John Powys - The Brazen Head

“I — haven’t — seen — her — yet,” stammered the agitated giant.

Sir Mort looked at him intently. “You’re bewitched, old friend. There’s no doubt about it. I see you’re feeling exactly the sort of thing that I felt myself when I fell in love with Lady Val a quarter of a century ago, when I’d only caught one glimpse of her at the Winchester tourney. Well, the best thing you can do, Peleg my lad, is to go straight away now and find your girl and have a good talk, a long talk with her, and discover what she wants to do! She may be so happy with those nuns and made such a pet of, that she won’t want to consider moving to the Fortress kitchen, even if Lady Val had room for her here. On the other hand she may — Holy Jesus, take care! What is the matter with you? Are you ill, Peleg?”

The giant would indeed have fallen prone on his face if Sir Mort hadn’t caught him in his arms. He hadn’t lost consciousness however; and when his master propt him up in a sitting-posture with his broad back against the trunk of a pine, he still had the wit left to grope for his iron mace, and when he’d got it in his grasp, to prop it up between his knees, the round bronze ball of its handle, about the size of an apple, pressing against his chin.

Sir Mort laid a hand on his head. “What you want, my boy, is a sip of that strong water Nurse used to give Tilton when he got one of his fainting-fits. If I weren’t afraid of those damned red devils from Lost Towers, who brought that Bonaventura here, lighting on you and slaughtering you or carrying you off, I’d leave you here and get a drop of that stuff from Nurse. Look up, big sonny! Let a man see your face. If you’re bewitched to this tune, before you’ve even seen the wench, what’ll you be when you meet her face to face?”

At this the giant did raise his head, and the two men stared gravely for a moment into each other’s eyes. Then Sir Mort hesitated no longer. “By the wounds of Jesus, I’ll risk it! Don’t you dare to move! And if any of those red-jerkin’d villains come along, you just pretend to be dying till they get near and then give them what for with your iron mace! If you threaten one of the sods with it, the rest will bolt!”

And with a nod and a grim shadow of a smile, he took himself off; and Peleg was left alone, propt up against that pine. His feelings grew queerer and queerer as he waited. “Am I really bewitched?” he thought, “and is it possibly that she’s always been some kind of a demon and not a real girl at all? Well; I’ll be damned if I care if she is a demon. She’s my true love, demon or no demon. I’d sooner go down to Hell with her than to the highest Heaven with anybody else!

“But it’s all very well for me to think like that! The point is: what does she think? It’s no good for me to go on telling myself these crazy stories about her, while she, maybe, doesn’t give me a thought, or, if she does, has lost all wish to see me again! Besides I must remember that by this time she’s older, and no doubt wiser, and may not at all be in a mood to be carried away by the great love of a hulking monster like me. She’s probably decided that all this business of having children and taking care of children, and having a man and taking care of a man, is simply slavery; whereas if she retains her maidenhood and finds some work for herself that suits her and that doesn’t tax her strength beyond a certain point, she may go on being absolutely independent.

“Of course her danger in that direction would be the risk of becoming a nun with holy Jesus in the offing and the Holy Ghost — Ghost for Ghosta! — on the horizon. And this sort of life must in many ways, when you really come to think of it in detail, be no independence at all ! O Ghosta, Ghosta, what are you , now at this very moment, thinking about? Does the faintest thought of your lover ever cross your mind?”

At this point Peleg’s cogitations were interrupted by the reappearance of Sir Mort accompanied by both his sons; nor did our Mongolian fail to notice that, as usually happened in their father’s company, the two lads were in a state of quiet fraternal expectation, ready for anything to happen, and interested in anything that did happen, but not engaged in an angry argument, as they had such a tendency to be when with their mother or their sister.

“You’re sure your mother said it was pure Neapolitan, that white wine, and not some crazy drink that Tuck of Bumset has concocted and that’s been smuggled into our kitchen from theirs?”

Sir Mort’s words were addressed to Tilton, who held in his hands with exemplary care a four-sided bottle of colourless liquid closed with a glass stopper of an emerald tint.

“O yes, Father,” Tilton replied, quietly enough, but with obvious eagerness to see what effect upon the gigantic patient this particular beverage would have, and excitedly ready to be the one called upon to administer this cure for over-excitement.

“Mother said she’d just given a glass of it to Nurse when Nurse was so upset by Lil-Umbra’s taking John’s side — wasn’t she, John? — that her hands shook till she dropped a plate on the stone floor and it broke into three pieces; and John said — didn’t you, John? — that one piece was Lil-Umbra and one was himself and one was me. Here it is! Shall I give it to Peleg?”

Sir Mort gravely nodded; and Peleg taking it from the boy’s hand, and removing the stopper, poured the whole contents of the bottle down his throat in three long gulps. The effect on the big man was instantaneous. He handed back the phial that had contained this saving grace to Tilton; and quite calmly and naturally squared his shoulders, grasped his great mace by the middle, and bending his head automatically towards his master, and deliberately and with great dignity towards the two lads, went off with long and rapid strides in the direction of the Priory and the Convent.

As he went, the strangest feelings swept through him, affecting his attitude to everything in the world. He felt perfectly calm, but prepared to fight to the death, for two inexhaustible causes, each of which he saw at that moment in close connection with a separate aspect of the scenery through which he was hurrying, the first with a long line of stately pines and the second with a distant hill-top upon which at that moment rested a large white cloud.

His first cause was to win Ghosta against all the world, and his second was, when once he had won her, to fight on behalf of her people, her tribe, her ideas, her religion — yes, on behalf of everything that belonged to her, of everything she loved and represented, of everything she had set her heart upon, whether to do or to enjoy.

There was even a third cause that came to him as he passed a dark avenue descending into a mossy gully; and this was to fight to the death against all the things and people and customs and ways and systems and institutions, which she loathed and hated! It was just when he was passing this sombre declivity, which the Sun himself, even at the high hour of noon, seemed to hesitate to enter, that he heard behind him the sound of running feet and the quick panting breath of the runner.

He stopped and swung round, tightening his hold on his mace. And there, behold, was young John! John never looked his age. He was over eighteen; but any stranger seeing him as he looked at that moment would have taken him for sixteen or seventeen. John’s eyes were hazel in colour, and were large and full of spirit; in fact they gave the impression that his soul was much nearer the surface of his skin than is usual with young men; and as Peleg waited till the lad got his breath, he told himself that it was no wonder this learned Friar, whom everyone talked about, enjoyed teaching a boy like this.