Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  So he stumbled and fumbled his way to the top of the house and there reached the roof.

  It was not quite full darkness. The night, like an ugly smoke, steamed upward, as it seemed, to Tizzo. When he stood on the roof, he could see dim lights far down in the streets; voices rose to him very faintly.

  CHAPTER 10

  TIZZO LOOKED UPON himself as already dead; therefore life was a casual thing to be risked as he chose. Otherwise perhaps he would never have dared to attempt what he now tried.

  There were watchers on the ground, an ample posting of guards, of course, as young Bardi had said. But were there watchers from the nearer houses? No, all of the windows had been closely shuttered as though to keep off the terrible breath of the infection from that pesthouse. So he measured the distance to the nearest roof and guessed it, with a fair accuracy, to be the full ten paces which Bardi had mentioned. Well, it was not an insuperable distance, after all.

  He made a loop in the end of the wellrope and tried to cast it over the nearest chimney on the adjoining roof. But his stand was precarious on the slant of the tiled roof. The rope was heavy of its own weight and the damp it had absorbed; the frayed strands of it caught the wind and always it fell short or far away. He worked until his arm was weary before he surrendered that project.

  There was some mystery behind the coming of Melrose. And Tizzo would be dead, of course, before ever he pierced the strangeness and found the answer.

  He determined on another way of reaching the house adjoining. He went down the roof of the Bardi home until he was at the rear edge of it. It was perhaps ten feet higher than the roof of the adjoining house, at this point. Tizzo fastened his wellrope over the nearest of the chimneys and allowed some forty feet of its length to fall dangling over the edge. Down this length he lowered himself until he reached the big knot which he had tied in the end. Afterwards, like a boy in a swing, he began to sway his body back and forth until the rope commenced a pendulous motion that swept Tizzo farther and farther; in a greater and a greater arc across the rear face of the Bardi house.

  Above him, he could hear the rope grating against the cornices, he could feel the shudder as the strands of rope began to fray out with this continual, heavy rubbing. At any moment the rope might part, he knew. But, since death was almost certain anyway, it was well enough for him to come to the end of life by the merciful swiftness of a fall to the hard pavement.

  Higher he swayed. The rope flexed and bucked at the end of each rise. He could look up the slope of the adjoining roof, now. Then he could touch it with his feet if he cast them up.

  Now, dimly, he could make out the hollow of the stone gutter that circled the edge of the roof.

  A greater effort — and as the arc of the swing lengthened, he gripped a hand and arm inside the edge of the gutter. The strain was tremendous for an instant only; then he was up on the roof, holding an end of the rope in one hand. If it were impossible for him to find a way down into the house from the roof, the rope must serve as a bridge by which he could return to the house of Bardi. It was barely long enough to enable him to tie it around a chimney pot. It slanted up at a rather steep angle toward the Bardi roof above, but for one of his great activity of body and strength of hand, it could easily be traveled.

  He began the search of the new roof at once. It was very wet, and where lichens had grown on the tiles, they were as slippery as though they had been oiled.

  He had to watch himself carefully, for the pitch of the roof was, in addition, quite sharp. But he found on the other side of the crest of the roof what he had hoped for — a trap door which opened to the first pull.

  He passed down a ladder into darkness thick as that of a wall. He found himself in a room cluttered with odds and ends, with a smell of moldy old cloth. Perhaps battered furniture was stored here. After he got to the wall he had to fumble carefully along it until he reached a door. It was not locked. He pushed it open and found himself in an upper hall, very narrow, long, bare. Down this he went to a stair which communicated with a far more spacious hall beneath, and here the odor of cookery greeted him. It was, of course, far past the time for the dinner of Italians; but the first door he passed was a big upstairs kitchen such as the clever Italians continually built in their larger houses so that the servants need not climb the great distance from the cellar kitchens to serve meals.

  There was no one in this part of the house. Voices and laughter sounded farther down in the building, but Tizzo paused an instant at the kitchen, his teeth set.

  He needed no food for himself; but he could not help remembering the gaunt body and the skeleton face of Bardi, in the pesthouse. To return to that place, now, seemed worse than giving up life itself. What man would be generous enough to dare such a thing? How could it be expected of anything in nature?

  So Tizzo argued with himself, briefly — and then he remembered how the Englishman had adventured into Perugia — truly as dangerous as any plague spot for him!

  He took a quick breath and made up his mind though his hair prickled in his scalp at the thought.

  There was a slowly steaming bowl of soup near the embers of the fire, but of course such a weight as soup would be a waste of effort. Instead, he found a great ham such as might have come as the prize from a boar hunt. He cut a heavy quantity of this meat from the bone. There was good whole wheat flour. He took a bag of that, also, and even placed a flask of wine in his pocket.

  He had some thirty pounds of provisions on his person, and if he could haul himself up the rope with that freight, it would keep the life of poor Bardi in his body for a fortnight, at the least.

  He returned to the roof by the way he had come, found the rope, and began to climb, his body hanging under while with hands and pinching knees and a leg twisting into the slack of the rope he struggled up to the Bardi roof.

