For there is no doubt that the “something” of which John suddenly became aware was some thought from the Brazen Head. And what the chronicler of these things cannot escape calling to mind was the lack of response that the old ex-bailiff had found in John’s sister Lil-Umbra when the latter, her head full of the possible appearance of Raymond de Laon in the armoury, was doing her best to be nice to him. But this lack of response was now wholly compensated for in the old bailiff’s mind by Ghosta’s attitude.
Young John and the old man were however both vaguely conscious that it was some mysterious connection between the Brazen Head and Ghosta that was now giving to the voice of Peleg, as it rumbled hoarsely above their heads, an irritable and dictatorial tone. The giant concluded with these words: “I’ll fetch the Head now, and carry it straight to the postern; for I can see exactly where we are, torch or no torch! Better give the torch back to Master John, Ghosta, and then you all—” and he threw this out, like a handful of crumbs, in the direction of Colin and Clamp, who, conscious of not being altogether indispensable as the drama thickened, had linked themselves together in the last few minutes in a rather childish though very natural way.
Clamp had picked up a moss-grown stick from the ground that had a couple of tiny ferns growing out of the middle of it, and had poked Colin with it to show him this phenomenon, and the flickering torch had at once revealed those small ferns; and Colin had promptly seized the end of this interesting stick, and now neither of this quaint pair would be likely to relax his grasp.
It was clear that, in their uneasiness as to whether they would be allowed to follow the others into the interior of the Fortress, this mossy stick gave them some curious support, as well as uniting them on this particular occasion.
“And then you can all,” Peleg concluded, “follow me to the little door. Isn’t that the thing, Master John?”
John, who had begun to long for his comfortable bed in the little room that had been his own now for a couple of years, agreed at once; and Peleg, without even glancing at Ghosta, who had obediently handed the torch to John, snatched up the latter’s woollen scarf upon which the old man was no longer sitting, and clapping it upon his own head like a turban, rushed over to where the Brazen Head was surveying them all with the stark indifference of a rocky landscape, and seizing it in his two hands heaved it into the air till he held it propt up on the top of his head. The effort required for this was so great that it drew from him a really terrifying sound, a sound such as Samson must have made when, with the central pillars of the Temple of Dagon in his arms, he bowed himself down and brought down with him the whole of that great building.
An outrush of blood from the two arrow-hurts in his shoulders accompanied this sound; and John, who was close to Ghosta, heard a similar sound, bursting unconsciously it would seem, from her; and it certainly was all he could do to restrain in himself a cry of amazement.
But he had the wit to see what the two of them had to do at this important juncture. He began hurriedly helping the ex-bailiff to his feet. “You take hold of him on your side,” he said to Ghosta, “and I’ll help him on my side!”
And then he shouted after the departing figure of their friend, who was carrying away the Brazen Head on his own head as if it were a gargoyle made of the fossilized features of some antediluvian giant, belonging to the same race, though of an earlier breed, as the man who was carrying it. “Wait for us at the postern, Peleg! We’ll help you in with it!”
The thoughts and feelings of the old man as he stumbled along over the tree-roots and over the mossy stones, while John’s torch flung the sort of wayward and flickering bursts of illumination that can be both angelic guides and devilish betrayers, grew more and more intense and more and more unrestrained as they drew near the postern-gate.
“I’m glad I came out,” he told himself, “if only to be able to brood over the unbelievable advantage of being allowed to sit by the fire in my own chair in that faithful old armoury until I die. But — Jesus help us! — these young folk seem to think I’m half-dead already! Not one of them asked me whether I wanted to spend my days and nights with the Friar’s Head of Brass! But I’m glad they didn’t. For it would have been terribly hard to explain what I do want! And now that I come to think of it I seriously believe it was some queer understanding between the Head and me that brought me out here tonight! I wonder what time it is? About two o’clock in the morning, I wouldn’t wonder! It has that kind of feeling. O! but this Ghosta-girl had better be careful how near to this Head her home-sickness for Palestine and Jerusalem draws her! I didn’t have that queer presentiment for nothing that night when I sat with Lil-Umbra waiting for her lover Raymond!
“Sitting alone by the same fire, day in, day out, a person picks up a few little things about life here below, things that great giant Jews dream not of! And when I watched that little sister of yours, Master John, and talked of this same Head, I knew all of a sudden, and for a certainty, that this Thing, created not by God but by Friar Roger, needed, to make it complete, to make it its real self, to make it a true oracle of life’s hidden secrets, to be in some way connected with amaiden, who, without officially losing her maidenhead to the Head, would lose something of her inmost self, her secretest feminine self, to it, giving it that unique power of revelation, of illumination, of ultimate vision, that virgins alone possess!
“There’s the Fortress! We shall be there in a minute! Whether spending the rest of my days with a living intelligence created by man and not by God will lengthen or shorten my days, I don’t know and don’t greatly care! But that it will make life far more interesting to me is certain. I’ve always hoped for something like this to happen and now it has happened! Maybe this will prove a moment in the history of our race of an importance second only to the creation of Adam! We shall see!
“Meanwhile what I’ve got to do now is clear. I must make them all take off their shoes, and not utter a word, even in a whisper! And as for this pair of antics, this Colin and Clamp, hanging on to that pathetic old stick as if it were the sceptre of Solomon, I suppose I must find a corner for them to sleep in, in the Manor kitchen. They won’t do any harm, wherever they are; and I certainly can’t have them in my armoury!”
XIV FRIAR BACON’S CHAMBER
Several months had passed away into the revolving rubbish-heap of time — or, to placate our final resting-place with a grander name, into the palindromic abyss — since an abode was found for the Head in the armoury of the Fortress and under the guardianship of the old ex-bailiff.
“Why did you straddle me in my nakedness round the neck of that thing of brass?”
These startling words were the first that greeted Friar Bacon from the lips of Ghosta, when the old factotum of his prison-chamber brought her to see him.
“Sit down, my daughter,” the Friar replied, laying down his pen and pushing back across the table from beneath his wrists the parchment upon which he was at work.
“There, child, sit down there!” And he pointed to an upright seat on the opposite side of the table, a seat which in appearance was the sort of chair that any young girl in any epoch would have associated with some sort of goblin royalty and elfin ritual. “And you may leave me,” he added, turning to the lay-brother, “for a few minutes now. I shall not be doing any harm to this good maid, but I want to talk to her alone for a while if you don’t mind.”
Brother Tuck gave them a quick glance and a grave nod, and, shuffling to the door, took himself off.