Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Give me a cup of wine, Giovanni.”

  “The red?”

  “No. The Orvieto. Red wine in the middle of a hot day like this would boil a man’s brains.”

  He picked up the wine cup which Giovanni filled and was about to empty it when he remembered himself, felt in the small purse attached to his belt, and then replaced the wine on the counter.

  “I have no money with me,” he said. “I cannot take the wine.”

  “Mother of Heaven!” exclaimed Giovanni. “Take the wine! Take the shop along with it, if you wish! Do you think I am such a fool that I cannot trust you and my master, Signore Falcone?”

  “I have left his house,” said Tizzo, lifting his head suddenly. “And you may as well know that I’m not returning to it. The noble Messer Luigi now has nothing to do with my comings and goings — or the state of my purse!”

  He flushed a little as he said this, and saw his words strike a silence through the room. Some of the men began to leer with a wide, open-mouthed joy. Others seemed turned to stone with astonishment. But on the whole it was plain that they were pleased. Even Giovanni grinned suddenly but tried to cover his smile by thrusting out the cup of wine.

  “Here! Take this!” he said. “You have been a good patron. This is a small gift but it comes from my heart.”

  “Thank you, Giovanni,” said Tizzo. “But charity would poison that wine for me. Go tell the Englishman that I have come to try for the place.”

  “You?” cried Giovanni. “To become a servant?”

  “I’ve been a master,” said Tizzo, “and therefore I ought to make a good servant. Tell the Englishman that I am here.”

  “There is no use in that,” said Giovanni. “The truth is that he rails at lads with red hair. You know that Marco, the son of the charcoal burner? He threw a stool at the head of Marco and drove him out of the room; and he began a tremendous cursing when he saw that fine fellow, Guido, simply because his hair was red, also.”

  “Is the Englishman this way?” asked Tizzo. “I’ll go in and announce myself!”

  Before he could be stopped, he had stepped straight back into the rear room which was the kitchen, and by far the largest chamber in the tavern. At the fire, the cook was turning a spit loaded with small birds and larding them anxiously. A steam of cookery mingled with smoke through the rafters of the room; and at a table near the window sat the Englishman.

  Tizzo, looking at him, felt as though he had crossed swords with a master in the mere exchange of glances. He saw a tall man, dressed gaily enough to make a court figure. His short jacket was so belted around the waist that the skirts of the blue stuff flared out; his hose was plum colored, his shirtsleeves — those of the jacket stopped at the elbow — were red, and his jacket was laced with yellow. But this young and violent clashing of colors was of no importance. What mattered were the powerful shoulders, the deep chest, and the iron-gray hair of the stranger. In spite of the gray he could not have been much past forty; his look was half cruel, half carelessly wild. Just now he was pointing with the half consumed leg of a roast chicken toward the spit and warning the cook not to let the tidbits come too close to the flame. He broke off these orders to glance at Tizzo.

  “Sir,” said Tizzo, “are you Henry, baron of Melrose?”

  “I am,” answered the baron. “And who are you, my friend?”

  “You have sent out word,” said Tizzo, “that you want to find in this village a servant twenty-two years old and able to use a sword. I have come to ask for the place.”

  “You?” murmured the baron, surveying the fine clothes of Tizzo with a quick glance.

  “I have come to ask for the place,” said Tizzo.

  “Well, you have asked,” said the baron.

  He began to eat the roast chicken again as though he had finished the interview.

  “And what is my answer?” asked Tizzo.

  “Redheads are all fools,” said the baron. “In a time of trouble they run the wrong way. They have their brains in their feet. Get out!”

  Tizzo began to laugh. He was helpless to keep back the musical flowing of his mirth, and yet he was far from being amused. The Englishman stared at him.

  “I came to serve you for pay,” said Tizzo. “But I’ll remain to slice off your ears for no reward at all. Just for the pleasure, my lord.”

  My lord, still staring, pushed back the bench on which he was sitting and started up. He caught a three-legged stool in a powerful hand.

  “Get out!” shouted the baron. “Get out or I’ll brain you — if there are any brains in a redheaded fool.”

