John Powys - The Brazen Head

“You will pardon me, your Reverence, I trust, for addressing you without your permission. But I am a student of scientific magnetism — a most complicated subject — and I was anxious to visit this famous inventor of the Brazen Head whom I now find in your company.”

At this point Friar Bacon, who, to Peter’s discerning black eyes, was far the most embarrassed of all the four, spoke out strongly, though Petrus could almost see his heart beating under his grey robe and his pulses throbbing under his grey sleeves.

“What we must all do now, and you with us, Master—”

“Petrus of Maricourt in Picardy!” interposed Bonaventura with a nod and a smile.

“And you with us, Master Petrus,” went on Friar Bacon, “is to take advantage of my cousin Perspicax having a body of King’s Men from London with him, and go straight to Lost Towers and possess ourselves of it in the King’s name. King Henry, though very ill, is still alive, and we all know what his son, Lord Edward, would do if he were with us today! He would make short work of this stronghold of bandits, who have for some many years troubled the lives of quiet people in this part of our land! So the first thing we must do — and I trust you will accompany us, Maître Pierre de Maricourt — is to go to the camp and tell my Cousin Perspicax to assemble his men at once and follow us to Lost Towers.”

Petrus told himself as he looked from this Friar in grey to the courtly Bonaventura, also in grey, and from them both to the black raiment and incredible headgear of Albert the Great, that what he really needed at this crisis in his life was one clear and definite and decisive word from the Devil Himself — for He alone could really help him at such an amazing concatenation as this — telling him by what word, what blow, what death-dance, he, Petrus, ought to make it clear to the whole lot of them that the long-predicted Antichrist was at last really among them, and that the hour had come for the crashing down, once for all, of the whole shaky edifice of the Christian faith.

“It is extraordinary,” Petrus told himself, as he followed the two grey figures and the one black figure in the direction in which the King’s Men had just conveyed their exhausted commander, “how a weak, timid, nervous, hermit of philosophy like this Roger Bacon can suddenly take the lead, and without any ‘Little Pretty’ pressed against his skin, can dominate — can dare to try to dominate — two such figures as this Grey One and this Black One, not to mention Antichrist himself, who in the shape of a lodestone-bearer has come among them!

“But it shows one thing. It shows that when a man is quiet and peaceful and timid and philosophical, and scared of both God and the Devil, and longs to live entirely for his own lonely sensations and for his fine points of learning and for the mystery of words, there may come a moment when he suddenly finds himself with a power of plunging into action and of abandoning himself to reckless and desperate moves, such as much stronger characters and much more formidable wills would never dare to display.”

The four singular visitors were not long in discovering that, although he had so recently been down in the very depths of impotence, Friar Roger’s cousin from Ilchester was now perfectly ready to retake complete command of the bulk of his men. And so without more ado, they set out through the forest and actually found themselves in less than a couple of hours at the entrance to Lost Towers.

They were, however, certainly not prepared for what they found when they reached those gates. Instead of riding for pure pleasure that morning, far less engaging in any boar-hunt or any wolf-hunt, the Lord of the Manor of Roque had left his bed while it was still quite dark, and had taken with him, completely unknown to Lady Val or Lil-Umbra or either of his two sons, the whole force of all the best Fortress-fighters who were available, and had hurried off with them to Cone Castle, where he obtained an interview with Lady Ulanda and her son. As for Baron Boncor himself, he had heard about the squadron of King’s Men arriving by forced marches into Wessex and had foreseen that Friar Bacon and his Brazen Head were bound to be included in the local trouble which the arrival of this royal force was sure to bring with it. And so, knowing that nothing would stop Lady Ulanda from rushing openly and shamelessly into the fray as long as there was the faintest chance that it might lead to the destruction of the inventor of the Head, he had already taken his own sensible counsel and nobody else’s.

Having for once been able to slip out of their mutual bed without waking his infatuated lady, he had gone bare-footed to his cousin Raymond’s chamber and communicated his intention to him. Raymond de Laon did exactly what his friend wanted him to do. He dressed with incredible speed, picked up a long hunting-spear with which, by climbing upon a particular buttress, he could tap on Lil-Umbra’s window-sill at the Fortress, and glided, more like a beneficent spirit than an enamoured young man, out of Cone Castle and clear away from its precincts.

“Yes,” he promised his cousin, “I’ll hang around in the forest, clear of Perspicax’s camp, till it’s light enough for a talk at her window. So you get away, while the going’s good. Don’t give me a thought!”

So after ordering the obstreperous Turgo on no account to leave the Castle till his return, Boncor set off with only one attendant, namely a certain Bob Talirag, who had an aunt who worked there, and hurried through the forest by the first light of dawn to Bumset Priory. He felt he must see Roger Bacon and discuss the whole matter with him, not even excluding, if the Friar proved friendly, Lady Ulanda’s prejudice and the unfortunate misunderstanding that had given birth to this prejudice.

But, as happens so often in our complicated world, this sensible course of action, taken by the only really wise and good ruler in that part of Wessex, was taken too late. The only person to be got hold of at that hour in Bumset Priory was Lay-Brother Tuck, who with some difficulty was roused from a drunken sleep. This was achieved by Bob Talirag, who obtained an entrance by climbing into the window of his Aunt Moll, an aged scullery-maid.

Brother Tuck, wrapt up against the chill of dawn in all his bedclothes, was soon seated on the top step of the Priory entrance, with the door open behind him. “The truth is my Lord,” murmured the dishevelled and perspiring Tuck “I wake up slowly.”

“Are we to enter without further parley, my Lord?” enquired Bob Talirag, who, having been brave enough to disturb his respected and formidable Aunt Moll, felt ready for anything.

But before Boncor could reply, above the muffled head of Brother Tuck, who was fully prepared to go to sleep again, appeared the already quite decently attired figure of Bob Talirag’s aunt.

“I am sorry, my lord, to have to say such a thing — be quiet Bob! I’m not talking to you! — but the truth is, my lord, his Reverence the Prior is still fast asleep. And when his Reverence the Prior is asleep”—and Bob Talirag’s aunt gave vent to a high-pitched chuckle of an experienced jackdaw who has already educated more than one brood of open-mouthed ignoramuses in the ways of the world—“nobody can see nobody”.

“Could this young friend of yours, my dear Dame,” enquired Boncor quietly, “run upstairs to ask Friar Bacon if I could come up to give him a word of warning?”

“One minute, my Lord,” replied the lady, and disappeared; while Brother Tuck, who had roused himself to consciousness again under his perambulated bed-clothes, went on more obscurely than before:

“The question I asked King Stephen in my dream was the simple question: who was the giant who had so many wives that in the end they turned him into a puppy-dog and wouldn’t let him do his business in his own palace? And do you know what King Stephen answered? He said the giant’s name was Boncor ! And when he uttered that name, your name, my lord, do you know what I heard? I heard a choir of angels singing in a great purple cloud, and do you know, my lord, what words they sang? They sang a song my granny taught me when I was young. It went something … something like this: