John Powys - The Brazen Head

She watched with an abstracted gaze how her son settled himself more and more comfortably in his father’s chair, and as she rubbed with the inside tips of the trembling fingers of one hand the white knuckles of the other, which was fiercely pressed against the edge of the maps of all the world, she vividly imagined herself stroking, with an absolutely sated satisfaction, the bare, soft, hairless chin of the man she possessed.

But at this moment, as Boncor and Raymond crossed the room, she felt as if they were both as transparent as ghosts.

“They’ve gone, Ulanda,” Boncor announced, “and you should have seen the effect of the light they carried, as it fell on the clump of firs at our gate!”

“And then on their red-brown costumes,” added Raymond de Laon.

“Is Bonaventura waiting for them?” Ulanda enquired. “Is he going boldly to lead them into the Priory and straight up the steps into that chamber where the wretch manufactures his devilish machines?” As the two of them moved up to the table they both replied at once.

“I told them plainly that I wouldn’t have any killing of Friars on land that belongs to me. But when they asked: ‘Will you forbid your people to meddle with them as they carry off the sorcerer?’ I answered that I never interfere with private quarrels between different sections of my people. If the pious ones want to kill the impious ones, Let the Devil look after his own ! is what I say. And if the profane ones want to kill the pious ones, Leave it to God ! is my motto.”

“You know, lady, there are some quite presentable fellows among these Lost Towers rascals! I expected them to look like a pack of thieves,” added Raymond de Laon, “but, I assure you, Lady, they weren’t all like that!”

It was at this point that little Sir William, who had been listening to their words like a prince in a fairy-tale, rose portentously to his feet. “Don’t you think, Father, don’t you think, Raymond, that it would be a good thing if I went down and talked things over with Turgo? When I discussed with him last week the question of what weapons our Cone bodyguard had better carry on important occasions, he was very impressed by what I told him I’d seen in London at King Henry’s court. I noticed just now when I saw what they were carrying — I mean the ones who were going into the forest to keep watch on these brown-backed bandits — that Turgo had taken my advice. But there was just one little thing that he’d forgotten on which I had specially insisted, namely that their short Roman blades should be unsheathed before placing them in their belts; and that their belts should be furnished with leather clasps, or leather bands, all the way round their waists, so that it would be possible for each man”—Here the new-made knight clapt his hands to his own belt, which bristled with the handles of two or three gleaming blades—“for each man at any sudden attack to defend himself with desolating — no! I mean devastating — no! what I had in mind was penetrating , for the daggers of course must be ready to go in —I mean to be plunged into their enemies’ bodies. I think — don’t you agree, Father? — that it might be a real help to our good Master Turgo if I went more fully into this matter of the way our Cone bodyguard should be armed at this important chorus — I mean crisis — in this history of our house here, and perhaps of — of — of this hemisphere. Don’t you agree with me, father?”

The belted knight’s progenitor bowed his head. But having gasped and gurgled and almost choked in his effort not to laugh, he glanced appealingly at his wife, and there was a prolonged — and for Raymond de Laon — an embarrassing silence.

The truth was that Ulanda hadn’t been listening. Not a single word of all that her son had so pontifically repeated about belts and daggers had “penetrated” the walls of her mind. She had known he was speaking “in character”. She had known that her husband was trying not to laugh. She had known that Raymond was vaguely watching all three of them with ironic detachment, and was probably calculating in his own mind how early in the morning he would have to wake up if he were to get a glimpse of Lil-Umbra before their breakfast at the Fortress, and whether he could make himself wake up or whether he’d better get Turgo to wake him.

Ulanda knew all these things. But as at this instant she glanced under the left arm of her boastful offspring and caught a certain humorously resigned expression in the eyes of her mate, she suddenly felt such a rush of love for him that she could hardly keep herself from betraying it. But she used all her will-power to struggle against this wave of emotion; and, as she overcame it, it became clear to her that to have yielded to it at this moment would have meant the giving up for good of her sworn revenge upon Friar Bacon.

It was at this precise point in Ulanda’s cogitations that wild excited cries and alarming crashing sounds were heard in the rooms below, followed by a rush of half-a-dozen feet up their staircase. Raymond ran to the door that opened on these stairs and jerked it wide open, repeating as he did so in a high-pitched voice: “What the devil is this? What on earth’s happening?”

But the broad-shouldered Turgo, with half-a-dozen stalwart and extremely excited men-at-arms behind him, flung him aside, and bursting into the room, stood like a rocky water-fall of indignation in front of the three persons grouped round that map-laden table, behind which, in the absence of fresh logs, the fire was almost dead.

“It’s too much to endure, my lord! It’s too much for anybody to endure! There’s a big lot of men from the Fortress outside there now, led, yes! actually led, by that boy John who’s the younger of them two, so he ain’t even the heir to Roque! He’s only a young scholard, that’s what he is, yes! that’s all he is — just a scrap of a lad at school! And there he is outside the main gate of Cone waving God knows what sort of weapon in his hand and defying these Lost Towers men and our men and all the men of Wessex to touch his precious Friar and his Friar’s bedevilments!”

At this point the formidable bailiff of Cone straightened his tremendous shoulders to a degree that might have made even the powerful lover of Ghosta take notice.

“The man we need here now,” bellowed Turgo, “is Lord Edward himself — O may he soon be our lord and King! — who is already on ship-board on his way home. It’s him we need now, in this wretched bandit-beset country! Lord Edward would soon settle this crazy confusion in our ancient forest! Why, when he was with the King in London, none of these curst, insurrectionary barons dared lift a cry or wave a banner in this forest of ours! No, they daren’t, I tell you, my lord. They daren’t, I tell you, my lady! That’s what we need here today, a proper knightly prince like Lord Edward!”

“I’ll come down at once, Turgo,” said Boncor, giving his wife an enquiring glance and apparently taking for granted that she would confirm his decision. “You’d better stay up here with your mother, son,” he added in rather a less assured tone, when he noticed how nervously and anxiously the newly-made knight was pulling out and thrusting back the various silver-handled and brass-handled daggers which protruded from his leather belt.

In a flash Ulanda rushed round the table and clutched her husband by his left wrist. She had seen in a sudden vision these Fortress adherents, urged on by this crazy young John, and full of the idea that Friar Bacon, the greatest teacher in the world, must be saved at all costs, striking the already-wounded Boncor a blow that would be his death; while she, bereft of the love of her life, would be doomed to abide for the rest of her mortal days listening to this swaggering son of hers and trying to make him turn his words into deeds. God in Heaven, no! that would be more than she could bear! Let all three of them perish before that happened!