Matlock's System

by Reginald Hill

  “I will see you later then, Mr. Matlock.”

  “Of course.”

  Matlock drew his legs up on to the bed then allowed his head to sink back on the pillow.

  “Till later then,” said the Abbot as he closed the door.

  Matlock was already asleep.

  He awoke from a dream of Lizzie so real that he was physically excited and put out his hand to seek her beside him. Then he sat up and looked around the darkened room, taking a second or two to realize where he was.

  His excitement quickly faded and he lay back, staring sightlessly at the changing dapples of light on the ceiling. Outside, the river which threw the light bubbled and hissed over the stones. It must be running low. It had been a hot summer. Mingled with it were other noises, separable only after many minutes’ quiet listening. A fragment of birdsong. The long hoot of an owl (not very merry in spite of Shakespeare). Occasional water noises which were more than just the flow of the stream. Small things plunging.

  If there weren’t so many of us, more of us could hope to hear this, he thought. Then he smiled at the old familiar paradox of the words.

  What is the answer then? Compulsory birth control? Surely it’s better to control death than love? But we would not control love only the begetting of children. Then you have an old man’s world, a world in which a man cannot hope to achieve anything worthwhile till he’s seventy or eighty.

  The Long Adolescence.

  One of my phrases that. Good of its kind.

  Was I right?

  No matter, thought Matlock as he turned on his side and stared at the old-fashioned curtained window. No matter. What I have seen these past years is nothing of my begetting. It is not what I started.

  It is not what I intended.

  “It is no matter!” cried Matlock, sitting upright on the narrow, hard bed.

  The window drank up his words, diluted them with the river, and washed them away as though unspoken.

  He realized that a new sound had joined the noises of pure nature which filled the room. Yet in its way it too was river-like, flowing, swelling, ebbing, sinking.

  It was the monks chanting at their evening service in the Abbey.

  Now he rose from his bed and went to the window. He was facing the river and therefore quite unable to see the Abbey, but the chant came to him quite clearly now. On an impulse he opened the small window wide and stepped through it — with some difficulty — on to the river-bank.

  The night was warm but fresh. He knelt by the water and bathed his hands and his face till he felt fully awakened. Then he moved off along the edge of the Strangers’ House till he cleared the corner and was able to see across to the main group of buildings of the Abbey itself.

  When he had arrived at the Abbey earlier in the day, this had been his first view of it for over fifty years. The sight which had met him was one he would never forget. He knew that reconstruction had taken place, he knew the Meek had begun to build again. But still in his mind had been that curious mixture of artifice and nature which is called a ruin, mighty pillars growing from grass; great arched windows framing trees and hills and sky; chambers with floors of turf, and paving-stones with roofs of cloud; birds nesting in clerestories and flowers growing out of capitals.

  Instead as they levelled off their flight, then began to drop more sedately towards the grass before the West Doorway, he saw beneath him a complete building, arches unbroken, roofs unpierced, windows glazed, gutters leaded. The sight had struck him so powerfully that he paid little notice to the group of welcomers gathered outside the doorway, until the helicopter landed.

  The Abbot had come forward smiling and greeted Francis with a chaste embrace and a kiss on the cheek. Matlock had been treated to a mere handshake, but his attention was still more involved with the building behind than the people in front of it.

  “You will see it later, Mr. Matlock. All we have shall be shown to you. But first let us attend to your bodily needs.”

  And he had been led politely but firmly away from the Abbey itself across the grass to where, by the river, stood the Guesthouse for Strangers. Then had come the tiredness and the Abbot’s insistence that he should sleep before they talked. Now he had slept. It was time to talk.

  It was an eerie experience to move through the soft darkness of the night towards the source of that old music. The west window was only dimly lit and he realized that the main activity of the service would be taking place at the east end. When he reached the door he hesitated momentarily; he had been properly brought up and knew that you never interrupted a man at prayer or sex. If entry had meant opening the double outer doors he would probably have waited, but there was a smaller door built into one side of the large one and it swung noiselessly open at the touch of his hand. He stepped into an ill-lit porch and a couple of steps more took him to an inner door under which shone a faint crack of light from the nave beyond. There was no small door for inconspicuous entry this time and he had gripped the great iron ring of the door handle and was about to turn it when a thin but very bright beam of light flickered across his eyes, then went out.

  “Allow me, Brother,” said a gentle educated voice with a touch of Norfolk in it.

  Out of the darkness came a robed figure. Matlock was still too dazzled to see him as anything but a silhouette, his grey robes just visible against the general blackness. But when the man opened the door for him and the thin light from the church spilled out he saw that he was a slight, grey-haired man with a smile whose benevolence fitted the robes of his Order.

  “Brother Phillip,” said the monk by way of self introduction. “We thought you might care to join us, Mr. Matlock. It is my humble duty this evening to sit at the threshold and welcome any wayfarers who may chance this way in search of rest. Pray enter.”

  “Thank you,” said Matlock and passed into the Abbey.

  “I will see you later I hope, Brother,” said Brother Phillip, and closed the door gently behind him, leaving Matlock pondering what kind of rest chance wayfarers might expect from the Mark 2 Force Rifle he had glimpsed propped up against the wall before Brother Phillip had closed the door.

