'To promote safety?' Anthony shrugged his shoulders. 'But I warn you, Subaltern: unless you admit my brother without further delay, you must answer to His Excellency.'
Reichesberg looked hard at Anthony, then at Hubert. 'You, boy—you have every look of a child of the people in that rig. Account for yourself now.'
'I assumed this disguise, sir,' said Hubert at his most gentlemanlike, 'in order to penetrate the disreputable circles where my mission lay.'
There was a pause. The sentry shuffled his feet on the pavement, rolled his eyes a little and drew his index finger to and fro under his nose. Anthony raised his head and looked at the top of the lofty staff from which, its colours indistinguishable, the flag of New England fluttered.
'Goddam,' said Reichesberg without much emotion. 'Open up, Paddy.'
So Hubert stepped on to the soil of the only nation in Christendom into which the Pope's servants could not enter at will and of right. There was delay while the subaltern aroused a succession of household functionaries, each of whom had to go through his own cycle of disbelief followed by grudging acceptance, but before very long Hubert's arrival had been officially recognised; as much to the point, a bedchamber was put at his disposal pending his introduction to the Ambassador at a later stage. The brothers kissed and took their leave of each other. Reichesberg escorted Anthony to the street.
'Well, have you fooled me, sir? I can't undo now what I've done.'
'Some particulars are not as stated, but His Excellency will surely approve your decision, so your professional honour is safe.'
'That was never at risk; I'm concerned only with my powers of judgement. Thank you, sir. Good day.'
It was'indeed almost day when Anthony, back in Tyburn Road, paid off his public and approached the house, not frontally but, to avoid inquisitive eyes, up the express-house drive in the first place. He had reached the corner of the building when he heard a loud but muffled groan from indoors, from the express-house itself. A few seconds later, he was bending over a man who lay in a very uncomfortable attitude at the foot of the staircase. Anthony did not at once recognise him, because the lower half of his face was covered with a large gag secured by tapes, but well before this had been removed he could see that it was Father Lyall who lay there, lay there in pints of his own blood, his hands fastened behind his back, his left leg broken. It was later established that he had been attacked in his room and had fallen while trying to get down the stair in search of help, but for the moment there were more important questions to be answered. The main source of the bleeding appeared to be somewhere about the lower abdomen; Anthony lifted the hem of the nightshirt. What he saw made him turn his head violently aside and drive his fists hard against his cheekbones. Then he remembered his duty and his training, felt the pulse, listened for the heart-beat. There was almost none of either. The priest's eyes were shut and his breathing was imperceptible; the flow of blood seemed to have stopped. Anthony was as sure as he could be that death was unavoidable and imminent, but training had something to say about that too. He ran at his best speed to the Cistercian hospice across Edgware Road, where a surgeon was known to be always on call. From there he was also able to inform the authorities. Not till then did he set about rousing his father.
Half an hour afterwards, Tobias Anvil sat in his library giving information to two members of the constabulary, a proctor and a serjeant. Anthony was in attendance.
The proctor, a heavy man with a massive head and neck, said slowly, as he slowly made a note, 'Very good, master. You never once inferred that he was given to offences against chastity.'
'Certainly not.' True enough: Tobias had gone to some trouble to avoid finding himself compelled to infer such a thing. 'If I had, I should have dismissed him from his post in my household.'
'Your servants brought no word of that sort.'
'No. Why do you pursue this line of inquiry, Proctor?'
'I must first pursue the obvious, master. The crime declares itself as an act of jealousy and revenge on the part of a rival, perhaps a husband, as witness the mutilations.'
Over the past nights, Margaret Anvil had slept better than at any time since she was a young girl. She had not stirred when her husband, sent for by Anthony, left her side. It was no more than a minute since she had suddenly awoken and at the same time become aware of some unusual and untoward agitation in the house. Immediately filled with fear, she had put on a breakfast-gown and gone to find her maid, who told her that Father Lyall had suffered an accident and could or would tell her nothing more. Hearing voices from the library, she entered it without knocking for the first time in her life, at just the right moment to catch the whole of the proctor's last sentence.
'What mutilations?' she asked in a steady, unexcited voice.
'There has been a terrible mishap, my dear.' Tobias had left his seat in concern. 'Father Lyall is dead. These men are—'
'What mutilations?'
The proctor was not only a slow speaker, he was also slow to adapt himself to the unexpected or unfamiliar. So he said, as he would have said to a superior, to a State official, to a magistrate, 'Certain organs were removed.'
'What organs?'
Nobody spoke. Anthony hurried over to his mother, not knowing why he did so.
Margaret screamed. Soon she was weeping too, but she continued to scream at intervals. Her hands moved in the air and over her head and body to no purpose. Someone—Anthony—put his arm round her, caught her hands and gripped them. The constabulary serjeant said an urgent word or two to the proctor and half bundled him from the room. Margaret did not take in their going nor, when at last she looked up, the fact that they had gone. This was understandable, if only because, a couple of seconds after she did look up, Tobias hit her across the side of the face with an open hand but a stiff arm, so that she lurched and fell to the floor, her head missing a corner of the oak desk by about an inch.
'Harlot,' he said in his clear tones. 'Designing adulteress. Hell and all its flames receive you.'
Anthony made the Sign of the Cross. 'The sword of Michael stand between my mother and any harm.' His
