Free A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess Page A

no breath. It was one of the gaudily clad who now
asked:
    - Must we descry a distinction between the doer of evil
in all conscience and whosoever is drawn into evil through
ignorance?
    - Properly, the old priest responded, we must regard ignorance as sinful when the light is shown but disregarded. The
souls of the Indians of America are ignorant but not damned.
Granted the light and wilfully blind to it, the privilege of damnation follows.
    Some quietly laughed. In old man’s anger the priest shook
and said:
    - Yes, yes, I say that word. For damnation and salvation
alike are the signs of God’s holy care of his highest creation.
In this chiefly are we raised above the beasts of the field.
    - Must we love Queen Elizabeth? asked a student in the
rough tones of the priest’s own county.
    - She is not Queen Elizabeth, despite her crown and orb and
sceptre and the other trappings of royalty. She is illegitimate in
the eyes of God’s Church.
    - And therefore to be deposed? It was the man dressed
brightly who had been the first asker.
    - This is to be assumed. This must come in its time. But he
who asked of sin must be answered. We must love our enemies
as we love our friends, but we must not love their sin.
    Kit left, unnoticed. It was leafy outside, a sycamore cast kind
shade over the forecourt. Blessed tree and blessed birds, that were to be neither saved nor damned. Blessedly the birds flew
over the screams of the charred heretics or the traitors who saw
briefly and in disbelief their intestines cast into boiling water. All
beasts are happy. They thrust in their season and know nothing
of love. Kit sat on what was said to be a thunderstone, a bolt from
the heavens, and watched emerge the priest’s auditors. He had
seen the back only of the gentleman who had asked about the
deposition of the Queen; he saw now his bulk and ruddiness,
a soldierly man with a sword, who was telling laughingly two
younger men, one of them in black, the other in russet and
violet, of the need for tolerance within limits.

    - It is the nature of the limits that promotes argument,
he was saying. Our preacher, lecturer I would say, was drawn
into the forbidden when I put my question. God and Caesar -
did not Jesus Christ speak wisely of the division of authority,
though some would say that God being above Caesar there is no
division. The Zealots were in their way logical. But no matter -
we must cling to our limits of action. I keep to my narrow way.
    They were away around the corner and Kit heard no more.
What he noted in the speech of the speaker was a property
that was not of the language of London, though otherwise the
soldierly gentleman spoke that language in due conformity to
what was known as the Queen’s usage. Our language is rich in
what our orthopeists term the rhotic (I know these things; I was
brought up an actor), that is to say our dog sound is a firm roll
in words containing the letter r. But this gentleman was weak in
it and spoke argument and preacher and Caesar with but a limp
tap. It seemed at the moment nothing - a mere way of walking
or of agitating of the hands, or the outlandish cut of a doublet
or the tilt of a feather in the hat. And so Kit forgot it, or so
he thought, stood and wondered whether he should go back to
Tom’s inn and propose resumption of what they had done or else
supper, or else hand-holding and talk of Plato. But his shyness
overcame him. It would be a shy moment to face him again in
all sobriety and perhaps be impelled into utterance of the word
love. They stood or lay equal, man and man, and who must say
it first? And Tom had spoken darkly of another meeting he had in the evening. At remembrance of that Kit sweated a moment
in jealousy. He would think of the work for which he was paid
and slink slyly into a student tavern, there to listen.

    And so he did. Les Trois Couronnes, which three crowns
were meant was uncertain, was near the meat market, so