. Now, pardon, this piece of road, I go mighty careful.'
Hubert took the hint and said no more on the subject.
Somewhere in the distance he noticed an irregular patch of light that might have been the station. He half-listened to the hammering of the engine and the swish of the rubber tires through the rain. His curiosity was again at work, but it was a full two minutes before he yielded to it.
'Samuel, whom do they alter in New England?'
'Uh?'
'When I told you the priests meant to alter me, you said they didn't do it to children there. That shows they do it to some others.'
'I don't remember, young master.'
Stealthily, Hubert turned his head and scanned the exotic, handsome profile beside him. He could not make out much detail, and his experience of reading characters from faces had been necessarily brief, but he thought he could read a firm self-respect, some obstinacy, and a distinct trace of the sadness he had noticed in Domingo, a look of long-remembered disappointment. But there was humour too. Hubert said abruptly, 'I won't let the Secretary know anything.'
Samuel gave a faint smile, but his voice was not merry when he spoke. 'A man sins too much with women, they alter him. A man sins in other ways, ways of not being pure, they alter him.'
'A man? Surely not any man. Surely a priest.'
'A pastor. No, any man. Like my brother. Now I take you to the train.'
The station was crowded with travellers taking advantage of the cheap fares payable late at night: Hubert's half-price journey-tab cost him ten minutes' wait in a line and threepence-farthing. Most of the folk were pilgrims in bands of fifty or a hundred, bound for Rome, for Jerusalem (a destination unattainable for over thirty years before the Sultan-Calif, as part of his policy of detensione, had re-opened it to Christians in 1968), for the tomb of St James of Compostella in Spain, for the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury, the richest in northern Europe.
With Samuel at his side, Hubert walked up the pavement beside the train, past the mail vans being filled with the familiar grey sacks, past the loaded cargo vans to the passenger baruches. Samuel found Hubert a passage seat in a people's baruch opposite a friendly-looking old woman who carried on her lap a closed basket of chirping and rustling small birds. He asked her please to tend to this young stable-lad on his way to visit his sick mother in London. Then he looked hard at Hubert and said in his strange accent, 'Good-bye, little boy. I hope your God take care of you.' He was gone before Hubert could reply. After a time, a shrill bell rang, doors slammed, the baruch shuddered gently and the journey started. The man next to Hubert, a hireling by the look of him, curled himself up on the wooden bench and began to snore almost at once. Dirty children ran up and down the passage; a game of dice on the bench behind aroused increasing emotions; somewhere further back, a blurred voice sang very slowly and unsteadily (and with copious ornamentation) a song from an extravaganza of the Thirties. But, despite all these and other distractions, despite having meant to share his provisions with the old woman and to encourage her to talk about her family, he fell asleep almost as soon as the train was out of the station. He dreamed he was on Joan's back again and the ground under her feet was so soft, or her gait so smooth, that the saddle did not move at all, except forwards in a straight line. In the end she stopped; he woke to find that it was the train that had stopped, and half the other passengers were already on their feet. The old woman asked him if he needed help in making his way to where his mother lived. Her speech was uncouth, but her meaning was as plain as her good intentions. He thanked her and told her he would have no difficulty.
Nor would he, he was confident. Instead of taking an express-omnibus to the St Giles's neighbourhood and searching for St Edmund Street on foot, an exercise he had not been looking forward to, he would do what had been in his mind when he woke and be carried straight to the Embassy by public. (The drivers of London publics were famous all over Christendom for knowing their city down to its remotest alley; each had to pass the Civil Constabulary's rigorous probation in such knowledge before being granted his charter.) This obvious course had not occurred to Hubert earlier because travelling in this fashion was not expected in an unaccompanied child, even a child of the higher degree.
Beside the long arcade on the east side of the station stood a long file of publics, showing as well as their road-lamps the green light indicating that they were vacant. Instinct, and a touch of chill in the air, kept Hubert in the shelter of the arcade while the couple of dozen folk waiting at the head of the file were accommodated and driven away. Then, after a quick glance to and fro, he hurried across to the vehicle that stood at the front. The driver turned and saw him, but instead of opening his window on its pivot to hear instructions, as would have been customary, the man scowled fiercely and jerked his thumb and first two fingers downwards in the 'go to hell' gesture. Hubert understood at once. His cap, trousers and corduroy jerkin effectively disguised him as one of the people, an advantage at most points in his travels, not so here: he had of course been taken for a beggar or a tout. He reached in his pocket, found a shilling and held it up. The publicman's expression showed surprise, then thought.
