Towers in the Mist Page 9

  There was a door there, and they opened it. Spiral stone steps twisted downwards into the depths of the earth, lit by a light that came from somewhere down below, and a strong smell of spirits made them pause and wriggle their noses like inquiring rabbits. “It’s only the cellar,” said Faithful, and was for going back.

  But the twins knew that cellars are the most romantic places in the world. Wonderful things are found in cellars: skeletons, barrels full of rubies and pearls, and crocks of gold. They pattered fearlessly down the steps, clasping their dolls to them, Faithful following behind, holding firmly to their skirts lest they should fall and hurt their button noses.

  The stairs led them to a narrow passage, dank and musty, lined on each side with bins for the wines. A guttering candle, evidently left there by Mine Host of the Mitre when he fetched the ale for the merrymakers above, stood on the floor and flung their shadows eerily over the damp walls patched with mildew. The little girls blanched at the sight of those leaping shadows, but they did not turn back. In all the best fairy tales the reward is to the courageous, and little girls with fair hair are always supernaturally protected.

  The passage turned a sharp corner and led them into pitch darkness. A long way in front of them was a thin line of light, that might have been coming from a door left ajar, or that might again have been a spear held by an archangel, such as Meg had seen when she woke up that morning. They did not know how far away it was, it might have been miles, but they went on towards it, feeling their way cautiously, Meg going first with Bloody outstretched in front of her like a drawn sword.

  They reached it, and it was a door. They pushed it open and went in, and were instantly confronted by a blaze of light, all the colors of the rainbow springing upwards in a slender pillar of glory from clustering tongues of flame that burned about its foot like golden flowers, “The foot of the rainbow!” cried the twins, “the foot of the rainbow!” and running forward they fell on their knees before the golden flowers, pointing at them with their fat forefingers, laughing and chattering and exclaiming with that lovely note of sheer delight in their voices that is in the cooing of happy doves and the crowing of young cockerels in the first light of dawn. . . . The fairy tale had come true.

  3.

  But Faithful, who saw the scene before him as it actually was, stood on the threshold rooted to the spot by a mixture of awe and fear and wonder. He stood in a little vaulted chamber that had once been part of the wine cellar but was now a chapel. In front of him, in an alcove hollowed out of the rough stone wall, stood a richly ornamented altar, hung with fine tapestries and carrying a carved crucifix and some richly gilded figures, and to one side of it, standing well forward in the chapel and challenging attention even before the altar, was that pillar of color before which the twins were kneeling. It was a statue of the Madonna, and perhaps one of the loveliest ever made. Her robes of blue and scarlet hung in lovely folds from shoulder to foot and her face was serene and smiling beneath a jeweled crown that was as bright and golden as the sun itself. She held her babe in a crook of her arm, a lovely golden-haired babe dressed in a little green shift, who laughed and held up two fingers in blessing. A great bunch of spring flowers had been laid on the pedestal at her feet, because May was her own month, and she was the real Queen of the May, and below them burned clusters of candles, their lovely light illumining the rough walls of the chapel and the figures of the saints that stood there in little niches. The smell of incense hung about the place, conquering the smell of must and damp, and a faint blue haze of it clung overhead, almost hiding the shadowy spaces of the vaulted roof and the long silver chain with a small lamp at its end that hung from it, motionless before the altar. . . . . Popery. . . . Nourished upon Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” as he had been Faithful was as bigoted a Protestant as ever stepped. He sank upon a wooden bench near the door with his legs giving way beneath him and the hair of his head rising straight up in horror like the bristles of a disapproving porcupine.

  He knew that such places existed, of course. Popery was not stamped out because Queen Mary was dead and Queen Elizabeth sat upon the throne of England; though it was driven underground it lived on; and in these early years of the Queen’s reign, before the menace of Spain had turned her tolerance to bitterness, it was still possible for men and women to attend mass without peril, though in secret. The Roman Catholics of Oxford would have been astonished had they known how many of their fellow citizens knew about that chapel beneath the Mitre Inn; knew about it and said nothing.

  But to Faithful, with his imagination luridly lit by the flames of Smithfield, it was as though he had fallen straight into the bottomless pit, and when a huge black shadow in a dark corner on the other side of the door uncoiled itself and shot up towards the roof he could have screamed aloud.

  But it was not the devil, it was merely a tall young man who had been kneeling in the corner saying his prayers, and who now got up and came and stood beside Faithful, looking down at him in comical bewilderment. “How did you get here?” he whispered. “Did I forget to lock the upstairs door?”

  “Yes, good sir,” breathed Faithful. . . . As well to be polite, he thought. Otherwise he might be taken off to an adjoining cellar, tied up to a stake and made an end of.

  “My absent-mindedness,” said the young man, “will be my undoing,” and he rubbed his chin ruefully.