  * * * * *

  Down from the roof through the upper passages and into the dark of the bedchamber he went. But he had marked a lamp, before leaving, and this he now lighted. Young Bardi gave proof of life, groaning as he heard the clicking of the flint against the steel.

  But not until the fragrance of the ham was in his nostrils and the savor of it was on his lips did he completely rouse.

  He looked, then, from the food on the table to the red wine in the flask, and thence to the flame-blue eyes and the red hair of Tizzo.

  “God of miracles!” said Bardi, and crossed himself. “Tizzo, have you worn wings?”

  “I used the wellrope,” said Tizzo, smiling. “It made a bridge for me to the next house.”

  “But after you reached it — after you were free to go — do you mean that you came back to me, voluntarily?”

  He sat up; he stood up; and he supported his unsteadiness by grasping both the hands of the redheaded man.

  “There’s enough food here,” said Tizzo, “to keep you alive until your kind uncle is certain that you are dead. And when he opens the house at the end of the appointed time — when he comes with his heart hungry for treasure — and finds you alive, well, with the scars of the plague disappearing from your face — that is a moment I should like to see.”

  “Tizzo,” said Bardi, “you are going back to liberty. Why? Stay here with me. We’ll divide the food. There will be enough for both of us until the time my uncle lets the house be opened. God will not permit you to catch the plague—”

  He stopped himself as he uttered the absurdity.

  “Whatever happens,” said Bardi, “to the end of my life half of whatever belongs to me is yours. All, if you need it!”

  He made a gesture toward the door.

  “There are the jewels yonder,” he said. “Even kings have heard of the Bardi jewels. Tizzo, pour them into your pockets. They are yours!”

  And when Tizzo thought of those sparkling beauties, a sort of fire shot up from his heart across his brain. He actually turned toward the door; but then something stopped him.

  “This is not for profit,” he said. “This is an offering
, Signor Bardi, and a little touch of charity—”

  He paused and added, with a certain touch of astonishment: “Only the second kindness that I have done in all my life! May it be recorded! And God take care of us both!”

  He slipped away from the gratitude of Bardi quickly. There was still trouble in his mind. And it was true, he could see, that all during his years he had taken, taken, taken, and never given. He had taken from the very beggars in the streets, when he was a child; he had taken from the long-continued charity of Falcone afterwards; and never until he ventured himself for the sake of “Tomaso” had he returned to the world its kindness.

  When he got to the roof again, he looked up at the raining sky and breathed deeply. He had a sudden confidence. Fear left him. He could swear that not a shadow of the plague would adhere to him, and that he would make his way again safely down through the house of the neighbor to the street and to the new chance for life which he would find in it. He could not tell why this certainty was in him; but it was an odd feeling that, having paid, he had a right to expect from fate some kind return.

  CHAPTER 11

  HE GOT DOWN through the house without the slightest difficulty, through dim halls, past some brightly lighted doorways, until he came to the ground floor. There remained only the porter at the entrance to be passed, but this might prove difficult since the heavy door was locked. However, he had his sword to cut a way through difficulties and he was about to lay hand on it as he stalked the drowsy figure of the porter, when a door opened at his right and a flood of men and women, richly dressed, came out of a chamber that flared with many lights.

  The surprise was so stunning that for half an instant Tizzo hesitated whether to run forward or back; and in that instant a man cried out in a ringing voice of horror: “The redheaded man of the Oddi; the man from the plague-house! We are all contaminated — we are dead!”

  The women began a frightful screaming, but as Tizzo turned to flee, half a dozen resolute men sprang out, sword in hand, to pursue him.

  He leaped to the nearest door, wrenched at the knob of it, and found it closed. He had barely time to whirl about on guard, with a sense that steel was already entering his body, and catch several swords with a sweeping parry.

  His dagger in one hand, his sword busy in the other, he saw that he could not hope to win without a miracle. For the men of Perugia were all soldiers who had followed the banners of the Baglioni all up and down the length of Italy. These were swordsmen; and in the cramped space of the semicircle that fenced him in, Tizzo could not use that flashing, catlike footwork which was the chiefest grace of his fencing.

  More men were coming. The big porter strode with a partisan in his hand, balancing the long-handled ax in a powerful pair of hands. In the meantime, feeling that the end had come, Tizzo threw back his head and laughed as he battled. For a frenzy was in him and the joy of the fight shut out past and future. He was to die, but he would do some execution even against all of those swords, before he fell. His body twisted from side to side; twice a lunging sword blade drove past him and shattered its point against the stone wall at his back. The dance of his wild sword parried many a downright cleaving stroke aimed at his head and flicked out a snake-tongue of danger that touched the others one by one. Here a fellow drew back with a slashed forearm; another was gashed across the forehead; a third was stung in the thigh by a lightning thrust.

  This incredible resistance brought a great shouting. More men came flocking, and up the great stairway at the end of the hall he could see the ladies, bright as a garden of flowers, standing to watch the fight. Yet, for all their numbers, they drew back from his deadly work a little. Someone shouted to bring a crossbow and nail the redhead to the wall; but here the porter, stepping into the throng, brought down his partisan with a monstrous sweep.

