by Max Brand
“At the Sign of the Golden Stag,” said Ugo, beginning to tremble in body and voice as he realized that he had struck upon great news indeed.
“He is yours,” said Astorre to Marozzo. “Go take him and do what you will with him.”
CHAPTER 8
AT THE SIGN of the Golden Stag a man whose face was roughed over with beard to the eyes was talking loudly in the big taproom. He had on a long yellow coat and pointed shoes of red; and he walked back and forth a little through the room, while all eyes followed him. The afternoon had grown so dark with rain that lamps had been lighted in the room and these cast an uncertain and wavering light. Tizzo followed the movements of the tall stranger with interest because he found the voice vaguely familiar, but not the face. He was wondering where he could have seen before that shaggy front; and in the meantime he sipped some of the cool white wine of Orvieto and listened to the stranger’s talk. The beggar, Ugo, surely would soon return.
The man of the yellow coat was a doctor, it appeared, and he was peddling in the taproom some of his cures; for instance— “A powder made of the wing cases of the golden rose chafer, an excellent thing for cases of rheumatism. Let the sick man put four large pinches of this powder into a glass of wine and swallow off the draught when he goes to bed at night. The taste will not be good but what is bad for the belly is good for the bones.” Or again the doctor was saying: “When old men find themselves feeble, their eyes watering, their joints creaking, their breathing short, their sleep long, I have here an excellent remedy. In this packet there is a brown powder and it is no less than the dried gall of an Indian elephant, which carried six generations of the family of a Maharajah on its back for two hundred years. And then it died not of old age but fighting bravely in battle. Now the merit, relish, and the source of an elephant’s long life lies in its gall; and in this powder there is strength to make the old young again, and to make the middle-aged laugh, and to make the young dance on the tips of their toes.”
Continuing his walk and his narration of wonders, the doctor happened to drop one of his many little packages on the floor beside the chair where Tizzo was sitting. And as he leaned to pick up the fallen thing he muttered words which reached Tizzo’s ears only.
“Up, you madman! Away with me. Your face is known in Perugia and every moment you remain here is at the peril of your life.”
The doctor, saying this, straightened again and allowed Tizzo to have a glimpse of flame-blue eyes which he remembered even better than he had remembered the voice.
It was the baron of Melrose who had come into the city of his enemies in this effective disguise. Was he risking his life only for the sake of plucking Tizzo out of the danger? The heart of Tizzo leaped with surprise and a strange pleasure. A moment later he stepped into a small adjoining room which had not yet been lighted. He had been there hardly a moment before the doctor entered behind him. He gripped Tizzo by the arm, exclaiming in a quick, muffled voice: “Go before me through the court and down the street toward the northern gate of the town. There I shall join you.”
“I cannot go, my lord,” said Tizzo. “I must wait here to learn—”
“You must do as I command you,” exclaimed Melrose. “You have given me the pledge of your honor to serve me; we have made a compact and have shaken hands on it.”
“I shall serve out the terms of the contract,” said Tizzo. “I swear that I shall hunt you out tomorrow, but today I have to find the lady.”
“What lady?” asked Melrose.
“That same Tomaso.’”
“You betrayed me, Tizzo,” said the baron, angrily.
“It is true,” answered Tizzo, “and I shall betray you again if you give me the work of harrying poor girls across the country, robbing them from their homes, leaving their people—”
“Hush!” said Melrose. “Tell me — when did you know that Tomaso was a woman?”
“When I grappled with her at the moment she dropped to the ground.”
“Not until then?”
“No.”
“I understand,” said the baron, “and any lad of a good, high spirit might have done exactly as you did, Tomaso turned into a lady in distress and the gallant Tizzo sprang to her rescue — but if I had overtaken you that night — well, let it go. She told you her name?”
“No,” said Tizzo.
“But you came here into Perugia because she herself invited you!”
“I was to find her in Perugia, but I could not hear the name she called to me. The horses drowned it, thundering over a bridge.”
“You came into this big city to hunt for her face? Are you mad, Tizzo?”
“I think I am about to see her,” answered Tizzo. “I was able to describe her—”
“My lad,” said Melrose, “if you try to reach her, you’ll be caught and thrown to wild beasts. She is the Lady—”
But here a voice called from the lighted taproom, loudly: “He was in here. He was seen to enter in here. A young man with blue eyes and red hair. A treacherous murderer; a hired sword of the Oddi. Find him living or find him dead, I have gold in my purse for the lucky man who will oblige me!”
Tizzo, springing to the door, glanced out into the taproom and saw a tall, dark, handsome young man in complete body armor with a steel hat on his head and a sword naked in his hand. Behind him moved a troop of a full dozen armed men. They came clanking through the taproom, looking into every face.
“That’s Mateo Marozzo,” said Melrose, “the same fellow you bumped on the head yesterday. Run for your life, Tizzo. Try from that window which opens on the street; I’ll make an outcry to pretend that you’ve escaped into the court on the other side.”
“My lord,” said Tizzo, “for risking your life to search for me—”
“Be still — away! At the northern gate as fast as you can get there — hurry, Tizzo!”
