The Brazen Head (28 page)

The demonic delight, which radiated in the train of these thoughts through the whole being of Master Peter, was so deliciously transporting that it carried him away altogether from his material position at that moment, and bore him aloft, as if in a chariot of air and fire, a chariot that flew upward upon the waving of two wings, one of which might have been Space and the other Time, for both together seemed to acquire a mysterious force that soon carried their voyager into a sleep, if sleep it were, where he found himself in reality, if reality it were, beyond all description by the words the human race has hitherto used.

Raymond de Laon was not given to moods of special exultation or to moods of special depression. He possessed an extremely well-balanced nature. He had been saved from quarrels with parents by having been made an orphan at an early age; and he was lucky now in having found a betrothed who exactly suited him. He took the shocks and accidents and
misadventures
of life with a calm, and yet, in a certain way, with an exultant commonsense, that was as much a support to
Lil-Umbra
as it was an authentic advantage to himself in his struggle with life. He had certainly done well in his present mission; for here by his side was none other than Albertus Magnus. At this moment with his band of armed retainers, who had been rather unwillingly provided by the authorities of Cone Castle to support him on this daring embassy, he had just reached the entrance to the convent where Ghosta was employed, and they were all now about to pass, while the Sun was at his hottest on that June day, the mysterious cave in the grove of oaks and willows, which Peleg had been assured was the abode of that tinker from Wales about whom the wildest rumours were current.

It was said for instance that he was helped in his work as a travelling tinker by several women from different parts of the country, all of whom had sold their souls to the Devil.

It was at this point that Raymond began rather nervously explaining to the great teacher from Cologne that they would be soon arriving at the main gate of the Fortress of Roque; and he went on to indicate more specifically, what he had already mentioned shyly to him before, namely that Lady Val, who was expecting him as her guest that night, was the mother
of the young lady to whom he himself was betrothed, and was the wife of the most formidable boar-hunter and wolf-slayer in all that portion of England. Nor did he hesitate, though even more diffidently, to explain that they were all so weary of the violent personal quarrels between these two belligerent Franciscans, Friar Bacon and Bonaventura that they welcomed the appearance among them of a renowned Dominican whose presence alone would be sufficient to break up these vindictive quarrels.

The whole party paused at this point at the request of the visitor, to enable him to retire behind a clump of willows with a view to relieving himself. When he returned he kept them standing for a moment above the leafy declivity
containing
the entrance to this cave of the tinker’s witch-wives, while he begged Raymond de Laon to tell him as definitely as he could what his own private and personal reaction was in regard to the quarrel between these famous men.

He had no sooner asked this question and Raymond was frowning and biting his lips and searching his mind for an adequate answer, when they all heard quite distinctly, borne up upon the wind from the depths of the leafy gully beneath them a wild husky voice singing a ditty which clearly was, whether they were able to follow all its crazy words or not, a blasphemous defiance of Providence above, of the Church below, and of all that mankind from generation to generation has been taught to hold sacred.

The day was so hot and the sky above was so blue, that the effect of this howl of defiance to everything they had all been accustomed from infancy to venerate was enhanced by the complete absence at that spot of any work of men’s hands, whether of wood or stone. It was like a voice from the depths of the earth replying to a voice from uttermost space. It seemed to be addressed to the formless and shapeless rocks of granite and basalt that lay around this small group of travellers, and it seemed to be appealing desperately to earth, air, and water, not to allow the sun-rays that were so lifegiving to all, to fool them by their warmth.

It was the sort of defiance such as the ghost of a baby of a million years ago, a baby or “baban” whose skull, “penglog”, had been discovered in the grave of an antediluvian giant,
“gawr”, might have uttered to all oracles and prophets and announcers of revelations and to all deities and pantheons of deities who were already gathering in the mists of the future to claim human worship.

The effect upon that small company, together with Raymond their leader and Albertus Magnus their visitor, of this weird ditty, a ditty followed by dead silence, save for the sound of the wind in the trees about them and the far-off cry of a buzzard high in the air above them, would have been for anyone
concerned
with the results of unexpected shocks upon human nerves, of no small interest.

It had an effect however that no chronicler, however sagacious, could possibly have foreseen. Every single one of those six armed men, as well as their leader and his visitor, behaved exactly in the same way. They all were so startled and shocked that they simply dared not comment on what they had heard. Every single one of them pretended—whether to himself as well as to the others who could tell?—that he had heard nothing!

The shock of what they
had
heard, for all this pretence, followed them, all the same, through the burning heat of this mid-day in June, as they pressed on, leaving the stone circle to their left, and that lonely stone seat where Lil-Umbra, on an early February morning, had asked Peleg such searching questions, on their right, till they approached, not the small postern this time, for they were too large a party, and it was too cogent an occasion, to use that entrance, but the main gate of the Fortress.

As soon as Raymond told him they were approaching their journey’s end, Albertus brought their march to a halt and put to his young guide the direct question, which the voice of that cave-devil had for the time postponed.

“And what,” he asked him, “is your own private attitude to these disputes?”

The Cone Castle men, who were already alert, now crowded quite close to them, and it became clear to Raymond that they felt unusually concerned. And indeed there was
unquestionably
something about Albertus Magnus that attracted the attention of intelligent persons wherever he went. He had already held for a couple of years an important bishopric in Germany, but this he had recently resigned together with all the influence and wealth that a bishopric gives in order to devote himself solely and entirely to the metaphysical and botanical and entomological studies that were the main interest of his days upon earth.

