John Powys - The Brazen Head

No sooner had Bonaventura finished speaking than Lady Lilt and Sir Maldung, as well as Lilith, whose long black mantle now trailed after her as she moved, made a circle round him, all three of them talking excitedly and at the same time.

It was not, however, as may easily be imagined, until after a prolonged and delicious supper at this same table — without the need for any blindfolding, and after a prolonged and undisturbed sleep in that luxurious bed on the top floor, without the need for any attendant sylphs, and without even knowing whether the wind was blowing or not — that the General of the Franciscan Friars, on just the sort of horse he had asked for, and with just the sort of escort he wanted, set out in the morning for the Fortress of Roque.

Peleg took swift decisive measures, precipitate measures they might be called, to ascertain that it really and truly was, without any doubt or question, his true love of that wild night when his life was saved by Sir Mort on those crusader-battled borders between East and West, and when he made that vow of devoted fidelity to him into which he threw at one drastic fling all his Jewish intensity and all his Mongolian strength of will. And though his feeling about her was so absolute that there were moments when it actually rendered him as limp as a bending reed, he was aware at the same time of a strange shyness at the thought of their facing each other.

It was with something of a double motive, therefore, partly in order to put off for a little while longer the actual moment of this overwhelming encounter, and partly to make sure he was doing nothing treacherous to his sworn lord and master, Sir Mort, that well before noon on a fine February day, Peleg set out, when all his domestic tasks were over, to make sure of meeting this eccentric head of the House of Abyssum.

It was the very morning of the unexpected arrival of Bonaventura at the great gates of the Fortress and the morning also of the instantaneous departure, the moment the gate-keeper appeared, of a band of curious riders in ramshackle armour and motley patches of red-brown cloth.

What Peleg did to make sure of catching Sir Mort as he came out of the Fortress — for he knew enough of Lady Valentia’s weakness for distinguished foreigners to be quite certain that her husband, whatever feeling he might have for or against the General of the Franciscan Friars, wouldn’t stay long as a partner to their talk — was to run at full speed across the piece of ground that separated the point at which the big gates were visible from the point at which the postern-entrance was visible, a distance which he could cover in time enough to catch Sir Mort departing from either of the two exits.

He took care to carry with him his mace with the iron spikes round its heavy circular head, for he had vivid memories of certain occasions when Sir Mort was all for carrying him off on a sudden foray and he had to insist on returning for his favourite weapon.

It was outside the postern that he finally caught his man, and the dialogue that followed was eminently characteristic of them both.

“That fellow with the staring eyes is after my John’s friend, Friar Bacon. Holy Jesus, but he’s the devil of a wizard-hunter! Do you know what he wants? But of course I’ll do nothing of the kind; though Lady Val thinks I ought to! He wants me to swear to Bog of Bumset that the Pope has told him I must take a few muscular serfs with me and haul the Brazen Head down from Bacon’s cell and lug the confounded thing here; so that here , if you please, here in our own grounds, here in this very strip of forest, the best piece of hunting-ground in the Manor, I can have this curst Brazen Head of his smashed to bits— to bits , mind you, and here , within a bow-shot, here , in less than a bow-shot, of this shrine Tilton’s so keen on building; and very well he’s building it too!

“If I’m a good fighter, Peleg, my Gim-crack Jew, Tilton’s a good designer, a good builder, a good carver, and a good one, I shouldn’t wonder too, at getting rid of smoke and soot. And here’s this staring-eyed fellow, who thinks his grey mantle’s as grand as Caesar’s purple, wants us to hammer to bits in front of my boy’s shrine a wizard-oracle, to whose funeral will come no doubt twenty devils far worse than any Brazen Head, who, when they see Tilton’s shrine to the Mother of God, you can bet your big Tartar soul, they’ll all come huddling into our house, and scenting out quick enough where my bed is, hug each other under it till midnight, and then — No, by God! I’m not going to have any Brazen Head hammered to bits in front of my door!”

Peleg had wisely held his peace during this indignant outburst; but as it went on he discovered that, without having said to himself anything resembling, “Now, my good friend, it’s your business to think out carefully where your interest lies in all this,” he had perceived, in a flash, in a pulse-beat, in the whirl of a swallow’s wings, just what he must say.

“O you are so right, dear my lord!” he murmured, leaning in such a manner upon the handle of his iron mace as not to tower above the man who had saved him and whom he served forever, “and I have just by good chance discovered something that will make it possible, I really do think, for me to be of more real use to you than alas! considering I owe everything to you, I can often be.”

“Aye? What’s that? What are you saying, big man? Have you caught this staring-eyed Pontifex-Cockolorum in flagrante delicto ? Have you found him raping our Abbess?”

“May I speak quite freely, my lord?”

“Of course! Don’t we always? I to thee and thou to me’s the tune! So out with it, my Lion of Judah and Behemoth of Karakorum!”

“But, my dear lord, it goes back a long way and concerns my own private life very deeply. It is indeed, if you will allow me to say so, my dear lord, my chief secretum secretorum , and it is only because it was a thing of despair rather than of hope that I kept it to myself.”

A peculiar tone in the giant’s voice quieted Sir Mort’s wrought-up nerves. He fumbled at the leather belt round his waist that kept his hunting horn in a convenient position.

“Tell me straight out, Peleg, old friend, what you’re talking about.”

“About a woman, my lord.”

“Ah! Ah! And what a double-dyed fool I was not to think of that before! Here have you been, a proud, handsome, majestic, powerful man, and, just because you’re such a giant and outside the category of common men, I let myself — fool that I was! — assume that you lacked the natural feelings of every man born into the world who isn’t a sodomite! Well, old friend, tell me her name quick, and where she’s to be found, and by God! I’ll get her for you even if she lives in Karakorum!”

Peleg did not hesitate. “She is a girl I made friends with just before that bloody fight, where, save for you, my lord, I should now be under the earth. Her name is Ghosta. She is a Jewess from Mesopotamia and she is now working in the Abbess’s kitchen here. Lay-Brother Tuck from Prior Bog’s kitchen told me about her. He told Friar Bacon too about her and the Friar wished to see her, and she went to see him, unknown to her nuns and unknown to the Prior.”

“So that’s it!” chuckled Sir Mort with a friendly grimace. “Kitchen to kitchen, eh? And do you want to marry this ghost of a girl from Mesopotamia? If that’s the idea, you old Jewish Goliath, you’ll have to go to Lady Val. She’s the one who arranges our matrimonial affairs. But I daresay I could — but what’s the matter, Peleg? Do you feel ill? You’re not going to faint are you? You look as if you’d seen something worse than a ghost-girl!”