The Alteration

by Kingsley Amis

  Hilda had entered the room, was already approaching, coming straight towards him. Her green frock was not the one she had worn when they first met, but it reminded him of it. He stood up and they shook hands; hers was warm and dry, as before. By the window, Dame van den Haag had begun to talk in low tones to a middle-aged person with eyeglasses, most likely a preceptress of some sort, who must have come in with Hilda, though he had not seen her do so. He smiled at Hilda, hoping that she could tell from that how pleased he was to see her; she smiled back, at least. She showed not the slightest surprise or curiosity at his presence: he guessed that embassy life taught one to expect what others would find unexpected.

  'Your honoured mother was showing me the photograms.' She reached down to the sofa and turned the open portfolio round towards her. 'Oh yes-Dawn Daughter's Leap,' she said in her hoarse voice-how could he have forgotten that voice? She went down on her bare knees with something of a bump and, while still looking closely at the photogram of the mountain top, lifted the corner of the page as if about to turn on.

  Hubert quickly knelt beside her. 'How does the tale end? The tale of Dawn Daughter and White Fox. I heard only part.'

  'My mother will finish it for you. She knows it best.'

  'Your mother's occupied,' he said, hoping she would continue to be. He could not have told why he so much wanted to hear the rest of the story from Hilda. 'How much did you hear yet?'

  'They had just reached the foot of the mountain.'

  'Oh, now...' She put her elbows on the edge of the sofa, clasped her hands and looked down at the portfolio. 'Well, they went on up. I suppose a god's horse can go anywhere, but the real horse must have found it tough. I was there that time, the time paps made the photogram. Yes, when White Fox was almost at the top a mist came down and hid the moon, so he couldn't find his way. That was the god's work. White Fox had to wait for daylight before he could do anything.'

  'Where was the chief and his men?'

  'I don't know. So: White Fox went right to the top and found there was a cliff below him. Just here.' She pointed. 'It doesn't show in the photogram it's a cliff, but it is. At the edge of the cliff were four hoof-marks in the rock. They don't show either in this, but they're there: I saw them.'

  'Real hoof-marks? In rock?'

  'Well—they surely looked real,' she said with reluctant conviction, then hurried on in the businesslike tone she had been using earlier. 'The horse had taken a leap into the sky, where the god was waiting for Dawn Daughter. He'd seen her and loved her when he sent the horse. And when she came to him he was so mightily glad he forgot to take the mist away, so it's still there.'

  'What did White Fox do?'

  'I don't know. White Fox. Isn't that a fool name? Dawn Daughter too.'

  Hubert did not speak. To him, those were not fool names.

  'What I think,' said Hilda, abruptly standing up, 'some old Indian just fancied the whole tale to explain the mist and the marks in the rock.'

  'It doesn't quite explain the mist. But you said the marks looked real.'

  Her manner changed again. 'Yes, they did.'

  'Where is Mount Gibson?'

  He had not wanted to know, only to continue the conversation. As soon as the words were out, he knew he had made a mistake, and from the way she looked past him and muttered her reply (which he failed to take in) he knew just what he should have said: that, whatever she thought, he believed the tale of Dawn Daughter and White Fox. It would have been too late now even if, having finished her conversation with the preceptress, Dame van den Haag had not been on her way to join them. But there would be another time: there must be.

  The next morning, Abbot Peter Thynne sat in his parlour over a breakfast he had hardly touched. Normally he ate this meal in the refectory; he found it a useful occasion for meeting those in his charge before the day's work began and offering any necessary words of encouragement and advice. But in his present mood, the mood that had fallen upon him more than twenty-four hours earlier, when the news had been brought of Hubert's disappearance, the notion of company was distasteful to him. Within his reach lay two books delivered not long before from Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford: a new commentary on the De Existentiae Natura of Monsignor Jean-Paul Sartre, the French Jesuit, and an analysis of Count William Walton's church music. The Abbot had eagerly looked forward to the arrival of both volumes; as yet he had not had the heart to open either.

  There was a knock at the door. 'Yes?' he said rather sharply.

  Father Dilke came in, bowed, and said, 'Good morning, my lord. I trust your lordship slept well?'

  'No. Of course not. What is it, Father?'

  'I have a little news, my lord.'

  At once the Abbot's demeanour altered. 'Sit down, Father. Forgive me for speaking as I did. What news?'

  'The ostler advises that the mare Joan is returned.'

  'At what hour?'

  'Some time in the night, my lord. She was grazing near the stable when he made his early round. He further advises that she hadn't been ridden far and had been fed and watered yesterday afternoon or evening.'

  'Where, I wonder? In Coverley, one would think. By whom? That's more difficult. Or it should be. I can't get free of the idea that that New Englander type is involved. Who else in Coverley has acquaintance with Hubert, pattie-shop men and such excluded?'

  'But at his second visit the proctor was positive that the Ambassador is in London and that his Secretary here denies all possibility of a visit from Hubert. And surely...'

  The Abbot sighed. 'Where then did the mare carry him?'

  'To a train or omnibus.'

  'Which might have carried him anywhere in the land.'

  'But most likely to London.'

  'And the New Englander Embassy, into which our constabulary can't enter.'

  'I hardly think the Ambassador would shelter an English runaway, my lord. The diplomatic consequences—'

  'The fellow's a New Englander, confound him,' said the Abbot, rubbing his eyes wearily and sighing again. 'I should never have allowed him across this threshold. See the proctor here is let know of the mare's return and of the other advice.'

