Chapter Text
The former Regius Professor of Divinity, Richard Smith, did dream of the apocalypse this night.
He stood at a latticed window in a vast palace—and saw only crimson clouds in a halo of ink. A bloody veil obscured all, granting him no sight of the earth nor the horizon. Only a single white spot did chill his soul—a point, shimmering with a blue light, hung in the unreachable firmament, whether drawing nearer or merely flickering, he knew not. And Doctor Smith prayed that it would remain in its place: for in his gut he sensed—should it draw closer to the earth, it would begin to grow, and grow, until it burst forth in a frozen deluge, a monstrous wave of white light. And he would stand and gape at it, like a stag before the hunter's aim—with trembling knees, rendered motionless by a dreadful awe.
Richard Smith awoke to the pealing of the bell for Vespers.
He had slumbered but a half-hour, his head fallen upon the wooden table in his study. This table had long been gnawed by weevils, and now they busily rustled somewhere beneath the papers. The chamber was piled to the rafters with parchment; the air was thick with the scent of wax and ink, and all of this existed in perilous proximity to the soot-stained hearth.
The chimney flue was blocked.
Whilst Doctor Smith beheld his nightmares, he had swallowed a plenty of smoke. The smoky poison gripped his head in an iron vice, and his eyes smarted most grievously. Richard essayed to lift his head—only to let it fall back and utter a pained groan, pressing his fingers to his temple.
For three days he had scarce slept. The night just past, he had managed to snatch but one hour of light, uneasy slumber.
Before his nose, the crimson serpent-flame of a candle swayed thrice—and then was quenched, blown out by a draught from a crack in the window. The glass whined piteously against the onslaught of the tempest that held sleeping Oxford in its grip. The fire in the hearth was a blurred amber stain upon the wet window-pane, igniting a thousand raindrops that played at chase upon the glass. The wind whistled, scrabbled, and whined beneath the door, like a cur cast out. In the far distance, a loose gate banged, and a downspout gurgled. Directly beneath the study window—for he was on the ground floor—a stream, swollen over the cobbles, bubbled and churned.
Doctor Smith might have lain thus in his stupor, watching the running drops with his eyes, had there not come a knock at the ornate oak door—three times, dispassionately, with dry knuckles.
The visitor entered without awaiting a reply. The creak of the door made him wince.
"Doctor."
Young Morgan Felipe was portly and tall—slender as a silver-barked aspen. His cassock scarce reached his shins, and his coal-black brows were accounted the thickest in all the college. Before his high boots, a cockroach scurried, gleaming, its antennae twitching. Morgan stepped over it and winced yet more deeply.
"You do venture out boldly in such weather," Smith rasped, with the voice of a dying lion. "I'll warrant you are soaked to the skin?"
"Doctor," Morgan repeated, unmoved, paying no heed to the gibe, "you bade me come to you when I received the letter from the College Fellows. I have it now. And its purport is this: you are requested to vacate the study. Immediately."
Smith started, as though struck.
"What?.. What is this nonsense you speak, Felipe?"
"The Fellows of the College wish to know when it shall be convenient for you to quit the study. We are sore pressed for lodging. A free chamber is required."
"Ha!.. Is it so, reverend father? They told you that, did they?"
"Positively." Felipe drew himself up; his eyes expressed nothing at all—even as a gravestone expresses neither grief nor outrage, but merely marks a fate. "We must house a guest. You are aware that even after suspension, a month is granted for preparation. But I relay to you the words of the College Fellows: 'We live in an age of swift change, and it must on no account reach His Majesty's ears that a papist doth abide within the walls of an Oxford college.' Therefore, the masters have deemed it prudent to remove you and to grant your study to the new professor. The College can but gain thereby: the foreign visitor shall suffer no inconvenience, and the King shall not be wroth that his plans be thwarted."
"Ugh!.. With his fortune! This guest!" Smith slammed his great fist upon the table, not even turning. "He might hire proper lodgings, rather than stealing my dusty closet!"
A heavy silence fell. Felipe scraped his sole against the floor, shooing the cockroach, and coughed—the smoke was biting into his lungs. He tossed his head in irritation and sighed.
"Well, then... Doctor...?"
"Let them do their worst!" Smith swept the Satyricon and a Rhetoric from the table with a brusque motion of his great paw. The books thumped to the floor. He puffed and blew so that his chest seemed like to burst, and steam to issue from his ears. "I'll gather my goods in my arms this very instant and be gone to the devil! You go first, Master Ambassador, lest you stay to check I've not pilfered anything!"
