David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

How long had McKenzie waited, Powerscourt wondered. Eleven? Midnight? One? Did he stand in one place, behind a tree perhaps, or did he engage on regular patrols of the vicinity? What did he think about?

The second note was dated the following evening.

‘My lord,’ Powerscourt wondered what was coming this time, ‘have further information to report on the subject. Subject’s name is Barberi, Father Dominic Barberi. Believe him to be a member of the Jesuit order, but am not as yet absolutely certain. Subject only ventured out once today. Went to nearest branch of Thomas Cook and purchased return ticket to Rome in three days’ time. Did not wish the clerk to make any hotel reservations in his name. Presume he must stay once more with religious order. Subject also said by housekeeper, married by chance to former corporal in our old regiment, to be member of secret Catholic society called Civitas Dei. Housekeeper unable to provide any details of said organization. Stressed it was secret.’

Civitas Dei? City of God, maybe community or polity of God. God’s kingdom, that’s it, said Powerscourt to himself. What on earth was that? Why was it secret? What did it have to hide? What was it doing in Compton? Maybe the man at Trinity would know something about it.

‘Subject said to be very reserved and earnest individual. Not likely to be a bosom friend of Lord Fitzgerald. Subject works in his room during the day most of the time. Only known weakness said to be partiality for fish.’

Powerscourt decided that somebody should write a book about the different types of Oxford and Cambridge don. They spanned an enormous range after all, from the silent, the monosyllabic, the taciturn, the sarcastic, the arrogant, the superior, the rare ones who were almost normal, the talkative, the garrulous, the ones in love with their own voice, the ones in love with their own ideas, the ones in love with their own books, the windbags and the ones who couldn’t shut up. Christopher Philips, Powerscourt was certain, sitting in his rooms overlooking the beautiful gardens of Trinity College Oxford, was in the gold medal class of the ones who couldn’t shut up. Powerscourt had explained on his arrival that he was interested in the process of conversion from the Anglican to the Roman Catholic faith over the last twenty-five years. After ten minutes without a break, without even apparently a pause to draw breath, Philips still hadn’t got as far as Newman’s arrival in Oxford as an undergraduate. After twenty minutes Newman and his friends had launched the Oxford Movement and Powerscourt had decided that the only movement he was interested in at that point was movement out of Oxford as fast as possible. After forty-five minutes Newman had defected to Rome in 1845. There were, Powerscourt realized, another fifty-five years to go before they reached the present day. At the current rate of progress that was going to be some point well after sunset.

‘Forgive me, Mr Philips, this is all most interesting, but I don’t want to take up too much of your time,’ he said. ‘It is the conversions of the last twenty-five years that are of particular interest to me.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said Christopher Philips, and he was off again. The interruption did seem to have accelerated the flow of history, even if only slightly. The decades were now passing, Powerscourt calculated, at the rate of one every five minutes. Maybe he could escape in an hour and a half. He heard about Gladstone’s sister Helen, a passionate convert to the Roman faith, who refused to have lavatory paper in her house. Instead her cloakrooms were liberally provided with the published works of Protestant divines. He heard about Newman’s unhappy attempt to start a Catholic university in Dublin.

‘In some ways, of course, the strange thing about Newman,’ Philips said after seventy-five minutes with scarcely a pause, ‘was not that some people followed him, but that so few did so. The Cardinal at the time believed that Newman would lead a positive stampede of some of the best and brightest of the youth of England into the fold. But it never happened.’

And then, miraculously, Christopher Philips paused. He looked up at his clock.

‘My goodness me, Lord Powerscourt, forgive me. I have talked for far too long already. You want to know about the last twenty-five years, I believe.’

Powerscourt nodded. He wondered how long the man’s lectures went on for. Did he start at ten in the morning and finish about half-past three? Was there anybody left in the hall by the end?

‘The conversions are almost all one way, from Canterbury to Rome, as it were. They are isolated cases. They are steady but not very numerous. There are, of course, a variety of reasons for departure. You could put doubt at the top of the list, I suppose, doubt about the impact of modern science, doubts about miracles, doubts about belonging to a Church that is controlled by man in the form of the government of the day in the House of Commons rather than by a hierarchy of faith that has been in place for nearly two millennia. If you worked in the countryside you might wonder if you were in the wrong place. If you worked in the cities you might despair of ever achieving anything in the midst of such terrible social problems of dreadful housing that saps the body and the lack of work that saps the soul. Roman Catholicism offers faith to the doubtful. It offers certainty to the sceptics. It offers order to the confused. It offers hierarchy to the rootless. It offers historical tradition to those searching for authority. Once you can make the leap of faith to cross the drawbridge into it, as it were, your intellectual problems are resolved.’

‘Have you heard, Mr Philips, of an organization called Civitas Dei?’ Powerscourt fired his arrow into the dark.

Christopher Philips looked at him with great interest. ‘I have, Lord Powerscourt. I have to say I am surprised to hear that you know about it. It is very secretive.’

‘What sort of organization is it?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘And why is it so secret?’

‘I don’t know very much about it, I’m afraid. It’s believed to be related to the Jesuits in some way. The headquarters are in Rome. Its aims are to advance the coming of God’s kingdom, as the title would suggest. I believe it is secretive because they wish to use every means possible to obtain their objectives.’

‘When you say every means possible, are you implying that they might be prepared to use illegal means?’ asked Powerscourt, thinking suddenly of bodies roasted on a spit or cut into pieces and distributed about the countryside.

‘I don’t think they would do anything outside the law,’ said Philips. ‘I’m afraid that’s the sum total of my knowledge.’

As Powerscourt began to say his thank yous and goodbyes Christopher Philips held him back. ‘Just a moment, Lord Powerscourt, I think this might interest you.’

He reached into his desk and pulled out a fading place card from a dinner at High Table. ‘This is the menu and seating plan for the dinner the Master and Fellows gave for John Henry Newman when they invited him back to Oxford in the late 1870s, over thirty years after he left. They say he derived more pleasure from his return to Oxford than he did when the Pope made him a Cardinal. Everyone who attended signed it on the back.’

He handed it over to Powerscourt as if it were a holy relic or the bread at the Communion service. Powerscourt glanced down the menu, thinking that Johnny Fitzgerald would certainly have approved of the wines. Then he turned pale. For in one place at the top table, three places away from the Master’s left, was a Moreton. G.B. Moreton. Powerscourt remembered the Dean telling him about the two different Moretons who had been involved in the succession to the Bishopric of Compton. He checked the signatures on the back. There it was. Gervase Bentley Moreton. Then he had another shock. For seated at the bottom end of the table was one A.C. Talbot. Powerscourt checked the signature again. He knew it well. Like Moreton’s he had seen it before. His head was spinning. Gervase Bentley Moreton was the Bishop, and Ambrose Cornwallis Talbot was the Dean of Compton Cathedral.