David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

Lady Lucy was waiting for her husband underneath the west front of the cathedral. Above her soared the remains of one of the greatest collections of medieval statuary in all of Europe. Once the hundreds and hundreds of niches had each been filled with its own limestone apostle or saint. Now less than half were left as the statues had been torn down at the time of the Reformation with its puritan decrees against graven images or despoiled by the soldiers and supporters of Cromwell’s New Model Army during the Civil War. The west front was an enormous dictionary of the Christian faith. All the apostles were up there, with special places for the four evangelists. There were scenes from the Old Testament to the right of the great door, scenes from the New Testament to the left. As the statues rose higher up the facade, bishops and saints took their places in this towering showcase for the Christian religion. At the very top was the Resurrection, so the early pilgrims, gazing in wonder up at the facade, would be transported upwards through time and space, past niche and statue from their earthly place towards eternity. Heaven lay just above the figure of the risen Christ, a paradise beyond the limestone.

Powerscourt stared up at the figures. Suddenly he looked more closely. Could the two missing vicars choral have been encased in plaster of Paris or some similar substance over their cassocks and popped into one of the empty niches? Had the absent angels or saints been replaced by missing members of the Compton choir? Reluctantly he decided it would be too difficult, hard to preserve the corpses without specialist knowledge, virtually impossible to manoeuvre the bodies into position without being seen.

‘Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, taking her hand, ‘I’ve just been having a most enjoyable lunch. I need a touch of Evensong to wipe out the excesses of Mammon.’

They walked up the right-hand side of the nave. Earlier bishops gazed down at them from the walls. Local magnates were interred in the floor beneath them. Powerscourt paused at the chantry chapel of Robert, Lord Walbeck, with its master lying inside, encased in stone with a great stone sword by his side. This Lord Walbeck, Powerscourt remembered the Dean telling him, had paid for the construction of a special house on the Green to house the priests who would have said the Masses for his soul. Indeed, the house was still there. Powerscourt wondered suddenly what would have happened if the Reformation had never been. Would those chantry priests, even in 1901, be processing every day across the Cathedral Green, up the nave of the cathedral to say Masses for the soul of their dead benefactor, Lord Walbeck? Would the money have run out? And, if not, how much would the man have had to leave in his will to pay for the priests? Did he have a date in his mind for the Second Coming so he knew he had to provide only up till then, and no further?

Lady Lucy was tugging at his arm. They took their seats at the back of choir. There were only two other people in the congregation, bent old ladies who had difficulty with the steps.

‘Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful.’ A terrible vision of the garments of the late Arthur Rudd shot across Powerscourt’s brain, literally burnt off his body. The service was being taken by a member of the Chapter he had not seen before, a tall young man with a lilting Welsh accent. The Dean was sitting resolutely in his place. The Bishop’s chair was empty. As the choir sang a psalm, Powerscourt noticed that he was sitting in the stall marked with the prosaic name of Bilton. Lucy, he thought, had done rather better in the romantic names department, as she occupied Minor Pars Altaris, the lesser part of the altar. Powerscourt looked around to see if he could find Major Pars Altaris. Perhaps he could transfer himself there. But it seemed, like so many of the statues outside, to have disappeared.

The choir had moved on to the Cantate Domino. ‘Praise the Lord upon the harp; sing to the harp with a psalm of thanksgiving. With trumpets also and shawms: O shew yourselves joyful before the Lord the King.’ Powerscourt looked closely at the decorations on the choir stalls. There was a little wooden orchestra of angels in here, singing along with the choir, angels with trumpets, angels with harps, angels with stringed instruments, even an angel with a drum. One rather superior wooden angel, carved those hundreds of years ago, seemed too important to have an instrument. It was perched just in front of the Dean’s stall. Maybe it was the conductor.

Powerscourt could sense that Lady Lucy was becoming agitated as the choir sang an anthem by Purcell. She kept casting him anxious and worried glances, but he could not tell what was upsetting her. Then it was time for the closing prayers.

‘Almighty and everlasting God,’ the Welsh voice was at its most reverend, ‘Send down upon our Bishops, and Deans, and Curates and all Congregations committed to their charge, the helpful Spirit of thy grace, and, that they may truly please thee, pour upon them the continual dew of thy blessing.’

Powerscourt found himself staring in disgust at the young man. How could he pray for the blessing of the Almighty God upon the clergy of this cathedral? At least one of its members, if not two, had been murdered, one of them virtually inside the precincts of the minster itself. What would God do, he wondered, if he found that one of his bishops or curates or deans was actually a murderer? Powerscourt didn’t think the Almighty would be too pleased.

Lady Lucy held him back after the choir had departed. They waited patiently for the two old ladies, prayer books firmly clutched in their left hand, walking sticks in their right to descend the steps and tap their way out through the choir and down the nave. Powerscourt wondered if there was much future for the Christian religion in Compton with such a pitiful congregation. Then he remembered the Benedictines who had worshipped here for centuries after the place was built. Nobody came to their services at all, especially the ones in the middle of the night.

‘Did you see it, Francis?’ Lady Lucy was holding very firmly on to the sleeve of his coat just outside the main door.

‘See what, Lucy? I don’t think I saw anything unusual at all,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Did you see the choirboys, Francis, those poor choirboys?’

‘Well, I think there were about a dozen of them altogether,’ said her husband. ‘Ages ranging from about eight, I should say, to thirteen. Differing heights, depending on their ages. One very tiny chorister indeed with blond hair, could just about see over the stall. All dressed for the service in red and white. All giving what is almost certainly a misleading impression of virtue, devotion and general good behaviour. Was there anything else I was supposed to notice, Lucy?’

‘Sometimes, Francis, you can be really quite irritating. It’s because your brain has wandered off somewhere that you can’t see what is right under your nose.’

‘What was I supposed to have seen, Lucy?’ said Powerscourt, giving her arm a firm squeeze in recognition of his sins.

‘They all looked absolutely terrified, every single one of them. That tiny one you mentioned looked scared out of his wits to me.’

Powerscourt tried to remember the looks on the faces of the choristers. He also remembered that the youngest of them could have only been a year or two older than Thomas. Maybe that was influencing Lucy.

‘I think I should have said that they were looking solemn, Lucy. But surely the choirmaster must tell them they have to look serious in the cathedral. You couldn’t have them climbing all over the choir and running races up and down the nave.’

‘This was much more serious,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘I’m going to find out what’s going on if it’s the last thing I do. I can’t bear to think of all those little boys being so unhappy.’