John Powys - The Brazen Head

Peter Peregrinus now descended from his stone of oration and put a straight question to the beautiful Lilith. “Well, little lady? Had we better wait their arrival here? Or shall we just go boldly on to meet them, and then enquire, of whatever captain or centurion or prince who is leading them, whether he knows just where Albertus of Cologne is passing the night? We could tell him that I have come from a besieger’s camp in France, especially to bring him an important message.”

No chronicler could describe in words the expression on the face of Petrus Peregrinus at this moment. Neither Peleg from above him nor Lilith from below him had ever seen anything like the way those black eyes, just as if they had become the one solitary eye of an antediluvian creation from the bottom of the ocean, looked with an indescribably inward look at what his own red tongue was doing in its own cave-like mouth, into which it seemed as if this one eye must be able to watch this unique tongue tentatively emerging from the devil knows how much deeper a cavern, and beginning its exploration of the blood-sucking meat-mill which it has entered.

But the eyes of Peter of Maricourt saw something now that drew them away from his own interior being. He saw two young men coming towards them down the slope of a hill, from a direction that was at right angles to the direct line between the place where they stood and the point now reached by the advancing soldiers. To him they were unknown; but the moment Peleg, following the obviously startled look he saw him turn in that direction, caught sight of them, their identity was revealed.

“Why! there are Master Tilton and Master John! Do you wish me, Mistress Lilith, to call to them? I don’t think they have seen us yet; and to tell you the truth I don’t think they are likely to see us till they get quite close! It’s plain to me: indeed I can clearly hear,” and he exchanged a quick glance with Lilith, “that they’re arguing and disputing; and when those two begin that sort of thing, there’s no use trying to make them notice anything.”

It was Lilith who spoke then. “And what,” she enquired gaily, “do you think, Master Peter?”

What Peter thought, before anything else occurred to him, was simply how queer it was to see his wicked temptress of Lost Towers act like an ordinary and natural girl. It was clear that she was delighted with this new turn to the stream of events.

Peter of Maricourt didn’t openly hesitate. But in his heart he did more than hesitate. What rushed across his mind, as the girl waited for his answer, was the thought that, if he could deprive the Fortress of both its young men, it would be a better stroke in his Antichrist crusade than even if he managed to put an end to Albertus of Cologne.

He closed his mouth firmly against any premature licking of his lips; but there had come an excited note into his voice which it was impossible to miss, though he answered quietly enough.

“There are times in life, little lady,” he said, “when we can only listen to the ticking of the clock of fate and wait for what is destined to happen. This is one of those times.”

“But haven’t you the power to see,” young John was saying to his elder brother, his voice mounting up almost to a shout, “that the church has just created this whole business of the Trinity in order to catch the three in its fishing-net?”

“What three classes,” enquired Tilton, “have you got in your head?”

“In my head — nothing!” cried the other indignantly, “the classes I’m talking about are with us always. They are here in the Fortress! They are there in the Priory! They are everywhere. I am talking about first , stupid, simple, ordinary people: second , artistic, imaginative people: third , strong ambitious people. This third class is of course the class who govern and rule us — not always on thrones or on horseback, or in chariots — very often entirely behind the scenes.

“By the idea of God the Father they catch the strong rulers who imprison and execute their enemies. By the ideas of God the Son they catch the simple, stupid mass of ordinary people who aren’t tricky or clever enough to be anything but good and obedient, and who make of what they call Love a mystical and magical power that works miracles.

“And finally by the idea of the Holy Ghost they catch the poets, the story-tellers, the musicians, the painters, the builders and the scholars; and these are the ones who have invented Our Lady, and made Her the Mother of God, and the Fourth great Panel of the Pythagorean square!”

“I’ve heard enough of your fancies and theories, John,” retorted his brother. “For heaven’s sake let’s take advantage of having the whole day to ourselves, while Mother and Father are both taken up with listening to this Dominican from Germany refuting this Franciscan from Italy.”

John decided at this point that he must be more practical in talking to Tilton.

“Presently,” he remarked, “they’ll be having — father and mother I mean — a nice tricky job if these King’s Men from London demand shelter for the night. I can’t make out what the idea was in sending them down here at all. I don’t believe the old King had anything to do with it. I fancy there’s some ‘funny business’, as we say in Oxford, going on in the King’s court. What we want is Lord Edward back again! Why does he go on with this ridiculous crusade? What’s this city of Acre, to him, or him to it, that he should fight for it? What I think about this whole affair is—”

“ Please , John, don’t go on any more like this! And look there —Isn’t that our Peleg? Who on earth are those two with him? Why — John! If that’s not Lilith of Lost Towers! Who’s that man with her? He’s a foreigner of some sort. He doesn’t look as if he knew his head from his tail. He’s mad or something! There! He’s seen us now. What the devil is he up to? He’s moving about watching us with his hands pressed between his legs as if he were turning himself into a flying battering-ram.”

“Never mind him , Tilton. He’s nothing to us. The person for us to watch is that devilish girl! God in Heaven, but she’s a beauty! I’d like to — Listen, Tilton, why shouldn’t we get hold of her? Let’s carry her back to the Fortress as a prisoner-of-war!”

“John, John, what’s come over you? What’s the matter with you? You’re looking at me as if you’d like to knock my head off. What have I done to make you so angry? Do you think I want to start fighting as to which of us should have that girl? Heaven help you John! You’re getting queer. It’s that confounded Brazen Head that’s the trouble. Ever since that blasted thing came into the armoury you’ve been behaving more and more queerly. Didn’t I hear you the other day tell mother that you’d like to go and visit Iscalis — or what do they teach us to call that village now — Ilchester! And why? I know the damned place. There’s nothing there but a river, and a few houses by a bridge, and a lot of marshy fields! You think it’s wonderful because your precious Friar’s uncle or brother or somebody lives there. I tell you it’s not half as exciting as Montacute, where at least there’s a high pointed hill, or as Glastonbury, where King Arthur’s grave is!”

“If you don’t stop talking such nonsense, Tilton, I’ll give you such a rap over your dull, stupid, traditional, commonplace, church-building skull that you won’t be able to sleep for—”

“Stop that, you two fools!”

The sudden appearance of the utterer of these surprising words was as much of a shock to the two brothers as it was to Lilith and Maitre Pierre de Maricourt. Peleg was less startled because he had been for some while able, from the watch-tower of his own height, to detect some creature’s secretive movements from alder-bush to alder-bush, scrub-oak to scrub-oak, weeping-willow to weeping-willow; but he hadn’t imagined for a minute that a warrior in the rather extravagant accoutrements of a captain from the Royal Guard should be following these tactics.