The Spire Read online

  Jocelin looked at the cottage, glanced sideways at the piles of building material that crowded round it, one insolence attacking another.

  ‘I see.’

  Before he could say more, a voice began to sing sweetly in the cottage. Goody came out, saw him, stopped singing, smiled sideways and emptied a wooden bucket at the foot of the south wall. She went in again; and once more he heard her sing.

  ‘Now Pangall. All these things you have said. We are old friends, you and I, despite our different stations, so let’s be practical. They will build, and that’s the end of it. Tell me what’s really the matter.’

  Pangall looked quickly away at the men who were whistling and snapping glass. Jocelin leaned down.

  ‘Is it your good wife? Do they work too near her?’

  ‘Not that.’

  Jocelin thought for a moment, nodding wisely at the man. He spoke softly.

  ‘Do they treat her as some men will treat women in the street? Call after her? Speak lewdly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Anger had gone out of Pangall’s face. There was a kind of puzzled pleading in it.

  ‘It’s this, when you come down to it. Why me? Isn’t there anyone else? Why must they make a fool of me?’

  ‘We must be patient.’

  ‘All the time. Everything I do. They jeer and laugh. If I look behind me —’

  ‘You’re too thinskinned, man. You must put up with it.’

  Pangall set his face.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘They’ll be a trial to us all. I admit that. Two years.’

  Pangall shut his eyes and groaned.

  ‘Two years!’

  Jocelin patted his shoulder.

  ‘Now think, my son. The stones will go up bit by bit, and the wood. They won’t be forever snapping glass in your face. Then the spire will be done and our House more wonderful still.’

  ‘I shan’t see it, Reverend Father.’

  ‘Why not, in the name of —’

  He stopped, aware of his sudden irritation; but then as he looked at the man eye to eye, the irritation came back in a sudden flurry. For he saw the words in Pangall’s head, as clearly as if they had been written there; because there are no foundations, and Jocelin’s Folly will fall before they fix the cross on the top.

  He set his teeth.

  ‘You are like all the rest; not like the old man with the adze. You haven’t any faith.’

  But Pangall was looking down. He crept close in Jocelin’s shadow. His dusty thatch, his brown and dung-colour and dust was six inches below Jocelin’s face, and leaning inward, close to the cassock. Through his irritation, Jocelin heard a hoarse and private mutter.

  ‘How can I bear it? They strike me where I haven’t any guard. I’m ashamed before people, before my own wife; it adds up in here, and each day, each hour —’

  There was a sharp tap on the instep of Jocelin’s shoe; and as he looked he saw a wet star there with arms to it and tiny globes of water that slid off the dubbin into the mud of the yard. Impatiently, he let out his breath, and looked round for something to say. But the sunlight on stone drew his eye upward, to the empty air above the crossways, where the battlements of the stump tower waited for the master builder and his men. He remembered the workmen breaking up the pavement below the crossways and his irritation vanished in a return of excitement.

  ‘Be patient I said! And I promise you this. I shall speak to the master builder.’

  He patted the leather shoulder again and hurried away, edging between the piles of wood and stone. The workmen at the bench kept their backs to him. He ducked through the little door into the south transept, and stood for a moment, blinking in the dusty sunlight. He saw how paving slabs were piled to one side at the crossways, and how the two delvers stood over ankles below the floor. Beyond them in the north wall, a larger patch of the outworld was visible, so that he could see to the thatched shelter among the graves, where the treetrunks lay ready. He stood, smiling round his nose, head up, and he saw Adam Chaplain come hurrying towards him up the south aisle, with a letter in his hands; but he waved him aside.

  ‘Later, dear man. When I have prayed.’

  So he went quickly, smiling, with joy like wings, through the south ambulatory between the choir and the vestry. The service was over and there was no one about but two vicars choral, standing and talking by the inner door. In the Lady Chapel the priedieu had been set ready for him on the centre line. He bent to the altar then sank kneeling in the priedieu. Somewhere near, he could hear the dumb man begin to tap and scrape gently on stone. But he hardly had to put the thin noises away from him, since joy was its own prayer, and immediate to the heart.

  What can I do on this day of days when at last they have begun to fashion my vision in stone, but give thanks?

  Therefore with angels and archangels —

  Joy fell on the words like sunlight. They took fire.

  *

  He had a tariff of knees. He knew how they should be after this length of kneeling or that. Now, when they had passed through a dull ache, to nothing, he knew that more than an hour had passed. He was in himself again; and as the slow lights swam before his closed eyes he felt the pain surge back in his shins and knees and thighs. My prayer was never so simple; that’s why it took so long.

  And then, quite suddenly, he knew he was not alone. It was not that he saw, or heard a presence. He felt it, like the warmth of a fire at his back, powerful and gentle at the same time; and so immediate was the pressure of that personality, it might have been in his very spine.

  He bent his head in terror, hardly breathing. He allowed the presence to do what it would. I am here, the presence seemed to say, do nothing, we are here, and all work together for good.

  Then he dared to think again, in the warmth at his back.

  It is my guardian angel.

  I do Thy work; and Thou hast sent Thy messenger to comfort me. As it was of old, in the desert.