  The sword of Tizzo came out of its sheath. It made a sound like the spitting of a cat.

  “If you throw the stool,” he said, “I’ll cut your throat as well as your ears.”

  And he began to laugh once more. The sound of this laughter seemed to enchant the Englishman.

  “Can it be?” he said. “Is this the truth?”

  He cast the stool suddenly to one side and, leaning, drew his own sword from the belt and scabbard that lay nearby.

  “My lords — my masters—” stammered the cook.

  “Look, Tonio,” said Tizzo. “You have carved a good deal for other people. Why don’t you stand quietly and watch them carving for themselves?”

  “And why not?” asked Tonio, blinking and nodding suddenly. He opened his mouth and swallowed not air but a delightful idea. “I suppose the blood of gentlemen will scrub off the floor as easily as the blood of chickens or red beef. So lay on and I’ll cheer you.”

  “What is your name?” asked the baron.

  “Tizzo.”

  “They call you the Firebrand, do they? But what is your real name?”

  “If you get any more answers from me, you’ll have to earn them,” said Tizzo. “Tonio, bolt the doors!”

  The cook, his eyes gleaming, ran in haste to bar the doors leading to the guest room and also to the rear yard of the tavern. Then he climbed up and sat on a stool which he placed on a table. He clapped his hands together and called out: “Begin, masters! Begin, gentlemen! Begin, my lords! My God, what a happiness it is! I have sweated to entertain the gentry and now they sweat to entertain me!”

  “It will end as soon as it begins,” said the Englishman, grinning suddenly at the joy of the cook. “But — I haven’t any real pleasure in drawing your blood, Tizzo. I have a pair of blunted swords; and I’d as soon beat you with the dull edge of one of them.”

  “My lord,” said Tizzo, “I am not a miser. I’ll give my blood as freely as any tapster ever gave wine — if you are man enough to draw it!”

  The Englishman, narrowing his eyes, drew a dagger to fill his left hand. “Ready, then,” he said. “Where is your buckler or dagger or whatever you will in your left hand?”

  “My sword is enough,” said Tizzo. “Come on!”

  And he fairly ran at the baron. The other, unwilling to have an advantage, instantly threw the dagger away; the sword blades clashed together, and by the first touch Tizzo knew he was engaged with a master.

  He was accustomed to the beautifully precise, finished swordsmanship of Luigi Falcone, formed in the finest schools of Italy and Spain; he knew the rigid guards and heavy counters and strong attacks of Falcone; but in the Englishman he seemed to be confronting all the schools of fencing in the world. His own fencing was a marvel of delicacy of touch and he counted inches of safety where other men wanted to have feet; but the Englishman had almost as fine a hand and eye as his own, with that same subtlety in the engagement of the sword blade, as though the steel were possessed of the nerves and wisdom of the naked hand.

  Moreover, the Baron Melrose was swift in all his movements, with a stride like the leap of a panther; and yet he seemed slow and clumsy compared with the lightning craft of Tizzo. The whole room was aflash and aglitter with the swordplay. The noise of the stamping and the crashing of steel caused Giovanni and others to beat on the door; but the cook bellowed out that there was a game here staged for his own
entertainment, only. The cook, in an ecstasy, stood up on his table and shouted applause. With his fat hand he carved and thrust at the empty air. He grunted and puffed in sympathy with the failing strength of the Englishman — who now was coming to a stand, turning warily to meet the constant attacks of Tizzo; and again the cook was pretending to laugh like Tizzo himself as that youth like a dance of wildfire flashed here and there.

  And then, feinting for the head but changing for the body suddenly, Tizzo drove the point of his sword fairly home against the target. The keen blade should have riven right through the body of Melrose. Instead, by the grace of the finest chance, it lodged against the broad, heavy buckle of his belt. Even so, the force of the lunge was enough to make the big man grunt and bend over.

  But instead of retreating after this terrible instant of danger, he rushed out in a furious attack.

  “Now! Now! Now!” he kept crying.

