London - Edward Rutherfurd [427]
He had been greatly surprised a few weeks ago when Meredith, chancing to see him in Cheapside, had smilingly approached. “Come,” he said. “I have something that will please you.” Leading the way past the site of St Paul’s, the clergyman took him into a drawing office nearby where he pointed to a large sheet of designs on the wall. “The great model you worked on has been refused,” he explained. “The Church authorities didn’t like the popish dome either. So this is what has been approved.”
O Be Joyful stared. The drawings on the wall were remarkable. One could see parts of the classical building remaining, but it was longer, thinner, more like an ordinary church. No dome now rested over the central crossing. Instead, supported on a similar framework, stood a tall spire – classical in form, but clearly echoing the spire of the previous building. It was, it had to be confessed, a somewhat ungainly-looking design, not at all what one would have expected from Wren, but it satisfied the main requirement.
“As you see,” Meredith confirmed, “no dome. Work is to start at once,” he added.
So here he was with Grinling Gibbons and Wren’s other chief craftsmen to witness an impromptu ceremony – not a formal affair for the great men of the city but, typical of the great architect, a modest gathering, called at short notice, for the ordinary workmen. Nothing special had been prepared. Everyone except O Be Joyful was cheerful. He was so deep in gloom that at first he did not notice that the rest of the company had turned to look at him and that they were laughing.
Christopher Wren had just decided he needed a stone to mark the central spot of the new church and he had asked someone to bring him one from the churchyard outside. A stonemason was just setting off, when the great man’s eye had fallen upon Carpenter and he remembered his unusual name.
“O Be Joyful,” he announced, “what more perfect name for such a mission! Go with this fellow, O Be Joyful, and find me a stone.” The company laughed, with simple good humour.
To O Be Joyful however, as he accompanied the mason outside, the laughter contained a note of mockery. They were laughing not at his name, but at his foolishness. Did they all know the secret then? It was unlikely. But Wren, his master Gibbons and doubtless many of the others were sure to be in the plot, and they were laughing because they supposed he had not guessed. He cursed them all in his heart as he did their bidding.
He and the mason looked about for several minutes in the churchyard and, feeling they should not take too long, they finally chose a flat piece that had obviously broken off a gravestone. On it was written a single word. The mason could not read. O Be Joyful slowly made out the letters, but they meant nothing to him. He shrugged. “It’ll have to do,” he said. They carried it back; and were both rather disconcerted when Wren, seeing their stone, most uncharacteristically clapped his hands in delight.
“O Be Joyful,” he cried, “you are a wonder. Do you know what this says?” And he made them turn the stone so that all could see the single Latin word it bore: RESURGAM.
“I shall rise again – that is the meaning,” Wren explained. “Here,” he beamed, “was the hand of providence indeed.”
They put the stone face up in the centre of the great church’s floor.
But O Be Joyful did not even smile. He felt nothing but humiliation, for he knew very well what was to rise over this cursed stone. It had come to him the very day after Meredith had shown him the new drawings, and looking at Wren’s laughing face now, he was utterly sure. It was inconceivable that the great architect truly planned to build that ugly, clumsy structure he had seen in the drawing office. It could only mean one thing therefore. The designs for St