The Box of Delights (34 page)

‘I could weep,’ another Bell-ringer said, ‘that our great Bell, Old Truepenny, of 1427, isn’t throwing his tongue. He did ring in King Henry from the French Wars, Old
Truepenny.’

‘We might still be in time to start Old Truepenny,’ the Dean said. ‘It is still not a quarter to twelve; we are nearly there. The only questions are, “Can we reach the
Cathedral in all this snow?” and, “Have these ruffians who kidnapped us stolen the bell-tower keys, or cut the bell-ropes?”’

‘We shall soon know, sir,’ Cole said. ‘The snow is deep: it has been a sad storm. Wolves’ Weather, as we used to say in King Harold’s time.’

Now that they were over the Common, nearing the Gate, Kay could see what desolation the storm had wrought. The telegraph posts were down; the brackets of telephone wires had been wrenched from
buildings; two old elms on the Council Piece had been uprooted; and the snow had drifted so deep at the Gate and in the High Street that no one had trodden it nor tried to drive it. The way was
white unspeckt snow deserted under the lamps.

The sleighs turned up the narrow lane known as St Margaret’s Barbican; the snow scattered from their runners with a crisp, soft, slithering swish; it was so deep in that narrow lane that
Kay could see into the lighted rooms on the first floors of the old houses. He saw old black beams, old men and women drinking to Christmas, or stooped over children’s stockings, as they
filled them with toys, neat surprise packages, Eggs of Delight, and oranges. All the narrow lane boomed and hummed with the noise of the bells of St Margaret’s Church; tremblings of music
went thronging by in the air.

‘Where are we going to, please?’ Kay asked.

‘To the Parvice St Michael, Master Kay,’ Herne said.

Now the Parvice St Michael was a space in front of the Cathedral’s North Door. It had once been a part of the Monastery: a wall still shut it from the approach to the West Door which was
in the Precincts. From the Parvice there was a wicket into the Cloisters.

The sleighs sped out of St Margaret’s Lane into the Parvice; as they entered it, the Cathedral suddenly rose up in front of them with its enormous black bulk, its windows unlit, its tower
transfigured with floodlight, its ledges, mouldings and carvings all topped with snow. A man held up a lantern to check the unicorns. He came slowly past the team to the sleigh with his lantern
lifted so that he might see who was there. He dragged a spade from his left hand. Kay noticed that he wore a rough dark sackcloth overall, and that other men, clad like him, were shovelling snow
from the North Door. On the farther side of the wall, the scrape of shovels on stone told Kay that other workers were clearing the West Door.

‘Ah, pass in, brothers, to St Michael’s Door; we’ve cleared the way for ye,’ the man who held the lantern said.

He waved his light, and Herne moved the unicorns up the path to the Door: the shovellers stood aside as they passed and called blessings on them. They were all little men, Kay thought, with
faces which looked white and tense in that dark place.

‘I believe their heads are all shaven,’ Kay thought. ‘Are these the Monks?’

‘These are the Monks of the Abbey, Master Harker,’ Cole Hawlings said, ‘for on such a Christmas Eve what one of them would keep away? They’ve all come for the glory of St
Michael’s Abbey.’

Whoever they were, they had cleared a way to the door. The clergy and Bell-ringers flung aside their rugs and pressed into the porch of the dark North Door. The leader of the snow-shovellers
held his lantern while the Bishop left his sleigh. Kay long remembered the thin eager faces of the Monks on both sides of the approach lit by the lantern.

‘Pass in, my Lord Bishop,’ some voices said.

It was strange. No one knew why the Parvice had been called Parvice St Michael. This night, it was clear; a big statue of St Michael stood at the entrance to the porch. There he stood, in
painted armour, as though he had just been carved there.

There was someone inside the porch, working at the fuse-box, with a clutter of tools and one little inefficient electric torch.

‘Mind, please,’ this man said. ‘You can pass in to the side.’

‘Ha,’ the Bishop said. ‘It is Winter, the electrician. Can you give us the lights in the Cathedral?’