  With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

  Joy, fire, joy.

  Lord; I thank Thee that Thou hast kept me humble!

  Once more, the windows were coming together. The saint’s life still burned in them with blue and red and green; but the spark and shatter of the sun had shifted. He was back, looking at the familiar window over clasped hands; and the angel had left him.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Scrape.

  Thou dost glorify the lives of Thy chosen ones, like the sun in a window.

  He bore down on the desk and managed to break up the rigor of his knees. He tottered a step or two before he could stand and walk erect. He smoothed out his cassock with his right hand, and while he was doing this, he remembered the tap and scrape and looked towards the north wall, where the dumb man sat, his mouth hanging open. There was a cloth on the pavement at his feet, and he scraped carefully at the lump of stone. He stood up quickly when Jocelin’s shadow fell on him. He was a hefty young man and he held the carving easily in both hands by his stomach. The joy and comfort and peace of the angel laid a favour on the young man’s face as on all the world; so Jocelin felt a smile bend the seams of his own face as he looked round his nose at him. He was a big young man too; could look at the dean on a level, eye to eye. Jocelin looked him over, in the joy of the angel, still smiling, loving him, the brown face and neck, the chest where the laced leather parted to show a covert of black hair, the curly head, the black eyes under their black eyebrows, the brown arms sweated at the armpits through the jerkin, the legs crossbound, rough shoes white with dust.

  ‘I was still enough for you today, I think!’

  The young man nodded eagerly again and again, and made a humming noise in his throat. Jocelin went on smiling into the eager, doglike eyes. Where I led he would follow. If only he were the master builder! Perhaps one day —

  ‘Show me, my son.’

  The young man shifted a hand under the s
tone and held it in profile by his chest. Jocelin lifted his head and laughed down at it.

  ‘Oh no, no no! I’m not as beaky as that! Not half as beaky!’

  Then the profile caught his attention again and he fell silent. Nose, like an eagle’s beak. Mouth open wide, lined cheeks, hollow deep under the cheekbone, eyes deep in their hollows; he put up a hand to the corner of his mouth and pulled at the parallel ridges of flesh and skin. He opened his mouth to feel how that action stretched them, striking his teeth together three times as he did so.

  ‘And no, my son. I haven’t as much hair as that either!’

  The young man shot out his free arm sideways, brought it in again, and made the palm sweep through the air in a swallow flight.

  ‘A bird? What bird? An eagle, perhaps? You are thinking of the Holy Spirit?’

  Arm out again, sweeping.

  ‘Oh I see! You want to get an impression of speed!’

  Young man laughing all over his face, nearly dropping the stone but catching it again, communion over the stone as with an angel, joy —

  Then silence, both looking at the stone.

  Rushing on with the angels, the infinite speed that is stillness, hair blown, torn back, straightened with the wind of the spirit, mouth open, not for uttering rainwater, but hosannas and hallelujahs.

  Presently Jocelin lifted his head, and smiled ruefully.

  ‘Don’t you think you might strain my humility, by making an angel of me?’

  Humming in the throat, headshake, doglike, eager eyes.

  ‘So this is how I shall be built in, two hundred feet up, on every side of the tower, mouth open, proclaiming day and night till doomsday? Let me see the face.’

  The young man stood obediently, with the full face turned towards him. For a long time then, they were both still and silent, while Jocelin looked at the gaunt, lifted cheekbones, the open mouth, the nostrils strained wide as if they were giving lift to the beak, like a pair of wings, the wide, blind eyes.

  It is true. At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

  ‘How do you know so much?’

  But the young man looked back blank as the stone. Jocelin laughed a little again and patted the brown cheek then tweaked it.

  ‘Your hands know, perhaps, my son. There’s a kind of wisdom in them. That was why the Almighty tied your tongue.’

  Humming in the throat.

  ‘Go now. You can work at me again tomorrow.’

  Jocelin turned away and stopped suddenly.

  ‘Father Adam!’

  He hurried across the Lady Chapel to where Adam Chaplain stood in the shadows under the south windows.

  ‘Have you waited all this time?’

  The little man stood patiently, the letter held in his hands like a tray. His colourless voice scratched itself into the air.

  ‘I am under obedience, my Lord.’

  ‘I am to blame, Father.’

  But even as he said it, other things pushed the contrition out of his head. He turned and walked away towards the north ambulatory, hearing the click of nailed sandals behind him.

  ‘Father Adam. Did you see — see anything behind me there, as I knelt?’

  Creak of a mouse voice.

  ‘No, my Lord.’

  ‘If you had, of course, I should have commanded your silence.’

  He stopped in the ambulatory. There were shafts and trunks of sunlight overhead; but the wall between the choir and the wide passage round it, kept the pavement where they stood, in shadow. He heard the noises of breaking stone from the crossways, and watched the dust that danced even here beyond the wooden screen, if more slowly. This drew his eyes upward, to the high vaulting, and he stepped back to see it more clearly. He felt soft toes under his shod heel.

  ‘Father Adam!’

