“You are the seneschal, I suppose,” he said.
“No,” I replied, “the seneschal is at home in Leaside, and at this moment I would to God that I were with him. But I am the Master of this College, and I will defend it with all my strength, though it be but that of a poor old man, sore stricken in years; and I shall defend it also with all my art and craft, which is virtually unlimited. Now, sir, who in Hell are you?”
“It is to avoid Hell that I, and all this rabble (for I know no other way to describe most of them) seek your hospitality,” said he. “I am Saint George of Cappadocia, formerly patron saint of England. This lady, with the wheel and the great Sword of Truth, is Saint Catherine of Alexandria. This other lady—the redhead with the cannon—is Saint Barbara, patroness of artillery. And we are all, every one of us here, deposed, degraded, denuded, despoiled, defeased, debauched, and defamed by that arch tyrant Giovanni Batista Montini, pseudonymously describing himself as Supreme Pontiff, Servant of the Servants of God, Bishop of Rome and Pope Paul the Sixth!”
There is something about other people’s rhetoric that reduces my own language to the lowest common denominator. I regret my reply. It was unworthy of an academic. But history is history and truth must out.
“What’s your beef?” I said.
It was the girl who shared the horse who replied. “He means that Pope Paul announced last ninth of May that all this lot weren’t really saints any more. Demoted them to legends, you see. A stinking trick, when you consider what they’ve been worth to the Papacy, over the centuries. But he wanted to make places for some Africans, and Americans, and other trendy riffraff. So since then we’ve been racketing all over Christendom trying to find someplace to stay. My name is Cleodolinda, by the way, and I’m not a saint. I just have to travel around with Georgie here because I’m a reminder of his greatest triumph. You remember, when he slew the dragon? I was the girl the dragon was—well, nowadays they call it molesting. Will you take us in? It’s All Saints, today; if we don’t get a home, and a place where we are respected, before midday, it’s Limbo for us, I’m afraid. And Limbo is the absolute end, you know.”
I liked Cleodolinda. As I listened, her history came back to me. Daughter of the King of Lydia. I’ve always got on well with princesses. But as I looked at that streetful of sanctified hippies and flower-children, my heart misgave me.
“Why Massey College?” I asked her. “With all the earth to choose from, why have you come here?”
It was Saint George who answered. He never let Cleodolinda get a word in edgewise. The way he insisted on having all the good lines for himself, you might almost have thought they were married.
“You need us,” he said, “to balance the extreme, stringent modernity of your thinking; nothing grows old-fashioned so fast as modernity, you know; we’ll keep you in touch with the real world—the world outside time. And we need you, because we want handsome quarters and you have them. It is our intention to set up a Communion of Saints in Exile, and this is the very place to do it. We wouldn’t dream of going to the States, of course. But here in the colonies is just the spot.”
Cleodolinda saw that I didn’t like Saint George’s tone; she leaned forward and whispered, “He’s begging, you know, really; please let them in.”
Compassion overcame common sense, and I nodded. Immediately the crowd began to surge forward, and that tiresome girl Saint Catherine shouted “Adeste fideles!” again. I began to dislike her; she reminded me of a girl whose thesis I once supervised; she had the same quality of overwhelming feminine gall.
“One moment,” I shouted. “It must be understood that if you enter here, I’m running the show. There’ll be no taking over, do you understand? The first rule is, you must keep out of sight. I presume you are all able to remain invisible?”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Saint George; “but we really must resume physical form for a little while each day. You’ve no idea how cold invisibility is, and most of us are from the East; we have to warm up, every now and then.”
“Five minutes a day,” I said, “and I don’t want you scampering all over the College. I’ll tell you where to go, and there you must stay. Oh, yes, you may run along to the Chapel daily, but don’t loiter. And no ostentatious miracles without written consent from the House Committee. We have participatory democracy here I’d like you to know, and that means you mayn’t do anything without getting permission from the students. Now, one at a time please, and no shoving.”
Saint George helped me to check them in, and it was no trifling job. There were about two hundred of them, but the trouble was that they all insisted on bringing what they called their “attributes”—the symbols by which they have been recognized through the ages. Saint Ursula, for instance, brought her eleven thousand virgins with her, and insisted that they were simply personal staff, and only counted as one; they were a dowdy lot of girls, and I sent them to the kitchen, thinking the Chef would probably be able to put them to work. Saint Barbara I packed off to the Printing Room; I thought that brass cannon of hers wouldn’t be noticed among all the old presses down there. Because of his association with travel I sent Saint Christopher to the parking-lot; many College people have remarked that they have never had any trouble finding a space since that moment. Saint Valentine was tiresome; he insisted that he must be free to roam at large through the living quarters, or I would regret it. I mistrusted the look in his eye. Indeed, I quickly realized that all of these saints had a strong negative side to their characters, and could turn ugly at a moment’s notice. So I told Valentine to go where he liked, but that I would hold him responsible for any scandal.
Saint Lucy seemed a nice little thing, but conversation was made difficult by her trick of carrying her eyes before her on a salver. Still, she was simplicity itself compared with Saint Agatha, who walked up to me, confidently carrying her two severed breasts on a platter; I was so disconcerted that, before I grasped the full implication of my deed, I sent her to the kitchen. I made the same mistake—so full of potentialities for College cannibalism—with Saint Prudentiana, who was carrying a sponge, soaked in some jam-like substance that she insisted was martyr’s blood. I can tell you that after these it was a relief to admit Saint Susanna, who carried nothing more disconcerting than a crown. As for Saint Martin, I recalled that he had once rent his cloak in two, in order to share it with a beggar, so I knew that he had experience in tearing up rags, and sent him down to our Paper-Making Room. Nor was Saint Thomasius a problem: I knew that his knack was for turning water into wine, and I thought he could make himself useful in the bar.
In fairness I must say that I foresaw certain problems that did not arise. Saint Nicholas, for instance. I was sure he would miss children, but he assured me he did not care if he never saw a child again this side of the Last Judgement; he said he wanted to re-establish himself as what he originally was—a treasurer, an administrator, a dealer in money. I shipped him straight off to the Bursary, and I understand he has since made himself very comfortable in that grandfather’s clock.
Many of the saints had animals, and these gave me a lot of trouble. Saint Hubert, for instance, had brought a large white stag, which was interesting enough because it bore a blazing cross between its horns; I told him to put it to work cropping the croquet lawn, but not to let it nibble the flowering shrubs. But then there was Saint Euphemia, who had brought a bear, and knowing how bears love to catch fish, I was worried about what Roger would think; we finally made a deal that if the bear would chase those squirrels that eat all our crocus bulbs, it could stay. But the problem presented by these animals is that their powers of invisibility are not under such control as those of their saintly owners, and I don’t want that bear to turn up unexpectedly in—well, for instance, in a quorum of university presidents. You may imagine I was glad to face such easy decisions as that of Saint Dorothy with her basket of fruit and flowers—very handy in the private dining-room. And when Saint Petronilla turned up with her dolphin, I simply gestured her toward the pool.