The Rebel Angels

"Francis Cornish is – was – undoubtedly the foremost patron of art and appreciator and understander of art this country has ever known. Immensely rich, and spent lavishly on pictures. They'lll go to the National Gallery; I know because I'm his executor. Don't say anything about that because it's not to be general knowledge yet. He was also a discriminating collector of books, and they go to the University Library. But he was a not-so-discriminating collector of manuscripts; didn't really know what he had, because he was so taken up with the pictures he hadn't much time for other things. The manuscripts go to the Library, too. And one of those manuscripts will be the making of you, and will be quite useful to me, I hope. As soon as we can get our hands on it you will begin your serious work – the work that will put you several rungs up the scholarly ladder. That manuscript will be the guts of your thesis, and it won't be some mouldy, pawed-over old rag of the kind most students have to put up with. It could be a small bombshell in Renaissance studies."

I didn't know what to say. I wanted to say: am I just a student again, after having been tumbled by you on the sofa? Can you really be so unfeeling, such a professor? But I knew what he wanted me to say, and I said it.

"How exciting! How marvellous! What's it about?"

"I don't really know, except that it's in your line. You'lll need all your languages – French, Latin, Greek, and you may have to bone up some Hebrew."

"But what is it? I mean, could you be so interested if you really didn't know?"

"I can only say that it is very special, and it may be a – a bombshell. But I have a great deal to get through before lunch, so we must put off any further talk about it until later. You'd better move your stuff in here this morning and put a sign on the door to say you're inside. – Nice to see you again."

And with that he shuffled off in his old slippers up the steps into the big inner room which was his private study, and where his camp-bed lurked behind a screen. I knew because once, when he was out, I had peeped. He looks at least a million, I thought, but these academic wizards are shape-shifters: if his work goes well he will come out of that door within two hours, looking thirtyish, instead of his proper forty-five. But for the present, he was playing the Academic Old Geezer.

Nice to see me again! Not a kiss, not a smile, not even a handshake! Disappointment worked through me like a poison.

But there was time, and I was to be in his outer room, constantly under his eye. Time works wonders.

I was sufficiently bitten by the scholarly bug to feel another kind of excitement that somewhat eased my disappointment. What was this manuscript about which he was so evasive?

2

I was arranging my papers and things on the table in the outer room after lunch when there was a soft tap at the door and in came someone who was certainly Parlabane. I knew everyone else in St. John's who might have turned up in such a guise; he was wearing a cassock, or a monkish robe that had just that hint of fancy dress about it that marked it as Anglican rather than Roman. But he wasn't one of the divinity professors of St. John's.

"I am Brother John, or Dr. Parlabane if you prefer it; is Professor Hollier in?"

"I don't know when he'll be in; certainly not in less than an hour. Shall I say you'll come back?"

"My dear, what you are really saying is that you expect me to go away now. But I am not in a hurry. Let us chat. Who might you be?"

"I am one of Professor Hollier's students."

"And you work in this room?"

"After today, yes."

"A very special student, then, who works so close to the great man. Because he is a very great man. Yes, my old classmate Clement Hollier is now a very great man among those who understand what he is doing. I suppose you must be one of those?"

"A student, as I said."

"You must have a name, my dear."

"I am Miss Theotoky."

"Oh, what a jewel of a name! A flower in the mouth! Miss Theotoky. But surely more than that? Miss What Theotoky?"

"If you insist on knowing, my full name is Maria Magdalena Theotoky."

"Better and better. But what a contrast! Theotoky – with the accent firmly on the first 'o' – linked with the name of the sinner out of whom our Lord cast seven devils. Not Canadian, I assume?"

"Yes, Canadian."

"Of course. I keep forgetting that any name may be Canadian. But quite recently, in your case, I should say."

"I was born here."

"But your parents were not, I should guess. Now where did they come from?"

"From England."

"And before England?"

"Why do you want to know?"