  But the little man said nothing, did nothing. He stood, still holding the letter, and there was not even a change of expression in his face; and this might be, thought Jocelin, because he has no face at all. He is the same all round like the top of a clothespeg. He spoke, laughing down at the baldness with its fringe of nondescript hair.

  ‘I ask your pardon, Father Adam. One forgets you are there so easily!’ And then, laughing aloud in joy and love — ‘I shall call you Father Anonymous!’

  The chaplain still said nothing.

  ‘And now. About this foolish letter.’

  On the other side of the church, the choir had gathered for the next service. He heard them begin the processional chant. They were moving; you could hear the children’s voices first most clearly; then these faded, to be replaced by the low voices of the Vicars Choral. Presently these faded too, and from the Lady Chapel, a single voice sang, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah; and chased itself in echoes round the acreage of the vault.

  ‘Tell me Father. Everyone knows, that as the world has these things, she is my aunt?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘One must be charitable, as always — even to such as she is; or has been.’

  Still silence. With twain he covered his feet. Thy angel is my security. I can bear anything now.

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘It is tavern talk, my Lord.’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘They say that if it had not been for her wealth, you would never build the spire.’

  ‘That’s true. What else?’

  ‘They say that even if your sins are as scarlet, money can buy you a grave next to the High Altar.’

  ‘Do they so?’

  The letter was still there, like a white tray. A faint perfume still clung round it and pushed out at the nostrils, so that the ambulatory, dark beneath its north windows, seemed invaded by a breath of artificial spring. For all the new beginning and the angel, his irritation came back.

  ‘It stinks!’

  The wah-wah-wah from the Lady Chapel died away.

  ‘Read it out!’

  ‘“To my nephew and —”’

  ‘Louder.’

  (And from the Lady Chapel, a single voice, slow, defeating the echo. I believe in one God.)

  ‘“— father in God Jocelin, Dean of the cathedral church of the Virgin Mary.”’

  (And from the Lady Chapel, voices young and old chanting together. Of all things visible and invisible.)

  ‘“This letter is written for me by Master Godfrey, since I suppose among your church business and building matters you neglected the ones he has written for me during these last three years. Well, dear nephew, here I am again, bringing up the old question. Can you not spare a word for me? It was a different and a much quicker answer you gave when the question was one of money. Let us be frank. I know and the world knows and you know, what my life has been. But all that ended with his death — murder, martyrdom, I should say. The rest is penance before my Maker, who I hope will vouchsafe his unworthy handmaid many more years of living death to repent in.”’

  (Suffered under Pontius Pilate.)

  ‘“I know you are silent because you condemn my traffic with an earthly king. But is it not said render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s? I have done that at least, to the best of my power. I was to lie in Winchester, among the kings, I had his word for it, but they have turned me away, though the time will soon come when dead kings are all I am fit to lie among.”’

  (To judge the quick and the dead.)

  ‘“Master Godfrey wishes to strike out that last sentence, but I say he must leave it in. Are all the bones in your church so sanctified? You may say I have small prospect of heaven, but my hope is better. There is a place, or there was before your day, on the south side of the choir, where the sun comes in, between some old bishop and the Provoste Chantry. I think the High Altar could see me there and perhaps be more absentminded than you about those faults I still find it so difficult entirely to repent of.”’

  (The forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting.)

  ‘“What is it? More money? Do you want two spires rather than one? Well, you may as well know that
I intend to divide my fortune, he was generous in that as in all else, between you and the poor, setting aside sufficient for my tomb, a mass priest, a gift for the cathedral in your dear mother’s name, once we were very close —”’

  He reached out and folded the letter together in the chaplain’s hands.

  ‘We could do well enough without women, Father Anonymous. What do you think?’

  ‘They have been called dangerous and incomprehensible, my Lord.’

  (Amen.)

  ‘And the answer, my Lord?’

  But Jocelin was remembering the new beginning, remembering the angel, and the invisible lines of the spire that even now for those who knew, had sketched themselves in the sunny sky over the crossways.

  ‘Answer?’ he said, laughing. ‘What need is there to change a decision? We shall make no answer.’

  Chapter Two

  He came out of the ambulatory through the temporary wooden door and stood blinking for a moment in the sudden light of the crossways. The gap in the wall of the north transept was big enough for a wagon; and some of the master builder’s army were busy tidying the edges. The dust was thicker than ever, like yellow smoke, so that he coughed, and his eyes ran. The two men breaking up the pavement were working out of sight to their thighs, and the dust was so thick in that part of the air, he thought their faces were monstrously deformed, until he saw that they had drawn cloths over their mouths; and these cloths were caked with dust and sweat. A hodman stood waiting by the pit, and when he had a hodful he walked away through the north transept and another took his place. As the hodman came from more dust to less, with the hod over his shoulder, he began a laboured singing. Jocelin understood these words, and after the first few, he clapped his hands over his ears and opened his mouth in the dust to rebuke the singer, who paid no attention, but marched singing through the gap in the wall. Jocelin hurried into the nave and peered round him. He went poking and peering round pillars but found no one. He went purposefully through the south transept; he clashed the great cloister door, he wrenched back the curtain. But there was no Principal Person in the scriptorium; only a deacon who compared two manuscripts, his nose three inches from the page.