This absorption in the mysterious life of all the creatures of Nature and in the whole problem of mind and matter, since it was combined with a lively interest in men and women for themselves, threw a very singular aura round him, an aura which, though it rendered him separate and aloof, endowed his presence with the peculiar attraction which certain rare and evasive animals and birds and insects possess.

And not only was Albertus Magnus an unusual, indeed we might say a unique person in himself, but the particular line of philosophical investigation into which he threw his whole nature linked itself with metaphysical thoroughness to his wide natural sympathy. He himself described it as finding the
Universal
“before” all, “in” all, and “after” all. He was not only a student of plants, trees, flowers, and insects, but of human
beings also; and he sought to find this
Universal
of his in all its three stages of “before”, “in”, and “after”, in every living thing he studied.

In appearance Albert of Cologne was curiously impressive. He was of medium height but very powerfully built. He always wore, day and night—for it was a weakness of his to be
physically
sensitive to catching cold, and it was a conviction of his that where he was especially menaced by this affliction was through his head—a curiously shaped white cap that had a remote affinity to an academic cap, and also to the metallic cap of a knight in armour, but was first suggested to him by the singular night-turban worn by an Arabian student of Aristotle with whom he had shared a lodging in early days in Swabia.

But the chief advantage of this ubiquitous protection against colds was that it was made of such soft stuff that any kind of ceremonial head-gear, from a pontifical mitre to a more secular token of authority, could be squeezed over it.

The head of Albert of Cologne was if anything not larger, but smaller, than most human heads. He had a long straight nose with wide sensitive nostrils. He had small ears close to his skull, extremely full and very attractively curved lips, a large mouth that was often open and even had a tendency to dribble, an unaggressive and retreating chin and a pair of small hazel eyes under bushy grey eyebrows, eyes that searched affectionately and longingly into every person and thing he looked at, as if seeking to trace “within” this person or thing the
Universal
in which he believed, the Universal that had been “before” it and would be “after” it. The truth was he was always aware of the contrast between the touchingly pathetic brittleness, feebleness, silliness and conceitedness of the particular small creature he was regarding and the
enormous
life-force which brought it to birth.

“What I would like to be able to tell you, Doctor,” replied Raymond hesitatingly, fully aware that his Cone Castle friends were glancing quickly from one to another as they followed his words, “would be that I have steadily tried hard, ever since I realized the bewildering complexity of all these ultimate problems, to keep my mind entirely open and my personal conclusions undecided and hanging in the balance. But such is the weakness and such is the pride of human nature, or at
any rate, great Doctor, of my nature, that I cannot resist
bringing
into the workings of my will and of my faith in myself all manner of obstinate prejudices and too-quickly reached
conclusions
.”

Albert of Cologne made a quick little inclination of his head, upon which for this journey through the forest of Wessex, he wore above his white skull-cap, a traveller’s variant of a Dominican cowl.

“Please give me, my dear young guide, and let me tell you I shall certainly congratulate your future parents-in-law on having secured for their daughter such a thoughtful and resourceful bridegroom, some general notion of these fixed ideas of yours before we have to separate.”

“Well, master; to confess the truth,” and Raymond de Laon looked nervously round him at a receding glade of
sun-illumined
bluebells in one direction, and at several sumptuous bunches of horse-chestnut blossoms in another direction, and finally at the illimitable gulf, of that early June’s noon-deep, noon-blue infinity above them, and then, with a quiver of unquestioned sincerity in his voice: “What I feel myself, great master,” he said, “is that it’s wrong for the church to forbid Friar Bacon to work at his self-chosen inventions. And I also feel that it’s wrong, and worse than wrong, in fact I think it is devilishly wicked in this Bonaventura, who by some pious people among us is regarded as a saint, and who at one time was the Pope’s Legate, to start the rumour”—here the young man’s voice became broken by a sound in his throat that was clearly a choked-down sob—“that my pure-minded young betrothed and her serious-minded elder-brother Tilton have committed the shocking sin of incest.”

His voice rose stronger at this point. “This man
Bonaventura
knows absolutely nothing of us people in the west of England. He knows nothing of the childlike and innocent character of the young man and young girl he is attacking in this gross manner. And further, great master, you must understand that he actually went so far as to urge on a band of notorious outlaws from a castle in this neighbourhood called Lost Towers whose lord is known far and wide as an enemy of God and man, but whom this Bonaventura, for his own secret ends, pretends to have converted, to attack Friar Bacon.
It was this rabble who under his direction smashed a shrine which my betrothed’s brother was building, and were on the point of destroying Friar Bacon’s Brazen Head, if it hadn’t been for——”

Albertus Magnus interrupted him. “You’ve not forgotten I hope, my young friend,” cried the famous teacher, “that it was only your promise that I should be allowed to sleep in the same chamber as this Brazen Head that made me put off my return to Cologne? This particular invention interests me profoundly. To tell you the truth, Raymond de Laon, what I had been hearing from England about the experimental theories concerning physical science originated by your great Robert Grosseteste had led me to aim at something very much on Friar Roger’s lines. It was when they made me a bishop that I had too much work and too much responsibility to be able to go on with such things; and I warrant it was the same with your Grosseteste who must have been both a real scientist and a real saint.

“But I can tell you this, my lad—I can tell you this, my friends—when a thinker gets an appointment all his thinking’s done. We are just idiots if we imagine we can accept
responsible
positions in Church or State and go on thinking just the same. I tell you, my dear lad, I tell you, my excellent friends, the noble words I have already read written by this Friar Bacon have interested me greatly. He knows Aristotle through and through and few scholars have better interpreted the
secretum secretorum
of all matter, I mean the
energeia-akinesis,
or ‘energy without fuss’, that is at the heart of the world.