Page 273 of The Armor of Light

That was polite, but it was not consent, Hornbeam noted. However, it would probably have to do for now. This was not the moment to insist. An acrimonious row might tip Joe in the wrong direction. Joe could not easily be bullied: in that way he was different from his father and similar to his grandfather.

Hornbeam stood up. ‘I want you to think about this hard. You’re very able, but you have a lot to learn. The sooner you begin, the more capable you’ll be when I retire.’ He still had not said what he had come to say. This is so unlike me, he thought.

‘I promise to think about it very hard,’ Joe said.

Hornbeam went to the door. Pretending he had just remembered something, he said: ‘Oh, and go and see Jarge Box’s widow. I should probably do something for her by way of reward. Find out what she wants.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘You should always do your best, Joe,’ said Hornbeam, and he went out.

*

Kenelm Mackintosh was buried in a Protestant churchyard in Brussels. Elsie had been one of hundreds of women searching the valley for the bodies of loved ones after the battle of Waterloo. It had been the worst day of her life, looking at the dead faces of thousands of men, mostly young, as they lay sprawled in fields of mud and flattened wheat, their bodies horribly mangled, their unseeing eyes open to the sky. The weight of grief she felt was almost unbearable. Most of them would be buried where they lay, the officers in single graves, the men in communal pits; but chaplains were privileged, and she was able to take Kenelm’s corpse away and arrange a proper funeral for him.

The children were distraught. She told them to be proud of himfor risking his life to bring spiritual comfort to soldiers, and she reminded them that he was in heaven now, and they would see him again there some day. She only half believed it, but it gave the children consolation.

She herself was more grief-stricken than she would have expected. She had never been in love with Kenelm, and he had been a self-centred person until the army changed him; but they had been together a long time and had brought five wonderful children into the world, and his death left a hole in her life. She cried when they lowered his coffin into the grave.

And now she was back in Kingsbridge, living with her mother and Spade and running the Sunday school with Amos. Her eldest child, Stephen, had been readily accepted to study at Oxford, being the grandson of a bishop, so he had left, but otherwise they were the same as before, except that she was a widow now, and there would be no more letters from Kenelm.

She did not think she would marry again. Many years ago she had longed to marry Amos, but he had wanted Jane. He still spent a lot of time with Jane. He had looked quite grumpy during the visit of a certain Major Percival Dwight, from the office of the army commander-in-chief in London. Dwight had come to inspect the 107th Foot Regiment, he said, but he had found time to escort Jane to the racecourse, the theatre and the Assembly Rooms, standing in for her convalescent husband. Amos had said he did not like to see Jane flirting while her husband was recovering from a war wound. Admittedly this was the kind of stern moral attitude Amos would typically take, but Elsie suspected jealousy too.

She had enjoyed dancing with Amos at the duchess of Richmond’s ball. The waltz was a kind of symbolic adultery, she felt; an exciting and very physical encounter with a man who was not her husband. Amos may have felt something similar. But that was all.

One Sunday in October, after the Sunday school was over and they had cleared up, Amos casually asked her how she felt about the Anglican Church.

‘It’s the only religion I’m familiar with,’ she said. ‘I believe most of it, and I’m happy to go to church and pray and sing hymns, but I’m perfectly sure that clergymen don’t know as much as they pretend to. My father was a bishop, remember, and I didn’t trust half of what he said.’

‘Goodness me.’ She could see that he was shocked. ‘I had no idea you were so agnostic.’

‘I tell the children that their daddy is waiting for them in heaven. But we now know too much about the planets and stars to believe that heaven is up there in the sky – so where is it?’

He did not answer the question, but instead asked her one. ‘Do you think you’ll marry again?’

She said: ‘I haven’t thought about it,’ which was not true.

‘What do you think about Methodism?’

‘You and Spade are good advertisements for it. You’re not dogmatic, you respect other people’s opinions, and you don’t want to persecute Catholics. You don’t know any more than the Anglicans, but the difference is that you admit your ignorance.’

‘Have you ever been to a Methodist service?’

‘No, as it happens, but I might go one day, to see what it’s like. Why are you asking me these questions?’

‘Oh, just idle curiosity.’

They went on to talk about finding a new mathematics teacher, but Elsie mulled over the religious conversation afterwards. When she got home she told her mother about it. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit odd?’

Arabella laughed. ‘Odd?’ she said. ‘Not a bit. I’ve been wondering when he would raise that subject.’

Elsie did not understand. ‘Really? Why? Why has it become important?’

‘Because he wants to marry you.’

‘Oh, Mother,’ said Elsie. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

*