  Tizzo warded the stroke skillfully with his sword, but the blade broke at the hilt and the head of the long ax, turning, descended flat upon his skull. A red sheet of flame leaped across his brain; darkness swallowed him.

  When he wakened, he rolled his eyes vainly to find light. All was thick blackness; water dripped, somewhere; and he was lying on a pavement greasy with slime.

  He stood up, in spite of his spinning brain, and found that he could touch both walls of his chamber with his outstretched hands.

  They had him cooped in one of the dungeon cells, far underground. They might leave him there to die, never opening the cell for a year for fear of the plague; or else they might take him to the torture chamber.

  Tizzo sat down, cross-legged, and resigned himself to his fate. The sharpest, the most sudden regret that came to him was that he had not killed at least one man in the battle of his capture.

  Afterwards, he began to think of “Tomaso.”

  * * * * *

  He was very cold, very hungry, when a port in his door was opened, and a ray of light shone in at him. By that light, a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water were placed upon the floor.

  “Where am I, friend?” asked Tizzo.

  “Ay, you were out of your wits and talking dreams,” chuckled the jailer, “when we put you down here. You are in the cellars of Messer Mateo Marozzo. We keep you here for three days to see whether or not the plague comes out on your face. If it comes, why, then we wall up this door and let you rest for a hundred years. If it does not come, you have the pleasure of meeting Messer Marozzo and the torture chamber.”

  It seemed to Tizzo that the part of good sense would be to end his misery by dashing out his brains against the stones; but he could not smash the bottle and spill the unique wine of life. Hope remained to him, foolish though it might be. And now and again, several times a day, he amused himself with a horrible interest by feeling the glands at the base of his throat. For these were the first to swell when the plague laid hold on a man.

  Yet for a third time the shutter of the door opened, and the light struck on his face. Then said the voice of a man beside the jailer: “It is more than three days, and yet there is no sign of the plague in him. You may take him out at once. Let him be washed and have him dressed in clean clothes. He is to come before Messer Mateo!”

  All of this was done quickly. Half a dozen armed men — a proof that the desperate courage of Tizzo was recognized — took him from his cell. Under their eyes and the points of their weapons, as it were, he was allowed to strip, bathe, and put on clean clothes. Then irons were fastened to his wrists and ankles with a chain that connected them passing through his belt; and in this fashion he was taken into the great hall of the Marozzo palace, and through this to a smaller room where a tall, very handsome, dark fellow walked up and down; several other men stood back, apparently attendants.

  * * * * *

  When Tizzo was brought in with clanking chains, the tall man stepped straight up to him; the guards on either side checked Tizzo by the arms.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “You are Mateo Marozzo, I suppose,” answered Tizzo.

  “Have you ever seen me before?”

  “With your visor down, Messer Mateo,” said Tizzo.

  “You know it was I that you faced that day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” said Marozzo, stepping back with a smile of infinite satisfaction, “you are now in my hands.”

  “I am glad of it, Messer Mateo,” said Tizzo.

  “Glad of it, did you say?”

  “I had rather be in your hands than in those of any other man in Perugia. You at least know that I fight as an honorable man.”

  “Ah, you’ve been reading stories about perfect knights. Is that it?” asked Marozzo. “Do you think that the spies and body-snatchers of the Oddi are entitled to be treated like men of honor?”

  “I know nothing of the Oddi,” said Tizzo.

  “Am I to believe that?”

  “I hope so,” said Tizzo, frankly.

  “On the contrary,” said Marozzo, “I know that you are one of their men of greatest trust.”

 
; “I have never seen one of their faces,” said Tizzo.

  Marozzo laughed in his face in return. “Perhaps you never have seen the mad Englishman, Lord Melrose?” he asked.

  “Yes. I know him. I am in his service.”

  “And he in that of the Oddi. In fact, my friend, I know that you are one of their most prized hirelings, in spite of your youth. Shall give you the proof?”

  “That you cannot do.”

  “Presently. When I have sent off to Astorre Baglioni himself a letter from Lord Melrose in which he offers anything for your release. Anything up to his own life!”

  “His life?” exclaimed Tizzo, hoarsely.

  “If that devil of a Melrose offers so much, you are worth a high price; you stand among the first of the servants of the Oddi. Admit that, my friend, and talk to me freely concerning whatever you know of the Oddi now — their location, their position, their plans — talk openly, and it may be that I shall be able to give you what I have a right to take — your life!”

  His glance went hungrily over Tizzo as he spoke. It was plain that he hardly wished to surrender personal revenge to statecraft, no matter how he might be advanced in the eyes of the all-powerful Baglioni.

  “Messer Mateo,” said Tizzo, “I only repeat what I have said to you before; I know nothing about the Oddi.”

  “Well,” said Marozzo, “then I shall have to see if I can persuade you to talk.”

  Tizzo knew what that meant. Torture would be used now, in order to force him to confess things of which he knew nothing. A fine sweat covered his body, gleamed on his face; and his eye looked inward on his soul, wondering how long he would be able to endure the agony without screeching out shamefully. For wild savages would never be able to reproduce the exquisite masterpieces of pain of which the people of Italy were capable.

  But before another move was made, a servant came in haste, carrying a letter on a tray.