Death of a Chancellor (45 page)

The Compton Horse were now a few miles from the city that bore their name. Every now and then the Colonel would look back to check that his little troop were in their proper
formation.

‘Don’t suppose you know how long the campaign will last, Powerscourt?’ he said as the spire of the minster came into view. ‘Short engagement, or long siege? Bloody boring
things sieges, so they tell me.’

‘I doubt if it will last more than a couple of days,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But without your assistance the whole affair would have been a complete fiasco.’

‘Never thought we’d end up guarding a flock of treacherous parsons,’ the Colonel continued. ‘Don’t suppose we’ll be adding it to the regimental
colours.’

‘I’m sure that your role will be recognized,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if they would be in time. Johnny Fitzgerald had ridden ahead to find out how long before the service
would end.

‘I’d better detach a couple of fellows to sort out the commissariat,’ said the Colonel. ‘I feel as though I could manage a bite of luncheon quite soon.’

The Bishop was addressing his congregation. Anne Herbert was feeling deeply irritated that all these men, who had cared for her so well after the death of her husband, were now
desecrating his memory. Lady Lucy was wondering where Francis was and if he would arrive in time. Patrick Butler was trying to hear what was happening outside. Once he heard the horses’
hooves rattling on the stones outside, he said to himself, he would slip out the side door. He checked once more the spot where the Chief Constable and Chief Inspector Yates had been sitting. They
were not there.

The Bishop was holding up the box containing the words of the monk of Compton, recently serialized in the
Mercury.
‘This casket,’ he told his congregation, holding it well
aloft above the ornate pulpit, ‘contains the link between Compton’s past and Compton’s future. It was discovered in our crypt earlier this year. It contains what I believe to be
the last writings of a monk who dwelt here in the days before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. Those of you who live in or around Compton may have read my translations of the
earlier sections of the document in our local newspaper. For the visitors to our cathedral on this special day, our one thousandth birthday, I would merely say that it is like a diary, the fears,
the reflections, the last words of this monk, whose name we do not know, as his end approached and he went to the scaffold for his faith.’

The Bishop paused briefly. Patrick Butler listened hard for noises outside. There were none.

‘These are the last words of the monk of Compton before he was led away and put to death. “Tomorrow they are coming for me. It will be my last day on earth before I go to meet my
father in heaven. They have brought me clean clothes. I would not have chosen to be hung drawn and quartered for my beliefs. But I cannot betray my conscience and my God by subscribing to a faith I
do not believe in. I shall fix my eyes on Christ on the cross. May my blood flow in memory of his. May my wounds echo the sufferings of our Saviour in his last hours. May my agony contribute to the
final victory of Christ over his enemies. And for my tormentors, secure in the faith of our fathers, I pray that the Lord will forgive them, for they know not what they do.”’

The Bishop put away his notes. The congregation were very still. Patrick Butler heard no noises coming in from outside. The Bishop raised his arms high above his head.

‘May the martyred monk of Compton act as a bridge between our glorious heritage of six hundred years in the true faith and the fresh dawn of a new Catholic beginning we are witnessing here
today. For today is Christ risen. Today the stone has been rolled from the sepulchre of his dark entombment. Today is this cathedral risen from its own long entombment in the false religion so
brutally imposed on God’s people all those years ago. True religion cannot depend on the lusts of princes or the arrogance and greed of their ministers. True religion cannot depend on the
fancies of a Parliament or the passing whims of an electorate that may be moved more by the lures of Mammon than by the faith of our fathers. True religion could never depend on the body of men now
sitting in the House of Commons, a body peopled by ever-growing numbers of professed atheists and a host of unbelievers. Thou art Peter, our Lord said, and upon this rock will I build my Church.
That rock, that Church have survived intact across the years since those words were uttered in Jerusalem. The authority of Christ’s true Church stretches out across the centuries in an
unbroken line to us here in Compton today. It is an authority above and beyond the reach of politicians and the fashionable doctrines of this unhappy world. That authority, slowly accumulated over
the long ages of the Church’s life, is stamped on the patterns of our worship and on the conduct of our lives.’