  'Yes, my lord.'

  'Should we talk again to Decuman and his party?'

  'I find no advantage in it, sir. They told the truth, as I think, when they denied knowledge of Hubert's goal.'

  'Yes, yes. It was Decuman who took the mare at first.'

  'Oh yes, my lord, and he knows we know it, but...'

  'Yes.'

  The Abbot was silent for a long time, but gave no signal that he wanted to end the interview. The skin over his cheekbones was stretched and shiny, and his shoulders had lost their habitual squareness. When he spoke again, it was in a thin tone Dilke had never heard him use before.

  'Father, I want your help.'

  'Anything, my lord.'

  'I'm frightened, Father. This atrocity we learned of yesterday: the murder of Father Lyall. He was a proud and rebellious man and an unworthy priest, but no human creature deserves an end like that. Who could have done such a thing? And why?'

  'Some beastly quarrel, my lord. Spiritual impropriety must show its counterpart in behaviour. There'll be a woman or a gaming-debt at the back of it. Or it might be some brush with agents of the law—they can be savage if they're provoked. I remember your lordship saying in this very room that you were surprised he'd never collided with those in authority. Well, perhaps now he has, once and for all.'

  'Do you mean a constable would take a knife to a man who'd crossed him?' asked the Abbot disbelievingly and with a hint of distaste.

  'Oh yes, my lord.' Dilke smiled for an instant. 'A constable or other officer. It's not probable in this case, which was, as you say, atrocious. A disfiguring slash would not be so unusual.'

  'Who tells you such stuff?'

  'I have some children of the people among my charges, my lord.'

  'Don't listen when they feed you thieves' cackle.'

  'No, my lord. I beg your
lordship's forgiveness for the diversion.'

  The Abbot gestured with the back of his hand. After a moment, he went on with evident difficulty, 'And yet there's the terrible fact that Lyall was killed by having worked on him the very same... deed as that resisted by him in Hubert's case. I know there was a further mutilation, but... It's as if someone said, "Obstinately and rebelliously resist alteration in another and suffer it yourself for your pains." Not revenge or quarrel. Chastisement.'

  'Someone? Who, sir?'

  'I dare not think.'

  Dilke said gravely, 'When I told you just now, my lord, of private violence against the citizenry, I spoke indeed of constables, of the minor agents of the law, of petty authority. Such acts would meet—I'm sure they do meet—the sternest possible rebuke from those of substantial power. That Father Lyall should have died through any sort of sentence or warrant of theirs is not to be dreamed of. Our polity is imperfect, but not evil. And besides, who knew of Lyall's resistance other than ourselves here and Master Anvil—not one to proclaim differences with an ecclesiastic? No, my lord, dreadful as it is, this is a concurrence. There can be no connection. Do I relieve your mind?'

  'No. That's to say no more than partly, though I thank you for it. See you, Father, it was to the purpose, all too much to the purpose, that you recalled a moment ago what I said of poor Lyall within these walls. That's what has discomposed me far more. That and what I thought of him. I wanted him removed. I prayed for his removal. But I didn't intend this kind of removal,' said the Abbot, swallowing hard.

  'Oh, my lord, of course not. No one could suppose such a thing.'

  'My fear is that God has taken this enormous means of rebuking my pertinacity and self-will and desire for wordly acclaim in pressing for the alteration of Hubert. Until yesterday morning, I could lay that fear aside as a sick fancy. But now that Hubert is gone, become a runaway, it returns, redoubled. I take his departure as a sign, an unmistakable sign of God's displeasure.'

  Father Dilke had gone down on his knees in front of the Abbot and taken his hands between his own. 'My lord, you were not pertinacious or self-willed in what you did: you showed nothing but a proper resolve in pursuing what you took to be right. And your design was not worldly acclaim but the renown of this Chapel, Hubert's welfare and the greater glory of God. Believe me, my lord; I know you and I speak out of that knowledge.'

  The Abbot gave another sigh, but this one had no impatience or fatigue in it. 'Thank you, David. You're a good friend.'

  'Your lordship honours me.'

  'I tell you the truth. Will you pray with me, Father?'

  Unable to speak for the moment, Dilke nodded. The two knelt down side by side on the Abbot's Beauvais carpet. Together they made the Sign of the Cross.

  'In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, amen,' said the Abbot.

  'Most loving and merciful God,' said Dilke a little unsteadily, 'hear Thou the voice of Thy servant.'

  'O God, I humbly petition Thee to remit Thy justified wrath at my sins and to forgive me and to send me comfort if in my thoughts or prayers I betrayed peevishness or animosity at what in all good faith I took to be the stubbornness of that Father Lyall whom Thou hast lately taken to Thyself. And I crave Thee most reverently that Thou have mercy on his soul and at the Last Day number him among Thine own.'

  'Amen.'

  'And I further humbly petition Thee to take Thy most especial care of the temporal and spiritual well-being of Thy child Hubert Anvil, wherever he may be and wherever he may go. Enter into his heart and mind, O Lord, and send him the desire to return here among those who care for him. Or, if that is not Thy purpose, bring it about in Thine own way that he forsake the path of rebellion and outlawry and be brought at last to serve Thy will.'

  'Amen.'

  'Give ear, I beseech Thee, O Lord...'

  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.