  Reassured by his kindly tone Faithful ventured to take a good look at him. He was dressed as the preacher at the other Chapel of Saint Bartholomew had been dressed, in a white ruff and a long gown, and his fine ascetic face, too, reminded Faithful of that other man, his friend. They were of the same type, he felt. This man was now young and straight and comely but if he too were to suffer persecution he too might become as misshapen as a storm-twisted tree; and yet keep the attraction of anything that stands upon a mountain top. It was odd, thought Faithful, that two such similar men should think so differently about religion; should be ready, as he had no doubt from the look of them that they were, to die for their divergent beliefs. Man was very odd, he thought. But then life was very odd, and became odder and odder the more you thought about it. . . . And it seemed very odd to him that a man who by his dress was evidently a college don should be saying his prayers in a Popish chapel. These things, thought Faithful, ought not so to be. As a prospective and most Protestant scholar he shook his big head in considerable concern, and blushed for the stranger.

  But the stranger failed to be shamed by the blush, for he did not see it. He was looking at the two little girls where they still knelt at the feet of the Madonna, holding their dolls in the crooks of their arms as she was holding her baby in the crook of hers, squeaking happily as their fat fingers pointed out to each other all the glories of her lovely clothes and golden crown. “That is a lovely sight,” said the stranger.

  Faithful thought it was a dreadful sight. There were those two dear little girls, whom he had no doubt were as earnest, orthodox Protestants as he was himself, kneeling before a Popish image in the attitude of worship. No doubt, poor little dears, once they had realized that the Madonna was not the foot of the rainbow they thought she was some sort of big doll. . . . But even so he could not forgive himself for having unwittingly conducted two innocent females into this sink of iniquity. . . . The only one of the group by the Madonna whom he could bear to contemplate was the white-faced doll with the black velvet farthingale, the one who had been introduced to him as Bloody Mary. She looked at home. She, he remembered, had gone first down the passage.

  “Meg, Joan,” said the stranger softly.

  They scrambled up from their knees, saw his face smiling kindly at them in the candle-light and flung themselves upon him. “Master Campion!” they cried. “Master Campion!” and pulling him down upon the wooden bench they cuddled up to him, one on each side, with squeaks of pleasure. For beneath all the excitement of their great adventure they had been feeling secretly a little frightened. To find Mas
ter Edmund Campion of Saint John’s, their father’s friend, with them in this strange lost place in the depths of the earth was like seeing the lights of home as one trudged through the rain and the wind on a dark night. Their secret fear, that having once fallen into fairyland they would not be able to scramble out of it again, was stilled. . . . Master Campion would get them out.

  “But how did you get here?” he asked in bewilderment.

  Meg and Joan burst simultaneously into a long confused narrative about stables and dragons and rainbows and crocks of gold of which Master Campion found himself unable to make head or tail. Faithful, from the other side of Meg, was obliged to chime in and give a lucid account of their adventures from the moment when the littler girls had descended from the stable window until the moment when they had blundered down the dark passage into the chapel in search of the rainbow. He grew pink with shame as he told it. It seemed ridiculous that he, a grown man, should have taken part in so ridiculous a performance. “I hardly knew what I did,” he murmured. “I was so confused.”

  “And footsore and weary?” questioned Master Campion kindly. “And homeless and forespent?”

  Faithful hung his head and Master Campion, noting the pallor that had followed the boy’s flush, and the dark pits into which his eyes had sunk, lifted Meg on to his knee that he might be nearer to him. “And so it was for you that these children wanted the crock of gold?” he asked. “How would you use the gold if they found it for you?”

  “To buy books,” whispered Faithful. “I have tramped to Oxford to be a scholar.” He spoke hoarsely, and twisted his hands together, for of all the things that had been hard to endure in his life of vagabondage the hardest had been the fact that because he was a vagabond he was never believed. Specious rogues were so numerous that an honest poor man had never a chance of winning faith.

  But Master Campion, who himself set great store by books, and who knew the authentic note of yearning when he heard it in another man’s voice, believed him. He put Meg down, got up and crossed the chapel floor to the statue of the Madonna. Faithful watched him as he stood there with head bent, and heard the words that he whispered. “Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus.” Then, with a pounding heart, he saw him take something from his wallet and slip it beneath the flowers piled at the Madonna’s feet. Then he came back and sat down again at the boy’s side.

  “Once upon a time,” he told Faithful, “there was a poor boy who tramped to Oxford as you have done and became, as you will do, a famous scholar. We call him Saint Edmund. It is a story that every scholar in Oxford knows by heart, for he was the father of us all. I will only tell you this about him, that he loved Mary the Mother of God with a love that was the inspiration of his life, and at her feet he found salvation.” He paused, flashed a smile at Faithful and went on again, his eyes on the Madonna. “With her golden crown she has always reminded me of the fair sun, a glory shining forth from Paradise to which we poor shadows are forever flying. But now I shall think of her smiling face as the rainbow, a laughter in the sky that heartens us between storm and storm.”

  Ten minutes ago Master Campion’s heretical remarks would have brought Faithful out in a cold perspiration of horror, but now, sitting there in the dark little chapel, he felt nothing but an overwhelming sense of peace. Wherever men had found God, he supposed, there was always peace, even though the men who searched and found were heretics who extremists thought should be sizzling at the stake. . . . But then he supposed that to Master Campion he himself was a heretic who should be sizzling at the stake. . . . It was all very odd.