Patrick Butler was still scribbling furiously in his notebook. Lady Lucy wondered if the Bishop was longing for martyrdom like the monk of Compton. Anne Herbert was wondering if the new
cathedral authorities would apply to Propaganda for the monk to be canonized.

‘Let us give thanks on this day for the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour. Let us give thanks for the life and example of the monk of Compton, so brutally murdered for his refusal to
betray the true faith. Let us give thanks for the Resurrection of our own cathedral, one thousand years old this year. Let us offer up our own sins and our own weaknesses and our own failings to
God in his mercy.

‘Let me close by invoking the name of one of the greatest English Catholics of the last century. John Henry Newman was born and baptized an Anglican. He was ordained as an Anglican priest.
He became a leader of the Oxford Movement, a doomed attempt to reform the Anglican faith. Shortly before he was received into the Catholic Church he wrote a remarkable essay. At the time he was
making a choice, a choice between the soft life of an Oxford academic, the companionship of its fellows, the quiet beauty of its quadrangles, the cloistered havens of its great libraries, the
candlelight and the fine wine flowing beneath the portraits of scholars past at High Table, and the very different world of the Catholic faithful, a world he had never met and scarcely knew.
Newman’s words reach out to us all from the tiny parish of Littlemore outside Oxford where the future Cardinal wrote them seventy years ago. They call on us to make our choice of faith while
we still have the chance. If we do not, the consequences may last for ever. Time is short, wrote Newman. Eternity is long.’

The Bishop bowed his head. A great silence had fallen over the cathedral. Nobody stirred. Nobody changed their position in the pews. Nobody checked the angle of their hat or crossed or uncrossed
their legs. Many of them had their eyes closed in silent prayer. Maybe the spirit of John Henry Newman had descended on Compton’s cathedral to deliver a final benediction to the faithful.
Then the Bishop turned very slowly and began his descent from the pulpit. The choir rose to their feet and resumed the singing of the Mass. Very faintly outside there came the noise of
horses’ hooves. The cavalry had arrived. Patrick Butler began to rise from his feet to find out what was happening outside. Anne Herbert placed a hand firmly on his arm.

‘You can’t leave now, Patrick,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll never see anything like this again in your life. It would be like leaving Hamlet before the last
act.’

Reluctantly he sat down again. The Mass carried on. He was wondering if Time is Short Eternity is Long could be fitted as a headline across one page or if he should run it, in the largest
typeface his printers possessed, across a double page spread.

Shortly before the end of the service Chief Inspector Yates and five of his officers placed themselves very quietly in a line across the top of the nave. The Chief Inspector watched the
Communion ceremony very carefully.

‘
Et qui, expletis passionis dominicae diebus
,’ sang the choir, ‘You have mourned for Christ’s sufferings, now you celebrate the joy of his Resurrection, May you
come with joy to the feast that lasts for ever.’

The service was over. As the clergy moved slowly down the choir Patrick Butler saw that the police were directing them out of the cathedral not by the west door at the bottom of the nave but by
the entrance that led past the chapter house towards Vicars Close. He could contain himself no longer. He ran at top speed out of the west door and sprinted off towards the south transept.

As the procession reached the top of the steps leading them out of the minster they were met by a body of eight dismounted cavalry men. Colonel Wheeler and the Chief Inspector ushered them into
the chapter house. Powerscourt, standing a few paces behind, thought that the chapter house couldn’t have been this full of clergy since before the Reformation. When they were all seated, the
Chief Constable, the Colonel at his side, addressed them.

‘My lord Bishop, Dean, Archdeacon, members of the Chapter, distinguished visitors,’ the Chief Constable nodded to the Bishop from Rome who was scowling furiously in a corner,
‘I have to tell you that you are all under house arrest. You have broken the laws of this country, more specifically, the Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church,
and Administration of the Sacraments, passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First.’

Powerscourt had remembered on the final lap into Compton with the cavalry that there was an Act of Parliament reproduced at the very beginning of the Book of Common Prayer. He had drawn it to
the Chief Constable’s attention shortly before the end of the Mass in the cathedral.

