A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess Page B

You?
    - Corpus. Divinity, as I say, and am drawn here to resolve
doubts. Doubts dissolve in knowledge that religious change has
never been truly religious. Faith is corrupted by matters of state.
Christians should be Christians, that and no more.
    There has to be work for curious theologians, Fortescue
said. They thrive on division. Leave it to them and go your own
way. The bread of the altar is what you think it is. Forget religion
and think on justice. It is unjust that slobbering Spaniards bring
their racks and thumbscrews en el nombre de Dios to oppress the
honest Dutch. The Hollanders are men of trade who would be
left alone. I fight Philip of Spain in the spirit of one who hates
empire.
    - And, Gifford says, in the extending of his empire he may
put a Catholic monarch on the English throne. The Giffords
may be restored to the ancestral seat in Staffordshire. By grace
of Spain. What am I to think?
    - Do not think, Fortescue said. Drink. Sing.

    His voice was high and pleasing. The words and tune were
his, he said, but he had gotten no further. Could Christopher,
whom he would call Kit with his permission, add aught, he had
the look of a poet. Kit tried:

    - You lack a rhyme, but no matter. (Weak the r in rhyme
and matter but what Kit thought might be so was not possible. There was a limit to contradictions.) Now Jack here will sing of
shepherds. It is deep in the race, this longing to be at rest on
a grassy knoll, piping to sheep. And see what happens. Christ
rightly calls himself the good shepherd, but the bishops carry
metal croziers that would never disentangle a baaing prisoner of
a thorn bush. So by metaphor all things be in time made false.
Sing, Jack.

    So Savage sang:

    It was now that Tom Walsingham entered, alone and smiling.
He knew Gifford, the others not. Fortescue said:
    - Of the tribe of Walsingham that is the Argus of the
Queen, God bless her?
    - Argus as faithful watchdog, Argus of the hundred eyes.
Not so many. Yes, his cousin but not in his service, Heaven
forfend.
    - And you do what here?
    - I am here with my friend. (He stroked Kit lovingly.)
To help ease the torment of decision.
    - Where is your man? Kit asked.
    - Beaten soundly for presumption and went whinging to
bed. Is it song we are having?
    Savage said he could not remember the rest. Kit said they
might try this:

    - Pretty, Fortescue said, but the pastoral note is lost. Are we
(in change of tone) all for High Mass tomorrow? I suppose if we
seek the solace of singing voices we shall find that best in the
heavenly choristers of the cathedral. And the candles and the colours of the vestments and the divine and intoxicating smoke
of the incense. (He widened his nostrils and inhaled deeply as
if it were already being wafted through the tavern.) What I say
is this, friends, that what the soul craves at times is the majesty
of high ceremony. The deeper meaning skills not, the lifting of
the spirit to strange regions is fulfilled as much by the mass as
by the purple tragedy of Sophocles. It is the elevating that is all.

    - So, said Kit, feeling the hand of Tom Walsingham begin
to caress his sitting buttocks, it is not all eating and drinking
and swinking and snoring, as in your song?
    - No, if we come down to it, the shepherd’s life is not
enough. The senses need more than the stink of wool and
sheep dung. But I speak of the senses. I do not speak of
thought. Thought has killed millions and will yet kill more.
Let us drown thought in another jug.
    I T was in a field on the hot Sabbath under an elm whose
leaves were a tumult in the wind that promised a change of
weather that Kit and Tom consummated, in all gentleness, the
love that could be spoken aloud not in the disguise of French or
of Latin. They lay naked, and on Kit’s back the sparse flue was,
as in the cooling of pottage by the lips pursed, agitated lovingly
by the breeze. God was safely locked away in his cathedral. God
was obliterated by