The whole of Southwark establishment were present and in their smartest uniforms looked quite imposing. For almost the first time Tobias felt a flash of pride at being one of their number. This was a somewhat belated impulse since within the hour it would cease to be true. His subsequent posting within the Church had been known for some time, but it was traditional to withhold this information from the candidate so that the mind might have no distractions from contemplating the solemn vows about to be taken. Tobias’ small number of possessions was already packed for his imminent departure to pastures new.
As the organ ornately brought the dedicatory hymn to a proper close, Tobias sat down and studied the Bishop as he mounted the steps to the pulpit. It was only the fifth or sixth time he’d seen him and they were never to speak. For three years, thought Tobias, that man has shaped the world in which I have lived and thereby, I suppose, has moulded what I’ve become. This of course begged the question of what it was he thought he’d become.
The Bishop was thin and very sallow-skinned. Incautious and foolhardy wits had even at times speculated merrily on his racial antecedents. His eyes were deepest black and were unkind. And although he was old, the Bishop’s skin was that of a young man (another cause of wild theorising among Southwark folk). Despite or perhaps because of his singularities, when he leaned over the pulpit and addressed his bizarre congregation, they could be in no possible doubt that he was the leading figure there that day.
‘God’s very first vicar of Rome,’ he’d said, ‘the blessed Pope, St Peter, has this to say concerning those talents the Lord has bestowed upon us. “If any man speak, let him speak as of the oracles of God, if any man minister let him do it as of the ability which God giveth.” This is, of course, a very apposite reference considering the celebration and witness which brings us together today. To each and every man is given a range of senses that we may perceive God’s creation, and a degree of specific talents that we may further God’s plan as manifested in his world. This is the sum reason for man’s life on this earth and there is no other. In His wisdom our Lord gives to some much and to others but a little, some will have ability in such and such a thing, and others will not. This is God’s plan and there is no righteous escape from it. Furthermore it is a directive from God Himself as to the course He wishes us to take. If for instance it has been given to a man to be skilled in the shaping of wood as it was to St Joseph, then it is plainly the Almighty’s wish that such a man should express the Lord’s praises as a carpenter. Another might be blessed with a singing voice and here again it is obvious that his first duty is to use this gift to glorify its bestower.’
At this point many of the Southwark congregation became restive as they each in turn considered their own particular abilities and decided that this was probably not what the Bishop was on about.
‘If this is true for the humble carpenter and chorister, how much more true it must be for those amongst us who have been granted exceptional gifts, those among us seemingly singled out for a more decisive rôle in the implementation of God’s will. I, of course, refer to those young men assembled here today to pass through the first stage of their priesthood, their calling to God. You have come from widely separated areas and backgrounds united in one thing only, an extraordinary talent granted by the good Lord for the furtherance of His will; for this is its purpose, make no mistake. Just as He has enabled some men to bring beauty to simple glass,’ here he waved a hand at the Cathedral’s main stained-glass windows, ‘in order to enhance one of His houses, just so has God granted you magical powers to aid the Kingdom of God on Earth as manifested in the Holy Church.
‘So, by your heightened faculties you have the opportunity to earn correspondingly greater levels of grace. On the left-hand path, however, it is similarly true that selfish use of your gift will lead you into greater levels of sin than are possible for ordinary men. And so, my children, you will see that in your grasp is the opportunity for great good but also the possibility of great evil.
‘It is for this reason that the Church Universal gathers to itself those whom it knows are singled out by God for special grace or sin. The Church can appraise these fortunates of their potential and point out to them the path God wishes them to take. It is on this path that you are about to set out today.
‘A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.’
‘As the first Holy Father thus tells us, you are a chosen people, chosen by God that you might have the greater might to guide yourself and others to salvation, and that along with righteous brawn you may be the strong right arm and defence of God’s will on Earth, the Mother Church.
‘God go with you, remember service is a virtue and a duty, and grace is earned thereby and remember pride is a sin.
‘The candidates for ordination will now approach the altar and kneel while the congregation rises and sings hymn number twenty-three in your book. St John Wesley’s paean to Holy service:
“And have I measured half my days
and half my journey run
Nor tasted the Redeemer’s grace
Nor yet my work begun?”’
BOOK TWO
MAY 1982 – NOVEMBER 1985
MARGIN NOTES FROM THE EASTER ANNALS OF ST ANSELM’S CHURCH AT PAGHAM, SUSSEX
(Sussex Antiquaries Association Collections Volume 82 (1975))
RENDERED INTO MODERN ENGLISH by LADY ELIZABETH GALE
‘ … throughout the tragedies of that period. Readers will, no doubt, be aware that Easter is a moveable feast the date of which is related in a complicated way to the phases of the moon. In view of this complexity, various learned scholars produced tables of calculations showing the date on which Easter should fall over a number of years. The many columns of the tables, e.g. the “Golden Number”, the “Epact”, the “Sunday Letter” and so on, concern themselves with the technical calculation of the “DIES PASCHAE” but often a wide margin is left at the right-hand side of the text as is the case with the St Anselm records. This provident space was often taken up with a laconic sentence or phrase describing the most important or memorable event that occurred in that year. Therefore, such Easter tables as have survived into our own era provide us with an invaluable record compiled contemporaneously with the events described therein. My attention was particularly drawn by …’
