Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “So?” said Giovanpaolo. “If men were like you, I should have to give up war and my old way of living; I should have to take to frankness, honesty, truth, and mercy. Let me tell you this — if the time comes when I can persuade old Messer Guido, the head of our house, you shall marry Beatrice on that day. And I’ll carry you to see her this moment.”

  “You will?” exclaimed Tizzo.

  “This moment,” said Giovanpaolo, “she shall be set free from the house of the Clares and permitted to see you.”

  “Wait!” said Tizzo. “Before I take so much from you, tell me in what way I shall be able to serve you? Tell me, quickly, before my heart bursts, that service of which you are most in need.”

  “I should have to drop you like a plummet into the sea, deeply into the heart of a man who smiles in my face but who is, I fear, my greatest enemy,” said the Baglioni.

  “Let me go to him then,” cried Tizzo, “and I shall read his mind and you shall know his present attitude.”

  “Tizzo, if you could do that, the weight of the world would be removed from me!”

  “What is his name?”

  “Jeronimo della Penna.”

  “But he is one of the chief friends of the Baglioni.”

  “So he seems,” said Giovanpaolo, “but as a matter of fact he is known to have been kind to our enemies, of late.”

  “For all that is known to others,” said Tizzo, “I have been pursued through the city by your riders—”

  “There I was at fault,” said Giovanpaolo.

  “It is forgotten,” answered Tizzo. “But suppose that tomorrow you put a price on my head and proclaim me an enemy? I return to the house of my foster father. There is an estate of this della Penna close by. If he truly hates you, and learns that I also am your enemy, will he not try at once to make me his friend?”

  Giovanpaolo laughed, suddenly and loudly.

  “Our friends are the eyes that look into the hearts of the world; the ears that listen to its mind. With two more like you, Tizzo, I should be able to conquer Italy in six months. — But wait — there is a frightful peril. You and I alone will know the truth. All of my family will hunt you down like a wild beast the moment I put the price on your head; and you know already that the Baglioni can be cruel enemies.”

  “You, and I, and the Lady Beatrice will know the truth,” said Tizzo. “That is enough for me. Nothing is gained without danger. If della Penna is your enemy, within two days I shall know the degree of his hatred. You may depend on that.”

  “It is done!” said Giovanpaolo. “Here, cloak yourself with this and pull the hood down over your head. Already it is dawn. We shall go to Beatrice now!”

  Wrapped in a length of blue velvet that muffled his body and his sword, with the hood pulled down over his face, Tizzo a moment later was passing down the halls, down the great stairs, through the tremor of life which the night lights revealed along the painted walls of the house of Grifone and so out onto the street, where he walked eastward with Giovanpaolo toward a great, golden Venus which blazed in the green forehead of the morning sky. But the lesser stars already were withdrawing to their distances like the lights of a retreating army.

  So they came to the high, bald front of the convent of the Clares, where the porter saw the face of Giovanpaolo and bowed very lowly as though he would strike his forehead against the floor.

  CHAPTER 18

  TIZZO, STRIDING ANXIOUSLY up and down in the reception room, looked again and again toward the shimmering bars of iron which set off the room from the little cell in which the sisters of the order might appear to converse with their friends. He had waited, he was sure, for hours, before hinges moved with a dull, grating sound, and then a candle was carried into the cell by a veiled girl with a beautiful face.

  Tizzo leaped to the bars and grasped them.

  “Beatrice!” he said.

  “Beatrice,” said Giovanpaolo, “Tizzo is now my sworn brother. He has forgiven my sins; will you do the same?”

  “How did you buy him, Giovanpaolo?” asked the girl.

  “With my right hand,” said Giovanpaolo.

  “Has he given you his hand?” she asked suddenly of Tizzo.

  “And I have given him mine,” said Tizzo.

  Her face softened suddenly.

  “Did you hate me, Beatrice? I came to the place honestly, as I told you I would, and before the time. And there I was!”

  “Do you know what I found there?” she asked.

  “Marozzo?”

  “Yes. My wretched maid had sold my secrets to him; and Giovanpaolo let him use what he had learned.”