Morgan regarded him: the dishevelled, black-red mane, grey at the temples; the livid burn from hot wax on the knuckles of his left hand; the purple rings beneath his eyes; the bestial rattle in his throat. Morgan smoothed his own jet-black hair.
"I shall inform them that you have begun to make ready for your departure, Doctor."
And he slipped from the door, like a black cat, not even slamming it.
Smith growled—whether at himself, or at his unseen persecutors. He raised himself on his numbed arms, digging his nails into the tabletop, fixing his gaze upon a single object: a yellowish letter with the chestnut-coloured seal of the Rector.
This was what had stolen his sleep! This was why he now felt ready to throttle even poor Felipe, who was, after all, no foolish fellow!
He unfolded the letter. In an elegant hand, it read:
"It hath reached us, Professor Smith,
That pride of yours knows no restraint.
We can no longer soften with
The punishment for your attaint.
Let others now their gifts bestow,
From us, no favour shall you gain.
No servant you of God, but Rome,
Such risk we cannot entertain,
When the Pope's schemes, given room,
Might let you sell the realm for gain.
The King, perchance, is young, in gloom,
But we've no reason to refrain
From judging one who'd sell our doom."
Smith read the lines in a frenzy. He saw the College assembled in their hall with the long table—where he was now forbidden even to glance—saw them nodding in agreement with each veiled barb. It was clean, bright, nothing like his smoke-filled closet.
"Laughable! A provocation, or an error."
—
"Here is no error, Doctor.
Think we so need you, forsooth?"
—
"You are resolved to humiliate me?
I am a man of simple blood,
And my wrath is the darker for it!
I fear not your petty schemes,
I have survived a hundred nights
Healing kings, my will as steel,
Like the blessed Saint Bartholomew!
—
"Traitor, you must soon concede
Your sins, and with more speed, indeed!"
Richard Smith paced his study like a tiger in a cage, kicking at all that fell beneath his feet: the Satyricon, the Rhetoric, a new map of London—a gift from a visiting Italian cartographer—and the poker.
"Yet, how cunning is this game!
To cast me from my rightful post,
Sending no more than a letter's boast
With scorn—aye, cunning, past all claim!
They see not how much I have wrought
For Oxford, confounding those,
Within whose guts is filth and rot!
—
"Little wit for you is sought,
To rail and curse at others' fault."
—
"Indeed, and why should I persist?
Your school shall be by darkness caught,
With neither my reproach, nor my assist.
—
"Two commands to you are sent:
Swear to the Monarch, and be quick,
And from seditious words desist,
Lest on your head the blow descend."
—
"The wisest men among our nation
Do wander in far foreign lands!
Was it a pleasure for Iscariot
To be the blade in a tyrant's hands?
To play along with every fancy
Of a mad, wild, and reckless clan,
To serve in such a filthy trance,
Where power shifts since time began,
To drown in this vexatious mire,
Wounding one's conscience to the core!
—
Richard Smith snatched up the letter and crushed it in his fist—furiously, venting all his indignation upon the paper that the mercenary fingers of the base academics had touched. They might at least have put a coin in the envelope! It was for such a coin that the pack had agreed to sell the royal post to an Italian upstart!
Smith understood submission. He understood loyalty to a monarch—even a monarch yet a beardless youth. Orbis, nec te qui vincere possit, erit... At four years old, Edward had survived the malaria. At court and in the College, everyone swore the prince was miraculously healed, that God had blessed his reign. But were these constant, petty illnesses that followed—were they mere chance?
Richard Smith did not account himself an evil man. But an evil thought visited his hard-working, honest head: he was losing his elite post at the university in a single day, by the whim of a childish heir who—God forgive him—would not live to see his majority. And it was not even the king's whim. The sickly Edward was a puppet, its strings wound about the aristocratic wrists of Somerset and Northumberland.
Smith smoothed the crumpled letter, tore off the seal, and ground it beneath his heel. He drew back his arm—and the paper flew into the fiery maw of the hearth. The flames purred with satisfaction as they devoured it. The doctor's eyes blazed, and a ruddy spectre danced about the room.
"A thousand deaths I do devise
For you, in torment and in shame,
To Tartarus without a flame.
And if, in your sinful compromise,
You bid your hounds: 'Go, kill!'
Then lead the way, you Tudors—hence!
Be gone, and with a better will!"