Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Then he made Giovanpaolo hold him up on the low wall at the edge of the loggia in such a fashion that with his hands he could swing out and grasp the edge of the roof just above.

  With a mighty effort, he tried to pull himself up, but one hand failed to hold and left him dangling by a precarious grasp. Lady Beatrice, trying to reach out to save him, herself almost fell headlong into the street below, but her brother caught and held her.

  Behind them, they heard the conspirators smashing down the door to the outer room, the furniture which had been piled against it, yielding with a groaning sound as it was pushed across the floor.

  Tizzo, listening to that uproar which shook the house, made a new, great effort and swung himself up onto the edge of the roof. There he lay precariously on the steeply slanting surface, looking down into the piazza as into a deep well.

  Above him, the roof of the loggia rose to the higher wall of the house with a window in the midst of it. He reached that window, presently, smashed it open, and peered into an obscurity of shadow in which he could see nothing. He had no time to make sure of what was about him. Beneath him events were flowing like a wild river, and he was close to ruin with Lady Beatrice and Giovanpaolo. He merely tied the belt of his sword about a chair that could not slip through the window, and then fastened the safety catch which held sheath and blade firmly together. He had been able to trust his life once before to the strength of that catch. He would have to trust three lives to it, now.

  Sliding down to the end of the scabbard, on which he took a firm hold, he found that he could actually look over the edge of the wall onto the loggia beneath. Already the battering ram was crashing against the door that led from the outer room onto the loggia, and it must have seemed to the two Baglioni that they were only a moment from death. Above all other voices, like a rising fountain above still water, came the maddened screaming of the voice of Mateo Marozzo, who was yelling:

  “Down with the doors! Down with them! Oh, God, give my hands one grasp on his throat!”

  Like a hunting dog, Marozzo had followed his enemy and was now on his traces. It was a foolish hand, Tizzo knew, that had spared Marozzo in the house of della Penna.

  He threw down the crimson cloth which he had carried up with him. The reaching hand of Giovanpaolo caught it.

  “Now, Beatrice!” called Giovanpaolo, and helped the girl upward.

  Partly from his strength to lift her, partly climbing like a cat, she swarmed up the length of the cloth and over the edge of the roof.

  “Up to the window!” commanded Tizzo.

  She went panting past him, and by his body and his scabbard climbed to the window above.

  Giovanpaolo was already following, and the task of Tizzo was a heavier one, now. He had twisted the end of the cloth about his right arm, which swung over the edge of the room; the grip of his left hand was fastened upon the end of the scabbard, which terminated in a small knob. Even so, the smooth metal made an evil hold; he had to bow his head and grind his teeth together in the last extremity of effort as he felt the full weight of Giovanpaolo swing dangling from the cloth over the depth of the piazza.

  There was one instant of that frightful strain. Then the powerful grasp of the knight was on the edge of the roof and he heaved himself onto the roof beside Tizzo.

  “Marvels and miracles!” gasped Giovanpaolo. “How have you done this thing, Tizzo?”

  “Swiftly! Swiftly!” urged Tizzo. “They are at our heels!”

  He had snatched up the crimson cloth as he spoke, and at the same moment the doors which had held so stoutly to resist the batterings of the crowd, as though they had weakened the instant that the need of them had diminished, now were beaten down, and the pressure of men poured out instantly upon the loggia.

  Tizzo, retreating through the window above, his whole body shaken and trembling from the effort which he had made, heard them shouting beneath them in despair and in wonder. It was the screeching of Mateo Marozzo that again drowned all other sound.

  “He cannot have flown — three of them, they cannot have flown — but Tizzo has the wings of a devil. Look everywhere! — We shall find them — God cannot disappoint me again!”

  In the shadows of the room above, Giovanpaolo was saying: “You are the general, brave Tizzo. Oh, my friend, you are the leader and I am the humble follower. Tell us which way we should move now — or have we only dodged death for an instant?”

  “Up with me to the highest roof. There is still a way,” said Tizzo.