  “I was to blame,” said Giovanpaolo.

  “Some day,” she said fiercely, “I shall pay you home for that, my handsome brother!”

  “Hush!” said Tizzo. “I have put my mark on Marozzo.

  “With the point of my dagger I have drawn a cross on his forehead that will make him a crusader the rest of his life. No doctor will ever rub that mark away.”

  “Tizzo, I love you!” said the girl.

  * * * * *

  The mulberry, orange, and lemon trees flavored the airs that blew over the house of Luigi Falcone, and through the lawns of his garden great-headed plane trees gave shade and spear-headed cypresses marked the walks and circled the fountains. There was an artificial lake expensively produced by diverting the water from a creek among the hills and leading it here to fill an excavated hollow in the midst of the garden. A Venetian gondola with a gondolier waited there on the convenience of the master.

  This fellow now started up, for his name was called.

  “Olimpio! Fat-witted, lazy Olimpio!”

  “Mother of heaven!” said Olimpio. “It is my master!”

  And he leaped up to the deck and to the handle of his oar. As soon as he saw the flaming head of Tizzo under the shadows of the trees that crowned the bank, Olimpio began to lean his weight on the long oar and drive the little bark furiously forward.

  “Wait here,” said Tizzo to Elia Bigi. Before he left the town of Perugia he had said to the one-eyed servant: “Elia, I am about to leave Perugia as a proscribed man with a price on my head. You can sit here and keep my rooms, or you can ride with me and risk your neck.” And the grotesque answered: “Well, if I stay here I shall lose my appetite and the only eye that’s left to me will grow dull as an unused knife. But if I go with you, every day will have a salt and savor of its own.” So he had ridden with Tizzo, each with a shirt of the finest Spanish mail, and a steel-lined bonnet, and the pair of them got hastily from the town.

  The gondolier, bringing his boat swiftly and gracefully along the side of the little pier at the edge of the lake, held out both hands with a shout, but Tizzo leaped from the pier exactly into the center of the gondola.

  “Tizzo!” cried Olimpio. “Ah, two-footed cat. You could drop from a treetop and never break the leaves that you landed on. Welcome home! Welcome, welcome! You have been dancing with the devil in Perugia and still he has not turned your hair gray!”

  Tizzo shook the greeting hands warmly and laughed: “The best day is the day of the returning. Is your master on the island?”

  “He is there with a Greek manuscript,” said Olimpio. “He will make it a fiesta when he knows you have come!”

  From the columns of the temple, as the gondola touched the shore, there ran out a tall, bald-headed man who threw up his hands with a shout when he saw Tizzo.

  For a moment it seemed to Tizzo that he was again the nameless waif of the village streets, standing agape as the “lord of the castle” went past him. And then, like the blurred flicker of many pictures, his memory touched the years when he had entered this house as the humblest of pages and grown at last to the position of foster son and heir.

  Now he had fallen into the arms of Luigi Falcone. Now he was being swept into the little summer house where the harp stood aslant against a chair and, on a table, were scattered the yellow parchments of old manuscripts.

  “What have
you been doing with your Greek, Tizzo?” demanded Falcone.

  “I’ve been using it to sharpen my sword,” said Tizzo.

  “I’ve heard that you and Giovanpaolo Baglioni are like two brothers together; and a man must have a sharp sword to be a brother to Giovanpaolo. But Perugia is a city of murder.”

  “I’m a proscribed man with a price on my head,” said Tizzo. “Haven’t you heard that?”

  “Proscribed? By the Baglioni? Tizzo, what are you doing lingering here so close to Perugia? Wait! I’ll call for horses! We’ll send you as fast as hoofs can gallop—”

  “I’ve fled all this distance from Perugia and I’m tired of flight,” said Tizzo. “I’m going to stay here.”

  “They’ll come in a drove and slaughter you, lad!”

  “Perhaps they will. But the fact is that a man has to die some time, and it’s better to be struck down from in front than stabbed in the back. I’ll run no farther. It’s as easy to die young as it is to die old.”

  “Of course it is,” said Falcone. “But are you really resolved to run no more from the Baglioni?”

