Free Golden Hill by Francis Spufford Page B

none the worse, when the Rector pronounced the absolution. And quite possibly none the better, either.
    Mr Smith, similarly, did not give any outward sign as (it being early in the month, and the church’s endless progress through the psalms having reached Psalm 15) the blue-coat little boys, assisted by fiddle and hoboy, asked:
            Lord, who’s the happy Man, who may
                    to thy blest Courts repair;
            Not Stranger-like, to visit them,
                    but to inhabit there?
    – and the tenors in the adult half of the choir, accompanied by sawing bass, replied:
            ’Tis he whose ev’ry Thought and Deed
                   by Rules of Virtue moves;
            Whose generous Tongue disdains to Speak
                   the Thing his Heart disproves.
    He prayed gravely for King George to be replenished with the Holy Spirit, and for the Royal Family to be prospered with all happiness. He attended with calm seriousness to the hour-long sermon, not participating in the fan-flutters and glance-exchanges that broke out behind him: although, two rows back, an older woman on the arm of a choleric lobster of an infantry officer had eyes of the deepest blue he had ever seen, almost lapis-coloured. Sober Mr Smith; reverent Mr Smith; chaste, pious, prudent Mr Smith.
    In the church porch afterward, he was not completely surprised to find the Roman emperor somehow materialising smoothly beside him, amid the swirl of people, and taking him by the elbow with imperious familiarity, and fixing him with twinkling, cold little eyes.
    ‘Let me introduce myself,’ he said, ‘for I mean to take no chance of missing your acquaintance, young man. James De Lancey.’
    ‘Chief Justice,’ said Smith, bowing; for he had worked out the structure of New-York’s governance since Lovell had accused him of arriving to meddle in it, and in any case, De Lancey spoke in a voice of legal milk and honey, exercised, expressive, not hard to match together with a courtroom in which he had the unquestionable right to be heard. ‘I’m—’
    ‘Oh, I know who you are. Up to a point, anyway. An intriguing point. George, I hope this boy is on the list for the King’s birthday.’ Now De Lancey was speaking, with an absolutely undiminished expectation of authority, to the Governor himself.
    Smith bowed. Clinton’s peanut forehead creased anxiously. He made an indeterminate noise, and bent his head toward Septimus, who was hovering at his shoulder. ‘Er—?’
    ‘I had not thought of it, sir,’ said Septimus, shortly.
    ‘Well, you should; you surely should,’ said De Lancey. Rivers of milk, floods of honey. ‘And I look forward to it. Gentlemen, Mrs Clinton; good day.’ And he swept on, with family, entourage, and (it seemed) much of the congregation following in his wake, bowing and curtseying to the Governor as they passed, but treating him and his party – the sinewy man scowling, Septimus porcelain-bland – as little more than an honorific outcrop in a riverbed.
    Smith, not sure of his ground, let himself be carried with the current; and he would have got away entire, if it had not been for a grubby child of nine or ten years, threading his way through the crowd, who that moment thrust a hat under his nose, and cried out, ‘Penny to build the fire, sir! Penny to burn the Pope, sir! Penny for the guy, sir!’ Smith, already five shillings (New Jersey) the lighter thanks to the church plate, cursed inwardly, and with a radiant outward smile stuffed sixpence (Maryland) into the ragged bonnet.
    Strings and gangs of boys, all promising to burn Guy Fawkes, were out in force in the streets that afternoon when Smith made his way back to Golden Hill to take tea with Tabitha Lovell. He was obliged, several times, to dodge as if accidentally up alleyways, as he heard the collectors’ chant.
    The fifth of November
    As you well remember
    Was gunpowder