  And he guided them from the room down that upper corridor which he had passed through before, and below them the house seemed to rock with the turmoil of shouting. They climbed the stairs and issued by the dormer window onto the top roof, leveled for a garden.

  The moon was down, the stars were out in clear multitudes, seeming to tremble above all the horrors of Perugia. But the three made only an instant of pause, then Tizzo led the way across the roof to the edge which was nearest to the neighboring ledge. He cast sword and ax before him, then leaped lightly across the ten-foot gap.

  The girl turned back up the roof, ran forward, bounded high, and landed light as a cat on the safer side. Giovanpaolo’s foot slipped as he made his leap. His feet, striking the very edge of the roof, gave him a precarious balance and he began to fall backward, striking wildly with his arms at the thin air. But the swift grip of Tizzo was instantly on him, and he was drawn forward into safety.

  Through a trap door which was unlocked they passed from the roof down darkling stairs into a house of silence, into which only the vague uproar from the outside penetrated as from a distance.

  “Are we safe here, Giovanpaolo?” asked Tizzo.

  “This is the house of Carlo Barciglia,” said Giovanpaolo. “And he is among the traitors. I saw his face. But he is at his hellish work in the house of Grifone and we may win through this place if we have fortune.”

  In fact, they met not a living soul. All the people, no doubt, had been drawn out into the piazza. Giovanpaolo led them straight down into the armory of the house, where they paused, not to equip themselves with armor, but to take three hooded cloaks which might cover their faces and their bodies from recognition. After that, they walked, by Tizzo’s suggestion, straight out into the open street. They were not the only men who were masked on this night when few could tell who was a friend and who an enemy.

  “In command at the gate of San Ercolano,” said Tizzo, “there is the Baron Melrose, who is my friend. He would not have a hand in this work of murder, and for my sake he will pass us safely through, perhaps.”

  “Let us go there, then, in the name of God,” said Giovanpaolo. “There is blood in the very air we breathe, inside Perugia.”

  When they came down to San Ercolano, they found a close group of a dozen or more men-at-arms on the ground, and others in command on the walls. The great iron chains had been drawn across the gate.

  Their progress was challenged instantly by the crossing of a pair of huge halberds, those ponderous, two-handed axes with which horse and rider could be struck to the ground.

  “Who goes there?” came the challenge.

  “A friend of Baron Melrose,” said Tizzo.

  “I know the voice. Let them come to me,” said the voice of Henry of Melrose, instantly. So they were passed into the room of the captain of the gate, where Melrose was walking up and down uneasily. He banished his soldiers from the room, as he grasped the hand of Tizzo.

  “How have you escaped from the hands of Marozzo and the rest at the house of della Penna?” he demanded. “Show me your face, Tizzo. Are you hurt?”

  “Not in the flesh,” said Tizzo. “I am safe and sound.”

  And he threw back the hood to smile on the big Englishman.

  “Good! Good!” said Melrose. “Tizzo, the sight of you with a whole skin lets me breathe again. I have been wondering how I could persuade them with cunning or with blows to let you escape, because you have made strong enemies in this town, my lad. Who are these wi
th you?”

  “My best of friends,” said Tizzo. “And people who may be friends of yours on another day, sir.”

  “Will they?” said the baron. “I hear that there is wild work at the house of Grifone. I must see the faces of these two.”

  “It is not wise, my lord,” urged Tizzo.

  “Not wise? Are they a pair of bright angels who might dazzle me?” asked Melrose.

  “I say, it is not wise. If there is friendship between us, for the sake of that let them pass through with me!”

  “Why, my lad,” said Melrose, “for all I know the king of the clan, the eagle of the sky, the lion of Perugia, Giovanpaolo himself might be one of them! My friends, unmask, if you please!”

  Giovanpaolo turned his head slowly toward Tizzo. His hand made a slight motion toward his sword.

  “No!” exclaimed Tizzo. “It is better to trust to him than to fight against him. Do as he commands! He has a heart greater than any in Italy!”