  But the interior of the Abbey swept such profane thoughts out of his mind. The nave stretched before him for a distance he reckoned at about a hundred yards, and the arch of the roof seemed almost a similar height above, though this he recognized as an illusion caused by the mingling of the dim night light filtering through the clerestory windows with the brighter but even more deceptive shiftings of fume and shadow cast by the torches below. For at first glance the only illumination, at this end of the nave at least, seemed to be these comet shaped brands stuck in brackets attached to every third or fourth pillar. But the eye was drawn irresistibly down the nave, across the transept, through the choir (the terms came unbidden to his mind) to where brilliantly illumined against what seemed the sombre background of a great East Window, the High Altar stood.

  He also realized he had viewed this scene before. On the television set at his first meeting with the Abbot.

  He turned swiftly and peered up at the dark wall behind. There seemed to be some kind of cavity almost at the very top and he strained his eyes to penetrate the mirk when a rustle of noise behind him made him swing round just in time to see the floor of the nave rise up and burst into a thousand tongues of flame. The truth he realized almost simultaneously, but that almost left enough time to step back a pace and taste superstitious fear deep in the throat.

  What had happened was that several hundred monks, dark-robed, cowled, lying prostrate on the floor and shielding close in their hands the small flame of a candle, had stood up.

  Now the chant which had caught his attention as he made his way over to the Abbey and which had so blended with the background that he had ceased to notice it, was taken up by the entire congregation and the sound rose with the multiple blaze of the candles and filled the arch of the roof. The light brought the ceiling closer but did not make it any the less impressive. Now the
only part of the building in darkness was the corridor of the clerestory where the shadows of the massy pillars, whose double column ran before him down the nave, became even blacker in the new light. Again as Matlock looked up he had a sense of movement, of darker shadows in the shadow but he could not be certain.

  Suddenly the chant rose to a climax then stopped. The silence was as complete and eerie as if the birds had stopped singing in an orchard on a summer’s day. The light dimmed as the monks cupped their candles in their hands once more, this time to act as a windbreak as they moved slowly forward. At the end of the nave they were turning to the right (into the south transept, Matlock cumbersomely worked out) and thence, he supposed, out of the church into the working and living quarters of the Abbey. He followed them as far as the cross-aisle of the transepts. As the last monk went through the tall double door, it rolled quietly to behind him and Matlock, alone, felt the dimensions of the building, vast enough already, rush dizzily away from him till he was a pinprick of human warmth in a huge cross of space and time and cold darkness.

  He turned to follow the monks, eager for human contact.

  “Will you not stay a little longer, Mr. Matlock? You may find what you want here.”

  He recognized the voice, but could not place its source for a moment.

  “Where are you?” he asked in a voice pitched slightly higher than he intended.

  The Abbot chuckled.

  “Here I am,” he said, emerging from the shadows of the choir. “Where else should I be?”

  Right, thought Matlock, if he’s going to play the man of God, I’ll play the man of action.

  “I’m glad to meet you like this, Abbot,” he said briskly. “There’s a lot needs straightening out between us. Where can we talk?”

  “Why, here,” said the Abbot, unperturbed. “But do not be too keen to rush into practicalities, Mr. Matlock. We must make plans, it is true, but not, I hope, as a means of escape.”

  “Escape from what?”

  “Why, from this.”

  The small gesture of the ruby-ringed finger sent Matlock’s gaze and, against his will, thoughts spinning back round the shaped darkness above him.

  “It’s a strange thing, a church, Mr. Matlock. I mean the building, not the organization, though the two are inextricably linked. All buildings express their purpose. Obviously a house is not a shop and vice versa. And a church, whose purpose is far more complex than either of these, must express this purpose in the most complex of ways.

  “At its simplest, a church is a cross. A cross on which our Lord is still crucified. In a church you are close to the body and passion of Christ at the same time as you are in his outstretched arms.”

  “That’s a little grisly, don’t you think?” said Matlock, but the Abbot went on as though uninterrupted.

  “But a church is also an eye. A great eye facing East, always searching for the Light to rise which shall re-illumine the world. A telescope if you like. No wonder Galileo’s claims for his little glazed tube met with the scorn of those other watchers of the sky. And it is an arrow, leaping skywards in a thousand different ways, in pinnacles, arches, steeples, buttresses. Upwards, upwards, always upwards. Lightness, airiness, that’s what they were after, those great builders.”

  He laughed and slapped a massive pillar as they passed.

  “Are you trying to convert me?” asked Matlock reasonably.

  “Oh, no. No. At the moment that is the last thing I should want. Though in fact, I might be going to tempt you. I shall act the Devil for once and take you to a high place and tempt you.”

  The switch from religious fervour to urbane badinage did not seem at all out of place in the Abbot. They had stopped now and Matlock looked up, realizing they must be beneath the off-centre tower which dominated the external mass of the church.

  “Let us ascend,” said the Abbot, moving purposefully to a small door in the furthest column. “We still have a spiral staircase if you like, but I prefer this.”

