Read Online A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess - Free Book Online

Channel packet. He
speaks of calm waters but I do not believe him. To bed.

    HE was in Rheims, which the English had once held but Jehane
la Pucelle recovered by witchcraft. He was in Rheims, very weary
and still queasy in his stomach after a rolling voyage of which he
recalled best the vomiting of the passengers and Skeres’s jeers at
his own crying of Jesus Jesus Jesus as he gave bread and fish and
wine to the tigerish waters. Yet the poeticising mind rode high
above his body’s distress and he saw drunken marble as if Rome
had melted. Poley remained below but Skeres stood by him at
the taffrail, relishing his agony. But it was Skeres who brought
a hot posset, saving it would give comfort. It did not.
    At Calais there was French and English chaffering about
horses - a deposit greater than the worth of the raw nags offered,
charges for hire exorbitant. As Kit mounted he voiced a wonder
he had had in his mind, namely was he to be alone and trusted
on this mission, he a young beginner, as Skeres had called him.
Poley, who had asked to be called Robin, was rosy and smiling
and unscathed by the voyage. He said:
    - Fear not. There will be somebody along. You shall not
be alone. We are not fools in this business.
    So he had ridden the long way to Rheims, jolting on illmade roads, seeing the French farms not much different from
the English, drinking warm milk fresh from the udder and the
day’s new bread. He was not at his best when he sat before
Father Crawley in his study. On the wall Christ writhed on
his cross, and there was an Italian painting of the Madonna
and child. The Madonna, Mother of God, was not much seen
in England now. The priest’s desk was massive and Spanish.
There was a smell in the room that seemed to Kit Catholic and
alien - incense on the skin brought in from the chapel perhaps.
Something close and frowsty, and from Father Crawley a faint
odour as of bad teeth or an ailing stomach. Yet the glance from
his lined face was shrewd. He asked:
    - Are you a Walsingham man?
    - The shrine, you mean? There is no longer a shrine.
    - I think you must know my drift. Have you been sent?
    - Sent by my own doubts.
    - You must not think us innocent here. We are open to all comers but we remain watchful. What is it you wish?

    - To meditate a week or so. Talk and be talked to. Attend
lectures, services, anything.
    - You’re welcome to such hospitality as we can give. A
bed and spare diet. Tell me, what is your view of the Seven
Sacraments?
    - That there are seven and not fewer.
    - So our late king believed and wrote. His treatise earned
him the title of Fidei Defensor. He retained it when he no
longer believed. And so for the Queen and her successors.
This is hypocrisy. I recommend that you meditate on the Seven
Sacraments. Above all the Holy Eucharist. What are you taught
of the Holy Eucharist?
    - At Cambridge we learn that the bread and wine are
commemorative. That there is no transubstantiation.
    This is in spite of Christ’s own words. Hoc est corpus meum.
    - It is taken to be a manner of metaphor. It is said the
unreformed faith is one of cannibals.
    - Well, you will learn.
    He seemed to grow weary, matching Kit’s own state. He
tolled a small bell as in exorcism of the heresy that clung to
Kit’s travelling cloak. A fat young priest beamed in. Father Hart,
said Father Crawley. Father Hart led Kit to a wing of the College
where beds were ranged in, so to say, the symmetry of triv and
quad propositions. He might take this one at the end. He might
rest. He rested. Those who were to be his fellow sleepers were
awake and out and at work. The building reeked of fresh size.
The faith was renewing itself for battle.
    Awake on his third day, having eaten soup meagre and
munched bread among rowdy puppies who were to be priests, he
homed to the cathedral. Homed because he was cathedral-bred,
ever in hearing of bells, ever aware of strong and authoritative
stone, a pretended