‘Why, welcome back, my Lord Bishop,’ he said. ‘Welcome indeed. But as to the lights, I can’t yet give you as much as one; no, not a light, Your Grace,’ he said.
‘No; the storm’s got all the lights wrong. Whether it’s these fuses or something worse I can’t at the moment say.’

The clock in the central tower gave a heavy tocking whirr and rang out:

‘Just a quarter of an hour,’ the Dean said, ‘to robe and get the bells and lights and organ going. I wonder will that snow-shoveller very kindly lend me his
lantern. Oh, thank you so much. Come, then, will you please, to the Dean’s Cell, where we shall know whether all the keys have been taken.’

He led the way into the end of the dark North Aisle, where he unlocked the office known as the Dean’s Cell. He struck a light and lit the tapers which he sometimes used for heating
sealing-wax. ‘No, they’ve left us alone,’ he said. ‘Here are all the keys.’

There on the walls, neatly ticketed, and hung with plaques of wood or brass, to keep them from being easily pocketed, were all the Cathedral keys.

Some clergymen, in robes, who had been waiting outside the office, now welcomed the Dean.

‘I am Jo Stalwart,’ one of them said. ‘We were all here ready to carry on in case of need. We are so glad that you are back. If you’ll allow us, we’ll go up to
light the Choir.’

When they had gone, the Dean gave his other orders.

‘Bell-ringers first,’ the Dean said. ‘Here are the keys of the Belfry. You may still have time to ring the bells in, and start a chime before midnight. Now where has my Lord
Bishop gone?’

‘He has gone to robe,’ the Bishop’s Chaplain cried. ‘He promised long ago to bless the Bell-ringers in the Tower tonight before they begin to ring.’

‘I was afraid, for a moment,’ the Dean said, ‘lest he should have been captured again. Now, Vergers, take quickly all the wax candles in the storeroom and set them in the old
sconces along the Nave and in the Transepts. They will at least make the darkness visible. Choirboys, quick, to the Vestry, to robe. Anyone who has nothing to do with the service, get out candles,
please, with the Vergers and help to light the doors; we must let in the people in a moment. Who are those there, please? Oh, Mr Hawlings and Kay, it is you. Will you please very kindly take these
old bronze incense tripods to the West Doors; put wax candles in them and light them, so that the people coming in may see where they are treading: oh, and open the West Doors, will you
please?’

Kay had not seen him enter the Church, but when he and Cole had placed the bronze tripods near the great Entrance, lo, there was Arnold of Todi beside them. He looked perhaps madder than ever,
brighter in the eye and queerer in his way.

‘Ha,’ he said. ‘This is Feast of Nativity? You will pardon and excuse, this night, he Christmas?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Kay said. ‘Yes, Mr Arnold . . . Christmas dans cinq minutes.’

‘Ha,’ Arnold said, ‘then I’m back in Anno Domini?’

‘Yes, to be sure,’ Cole said. ‘And you must have a sup from my bottle that I brought all the way from Spain for you. And here is your Box of Delights that you have been parted
from for so long.’

‘No, no,’ Arnold said, ‘keep it, keep it. Now that I’m back in Anno Domini I’ll stay there, thanky.

‘But you,’ he added, ‘must have here a sup from my bottle that came from a temple which Alexander took; see, now, I will show.’

He produced a small glass bottle, which he opened over one of the bronze incense tripods. He poured into the cup of this a little fragrant oil from his bottle. He poured a few drops more into
the second of the censers. ‘Watch now,’ he said.

As Kay watched, the oil burst into a bright light, which lit up that end of the Nave.

‘So Alexander found it burning,’ Arnold said, ‘in that temple beyond the Gedrosian Waste, or one of the other Wastes. It will burn for seven hundred years, being Oil of
Eternity.’

It burned now so clearly, that Kay heard the people outside the West Door cheering. He heard cries of, ‘Hurray, there go the lights. There’s going to be a service after all.’
Some hands pounded on the doors, as Kay and Cole turned the giant key in the lock and dragged back the bolts one by one. All Tatchester seemed to be gathered outside there, waiting to get in.

