The Brazen Head Read Online Free PDF

vast reception room.
    While Peleg and Lil-Umbra were watching the Sun advance and the Moon retreat from their nature-made throne of stone, an interesting messenger was being interviewed at the great gate of the Fortress of Roque. This was a devil-may-care soldier of fortune called Spardo, who was a bastard son of Ottocar, King of Bohemia, and who was never tired of boasting of his regal begetting.
    In order to extend his own predatory explorations, which already had carried him to Byzantium and to most of the ports on the northern shores of Africa, this plausible rogue had recently constituted himself a sort of supernumerary guide, amateur factotum, and diplomatic outrider to a European group of courtly travellers, a few of whom were bound for Oxford, but the rest were wealthy pilgrims, anxious to visit the more famous shrines in all parts of these islands.
    Along with the others, however, were a certain number who at the moment were following with fanatical devotion wherever he went, as the same sort of crowd undoubtedly used to follow St. Francis and probably used to follow Jesus, the saintly “general”, as he was appointed to be, of the Order of Franciscan Friars, known to all Europe as Saint Bonaventura. This was the Order that Roger Bacon had rather incautiously joined when his family had completely ruined itself in its service of the King against the Barons; and it was anything but fortunate for him when Bonaventura was made the Head of the Order.
    It had been no other than St. Francis himself who had given to Jean de Fidanza the name of Bonaventura, by which he was known throughout the whole world; and it was Saint Francis who had started him upon his career of notorious sanctity.
    As for this Spardo, he was a tall slender person of about thirty, with a carefully trimmed red beard and large roving blue eyes. He was now holding by the bridle an odd-looking grey horse, which at first sight might have given the impression that it had two heads.
    This surprising effect was due to some organic deformity in the poor creature’s neck, a deformity which excited the curiosity not only of human beings but also of other animals. As this tall, slender, comical-looking Spardo advanced towards the great gates of Roque leading this equally slender grey horse by its bridle, the man’s gaze seemed to be focussed on the horse’s deformity, which the horse seemed to be deliberately covering with a strange self-induced film, and to be doing this with so obstinate a determination that the simple-minded Master Cortex, as he watched the two of them approaching, received the queer impression that the lean beast was desperately struggling to answer the man’s gaze through the deformity at which the man was staring, just as if that repellent excrescence possessed something corresponding to an eye.
    “I have come,” began Spardo, addressing the bewildered gatekeeper, “to enquire whether a special group of noblemen and ladies, who feel a natural reluctance to add themselves to the crowd who are taking advantage of the hospitality of Prior Bog, especially as they will be more than ready beforethey depart to offer as their quota to the doubtless already rich Treasury of the Fortress such pieces of gold and shekels of silver as may fittingly commemorate the occasion, might perhaps be welcomed by this noble and ancient Fortress of Roque and allowed to rest here for a few hours?”
    At this point the man stopped to take breath; and both he and the deformed animal he was leading turned their heads a little, as if to catch upon the air some faint premonition of approaching riders.
    “I can see at once, master,” Spardo went on, “that you’ve got a long experience of life in these high circles and in these difficult times, so that you must forgive me if I don’t stop to explain what might bewilder any ordinary person. But this particular group of travellers, you understand, are on a journey to Oxford and London; and it would be a most