John Powys - The Brazen Head

All Petrus did however was to fling the slow-worm into the uplifted jaws of the great sow, who promptly bit off its head. Nobody but Petrus saw the pitiful flap which the tail of the slow-worm made to avoid following its head down the sow’s throat. These are the things that, if they can only be seen by the right person, lead to some very curious conclusions as to the mystery of life. For as the sow lay down to digest what it had swallowed, the decapitated tail, without wriggling at all and with a final motion of infinite relaxation, as if it were thankfully joining the vast army of exhausted organisms whose reckless, desperate, and aggressive “heads” have flung them aside, stretched out to welcome eternal rest.

“And now,” murmured Petrus Peregrinus, “I shall leave you, and take the road to the nearest port for the Isle of Britain where I have a greater conquest to achieve than you — or he—” and he nodded at the old man with closed eyes—“or you either, old lady—” and with the handle of his sheathed sword-dagger he prodded the sow’s back—“could possibly understand. And that ”—and he pointed to the continuation, over the rim of the valley, of the road by which he had come, “ that will be the way I shall go.”

With this he turned his back upon them all, upon the old man, whose whole conscious personality seemed devoted to the task of allowing nothing to make him open his eyes, upon the sow who was clearly finding the digestion of a small saurian head an occupation both peaceful and soothing, upon the absolutely motionless body of the decapitated slow-worm, against which, as against the side of a Leviathan, two small insects were already tentatively extending their minute feelers, and finally upon the old lady, who, as she watched that small dark figure — for his soldier’s cap was black, his jerkin was black, a heavy velvet cloak he carried on his arm was black, his stockings and wooden shoes were black, while the blackest of all was his one single weapon, that half-sword, half-dagger, which he left in its sheath and used as a short staff to support his steps on any uphill road — uttered from the depths of her whole being the oldest of all European curses.

It wasn’t till he was just not quite out of hearing that the old woman stretched out both her arms to give full expression to this malediction. With the fingers of both her hands tightly closed she repeated the word Erre !

“Erre! Erre!” she cried over and over again, pronouncing each syllable of the word with peculiar emphasis.

Petrus of Maricourt turned quickly enough when he caught those two syllables upon the air. In Picardy, as well as in Savoy, and of course everywhere along the shore of the Mediterranean, that phrase was used to express loathing and bitter contempt. So there was the magic word that he had stopped so long at that turn-pike hovel to extract from its witch-wife! Erre ! And the word was the very same curse that had been heard in all the harbours of all the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean and Aegean since the days of Homer.

Petrus Peregrinus hadn’t been a traveller in all parts of Europe for nothing, and he had often pondered on the mystery of this word with its deadly rush of execration—“Get out of here, you rat, you maggot, you worm, you abomination, you lump of filth!”—and he knew well that it had been allowed to remain in all the most authoritative texts of the Homeric manuscripts, and must have been passed, not only by the Athenian censors of the days of King Peisistratus of Athens, but by the far more particular censors of the Library of Alexandria and by the tremendous scholars who revised the “Codex Marcianus” in the Library of San Marco in Venice.

He made no retort to it at this moment however; but every time he pressed his scabbarded sword-dagger into the ground to support his steps over the rim of the basin-like declivity from which he was now rapidly emerging, he concentrated his whole soul upon a solemn covenant he was now making with himself.

“It has become clear to me,” murmured his inmost heart communing with itself, “that my chief enemy at this moment among the righteous is Albertus of Cologne. He seems to have got some secretus secretorum out of the raw material of the Aristotelian “hulee”, of which the universe is made, that enables him to cast some sort of spell over his pupils. He’s been having with him of late, and they say they live together in the same lodging, which always gives a teacher a special personal influence over a young man, that eccentric silent youth with a big head who is called Aquinas. Yes! I know what you want me to do, my darling little Rod of Power!”

And the weak-legged, black-garbed, black-capped, wooden-booted climber upwards clutched, as he mounted the rim of the depression, the lodestone in the slit of his breeches.

“You want me to go straight to this great donkey of Cologne, who makes friends not with handsome young people but with great head-heavy lunatics, who think of nothing but dovetailing fantastical dogmas, and when I’m face to face with this double-dyed idiot, you want me to let you loose on him, to make him skip a bit! Don’t tell me that’s not what you want, for I know very well it is! But listen to me, my precious little Baton of Power. You’re the Wand of Merlin the Brython. You’re the Rod of Moses the Israelite. You’re the finger that Jehovah lifted when He bade the World leap up like a fish out of Nothing.

“But though you are all you are, little Push-Pin of Omnipotence, the fact remains that, if I am to win in this contest with Albertus Magnus in this arena of this amphitheatre of the universe, I must confront the fellow face to face.

“Well, little soul-prick of the world’s gizzard, you think that’s impossible don’t you? And you think since it is impossible, you and I will have to find another way of getting round this beggar and outwitting him! But let me tell you now, my Magnet of Satan, it’s not impossible. I’ve just heard — never you mind how or by whom! — that he’s been invited by Roger Bacon — yes! by Friar Bacon himself, Push-Pin, my devilkin! and you take note of that ! — to go and see for himself that Brazen Head magicked into life by Brother Bacon. So that’s where you and I come in, little lovely, and so let Holy Jesus beware!”

The small dark figure with his black military boots, black military cap, and black sheathed weapon to support his weak legs, was now well across the rim of the geological earth-circle over which that Homeric “Erre! Erre!” of the old woman had hurried him.

Looking round at all he saw and at how the highway he was following was losing itself in a distance that he knew well was westward and seaward, our resolute antagonist of the Christian religion, whom many people would have described as a grotesque little idiot but whom Paul of Tarsus and Jesus of Nazareth would have taken as seriously as he took himself, plucked now from out of his garments the magic lodestone with which he hoped to frustrate the whole Revelation. Rubbing it up and down against the tight black garments that covered his emaciated flanks, just as if he were sharpening a butcher’s knife, he proceeded to stretch the thing out to the full length of his arm and began working it up and down as if he were actually making a slit in some vast, invisible, planetary tent, through which when once his stabber, his prodder, his love-piercer, his hope-drainer, his life-borer, his faith-rinser, his root-sucker, his magnet of universal destruction had found its way, it might really hurt and wound and injure whatever universe or multiverse there might be outside and beyond our world.

Once clear of this whole district and aiming for the channel between France and England, our peregrinating Antichrist pursued his future movements with what really was uncommonly careful consideration. Having made straight for the channel, he followed the French coast harbour by harbour, till he hit upon the precise sort of vessel he wanted sailing direct to a Wessex port.