‘Oh,’ some were saying, ‘whoever’s going to take the service? Have they found the clergy?’

‘No, indeed,’ others said, ‘nor ever will, I’m afraid.’ ‘No, the poor Bishop’s in his grave by this.’ ‘I’m told the Dean’s legs
have been found done up in brown paper, gaiters and all, in the Brighton Waiting Room.’ ‘These people who go murdering are just like wolves, they stick at nothing.’

As Cole Hawlings seized one leaf of the double door, Kay seized the other. They swung the great doors back as far as they would go. The light from the tripods lit up a sea of faces gathered
there cheering the opening of the doors.

As the cheers rose, Kay saw that a great table had been laid immediately outside the Door. This table was heaped with boxes of chocolates, bottles of sweets, dolls of all sorts and sizes, bats,
balls, hoops, pegtops, humming-tops, boxes of bricks and of soldiers, toy ships, kites, toy aeroplanes, crackers, fruits, books, papers, musical instruments and charming little mechanical toys. By
this table were the three Jones girls, each dressed in white. With them was the dog Barney, who barked with joy to see Old Cole again.

‘Walk up,’ little Maria was saying, ‘walk up, Parents. This is the Jones’s Christmas Fund, organised by Maria Jones as a token of her great gratitude for having been
thrice expelled from school. Every parent of a child attending this Service is entitled to one package per child.’

‘Hullo, Maria,’ Peter said.

‘Hullo, you two. I hear they’ve got the scoundrels,’ Maria called. ‘We had it on the wireless; but we’ll talk about that later . . . Is yours a girl or a boy,
Madam?’

She and her sisters pressed packages on to all those who came thronging into the church.

At this instant, the organ sent out some spiring and quavering rumbles which passed into ‘Sleepers, Wake.’ Then, with a sudden burst of light, all the Cathedral lights went on, shone
for one glorious instant, went out again, recovered and then burned clearly; the electrician had found out what was amiss.

Now that the West Doors were open, Kay could hear that the Cathedral bells were ringing. He stayed there, listening to them for a moment or two. Old Cole was beside him, saying, ‘A happy
sight: a blessed sight, Master Harker, all these coming here to sing.’ Arnold of Todi went up the Nave to stare at the decorations: he seemed to Kay to be in a trance of pleasure at being
certainly back in Anno Domini.

‘Just two minutes more to go, Master Harker,’ old Cole said.

There came the sound of many men marching to a drum-tap: a clear voice called an order. With a clink of metal and grunt of leather the band of the famous Tatshire Regiment, the Tatshire Toms,
moved into position inside the church. A and B Companies of the same glorious battalion filed into place there, with the old blue and white colours, once a Spanish lady’s dress, under which
the survivors of the regiment had fought all one blazing summer’s day in the never-to-be-forgotten wheatfield of San Luis Frontera ‘against the massed might of Massena’s
veterans,’ as the History Books said. There came an instant’s silence.

Then Crash came the salute of cannon in the Barrack Square for the stroke of midnight. In all the church towers of Tatshire men fired the bells. Organ and brass band struck up, full strength:
the Vestry door curtains fell back to each side: out came the great Cathedral crosses and blessed banners, with all the Cathedral Choir and Clergy, with all voices lifted aloft in ‘Come, all
ye Faithful.’ By this time, the triforium and clerestories, as well as every space in the Cathedral, was packed with faces: all there sang as they had never sung: the singing shook the whole
building.

Somehow it seemed to Kay that it was shaking the Cathedral to pieces: all the heads came off all the bodies and moved up into the air still singing. He himself was being shaken to pieces, his
own head was surely coming off, still singing, through the Cathedral roof. In fact, the Cathedral was not there, nor any of all that glorious company: no: he was in a railway carriage on a bitterly
cold day: the train was stopped: he was at Condicote Station, with his pocket full of money, just home for the holidays and Caroline Louisa was waking him. ‘Why, Kay,’ she was saying,
‘wake up, wake up. You have been sound asleep. Welcome home for the holidays. Have you had a nice dream?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have.’

THE END

Other books by John Masefield