  “Not another step — today,” said Tizzo, and laughed.

  Falcone laughed in tarn. “The same blue devil is in your eyes and the same red devil is in your hair,” he said with a smile.

  “We’ll go into the villa. I have some French wine for you. You shall tell me everything; and I’ll give orders that every man on my place shall take weapons and be prepared to fight for you!”

  “Not a stroke! Not a stroke!” said Tizzo. “I’ve made my own fortune and whatever is in the cup I’ll be ready to drink it, alone.”

  They went back in the gondola, and as he left the boat Tizzo gave some golden florins to Olimpio. “Turn them into silver,” he said, “and scatter them among all the servants. Tell them that the Baglioni want my life and that if it is known that I am here in the Villa Falcone, I’m not better than a dead man.”

  “Ah, signore,” said Olimpio, his eyes still startled by the sight of the gold, “we all are ready to die for you; not a whisper will come from one of us.”

  But as they went on toward the large house, Falcone said: “Tizzo, that is the act of a child, really! You tell them that the Baglioni are hunting you, and you ask the servants to say not a word. But how can they cease from talking? They have heard no gossip like this for many years! You have come back from Perugia with the atmosphere of a hundred duels about you.

  “So how can they keep from talking about you?”

  “Let them talk, then,” said Tizzo. “Even mute swans have to sing when they die. Let them talk.”

  “In fact,” said Falcone, suddenly stopping, “it is a part of your plan to have them talk?”

  “Perhaps it is,” agreed Tizzo. “But don’t ask me what the plan may be.”

  “I shall ask nothing,” said Falcone. “Even when the wasps begin to hum, I’ll try to brush them away and merely go on rejoicing myself in you, Tizzo. Tell me everything! What have you learned in new swordplay? Are you content in Perugia? Why don’t you decide to travel across the world? There are great new things to see, in these days. But you hear everything in Perugia, because it is on a main road to Rome. Tell me all the news of the world, Tizzo! I hunger to learn it!”

  They sat in an open loggia near the top of the large house, looking over the green rolling of the Umbrian hills; the sunflare shimmered over all. They drank white wine of Bordeaux, cooled with packings of snow.

  So they sat talking and laughing together while the day ran on toward the evening. The dusk was descending blue and soft after the hot summer day when a whistle sounded from the trees near the villa and Tizzo bounded to his feet.

  “Is it danger? Wait for me, Tizzo!” exclaimed Falcone. “I catch up my sword and follow you instantly—”

  But Tizzo was gone, flashing through the bright, painted rooms, leaping down the stairways and then out the door into the garden.

  There he found a big, gray-headed man whose eyes shone even through the dimness of the twilight. He wore heavy riding boots; his doublet was wide open at the base of his great throat. A small round hat, plumed at one side, sat jauntily on his head, and at his side a heavy sword made a light shivering sound of steel against the scabbard as he moved to greet Tizzo. Even Luigi Falcone, even Giovanpaolo Baglioni were no greater in the eyes of Tizzo than this man who had made him the gift of one consummate trick of swordplay.

  CHAPTER 19

  THEY GREETED EACH other as men who have owed their lives to one another. Then, as Baron Melrose pushed himself back to arm’s length, he surveyed the younger man with care.

  “You are no bigger in the bones than when I last saw you,” he said. “But neither is the wasp as big as an eagle, and yet it can trouble a man more. Still, I could wish that there were twenty English pounds of extra beef on you. Then you could spend more muscle and less spirit in your wars.”

  “My lord,” said Tizzo, “I am what I am — a starved thing compared with you, but ready to guard your back in any battle. Tell me, how do you dare to show yourself so near to Perugia? Are the Oddi rising to try to retake the town? How did you know so quickly that I was at the Villa Falcone? Where have you been since I last saw you?”

  “If I had four tongues and four separate sets of brains, I would begin to answer all those questions at once,” said the big Englishman, laughing. “But as the matter stands, I have to speak them one by one. As for the Oddi, their secrets are their own. I am no nearer Perugia than I have been for a month. And I knew you were here because a whisper ran through the hills and came to my ears. Now for one question in my turn: Have you broken with Giovanpaolo, Astorre, and all the Baglioni?”