  “You little girls must be taken home,” said Master Campion suddenly and firmly. “I have no doubt that by this time your frantic family has sent the Town Crier out after you.”

  Meg and Joan slid eagerly to the floor and shook out their skirts, nothing loth. They were tired of fairyland. They were hungry, and there was nothing to eat there.

  “Have you forgotten the crock of gold?” asked Master Campion, smiling.

  They had quite forgotten it. The astonishment of having the rainbow turn into a beautiful lady with a crown on and a baby in her arms had driven the thought of it out of their minds. But now they remembered it and scuttled eagerly back to the Madonna. “Might it be under the flowers at her feet?” suggested Master Campion. Cautiously, poking their fat hands through the tall pillars of the candles, they lifted the bluebells and kingcups that lay there, and in a moment a chorus of squeaks broke out that for sheer unselfish joy and praise had surely never been equaled even by the Alleluia Chorus of the angels in heaven, even though in musical value theirs was doubtless superior.

  For a whole minute they stood there, holding the purse between them, squeaking, picking up the gold pieces and letting them fall back again with delicious chinks. Then they closed the purse and ran to give it to that Younger Son who in the best fairy tales always gets the luck that he deserves.

  To Faithful it was too much. In a chapel outside the city gates he had found a friend and in a chapel within the city he had found his crock of gold. In the first chapel he had given away a silver piece, all that he had, and in the second it had come back to him increased a hundredfold. It was too much. He put his ragged sleeve over his eyes and cried.

  Master Campion got at the moment no more thanks than that, but he wanted none. Full of the palpitations and misgivings that assail all impulsive givers of indiscriminate charity the moment it is too late to undo what they have done, he busied himself in blowing out the candles burning at the feet of the Madonna, for except for the dim flame of the sanctuary lamp this secret place was always kept dark between the visits of the faithful. Would the boy know how to spend the money wisely? Well, it was too late to think of that now. Had he perhaps done more harm than good? Well, he should have thought of that before. He supposed that he must now see to it that the boy and his money came to no harm. And he was a busy man. He sighed. When would he learn that endless trouble always followed impulsive giving? Then he looked up at the face of the Madonna, smiling dimly in the light of the one remaining candle. You have done no harm, she said. Comforted, he took up the last candle and led the children towards the door.

  Two last impressions remained with Faithful as he left that little chapel that he would never see again. One was of his friend’s figure becoming once again, in the dimness, that wavering black shadow that he had been when he just saw him; and the other, as the light from the candle shone through the closing door upon the chapel wall, was the sudden shining out in the darkness of a garland of roses and lilies painted there. Someone had once told Faithful that a garland of roses and lilies is the emblem of martyrdom. We are all shadows, his friend had said, flying towards the sun, and those who get there, thought Faithful, pass through flame.

  4.

  They were out in the High Street and Master Campion, again rubbing his chin ruefully, was wondering aloud what to do with Faithful.

  “He must come home with us!” cried the twins, clutching him. “We want him.” He was the Younger Son, a fairy-tale figure, and after their journey into fairyland they were not going home without a memento of the visit. “We’ll take him home to Father,” they added.

  Thankful though Master Campion, a busy man, would have been to shift the burden of Faithful on to the shoulders of a busier one, he felt that he must demur, and did so.

  “But Father likes poor boys,” said the twins, in the same tone of voice in which they would have declared that Father liked sugar plums. “Father lost one at Saint Bartholomew’s this morning. He’d like to have another.”

  Master Campion still demurred, but a glorious light broke upon Faithful. “Did your father really say that he had lost a boy at Saint Bartholomew’s Chapel?” he asked the twins.

  “Oh yes,” they said. “We prayed about him for hours. Breakfast was very late.”

  “It was me,” said Faithful to Edmund Campion.

  I
n happiness they turned the corner into Fish Street and walked down the hill towards Christ Church. The sun was high in the heavens now and flooded the rain-washed world. Faithful held his head proudly, for now he was going to the house of his friend with money to pay his own way in the world. For the first time in his life he was a gentleman of means.

  At the Fair Gate, when Master Campion parted from them, he said simply, “Thank you, good sir,” and stood very upright before Campion with his clear eyes looking straight into his and the purse of gold held against his ragged breast with both hands. His attitude, his rags, and the queer look of peace which his face wore, touched the man strangely. He seemed the personification of the perfect pilgrim, unashamed of poverty, taking what wealth might come with gratitude, at peace whether the road were rough or smooth. He would not forget this boy. His image was stamped upon his mind. He paused a moment and then asked what for the sake of others he must ask, though his pride shrank from it. “Can you forget what you have seen?”

  Faithful nodded gravely and then looked doubtfully at the two little girls, who were pulling at his jerkin in eagerness to get him home.

  “Their narratives are seldom coherent,” smiled Campion, “and it will have been to them such an adventure as happens only in dreams; when they wake up it will be hard to remember it.”

  He smiled and left them, and Faithful lingered a moment to watch his tall dark figure go up the street before he followed the little girls under the lovely gateway of the place that would seem to him forever after the center of the world.