Suddenly with a choking gasp he let his hands sink down till his weapon, held to his wrist by a strap, trailed in the dust. At the same time an expression of incredible relief relaxed his features and clouded with a misty haze his incredibly black eyes. Both Peleg and Lilith surveyed him with astonishment, an astonishment that was increased when they heard him talking to himself, and doing so in English though with a strong French accent.
“Thank the Devil he’ll be dead soon now! And thank the Devil that he can put so much power into his voice that even in the midst of this unspeakable way they’re murdering him a lot of the pain goes into his screams. O thanks be to the Devil! He’s quite dead now!”
Pierre of Maricourt became silent at that point, and leant so heavily on his scabbarded weapon that it sank several inches into the marshy ground upon which, at the sight of the gleaming arms of those distant men, they had all three paused.
“What is it Sieur de Maricourt?” enquired Lilith. “Nobody is screaming here. Nobody is being killed here. What is it, Maitre Pierre?”
The reply came slowly but quite clearly, each word of it being like an enormous gobbet of human flesh, steaming with red foam and dripping with hot blood.
“No! no! this thing is not happening now. It’s going to happen! It — is — all — in — the — future. I — am—making it — happen. It’s going to happen to the son of — never mind that! — who is being tortured to death in a castle whose name is — whose name begins with B. But he’s dead now; and with his screams went a lot of his pain — into the air! My little pretty one and I have done it … the prince of … of … of … of … But never mind that! But mark you … it has … it has … it has to happen! Little Pretty and I have done it already! All the rest can be left to the huge wave of natural necessity that carries us all before it. But there are certain”—and here even Lilith, the daughter of Baron Maldung of Lost Towers, was startled by the look of concentrated, merciless, indeed you might say insane ferocity in the two enormous black eyes, now almost become one, above the traveller’s raptorial beak—“but there are certain turnpike valleys, in the future lives of us all,” he went on, “in which things can be made to happen to us, either as a blessing or as a curse, by concentrated will supported by concentrated prayer addressed to Heaven or — mark you! — to Helclass="underline" certain turnpike valleys I say that this great rushing universal stream of Necessity lacks the power to touch.
“These turnpikes in our lives are so indurated, so scooped and gouged out, so chiselled and indented, so engraved, so branded by the intense will and the intense prayer of our worst enemy or our best friend, that this frantic hate or this desperate love works those effects that our excitable doctors of divinity, like this confounded Cologne potentate, call miracles.
“And in a popular sense they are miracles. But we must remember that the mass of people are so stupid, yes! so stupid and dull-witted and silly, that anything achieved by exceptional will-power or exceptional energy appears miraculous. And these accursed ecclesiastics are worse than the mob; for they are at bottom as stupid as the mob, but they have learnt the tricks of their trade and know how to appear both learned and clever.”
Peleg and Lilith exchanged amused glances at this point; for it had become clear to them that this student of magnetism had already become, not only a professor, but a professor whose contempt for other professors surpassed his contempt for common humanity. His companions’ thoughts must somehow have reached him, but instead of quelling his professorial desire to lecture, not so much to teach others as to get the thrill of haranguing others, these thoughts of theirs drove him on. For human beings are only surpassed in their quickness of emotional reaction to unspoken thoughts by one other animal on earth; namely by dogs; but unlike the reactions of dogs, our reactions are generally contradictory. This is proved by the way Petrus acted now.
He straightened his rounded shoulders and thin legs, and hurriedly clambered up upon a broad flat stone. Mounted on this natural rostrum he stretched out his black-sheathed sword-dagger towards the soldiers, who were now definitely marching in their direction, and cried in a shrill voice:
“And these military people too! What do any of them know of the real nature of the necessities of the country, or of the king, or of the nation? All they know is how to obey their trumpets and bugles. After the vulgar herd, and after the grotesque array of half-doting, ridiculously pontifical teachers, the most absurd body of men to be found in our crazy world are soldiers — yes! every kind of soldiers, soldiers of Kings, soldiers of Queens, soldiers of Regents, soldiers of sovereign realms who have only Dictators!
“You tell me those soldiers are English soldiers. Well, I can only tell you that I feel unutterable contempt for every soldier serving in that force and obeying a kindly King who is weak and dying, and only longing to obey a King who is strong, hard, and brutal and loves fighting for fighting’s sake. I tell you there’s not one single one of all these men now marching in their damned orderly ranks towards us, who has the intelligence of an ordinary dog, not one single one!”
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.