‘Under this Act,’ the Chief Constable went on, sounding, Powerscourt thought, as if he had learned the legislation by heart many years before, ‘it is illegal to hold any
service in any church or cathedral other than those contained in the Book of Common Prayer. The Catholic Mass, as you know as well as I do, is not included in that Book. Your fate will be decided
by the justices, in accordance with the statutes of the Act of Uniformity, acting in concert with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Until such time you are all under house arrest. You may
not leave your residences without permission. You may not leave Compton under any circumstances. The cathedral is closed until further notice.’

As the clergy were led away, escorted by police and cavalry, Patrick Butler found Powerscourt staring at the departing figure of the Dean.

‘Well done, my lord, at least you and Johnny Fitzgerald brought the reinforcements here in time.’

‘Well done, do you say, Patrick? Well done? I failed to prevent all this happening this morning. And there’s another failure to be laid at my door.’

‘What’s that, my lord?’ said Patrick.

‘The Bishop and the parsons may all be locked up, Patrick,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I still have to find the murderer.’

Lord Francis Powerscourt was pacing up and down in front of Anne Herbert’s cottage. Inside the Herbert household the Chief Constable was talking to a young canon from
Exeter called Gill who had been an unobtrusive witness to the morning’s events. Chief Inspector Yates and his men, accompanied by a section of Colonel Wheeler’s horse, were ensuring the
safe dispersal of all the visitors to their trains. Patrick Butler had departed to his office to write up his notes while they were still fresh in his mind. Johnny Fitzgerald and Lady Lucy were
indoors, discussing the Bishop’s sermon.

Powerscourt thought of the murder that had brought him to Compton in the first place, John Eustace, one of England’s richest men, despatched in his own bed. He thought of Arthur Rudd,
roasted after his death on the spit in the kitchen of Vicars Hall, the flesh falling off the cremated body. He thought of Edward Gillespie, hung drawn and quartered, sections of his frame dumped
all across the surrounding countryside. He wondered again about the murderer. The Dean with those organizational skills? The Archdeacon, longest known convert to Catholicism, with his secret visits
to celebrate Mass at Melbury Clinton? The Bishop himself, so secure and comfortable that morning in his new role? The Dean's monosyllabic servant, strong enough to tip that pile of masonry over
Powerscourt in the minutes before the cathedral closed? The mysterious Italian from Civitas Dei, Father Barberi, companion of the Archdeacon? Five of them, he thought, like the Five Wounds of
Christ. Then it struck him. There might just be a way to bring the matter to a conclusion. It would be risky, it would be dangerous, there could be yet another death in Compton. He rushed inside to
fetch Canon Gill. As the Bishop had said, Time is short.

The two men walked along the path that led to the west front. The statues were still there in their niches, staring past the sinners below them towards John Henry Newman’s long eternity.
Powerscourt did most of the talking. Canon Gill was in his early thirties, clean shaven with a distant look in his soft brown eyes.

‘I think it could be done,’ the Canon said at last. ‘It wouldn’t be the real thing, of course, but then that wouldn’t matter for your purposes. And I would need
another Anglican priest. But I’m sure we could rustle up one of those from a neighbouring parish.’

‘You do realize, Canon,’ Powerscourt was very emphatic at this point, ‘that it could be very dangerous. It could even prove fatal for somebody if we’re not
careful.’

The Canon smiled. ‘Of course I realize that, Lord Powerscourt. But in my profession we are not meant to take any account of such things.’

‘Forgive me if I ask this question, Canon. Do you have a wife and children? You do realize that you could leave them without a husband and father if things go wrong?’

‘I believe, Lord Powerscourt, that you too have a wife and children. Shall we return and confer with the Chief Constable?’

Johnny Fitzgerald looked very closely at his friend as he came back into the room. ‘I know that look, Francis,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I don’t think you’ve been
discussing the finer points of Reformation theology out there. I think you’ve been concocting some scheme or other.’