“You’ve been reading a guide book!”
“Oh, no. That’s in history. They lugged him here on a wagon or something and buried him. Where’s he plant—buried?”
Mark wished that the dark lady would stop frowning as she steered him to the glum, polished tomb in the choir. He must be offensive to her. She said, “This is supposed to be the tomb. They’re not sure,” and Mark stared at the raised slab of ugly stone with awe. The organ began to growl softly in a transept. It was solemn to stand, reflecting on the Red King while the organ moaned a marching air. William Rufus had been dead so long. History was amazing.... When he had a theatre of his own Mark meant to open it with Richard III or with Henry V. Carlson told him that no one would ever play Richard III again as Booth had gone too high in the part. But the Walling Theatre would be opened with a romantic play full of radiant clothes and scenes that would match the playhouse itself. The Walling would have a ceiling of dull blue and boxes curtained in silk, black as a woman’s hair. The lamps should wane in the new manner when the acts began and there would be mirrors rimmed in faint silver to gleam in far nooks of the balcony—something to shimmer in corners and shadows of his dream.... Mark stared down the nave and built his theatre against the grey age of this place until Olive sat in a heap of muslin on the tomb of William Rufus.
“One doesn’t have to bother about such an indifferent king. There are some more in those tins—I mean caskets—on top of the choir screen. Edmund and so on.”
“More kings? But won’t a—a sacristan or something come an’ chase you off of here?”
“What do you know about sacristans?”
“Cathedrals always have sacristans in books.”
“I dare say you read quantities of bad novels,” she observed.
“Well, I like Monsieur Beaucaire and Kim better’n anything I’ve read lately,” said her bewildering pupil, “Say, who was Pico della Mirandola?”
“I don’t think I can talk about the Renascence in Winchester choir,” Olive choked and took him away.