  With edge and point he showered death at Tizzo, but all those bright flashes were touched away and seemed to glide like rain from a rock around the head and body of Tizzo. And still he was laughing, breathlessly, joyfully, as though he loved this danger more than wine.

  “Protect yourself, Tizzo!” cried the cook. “Well done! Well moved, cat; well charged, lion! But now, now—”

  For Tizzo was meeting the furious attack with an even more furious countermovement; and the Englishman gave slowly back before it.

  “Now, Englishman — now, Tizzo!” shouted the cook. “Well struck! Well done! Oh, God, I am the happiest cook in the world! Ha—”

  He shouted at this moment because the combat had ended suddenly. The Englishman, hard-pressed, with a desperate blue gleam in his eyes — very like the same flame-blue which was in the eyes of Tizzo — made at last a strange upward stroke which looked clumsy because it was unorthodox; but it was delivered with the speed of a cat’s paw and it was, at the same instant, a parry, and a counterthrust. It knocked the weapon of Tizzo away and, for a hundredth part of a second, the point of the baron was directly in front of Tizzo’s breast.

  But the thrust did not drive home.

  Tizzo, leaping away on guard, was ready to continue the fight; but then, by degrees, he realized what had happened.

  “You could have cut my throat!” he said.

  And he lowered his weapon and stood panting, leaning on the hilt of his sword.

  “I would give,” said Tizzo, “ten years of my life to learn that stroke.”

  The baron tossed his own blade away. It fell with a crash on the table. And now he held out his right hand.

  “That stroke,” said he, “is worth ten years of any life — but I was almost a dead man half a dozen times before I had a chance to use it! Give me your hand, Tizzo. You are not my servant, but if you choose to ride with me, you are my friend!”

  Tizzo gripped the hand. The grasp that clutched his fingers was like hard iron.

  “But,” said the baron, “you have only come here as a jest — you are the son of a gentleman. Not my service — not even my friendship is what you desire. It was only to measure my sword that you came, and by the Lord, you’ve done it. Except for the trick, I was a beaten man. And — listen to me — I have faced Turkish scimitars and the wild Hungarian sabers. I have met the stamping, prancing Spaniards who make fencing a philosophy, and the quick little Frenchmen, and cursing Teutons — but I’ve never faced your master. In what school did you learn? Sit down! Take wine with me! Cook, unbolt the door and give wine to everyone in the shop. Broach a keg. Set it out in the street. Let the village drink itself red and drunk. Do you hear?

  “Put all your sausages and bread and cheese on the tables in the taproom. If there is any music to be found in this place, let it play. I shall pay for everything with a glad heart and a happy hand, because today I have found a man!”

  The cook, unbarring the door, began to shout orders; uproar commenced to spread through the little town; presently all the air was sour with the smell of the good red wine of the last vintage. But young Tizzo sat at the table with the baron hearing nothing, tasting nothing, for all his soul was staring into the future as he heard the big man speak.

  CHAPTER 3

  THEY HAD NOT been long at the table when a strange little path of silence cut through the increasing uproar of the taproom, and tall Luigi Falcone came striding into the kitchen. When he saw his protégé, he threw up a hand in happy salutation.

  “Now I have found you, Tizzo!” he said. “My dear son, come home with me. Yes, and bring your friend with you. I read your message, and I’ve been the unhappiest man in Italy.”

  Tizzo introduced the two; they bowed to one another gravely. There was a great contrast between the immense dignity, the thoughtful and cultured face of Falcone, and the half handsome, half wild look of this man out of the savage North.

  “It would be a happiness,” said the Englishman, “to go anywhere with my new friend, Tizzo. But this moment I am leaving the village. I must continue a journey. And we have been agreeing to make the trip together.”

  Falcone sighed and shook his head.

  “Tizzo cannot go,” he said. “All that his heart desires waits for him here — Tizzo, you cannot turn your back on it.”

  Tizzo stood buried in silence which seemed to alarm Falcone, for he begged Melrose to excuse him and stepped aside for a moment with the younger man.

