“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:
“If you’re only good,
When you feel your heart prick,
In the depths of the wood
You will hear a Tick-Tick.
If you’re only bad,
When you feel your heart burst,
You’ll go howling mad
And take best for worst!
With the end of your rod
Mix honey and gall,
So that neither God
Nor the Devil gets all!
A drop of the worst
Is the way to the best:
Let the Devil take the first:
And let God have the rest!”
Bob Talirag could see that to the Baron of Cone this blasphemous jingle was by no means unpleasing; but the news brought by Auntie Moll, when the old lady returned from the interior of Bumset, was so startling that it drove away all other impressions.
It appeared that Albert the Great of Cologne had spent the night with Friar Bacon, and then, before any one in the Priory save Brother Tuck, who was too drunk to know his head from his tail, was awake, had carried the Friar off with him, no one knew whither. Bob Talirag’s aunt was pretty certain that it was to the camp of the King’s Men from London that the two of them had gone, but she wouldn’t swear to this.
“Well, Mistress,” said Boncor, “that’s where we must go! And please accept this small token of our gratitude for your information.”
Saying this he must have handed her a golden coin; for the final impression Bob Talirag had of his Aunt Moll was of her supporting Lay-Brother Tuck, bed-clothes and all, with one arm, as they went in under the curved archway, while with the other she shook her clenched fist, containing the coin she had received, in an ecstasy of exultation.
XXII THE ORACLE