In a flash Baron Maldung observed this misadventure and quick as lightning leapt upon the offending thorn-bush and began hacking at it with a short sharp little war-axe which he unhooked from his belt. Lady Lilt, who had been tenderly stroking the deformity on the neck of Chieron, a deformity that to the eyes of Spardo seemed growing larger and more like a human head with every touch the lady gave it, now sprang to the side of her lord, and first with one bare arm and then with the other, though both arms were soon bleeding as the thorn-bush defended itself, held up the thing’s branches towards the slashing fury of Maldung’s war-axe.
The small bush was soon level with the ground; but the insanity of life-hatred in Maldung seemed to increase moment by moment with each advance in the demolition of those crumpled, twisted, wrinkled, broken little twigs, and, as can be imagined, each little drop of perspiration from the white arms that were acting like assistant executioners added to the man’s frenzy.
And it was at this moment, just when the now quite horizontal stream of afternoon sunlight had turned that small square of green grass into a radiant dance-lawn, that Spardo noticed that on the very edge of the reedy swamp there grew an immensely old oak-tree by the side of a small mound, and that upon this mound a very white full-grown lamb was bleating piteously. But all eyes, including Spardo’s, were now concentrated upon the exquisitely lovely and magnetically provocative daughter of the house, who now came forth to play her part in her parents’ battle with this sub-demonic vegetation.
Her part just now seemed to be the pretence that she had rushed forth from the hands of her tirewomen, in such haste to join the fight against these appalling monsters who had invaded this innocent world of noble animals, that she had been too hurried to remember to put all her clothes on. Her haste was, however, as even Spardo could see, attended by an exquisite delicacy of choice as to just where the effect of not being fully dressed would be maddeningly tantalizing, and indeed, not only seductive, but what you might call ravishing.
And they all could see that to the human nerves of the good Baron Boncor such provocation was unendurable. In fact all that that good-natured warrior found gall enough to do under such exceptional tension was to take a dignified and simple farewell of Bonaventura and to give Spardo a definite invitation.
“Don’t you forget, Master Spardo, that you’ll always be welcome at Gone Castle, whenever your wanderings bring you our way!”
And then, not without some difficulty — for Basileus was showing signs in a manner not quite seemly in so warlike a steed, of being unduly attracted to Cheiron’s deformity — Baron Boncor turned his horse clear round and urged him into a rather shy and not wholly polite retreat.
But to retreat from Lost Towers, when once you had discovered it, was more difficult than the discovery. Lady Lilt lifted one long white arm to direct her husband’s attention to this retirement of their chief antagonist; and with her other arm she groped for the bow and quiver hanging over the shoulder of Baron Maldung. This small bow, with its arrow already notched against its extended string she thrust into Maldung’s hands. “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!” she hissed. And when the Baron of Lost Towers released the string and the feathered shaft pierced the flesh of Boncor’s right shoulder and remained there quivering, the blood that dripped in big drops upon the mane of Basileus was a much brighter red than the red-brown of the Lost Towers retinue.
But, though the blood was bright enough, the hand which held the bridle-reins was reduced to helpless impotence. But Basileus leaped forward and at a gallop now; nor was there any sign before they disappeared of the Baron falling from the horse’s back. It was then and only then, that Lady Lilt turned to lead their visitors past the still half-naked Lilith into the interior of Lost Towers.
IX LOST TOWERS
The crowd of attendants, in their rich red-brown attire, seemed suddenly stricken with a weird sort of lethargy, and indeed displayed a tendency to drift and drift and drift without any purpose. But no aimless drifting disturbed the imperious though comical figure of Maldung, now busy at a job which absolutely absorbed him. This was nothing less, as Bonaventura quickly had an opportunity of realizing, than directing the covering with suitable colour of the carved mantles in the entrance-hall of Lost Towers of certain imperial Roman heads. These had been selected by the despotic Maldung — at least as far as Bonaventura was able to realize — purely for the sake of the devilish obsessions which possessed them.
But past this avenue of diabolical physiognomies the now thoroughly agitated General of the Franciscan Friars felt he had to go, if the obsequious salutation of Baron Maldung and the engaging gestures of Lady Lilt implied that at any rate tonight, whatever happened in the future, and he did begin to feel a little doubtful about converting these people, he was at least sure of a savoury supper and a comfortable bed.
It had been a comfort to him that the murderous arrow which he had seen lodged in the shoulder of Boncor hadn’t brought that worthy man down: and what he must do now was to make it clear that his stately strides towards the portal of Lost Towers were not accelerated by the sight of the provocative figure of the daughter of the house, just perceptible beyond the wicked and desperately unhappy visage of Tiberius Caesar, sated with his sadistic orgies, with his sub-human obsessions, with his super-human atrocities, and looking now as if scooped out, gouged out, thunder-blasted out, after years of petrifaction from the substance of an internal rock.
Lilith was still playing her perpetual game; and it was revealed to Lady Lilt, and not wholly concealed even from our friend Spardo, that the present object of the girl’s felonious wiles was none other than the saintly personage, armoured in the chastity of grey cloth, wrapped in the chastity of grey vapourings, fortified in the chastity of grey theocracy, cramped in the chastity of grey idealism, who was now approaching the entrance to Lost Towers between the door-post on the left and the profile of Tiberius Caesar on the right.
More momentous to Lady Lilt than the galvanic though invisible cord, that was stretched so taut between the flitting and wavering adumbrations of her daughter’s milk-white thighs and the furtive attention of Bonaventura, was a parallel psychic cord that she now caught sight of, and by no means for the first time, between those same exposed whitenesses and the eyes of the girl’s father.
Aye, but O! what Spardo would have given, possibly even the remaining golden coin he had robbed him of, to know exactly what this Man in grey, this special pet of St. Francis, was thinking just then! Would the fellow have the gall to do what everybody else was far too scared to think of doing? Would he be brave enough actually to enter Lost Towers?
He himself felt glad enough to give Cheiron’s bridle a gentle twist and to turn the head of the half-human animal due south — that is to say, in the direction taken by that rider upon Basileus who now rode with an arrow in his shoulder. Nobody was interested enough, either in Spardo or his deformed steed, to follow their retreat; but had anyone done so, they would have been absolutely astonished at the speed with which Cheiron could move at such a crisis.