Tizzo jumped into the casement of the window at the right and looked down into the rainy dimness of the street. One or two people were in sight; and the drop to the ground was a good fifteen feet. He slipped out, and he was hanging by his hands when he heard the loud voice of Melrose shouting inside the room: “This way! A thief! A redheaded thief! He has jumped down into the court—”
There came a trampling rush of armed heels, a muttering of eager voices. And Tizzo loosed his hold and fell. He landed lightly on his feet, pitched forward upon his hands, and then sprang up, unhurt. But from the entrance gate that led into the court of the tavern he heard a voice bawl: “There! That is he Messer Mateo wants. Quick! Quick! There is a golden price on his head!”
It was the old beggar, Ugo, who fairly danced with excited eagerness as he pointed out Tizzo to a number of loiterers about the gate.
The whole process of betrayal was evident now. One glance Tizzo cast up toward the high towers of Perugia, now melting into the blowing, rainy sky, and in his heart he cursed the pride of the town. But they were coming at him from the direction of the gate; and other yelling voices of the hunt issued from the tavern into the open of its court. They would be on the trail in another moment. He turned and ran with all his might, blindly.
It was clumsy work. He had to hold up the scabbard and sword in his left hand to keep it from tripping him; the steel breastplate which he wore under his doublet was a weight to impede him; but he held fairly even with the foremost of the pursuit until he heard the clangor of hoofs on the pavement, and he looked back to see mounted men behind, and one of them in the lead with three flowing plumes in his hat.
That would be Mateo Marozzo, of course!
He could not outrun horses, but he might dodge them for a moment, so he turned sharply to the left down a dark and narrow lane.
It was a winding way, as empty of people as it was of light, and when he turned the first corner he saw that he was trapped, for the foot of the lane was blocked straight across by a great building.
All other doors were blocked except to the right, where two figures in black hoods stood as if on guard, one o
f them constantly ringing a little bell. They made an ominous picture, and inside the open door of the house there was a yawning, a cavernous darkness. But Tizzo sprang straight toward this added moment of safety. In front of him, he saw the dark forms lift and stretch out their arms.
“Halt!” cried one deep voice. “Better to die in the open under a clean sky; death itself is waiting inside this house.”
But Tizzo already had brushed past the restraining hands. He entered the dimness of a long hall with the ringing hoofbeats coming to a pause in front of the entrance to the place. And he heard a long cry from the street that might be triumph, horror — he could not tell what.
A stairway climbed on the left. He went up it on the run toward the greater light that came through the upper casements of the house. And at the landings of the stairway he saw bronze figures covered with the dark green patina of great age. That was sure proof that he had entered a house of the greatest wealth; none other could afford sculpture of the Greeks or of the Romans.
He sprang into an upper hall hung from end to end with magnificent tapestries, but empty of all life. There seemed to be no servants in the great mansion; none except the two grim door-keepers at the entrance. And as he ran past a long table in the hall, he saw that the surface of it was dim with dust.
Through the first door he turned into a chamber with brightly frescoed walls and a number of crystal goblets set out on the table. The glasses were stained but empty. A decanter lay broken on the floor.
He ran on into a bedroom with embroidered hangings over the walls, the windows, the doors. The bed itself was raised on a dais above a floor of wood mosaic; a heavily carved canopy rose above but from it some of the curtains had been torn away. These and the covers of the bed streamed out on the floor as though someone, desperately struggling, had fallen from the bed not long before.
But the dust was deep, everywhere.
A strange, oppressive odor made the air thick to breathe. And a chill of dread passed suddenly through the body of Tizzo, and through his spirit.
He no longer ran, but crossed that room slowly. The doorway on the far side, yawning like a dangerous mouth upon the unknown that lay beyond, made him draw his sword before he would cross the threshold.
He listened for the sound of pursuit, but there was no beating of footfalls on the stairs. He heard no more than a dim whisper through the room, and this came, he saw, from the wind which he had brought with him as he entered and which still made the rich hangings of the apartment sway slightly.
When he had passed the door into the next room he found himself stepping on the skins of leopards. A service of massive silver, now dim under tarnish and dust, stood on a sideboard; and on a central table a huge jewel box lay overturned. Red and green and crystal-bright, the jewels streamed across the table and lay scattered on the floor. Here in the palm of one hand there was wealth to make an entire family rich forever. But the beauty frightened Tizzo more than it excited him.
He remembered what the man had called to him in the street — that within the house was death itself.
He saw a Madonna in a niche at the end of the room, a beautiful carved image, but there was no taper burning beneath it. And then, compelled by a sudden cold horror in his blood, he turned and thought that he was looking into the eyes of death itself.
CHAPTER 9
IT SEEMED TO Tizzo an apparition which had not been in the chamber before; suddenly it appeared as a young man who sat in the depths of a chair near a casement. He was dressed very richly. About his neck shone a golden chain that supported a great jewel. But his hose lay wrinkled over his wasted legs; his neck was shrunk to hardly more than the bigness of a man’s wrist; and his face was a death’s-head in which the eyes were deep caverns of unlighted shadow. Like a death’s-head he grinned, or seemed to grin, at Tizzo. And to crown the horror some great red patches appeared across his forehead and down one side of the face.