  “It is always true,” said Falcone. “We never know our happiness until it is endangered. When I found that you had gone, the house was empty. I read your letter and thought I found your honest heart in it. Tizzo, you came to me as a servant; you became my protégé; now go back with me and be my son. I mean it. There are no blood relations who stand close to me. I have far more wealth than I have ever showed to you. It is not with money that I wish to tempt you, Tizzo. If I thought you could be bought, I would despise and disown you. But I have kept you too closely to your books. Even Greek should be a servant and not a master when a youth has reached a certain age. And now when you return — I have been painting this picture while I hunted for you — you will enter a new life. Yonder is Perugia. I have friends in that city who will welcome you. You shall have your journeys to Rome to see the great life there. You shall enter the world as a gentleman should do.”

  Tizzo had started to break out into grateful speech, when the Englishman said, calmly but loudly, “My friends, I have heard what Messer Luigi has to say. It is my right to be heard also.”

  “My lord,” said Falcone, “I have a right of many years over this young gentleman.”

  “Messer Luigi,” said the Englishman, “I have a still greater right.”

  “A greater right?” exclaimed Falcone.

  “We have pledged our right hands together,” said the baron.

  “A handshake—” began Falcone.

  “In my country,” answered the Englishman, “it is as binding as a holy oath sworn on a fragment of the true cross. We have pledged ourselves to one another; and he owes me ten years of his life.”

  “In the name of God,” said Falcone, “how could this be? What have you seen in such a complete stranger, Tizzo?”

  “I have seen—” said Tizzo. He paused and added: “I have seen the way down a beautiful road — by the light of his sword.”

  “But this means nothing,” said Falcone. “These are only words. Have you given a solemn promise?”

  “I have given a solemn promise,” said Tizzo, glancing down at his right hand.

  “I shall release you from it,” said the baron suddenly.

  “Ha!” said Falcone. “That is a very gentle offer. Do you hear, Tizzo?”

  “I release him from it,” said the Englishman, “but still I have something to offer him. Messer Luigi, it happens that I also am a man without a son who bears my name. Like you, I understand certain things about loneliness. We do not need to talk about this any more.

  “But I should like to match what I have to offer against what you propose to give him.”

  “Ah?”
said Falcone. “Let us hear.”

  “You offer him,” said the Englishman, “an old affection, wealth, an excellent name, a great house, many powerful friends. Am I right?”

  “I offer him all of those things,” agreed the Italian.

  “As for me,” said the baron, “the home of my fathers is a blackened heap of stones; my kin and my friends are dead at the hands of our enemies in my country; my wealth is the gold that I carry in this purse and the sword in my scabbard.”

  “Well?” asked Falcone.

  “In spite of that,” said the Englishman, “I have something to offer — to a redheaded man.”

  Tizzo started a little and glanced sharply at the baron.

  Melrose went on: “I offer you, Tizzo, danger, battle, suspicion, confusion, wild riding, uneasy nights — and a certain trick with the sword. I offer that. Is it enough?”

  Falcone smiled. “Well said!” he answered. “You have a great heart, my lord, and you know something of the matters that make the blood of a young man warmer. But — what is your answer, Tizzo?”

  Tizzo, turning slowly from the Englishman to Falcone, looked him fairly in the eye.

  He said: “Signore, I shall keep you in my heart as a father. But this man is my master, and I must follow him!”

  CHAPTER 4

  THEY HAD A day, said the baron, to get to a certain crossroads and they spent much of the next morning finding an excellent horse and some armor for Tizzo. Speed, said the baron, rather than hard fighting was apt to be the greatest requisite in the work that lay before them, therefore he had fitted Tizzo only with a good steel breastplate and a cap of the finest steel also which fitted on under the flow of his big hat. He carried, furthermore, a short, straight dagger which could be of value in hand to hand encounters and whose thin blade could be driven home through the bars of a visor or the eyeholes. He had taken, also, of his own choice, a short-handled woodsman’s ax. This amazed the Englishman. He tried it himself, but the broad blade unbalanced his grasp.

  “How can you handle a weight like that, Tizzo?” he asked. “You lack the shoulder and the hand to manage it.”