Rome glimpsed a solution based upon simple cause and effect — if Schwermann was reprieved, the face of the Church would be saved.’
‘It has to be said,’ observed Father Andrew, raking with the poker once more, ‘Rome is often more concerned about her complexion than her conduct.’
‘In this case, if you’ve seen both, it’s pretty unattractive, said Anselm. Dismay at the calculating betrayal of his trust had settled into a judgment. ‘They seem to have thought that if Brionne gave evidence there was a good chance he would absolve his former master, if only to protect himself. All they needed was someone to prompt him to come forward. So they used me’ — he remembered standing in the cold, looking into ‘Pilgrim’s Rest’ at the children with their beakers — ‘and there’s a grim irony in all this-’
‘Which is?’
‘I suspect Brionne was hiding not just for his own sake but also to spare his family There was no point in devastating them for the price of a lie. But I pushed him and now it’s been told.’
The fire crackled quietly, sucking in the darkness of the room. Father Andrew said simply. ‘You have been thinking hard.’ The two monks sat joined in contemplation: Anselm rehearsing the future; the Prior… what was he doing? Anselm sensed he was listening to the past.
Anselm said, ‘I will have to go to the police.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And it will all come out.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And Larkwood, Les Moineaux, Rome; contempt will fall upon us all like rain.’
‘Perhaps.’ Father Andrew’s chair scraped across the flags and he moved thoughtfully to the window overlooking the cloister, the heart of the monastery, concealed by the wet night. The firelight flickered on the glass. Father Andrew raised an arm and wrote a name slowly upon the condensation. It read: ‘Agnes’. Hairline streams of water faltered down the pane from each letter. He said, ‘Something tells me you should first go back to Victor Brionne.’
‘Why?’ asked Anselm.
‘Because I am struck by the one thing you have not mentioned tonight: he believes Agnes to be dead, but you know she’s alive.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
1
Lucy’s parents had arranged to collect their daughter on Sunday morning on their way back from a short break in Canterbury. Father, mother and daughter would then go to Chiswick Mall for an afternoon with Agnes.
The doorbell tore through the air twice. It was a buzzer more suited to the requirements of the fire brigade. Lucy could not hear the electric shriek without thinking urgency stood panting on the street. Her mother peeped her head round the door, eyelids aflutter. She stepped inside, commenting on Grandpa Arthur’s clock as if he were there, nodding, on the wall. Her father followed, handing Lucy a mug with a picture of a cathedral on its surface. ‘From the gift shop,’ he said.
‘Lovely glass,’ said Susan, turning round, ‘makes you think.’
Lucy snipped the door shut. When she joined them a moment later her mother was discreetly checking for dust; her father stood before ‘Sibyl’s Cave’.
‘It’s absorbing,’ he said. Lucy joined him; their eyes met and she understood. His daughter had a life of her own, choosing pictures, banging nails into walls, all the little things unknown to him.
‘Where did you find it?’ he asked cheerily
‘A friend gave it to me.’ The first two words almost dried her mouth. She did not expect to describe Max Nightingale in those terms, but having done so it could not be withdrawn. Instantaneously she thought of Pascal, the last time they’d met, and the old monk, known to Father Anselm, who’d died saying all that mattered were insignificant reconciliations.
‘He’s very generous,’ said Susan, adding, as if she’d peered inside an envelope, ‘assuming he’s a he.’
‘You’re right, said Lucy reaching for her coat. She moved into the hall, to a safe distance. ‘He’s a painter.’
‘An artist,’ called Susan encouragingly. ‘How lovely’
2
In times of joy or profound uncertainty Anselm always retreated to the small lake at the end of the bluebell walk, roughly halfway between the Priory and the Convent. He brought Conroy with him, who’d reached an impasse in the writing of his book. For a moment they looked across in silence towards the middle of the lake, where a stone statue of the Virgin Mary, smoothed by years of wind and rain, rose from the water, her arms open in endless submission. They climbed into a rowboat by a failing wooden landing stage and pushed off, to low groans from the black-green timbers.
The events of the previous year had increasingly brought to Anselm’s mind Tennyson’s ‘Morte d’Arthur’, large sections of which had been mercilessly thrust upon him at school. The lines often came back, like snippets of song, cuttings in the, mind. Looking at the shining levels of the lake Anselm said, ‘Sometimes I think of Sir Bedivere charged by his dying king to throw Excalibur into the place from whence it came.’
Conroy took his bearings and began a steady pulling of the oars.
‘He can’t obey Twice he lies. First, because he’s dazzled by its beauty. Next, because he asks a cracking good question: “Were it well to obey then, if a king demand an act unprofitable against himself?”‘
Conroy nodded knowledgably
‘So he lies. “What did you see or hear?” asks Arthur. “Just ripples and lapping.” But the king knows the answer isn’t true. He’s waiting anxiously for something outside the usual order of things.’
The oar-blades cut the surface of the lake.
“‘I’ll rise and kill you with my hands if you fail me this last time,” the king says, and the well-trusted knight runs for his very life to the shore and, with eyes shut, flings Excalibur far into the night. He’s obeyed but expects his old lie to come true. But something undreamed-of happens, at the very last moment. ‘
They were nearing the middle of the lake.
‘When he looks again, an arm clothed in white samite rises from the water and catches the hilt. Thrice it’s brandished, and drawn gently beneath the mere.’
Conroy rested and scratched his thick arms.
‘Overwhelmed, Bedivere runs back to tell the king what he’s seen. There the king lies, among the stones of a chapel ruin. He’s lost everything he cared about in this life. The Round Table is no more; its knights, man by man, having fallen under the sword. But the dream for which he hoped and waited has happened. The hand that gave him the sword has taken it back. His life has meaning. He does not die bewildered.’
Conroy pulled the oars through their locks, letting the boat gently turn and drift as it pleased.
‘I’ve always had a soft spot for Sir Bedivere,’ said Anselm. ‘He’s a bemused English empiricist, ill at ease with mysticism. And, rather unfairly he gets his head bitten off for keeping his feet on the ground:
Conroy made a pillow from his jumper, lodged it in the prow and lay back.
Anselm said, ‘As a boy I often used to wonder how Arthur would have died if Bedivere had come back and said, honestly this time, “Truly I saw nothing but water lapping on the crag. She did not come.
A slight wind threw ripples upon the lake, chasing shadows and reflections into a dark shiver. The boat turned in circles. Conroy was lying back, legs outstretched and arms crossed upon his chest. Unnoticed, the oars quietly slipped from their locks and bobbed away
‘“And God fulfils himself in many ways”,’ cited Conroy
