Just then, Lawrence arrived outside the parlour door on his way to remove the Abbot's breakfast dishes. He had already raised his hand to knock when he caught from within the familiar sound of a voice in prayer. To stay and listen would, in such a case, have been not only a breach of established procedure but also an act of profanation, and Lawrence was a very devout man. In addition, he had a warm personal attachment to his master. So he went back the way he had come, mounted to his bedroom and himself knelt down. He prayed to God to answer whatever petition the honoured and pious Abbot might have put forward, then supplicated for the personal intervention of St James the Apostle in his behalf.
His Honour Joshua Pellew, Archpresbyter of Arnoldstown, came out of the main entrance of the New Englander Embassy and moved at a dignified pace between two lines of guards standing with presented fusils. With him were his chaplain, Pastor Alan Williams, his Indian servant Abraham, the Ambassador and Ambassadress, a couple of senior diplomatic officials, and, somewhere near the middle of the party, a small brown-complexioned figure burdened with baggage, evidently a page of some sort. The group passed through the opened gates and, with due deliberation, boarded a pair of expresses drawn up beside the footway. The man who had for some hours been sweeping that part of the street ran his eyes over those outside the gates and went on sweeping, having been told to keep watch for a child of the English gentry and not having seen one. He was a very stupid man; selected for this duty because his superior, always short of non-stupid subordinates, had considered it most unlikely that a boy of ten could have made his way so far without assistance, more unlikely still that if he had he would have been allowed in, and unlikeliest of all that, once in, he would come out by the front door. (The back of the building was being watched by a slightly less stupid man.)
One after the other, the expresses pulled out and travelled at a moderate speed towards the Palace, in front of which they turned right, then, after a quarter of a mile, they turned left into St Osyth Street and were soon moving over Westminster Bridge. This, though extensively repaired and rebuilt in 1853, was still in all essentials Labelye's caisson-founded structure of a century earlier, and one of the sights of London. The vehicles on it this afternoon were as many as ever, since all cross-river traffic not using London Bridge had to go this way: the new Temple Bridge would not be open till 1978. On the south bank of the Thames, it was only a short run to Dahnang Station, named to commemorate the victory over the French in 1815 whereby the whole of Indo-China had passed under the English Crown. But, before entering the station yard, the two expresses drew in and stopped for nearly ten minutes. Accurate timing was of great importance in what was to follow.
At exactly the prearranged moment, the party halted at the outer side of a post of inspection which allowed (or withheld) access to the tracks. There were other such posts for the use of persons of lower degrees; this one, as had been calculated, offered immediate attention. On one side, two blue-uniformed recorders sat at a baize-covered table; on the other stood a railtrack constable and a man in grey who, to an educated eye, looked not quite unlike the man who had been sweeping St Edmund Street. Pastor Williams handed the nearer recorder a sheaf of documents and waited. The Ambassador and the Archpresbyter exchanged some rather weighty remarks while the others remained silent. After half a minute, the recorder conferred briefly with his colleague, then turned to Williams and said politely, 'My excuses, Father, but there's a paper lacking. It concerns your master's page... Elisha Jones. I have his sanction here, which is-'
Pastor Williams said in his gentle but resonant voice, 'The original was lost, as is explained by the temporary replacement you have, which was produced by our Embassy here in London, and is valid.'
'Yes, sir, that's entirely valid-it's the lad's moretur that's lacking.'
Every visitor to England, as to any other land in the Pope's dominions, required a moretur, a certificate of permission to stay for a prescribed period, supplied on arrival and to be shown at all posts of inspection. Since it was ultimately the Lord Intendant of the Exterior Office at Westminster who gave out these documents, even van den Haag's ingenuity had not sufficed to acquire one. He had known of the illegal trade in lost or stolen moreturs, flourishing because of their value to runaways and despite the heavy penalties attached to it, but this source had likewise failed him.
'It was missed at the same time as the sanction,' Williams told the recorder.
'No doubt, Father; for all that, it is lacking.'
'What do you suggest? That it might have been sold or given away? Of what use could it be to anyone but a ten-year-old Indian?'
'I suggest nothing, Father. I simply have plain orders that all exterior travellers passing this post are bound to lay before me a moretur.'
At an eye-blink from van den Haag, Joshua Pellew intervened. He spoke without overt impatience. 'What is this delay? Our train departs at any moment. I am the Archpresbyter of Arnoldstown, RNE, visiting England at the personal invitation of His Majesty the King. My affairs make it imperative that no check be placed on my progress.'
'My humble excuses, my lord. I...'
The man in grey had moved over to the recorders' table.
He was quite intelligent and observant enough to have uncovered the deception being attempted if he had known of its possibility, but his superior had considered it not merely most unlikely but too unlikely to be regarded, and had spared him the burden of having yet one more would-be fugitive from London to keep an eye open for. After a long look round the waiting group, designed to do little more or less than emphasise his own true mark and their lack of it, the man in grey gave the recorder a tiny nod. At once stamps thudded into ink-pads and on to papers, brief stylus entries were made in prescribed places, the documents were bundled together and handed back to Pastor Williams, the travellers were wished a fair journey, the diplomatic contingent showed their passes, and in a few seconds the post of inspection was behind them all.
Van den Haag betrayed relief at not having had to intervene himself: if needed, ambassadorial authority might have swung matters in the party's favour, but, men like the man in grey being what they were, it was almost as likely, exercised on behalf of someone as insignificant as an Indian page, to have excited suspicion. 'Good work, Your Honour,' he said. 'It was your reasonable address that did it.'
'Thank you, Cornelius. I hope there'll be no further such ordeal. I'm not sure I could suffer it.'
'Most unlikely, sir, as I told you. The rest should be a formality.'
No more conversation was possible for the time being. They had emerged into the main hall of the station. Here, under the soaring dome of glass and steel, the noise of an arriving train could barely be heard through the noise of humanity—vendors of food, drink or ricordos crying their wares, ballad-iers rattling their coin-bowls as they sang, touts offering a full range of services, beggars who declared their Englishness by displaying insolence rather than abasement. There were plenty of the lastmentioned to be found on the inner side of the post reserved for the passage of the rich and exalted. Pellew had the bulk and weight to shove aside even the most importunate, but he would have been at some trouble to hold his party together without the assistance of the railtrack constable and the staff he wielded. At last the struggle was over, the last huckster—a one-eyed woman putting up gaudy china
