John Powys - The Brazen Head

Ulanda’s parents were both dead and she had no relatives left, but she always maintained that these two rings had belonged to Rorsuk, King Stephen’s nephew, and that it was because he had forgotten to put them on at some royal banquet that he was found murdered that same night in the bed of one of the court ladies.

At any rate the sound that Ulanda’s rings, one of which carried on it the semblance of a wild-boar and the other the semblance of a whale, caused to vibrate across that monster-bearing table, suggested that a sea-serpent was catching its breath as it neared the land at the sight of a Behemoth munching grass on the sea-shore.

It was at this moment, before the bewildered Baron could formulate any appeal to her enraged soul, that they both became aware of steps on the tower staircase. They looked at each other and they looked at the door. But no indignant look and no muttered curse could stop that door from opening. And there, quietly crossing the threshold, was Raymond de Laon!

Raymond was as fair-haired as Baron Boncor, but his hair was straight, not curly like the Baron’s, and if he had grown a beard it would probably have been feathery and wispy in the manner of Spardo’s. In figure he was tall and slender, and his face had an alert, intent, interrogating look, as if he were forever searching for something he couldn’t find, and yet not at all as if this search was painful or as if he felt any touch of anger or desperation at not finding what he sought.

The first thing he did on entering the chamber was to turn ha f-round, even while he was in the act of making a low obeisance, and to close the door. This he did with extreme punctiliousness and almost with the air of being a confederate in an exciting conspiracy. But the door once closed and his obeisance over, it was with a most unembarrassed and easy manner that he advanced to the edge of the great table, and leaning forward across it with the tips of his long fingers just touching it, he completely, although very politely, disregarded the evident hostility on the lady’s face and addressed himself entirely to Baron Boncor, who had risen with a friendly greeting and now sank down, composed and attentive, to hear what his young friend had to say.

“I came to tell you, my lord,” Raymond began, “that your people in the reception room downstairs have just been considerably disturbed by the unexpected appearance among them tonight of a group of men from Lost Towers. None of my friends among your people have been able to tell me who it was who let these bandits come in. I fancy myself it was some young rogue who has been looking for an excuse to leave Cone altogether and to join these crazy followers of Lost Towers. Though evidently puzzled how they got in, your excellent Ralph Turgo, unwilling to be the one to start trouble, began at once giving them refreshments.

“Well, I took advantage of this moment of relaxation to ask a few questions of one of these Lost Towers men; and what I picked up from him was an amazing piece of news. It appears that Bonaventura, head of all the Franciscans, is lodging at Bumset Priory tonight, and that he himself, and no one else, has hired for the occasion these master-ruffians from Lost Towers with the intention of using them as his own retainers, so that he can drag Friar Bacon out of his prison there, and carry him off to a ship that’s waiting on the Thames in London to take him to France where he’ll never he heard of again.

“I heard them telling our Turgo — and Ralph’s a crafty fellow, you know, when it comes to inducing rascals like these Brown Tunics to talk — just what they told me, that Bonaventura wants them to carry off from the Priory-prison not only the Friar himself and all his unholy and heathen books, but also this Brazen Head of his, about which we hear so much. This Brazen Head he wants them to carry into some empty space in the forest, and when once they’ve got it there — in some empty space, you understand, between the Fortress and Lost Towers — to hammer it to bits with stones and plough-shares and iron clubs!”

Having thus delivered his startling news with dramatic intensity straight across that curious table which now bore upon its geographical face all the most terrifying monsters, of land, sea, and air, that have ever defied man’s domination of the world, the fair-haired lover of Lil-Umbra let his whole tension relax, and in an easy and quiet and apologetic way moved round the table till he reached the arm of Baron Boncor’s chair over which he bent.

“I didn’t want to bother you with all this, my dear Baron,” he murmured, “but it struck me as such an unexpected coalition between God and the Devil that it gave me the feeling of an unpleasant conspiracy against all quiet and moderate people who dislike extremes. I can’t myself quite explain the shock it gave me; but an unpleasant shock it was. I rather think it had to do with the peculiar colour of the clothes these men wear, which is almost exactly the colour of that liquid we always see between the stones in those places where they slaughter animals.

“I must have imagined the actual spectacle of these savage brown tunics doing the abominable bidding of this ferocious angel of God, who evidently would have loved to have seen hammered into unrecognizable bits not only the Friar’s Brazen Head but the Friar’s own human, all-too-human skull!”

“And a good thing too!” hissed Lady Ulanda, rising to her feet and confronting her husband’s young friend across the outer edge of a picture of a terrifying sea, whose waves were breaking on the shores of what that primeval map called “the Land of Cathay,” and on whose breaking waves a monster was riding, whose head resembled the head of a colossal lizard and its rear end the tail of a gigantic dolphin.

“Forgive her, Raymond!” murmured the Baron gently. “The poor old girl had a bit of a shock a day or two ago.” Something in the tone of his voice induced Ulanda to resume her seat; though those ominous rings on her fingers jangled remorselessly still against the table’s edge.

“May I tell him about your visit to the Friar?” enquired the Baron; and added hurriedly: “I think I ought to tell him, you know, because then he’ll realize better our whole feeling about the Friar and his confounded Brazen Oracle.”

Ulanda’s reply to this question was only a bowing of her head still lower over her knees. But her husband firmly, though very gently, went on. “Yes, she went to see this Bacon fellow to ask him to help her in preparing some of those ointments for which our present-day ladies have such a mania — the sort of ointment, you know, that that queer tinker or whatever he is, who rides a horse with a swelling in its neck like the head of a man, is always trying to sell and swearing too — I’ve often heard him at it! — that it’s what they used in Babylon when the whale swallowed Jonah.

“And how do you suppose this modern Simon Magus received our lady! No! I’ll tell him, my precious. Don’t you interrupt! You can correct me later. He burst into a fit of fury and acted to Ulanda with unpardonable discourtesy — Forgive me, Raymond! It’s only my shoulder. I didn’t draw back from your hand — lean against the back of my neck. I don’t get the ghost of a twinge there! He’s not really a good bowman, our Lost Towers rogue: and I don’t myself think he’s much of a catch for Satan. I mean I don’t think he’s half as corrupt or half as clever as his wife and daughter. What do you say, my dear, on that nice point?”

But Ulanda who had flung herself back in her chair, her knuckles white with the intensity with which she clutched the carved lionheads at its elbow, took no notice of this amiable request.

“Tell him at once,” she ejaculated, spitting out the words in a low hoarse voice, and with as complete disregard for the presence of Raymond as if what she said had to pass no further than from one organic portion of her own person to another, “tell him at once,” and it was as if the gall within her addressed itself to the midriff within her, “that it matters nothing to us by whose hand this accurst wizard is unfrocked and sent begging, as long as it is done, and all his fabrications pounded into dust! Tell him to say to Bonaventura that when the job is completed, we hope to welcome him here and do all we can to help him in his hunt for other traffickers with the Devil!”