“‘Be our leader, Sir William, be our leader against this wicked, hateful, abominable hell-born Friar Bacon who has devilishly been making, with all his infernal cleverness, out of tin and iron and copper and brass a real breathing, thinking human being, just exactly as if he were God, a Being, you must understand, made of Brass, a Being who predicts the end of the world, a Being who has the power not only to predict the end of the world but — think of their believing that, Mabbernob! — to bring it about! So please, please, please, Sir William,’ these poor wretches cried out, ‘consent to be our leader and help us to break into little pieces this New Man invented by this New Devil! Thou art a knight, Sir William, and here is work proper to thy knightly arms!’”
“Sit down over there in your Father’s chair, son of my heart, and you and I will discuss this whole matter as carefully as we can.”
Ulanda’s voice was so extremely quiet that her son, though he wasn’t quite the well-balanced sage he fancied himself to be, received not the faintest intimation of the seething and smouldering hurricane of feverish thoughts that was whirling in her head.
“Shall I use this child?” she asked herself. “Boncor will never go as far as I want; and these wretches have nothing to lose and everything to gain by killing this devil of a Friar! Besides if Lord Edward comes home before he’s expected and before Henry dies, he’ll be less inclined to make a fuss if it’s an excitable boy who brought about the killing of this sorcerer, and did it by the hands of this Lost Towers gang who’ve always been irresponsible outlaws.”
Thud — thud — thud—Ah! there were the steps of her bearded husband and his handsome and diplomatic young friend! As she heard these steps there was something about the image of her husband’s beard that flung new fuel on her fury. In these subtle fits of nervous rage, which most of us experience at one time or another, some particular visual image will often detach itself from its proper setting, like a scarf or a belt or a brooch or a feather from some old picture upon the wall, and fly to blend itself with the bodily target of our resentment, even partaking, though the luckless thing is in itself absolutely innocent, in the special objectionableness of the cause of our rancour.
Thus it was that several seconds before the actual appearance of the middle-aged man she loved and the young man she hated, the curly beard of the former and the clear-cut Hellenic profile of the latter rose so vividly before her mind’s eye that, in a flash of mad fury, Ulanda decided that at all costs, and in spite of all her love for the man himself, Boncor’s beard must be cut off.
The idea of a beardless Boncor did indeed so fulfil and so satisfy her wrath that, as she listened to what the two men were saying, she became actually aware, though she wouldn’t let herself enjoy that awareness, of a relaxation in the bitterness of her feelings. Something had come into her mind now that resembled a faint reflection in a sprinkling of water, by the side of a weary and unending road, along which she was riding.
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.