1562 October Queen Elizabeth the Wicked was called to God by the smallpox.
1563 Queen Mary II and her consort Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley did [begin to] reign.
1564 Cecil’s men from Lewes took the church plate save one chalice which was hid.
(A reference to the ‘Protestant’ rising of that year nominally led by William Cecil. The rebellion in Sussex attracted only sporadic, half-hearted support. The annals surprisingly make no reference to the heretics’ bloody defeat in the following year.)
1570 A sea-calf was washed ashore. Quite dead.
1571 The King died.
(Again surprisingly no mention is made of the violent, unnatural manner of ‘Henry IX”s demise.)
1575 Spaniards killed two men in the village.
(Although present in England as allies and at Queen Mary’s request the behaviour of the Spanish troops was not always all it should be.)
1580 Lewes was burned.
(A characteristically brief reference to the Lewes rising and the town’s sacking by an (English) Royal army.)
1588 In this year the Spanish came.
(A reference, of course, to the Great Armada welcomed ashore by the Queen herself at Dover.)
1589 Cambridge, it is said, rose against the Church and the Queen.
(Then in a different hand.)
1591 By the Grace of God the realm lay at peace. The Spanish departed to the Lowlands.
1596 A tide higher than any in the memory of the living.
1600 Queen Mary died.
1601 Fighting in London
. The Lord Essex was Regent.
(Then in a different hand.)
1602 King James of Scotland came to reign.
1625 The King died. King Charles reigned.
(Thereafter the tables are without a marginal commentary although the record runs up until the defeat of the great ‘Protestant’ rebellion in 1649.)
CHAPTER 1
In which a day in the life of our hero is described.
On a drizzly 1st May 1982, Curate Oakley rose, as was his custom, at six-thirty a.m. He washed and rapidly donned his priestly garb and boots. Three years had changed him greatly and his hair, while still fashionably long, was thinning rapidly. His dark incisive eyes and bland, abstracted expressions were unimpaired, however. He crossed to the window and opened the shutters and then stood for a while quietly observing the rainy street below. Tired of this, Tobias turned his back on the view, sat on the windowsill and stared blankly at the bed. The girl was still sleeping, her long brown hair flowing over the blankets and pillow. Soon enough this view palled as well and he unfolded his arm and flicked one finger at her while whispering a phrase. She woke with a jerk and sat up instantly, eyes wide with terror, but this just as quickly passed when she saw that nothing was amiss and Diane French, spinster of the city of Rugby, bade her lover good morning.
The lover continued to stare, somewhat discomfiting the girl, but replied to her greeting in no unfriendly way.
‘You must go, my dear,’ he said. ‘I have an early mass to assist with.’
‘Yes I remember now – Tobias, stop staring through me. It’s haunting – why do you do it so?’
‘I’m reading your mind, Diane.’
Miss French looked momentarily alarmed. ‘But you always told me that magicians couldn’t do such things!’
‘Maybe they can’t, who can say? Never trust a magician’s word.’
Smiling, he strode to the door and was half through it before Diane had time to digest his words.
‘Do you want me to be here tonight?’ she said. Tobias stopped, hand on the door knob and considered.
‘Er … no – come Monday if you like.’ With this rejoinder, he left the room.
Downstairs in the kitchen he lit a fire and heated some porridge. This, together with some fruit, tea and biscuits provided his breakfast. It was Tobias’ long-established custom to make his own breakfast and eat it in complete solitude; at that time of the day he wished for company less than ever.
Once she heard him leave, the housekeeper, Mrs Coley, would come down to start the day’s chores and prepare a meal for him if he was returning to the house for dinner. By the time the high-minded and disapproving Coley had established her presence in her domestic kingdom, Diane would also have gone.
Tobias had met Diane, along with her stolid artisan father and self-effacing mother, at a Cathedral-run Bible class over a year ago. She was no beauty, had no history of previous admirers (save those who had cynically flattered, loved and run) and so was desperately pleased to be the recipient of a magician’s advances with all the reflected status and the associated aura of romance and dark mystery. She found Tobias a strange, introverted and somewhat cold man but there again she had found all men to be essentially like that and so never noticed anything particularly out of the ordinary. Not far below the surface, she thought, lay a kind and warm-hearted nature and indeed he had been both affectionate and considerate to the girl and had gone a long way towards reviving her sagging confidence and self-esteem.
The reality, alas, was somewhat more prosaic on Oakley’s side. He had particularly liked her very long and silky hair; this was the initial attraction. Secondly she was undemanding, sweet-tempered and relatively sparing in speech and thus formed a well-matched partner for him. The clinching factor was that despite being plain (no sin, thought Tobias, I’m that myself), she was compliant and had a tolerably attractive body.
