Читать книгу Glittering Images - Susan Howatch - Страница 16

On the following morning the Archbishop telephoned to inform me that I should present myself at the palace early on Wednesday evening; Jardine had professed delight at the prospect of offering me hospitality, a profession which Lang cynically suspected derived from a guilty wish to make amends for the bellicose speech in the House of Lords. ‘… and I’m sure he’ll give you a warm welcome, Charles,’ was the Archbishop’s dry conclusion.

‘Did he remember meeting me last year?’

‘Of course! When I mentioned your name he said: “Ah yes, the young canon from Cambridge who thinks the world began not with Adam and Eve but with the Council of Nicaea!”’

So Jardine had at least glanced at the book which had made my name in theological circles. He himself had published no work of historical scholarship, but that never deterred him from writing trenchant reviews of other people’s efforts and I had been surprised as well as relieved when my own book had escaped his characteristic literary butchery. How the escape had been achieved I was uncertain, but possibly he found any discussion of Arianism boring and had decided to rest his pen.

These thoughts about scholarship reminded me that I had not yet decided why I should need to consult the library of Starbridge Cathedral, and aware how important it was that my need should be convincing I spent some time pondering on the problem before I devised a stratagem which would enable me to tell the truth. I had long been contemplating the revision of my lecture notes on medieval thought. I now decided that my undergraduates were going to learn more about St Anselm, and as a conscientious lecturer I naturally felt obliged to cast a glance over Starbridge’s early manuscript of The Prayers and Meditations.

I suffered a further moment of uneasiness as I contemplated the duplicity inherent in this decision, but then I pulled myself together with the thought that no harm could come to me even if Jardine were steeped in apostasy. On the contrary, Lang was bound to be grateful for my help with the result that I would inevitably emerge from the affair with my future prospects in the Church enhanced.

Casting my last doubt aside I began to prepare for my journey.