Then realization came over Tizzo, and blew through him like the empty howling of a winter wind.
“The plague!” he groaned.
He looked back.
He had crossed many thresholds since he turned in from the street and each one had, in fact, brought him farther into the maw of death.
Far better to have turned and faced the riders in the wet street, dying obscurely but with sweet air in his nostrils. Now he was confined where every breath might be planting the horrible infection deep in his lungs.
He gripped his head with both hands, and he set his teeth to keep back a yell of fear.
“Welcome,” said a husky voice hardly louder than the stillness of thought. “The last of the Bardis of Perugia gives a kind welcome to the last of his guests!”
Such a sickness of spirit troubled Tizzo that he gripped the carved back of a chair and supported himself. He wanted to sink on his knees and implore Heaven for succor.
“I should rise to welcome you,” said young Bardi, “but I lack the strength to do anything except crawl to the bed where my father and my grandfather have died before me. I should offer you wine, but it is consumed. I should offer you food, but there is nothing in the house — except the rats and even those must be a little thin, by this time. But if you can catch one of them, you are welcome.”
Tizzo passed the tip of his tongue across his dry lips. He wanted to turn and flee but a powerful instinct made him walk straight up to the specter in the chair.
“If you come near my breathing, you are probably a dead man,” said the young Bardi.
“If I am to die, I shall die,” said Tizzo. “If I am to live, all the plagues in the world will not touch me.”
“You talk like a brave man, but that is because you are cornered,” declared Bardi. “But you will have this comfort: When I am dead you may throw me into the foulness of the cellars where the rest of the dead are lying; and then for a few days you will be the heir of the house and the master of it.”
Tizzo, forcing himself to step still closer, peered at the red blotches on the forehead and face of the other.
“Those sores are dry,” said Tizzo. “And that means you are recovering from the plague. It is starvation that kills you, my friend.”
“It is as good a way to die as any other,” said Bardi.
“You must have food,” said Tizzo.
“I have prayed for it; there is no other way to come by it,” said Bardi.
“If you are healed of the sores, all the world knows that you are a clean man again,” said Tizzo, remembering the dreadful stories of the plague which he had heard.
“I shall be dead of the famine before the sores disappear from my face,” said Bardi. “And you — whether you take the disease after the third day or not, you will starve here after me. And another month will go by after your death before brave men will venture into this rotten hellhole. What is your name?”
“Tizzo.”
“Tizzo, I have told you your future. Accept it.”
“It is better to run out on the street and die fighting.”
“So you think now; but every day a strange new hope will come up in you, and you will cling to your life for another twenty-four hours — until you are too weak to hold a sword.”
“We could steal out through some secret passage underground.”
“There is such a passage; and it has been blocked to close up the rattrap. My kind uncle, who wants this house and everything in it when the plague has finished its work, saw to it that the secret passage was stopped.”
“We might be able to slip away in the dark of a rainy night like this.”
“My good uncle and the city of Perugia keep guards at every door, day and night.”
“Yet I was allowed to enter?”
“It would never occur to them to try to stop a man from entering; their care is to keep anyone from getting out.”
Tizzo nodded. He attacked the last possibility.
“We may be able to get to a neighboring roof.”
“From the eaves of this house
to the nearest, there is a span of thirty feet. I have thought of all of these things. There is no hope. I sat at that table with my own father trying to plan. There was no hope—”
His voice, which had raised to a great outcry, suddenly stilled and the Bardi fell sidewise across the arm of his chair.
Was he dying? Was he suddenly and mercifully dead?
It seemed to Tizzo that he could not force himself to touch that body, still no doubt reeking with the mortal presence of the plague; but he could not stand by and leave the helpless man in that position.
Besides, since Tizzo was in the house, since there was hardly a chance in a hundred that he could pass the crucial three days without becoming infected with the sickness, he felt that he might as well open his arms to the horrible danger. He deliberately picked up the wasted, skeleton body of Bardi and carried it back to the bedroom which he had noticed before. There he stretched the senseless man on the bed where his father had died before him. He arranged the clothes, opened the window to allow more air to enter, and listened for a moment to the breathing of the sick man.
He was alive. He was barely alive.
Water would help. Presently Tizzo found the door which opened on the wellshaft and he wound up the long, long rope that carried the bucket up from the depths below.
It was good, clean, bright water. Tizzo took a swallow of it himself and then carried the bucket in to poor Bardi. A few drops on that bruised, tormented face roused Bardi.
“Ah!” he said, looking at Tizzo. “You are going to be fortunate. I dreamed that I was in heaven and saw you there.”
It was a dream of a sort that Tizzo did not exactly appreciate. However, he talked with Bardi for a moment, bade him try to sleep, and then went back to the well. The length of the rope had given him thought. He unwound the long rope and put his weight against it; it held him easily.