As time wore on he had occasional impulses of affection for the girl and sometimes went out of his way to bring her a little happiness (as he knew anyone so easily could) to convey his gratitude for their stressless relationship. This was as far as it went. As for her feelings for him, he knew nothing and declined to speculate on the matter. When the time came, as it inevitably would, to break with her, he had resolved to do it in a manner involving as little hurt as possible by concocting some cock-and-bull excuse. It was, he thought, the least he could do.
Mr and Mrs French were not entirely pleased at the intimate relationship between their daughter and the magician, but the guilty party was too far up the social scale and was too unpredictable and powerful a man for any mere artisans to amend the situation. Even so, Tobias was no longer wholly welcome at the French household; and yet it had come to his ears through his many and varied contacts that Mr French the carpenter was still capitalising on the considerable, if unconventional, kudos his family had accrued because of the association. Tobias thought this a touch hypocritical but he was less and less inclined to judge people nowadays since he had only his own sense of right and wrong as a guide and he felt this was too wildly individual and lax to be a useful reference.
He heard Diane leave via the back entrance as he washed and wiped the breakfast things. When finished, he had merely to snatch his priestly sugar-loaf hat and umbrella, and he was ready to face his working day.
Rugby was a cramped town surrounded by a semi-ruinous wall and ditch, whose upkeep (in contravention of myriad statutes) had been neglected in the last fifty years or so. Beyond the town, in easy view from most parts, were cultivated fields owned in almost equal proportions by the Church or local small farmers of long standing. This land was protected by a barrage of ancient privilege and usage (not to mention considerable political influence) and only very rarely could any of it be appropriated so that the beleaguered town of Rugby might let out her corsets a little and expand. In consequence, the streets were narrow and buildings tended to aspire upwards rather than horizontally. Dominating this snug little community was a castle rising on an artificial mound; since its Norman conception, however, its profile had softened and made some concessions towards aesthetic appeal and human comfort. Nevertheless, it was still, in essence, a functional citadel for times of trouble. Nestling into the castle mound and yet surpassing it in architectural splendour lay Rugby Cathedral, Tobias’ destination that morning.
Besides these manifestations of past endeavour, Rugby was obviously a thriving modern community. Several major railways met there, thus ensuring that Rugby had the best turntables and depots in the Midlands. This in turn attracted trade, commerce and a large and easily exploitable passing population. Thus around the terminal, hotels and warehouses abounded.
Another corner of the town boasted a university with a small number of students but a very high reputation. Tobias was occasionally called upon to lecture there.
So much for a guided tour of the salient points. It was just after 7 o’clock on a Saturday morning and in the rainy narrow street in the mildly insalubrious part of the town where Tobias had been given a house, a steady stream of people were proceeding to their places of work: apprentices, labourers and the like – whose Trade Guilds had insufficient bargaining power to get them a shorter working week or free weekends. Tobias raised his umbrella and set forth to the Cathedral, head down and taking care not to splash his long gown. In this way he was prevented from seeing that he had joined a company of people until some time after he had actually done so. Lost in idle considerations, he was shocked out of his reverie by hymn singing close at his ear. Looking up, he immediately recognised the open and virtuous faces about him – the Avon Street Group, of course, of course. Oh no – don’t say they’re coming to the service.
Indeed they were. A group of twenty or so men and women in artisan-black were striding along in vague formation singing a rousing hymn as the rain pitter-pattered on their umbrellas. Leading both the advance and the singing were a tall young man and large, if not fat, young woman.
Tobias faltered in his step and
then stopped. Let them carry on, and put some distance between you and those cranks. None of them had noticed his presence at the back. Just then he realised that it was necessary for him to reach the Cathedral vestry before any number of worshippers gathered, and so feeling rather foolish, he broke into a hurried pace which soon brought him level with the singers. His dark-red priestly gown and hat made him conspicuous, to say the least.
‘Good morning, Father’, cried the tall young man; he was thin and curly-haired and his eyes burned with an eager earnest light.
‘Curate actually,’ said Tobias, lowering his umbrella and nigh-on smiling despite himself. The innocent remark had touched his shrinking sense of humour. Prior to their second ordination and the passing of their final priestly exams, priest-thaumaturgists were termed ‘curates’ for ease of identification within the context of the church’s hierarchy. In terms of position and sacramental duties, however, they were priests in all but name. In due course Tobias would be ordained ‘full priest’, be entitled to be called ‘Father’ and deemed ready to move on to higher things.
‘Oh it’s you, Mr Oakley – pardon me, I didn’t recognise you with that brolly covering your face.’
‘Good morning, Curate Oakley,’ said his plump female companion; she had a pleasant friendly face, Tobias thought, a little less ‘other worldly’ than her husband’s.
‘Hello,’ he replied. ‘I hope to see you all at early Mass – you won’t disappoint me I trust?’
‘Assuredly not, Brother’, the man said. ‘We gathered early this morning to pray together in preparation for it.’
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