  He opened the door, motioned Matlock ahead of him, and together they stepped back into the twenty-first century.

  It was an elevator.

  The Abbot pressed a button and the floor pressed forcibly against Matlock’s feet. The journey only took a couple of seconds, but he noticed that there were according to the buttons another two floors they could have stopped at, though their speed had been too great for him to see anything of them in passing.

  “Top floor, Mr. Matlock. Won’t you step out?”

  The room they entered was windowless and might have been the control room of a very tiny airport. It was in semidarkness and two monks sat incongruously watching two radar screens while a third flicked idly from one picture to another on the television monitor before him.

  “You look for God in curious ways, Abbot,” said Matlock.

  “Oh no. God has long been here. It is the Devil in various forms that we try to keep out. Though I am not sure I have not invited him here myself.”

  He raised his eyebrows quizzically at Matlock.

  “But you are disappointed, I can see. You expected a fine view. Well, of course, you can view any part of the grounds you like from here. Any undue movement on the screens and a picture can be conjured up immediately.”

  One of the monks spoke. The brother in charge of the tele leaned forward and altered his picture. Trees, undergrowth, came into sharp focus. Through them something moved. The picture zoomed in on it.

  “I doubt if you’ve ever seen that before, Mr. Matlock. A badger.”

  Matlock looked curiously at the animal which moved cautiously through tall bracken, unsuspecting that it was so closely observed.

  “There are not many left now. Blunt, tough beasts who live their lives in such obscurity that when they do appear, everyone fights for a good look. They would give a great deal for such a creature in London, Mr. Matlock, archaic and superseded though it is.”

  Matlock shook his head sadly.

  “The trouble with religion is that if you’re not careful you start confusing allegory with reality, the image with the thing itself. Some people even start believing in human immortality in human terms.”

  “I see that nothing less than a real sight of real things will please you. It will please me also. Come.”

  He went to a corner of the room and pulled a lever. From the roof there swung down a set of aluminium steps. The Abbot ran lightly up them and pushed open a small trap in the ceiling. Through the hole Matlock saw a square of the night sky. The Abbot’s head was black against a haze of stars.

  “Come up. Do.”

  He climbed out on to the top of the tower and stood quite still for a moment to accustom himself to the new light.

  It was a fine clear night though there was no moon. Silhouetted above the castellated parapet was the now familiar cowled head of a monk who moved away at a soft-spoken instruction from the Abbot and swiftly descended the steps, pulling the trap-door shut behind him.

  “You see we do keep a more traditional type of watch, Mr. Matlock. I am glad to see these hints of a love of tradition in you. This is part of your appeal to your followers. The English have always been a nostalgic race, but nostalgia has never been a real political force. During our own youth there were always plenty of people willing to talk longingly of the twenties, the thirties, even the forties and fifties. But no one ever really wanted to get back to them, or at least only an insubstantial minority. But things have changed. For the first time ever in our history there is a real desire to go back, to reverse the tide. And you are our Canute.”

  “And just as helpless I suppose.”

  “Oh no. If Canute had really wanted to impress the people, which he didn’t, he would merely have worked out where the next high tide line would be, and stood there. That’s what you can do. Nothing is really changed by man. It’s just that some men happen to be about when the changes take place. But you are full of questions, Mr. Matlock. Why not ask them?”

  “Right. Question. What has
happened to my friends?”

  The Abbot shrugged eloquently.

  “The first time we met, I gave you what I believe was true information about your friends. That is, that at least two of them, the woman Armstrong, and the man, Colquitt, were in Browning’s service. I fear that you disregarded this information and continued to take them into your full confidence. Ask yourself what seemed to be known by the authorities and what did not. And compare this with what you told your friends.”

  “I have done so a hundred times, Abbot. Nothing conclusive appears. Are you suggesting that Browning’s latest moves are the result of this alleged betrayal?”

  “Not directly. The timing, I think; yes, that might be. But this was carefully planned, not hastily put together overnight. In any case, he had information which was not yours to give. Names, places, times.”

  “Just what has happened? I only know what the tele-news told me.”

  The Abbot leaned against the old stone of the parapet and stared out down the valley through which the scarcely audible river ran.

  “Our organization was not a tightly-bound thing, you understand, with levels of control and authority clearly marked. In no sense a pyramid. No, it was a loose union of diverse interests — and individuals linked together by a common aim. Revolution. The overthrow of Browning. The repeal of the Age Laws. Such diversity required a focal point. That’s where you came in, Matlock. The Apostate. The man who had the blinding vision which converted him and could convert the world.”

  “Who was in this organization?”

  “Oh, many thousands you would not know. Could not. But there were four or five main groups scattered over the North. The North West was controlled by an old friend of yours. The Chief Constable of Manchester. Don’t be surprised. He played his part well whenever he met you. He was a pillar of strength to us.”

  “Was?”

  “He was shot during last night’s purge. Resisting arrest they say. My informants tell me he was shot in bed before he opened his eyes.”

  Matlock was silent, remembering the man. And his own puzzlement when he had appeared personally to escort them from the hall where Percy was killed. He really was protecting us, he thought bitterly. He really was.