  “I’ve crossed swords with Giovanpaolo,” said Tizzo. “I’ve had my life attempted in the garden of Messer Astorre. And a price has been put on my head.”

  “Have all of these things happened?” asked Henry of Melrose. “You can pick up trouble faster than a pigeon can pick up wheat. But if the Baglioni have closed one door in your face, another opens of its own weight behind you. Tizzo, Jeronimo della Penna wishes to speak to you.”

  “About what?”

  “He will open the subject to you himself.”

  “Tizzo!” called the anxious voice of Falcone.

  “Say farewell to Falcone,” said Melrose, “and meet me again here. That is, if you wish to face della Penna tonight.”

  There was nothing that Tizzo wished to see less than the long, dark face of Jeronimo della Penna, but it was for the very purpose of sounding the depths and the intentions of this man that Giovanpaolo had schemed with him. Therefore: “I return in one moment!” said Tizzo, and hurried to meet Falcone.

  “I’m called away,” said Tizzo.

  “Into what?” demanded Falcone. “Tizzo, you shall stay this night, at least, in my house.”

  “I have to go. I am compelled,” said Tizzo. “As surely as a swallow ever followed summer, so I have to follow the whistle that sounded for me tonight.”

  “It’s a thing that I don’t like,” said Falcone. “But the devil befriends young men. Good-by again. Wait — here is a purse you may need — no, take it. God bless you; come to me again when you can!”

  And Tizzo was away again to the side of Melrose.

  They walked on through the gardens until they heard the ringing strokes of an ax in a hollow, followed by the crashing of a great tree. The fall of the heavy trunk seemed to shake the ground under them.

  “There are friends of mine, yonder, working by lanternlight,” said Tizzo. “And I must speak a word with them. Wait here — or at least keep out of their sight.”

  Tizzo, hurrying on, came on three foresters who worked by a dim, shaking light which had been hung from the branch of a small sapling. Unshaven of face, ragged in their clothes, the three were preparing to attack another huge pine tree with axes.

  “My friends!” called Tizzo, stepping into the faint circle of the light. “Taddeo — Riccardo — Adolfo — well met again!” />
  The three turned slowly toward him. Old Taddeo began to nod his bearded head.

  “Here comes the Firebrand again. What forests have you been burning down, Tizzo? Is it true that the Baglioni are leaning their weight and ready to fall on your head?”

  Tizzo grasped their hands. “I’ve had my hands filled with something besides axshafts,” he admitted. “But I’m happy enough to see you all again.”

  “Your hand has turned soft,” said Taddeo.

  “It is harder than my head, however,” laughed Tizzo. “Why are you working so late?”

  “Because the overseer drives us like dogs.”

  “I’ll speak to my father. You shall not be enslaved like this!”

  “No man is a slave who has mastered an art,” said Taddeo. He waved his great ax with one hand. “And we are masters of ours!” he added. “But have you touched the haft of an ax since we last saw you?”

  “An ax has helped me more than a sword,” said Tizzo. “Give me a mark and let me show you that my eye is still clear.”

  Old Taddeo struck the trunk of the tree a slashing blow and left a broad, white face, large as the disk of the moon and shining brightly.

  “There is the target. Make a mark for him, my sons,” said Taddeo.

  Big Riccardo, chuckling half in malice, drew out a knife, picked up a straight stick to make a ruler, and calmly drew a five-pointed star with the sharp steel edge. Where the knife cut the white of the pine wood it left a thin, glistening streak, hardly perceptible except to a very fine eye.

  Old Taddeo ran the tips of his hard fingers over the design and laughed loudly.

  “Let me see it done, then!” he said. “It has never been managed before even by the oldest woodsman in the forest. Strike at that target freely, Tizzo. There are ten strokes to make and with the tenth the star should leap out from the tree. And then see that every one of your strokes has hit exactly the ruled line. Ten strokes without a single failure — here is my own ax to use, and if you succeed — why, the ax is yours!”