  Giovanpaolo, slowly, raised the hood from his head; Beatrice flung back her own with a quick gesture.

  But Melrose, dropping his head suddenly, stared at the floor.

  “There is dust in my eyes, Tizzo,” he said. “I cannot see. God and my employers forgive me — but — battle is battle and murder is murder! The key to the small outer portal is lying on that table. Take it — go, all three of you. Quickly!”

  There was not time even for thanks. The heavy key was fitted into the lock on the farther side of the gateroom; in a moment more they walked freely down the slope beyond the city wall.

  CHAPTER 31

  FAR BEYOND PERUGIA, three dark figures, small on the top of a great hill, looked back to the dim tremor of the lights of the city.

  Giovanpaolo, dropping to his knees, began to pray, softly, aloud. He prayed for the souls of his father, his dead brother Semonetto, the warrior soul of Astorre.

  And the girl and Tizzo dropped back until the voice was only a murmur in their ears.

  It seemed as though all possibility of lamentation had gone from her. Her pale face, clear and cold as a stone, lifted slightly toward the dim light of the stars. And Tizzo, saying nothing, looked sometimes at the girl he loved and sometimes toward that sworn blood brother, Giovanpaolo.

  He could not tell for which of them his heart ached most.

  Giovanpaolo rose and came slowly on toward them, his head bowed. But he straightened himself with a sudden effort and said: “There is no time for grief. None at all. We shall be at the house of my uncle before morning. By midday we shall have a hundred lances with us. By night there will be an army. There is no time for grief.”

  “When I think of this night’s work,” said the girl in a trembling voice, “I could turn myself into a man and spend the rest of my life in armor, with a drawn sword.”

  “There will be swords enough,” said Giovanpaolo. “And a melancholy work for them to do, because we must strike against our own kindred. Beatrice, except for Tizzo, the house of the Baglioni would have fallen indeed and the name would have been borne by traitors only.”

  They listened, and heard far away the rapid ringing of the bells of Perugia, all striking together to beat out the alarm.

  It was easy enough to understand what the alarm bells meant. The traitors had paused in the midst of their murders to discover that Giovanpaolo had definitely escaped from the city. And therefore their work remained a headless task. It was all to be done again.

  The bells were still ringing when the three turned their backs on the dim city and went steadily away across the darkness of the hills.

  CHAPTER 32

  IT WAS A month later when Tizzo rode swiftly through the camp of Giovanpaolo and, coming to the tent of the commander, which was distinguished by the long pennon which flew from the peak, slipped out of the saddle and threw the reins toward one of the men-at-arms who stood guard at the entrance.

  Entering the tent, Tizzo saw Giovanpaolo striding up and down, his head a little bent toward the depth of his thought. On the table lay a map. Pieces of armor were stacked on a folding chair. The whole tent was filled with confusion.

  “Ah, Tizzo,” said Giovanpaolo, hardly turning his fine head toward the interloper, “what is it now? More brawling? More tavern drinking? More duelling? You have put Gismondo of Urbino to bed for a month with one of your sword tricks; the Spaniard from Naples will never see out of both eyes again, they tell me; and Ugo of Camerino will be a lucky man if he ever recovers the use of his left arm.”

  “It was only the left arm,” said Tizzo, seriously. “I knew that he was a fellow you put a value on, and that was why I did not teach his right arm the sort of manners it ought to know.”

  Giovanpaolo threw himself wearily back into a chair. He shook his head.

  “Is the world always no more than a playground for you?” he asked, sadly. “Here we are shut out of Perugia, half of our friends killed, my own family slaughtered like sheep in the middle of the night, and the army which I am raising to retake the city already muttering and growling because I am slow in giving them pay. The men promised to me by the city of Florence have not appeared. All men begin to doubt my fortune. The sky turns black over me; and still you are dancing, drinking, laughing, fighting day and night without a care in the world.”

  “Look!” said Tizzo, and held out a rolled letter which Giovanpaolo pulled open and read aloud:

  Friend and Fire-eater, My Tizzo:

  I send you this letter by sure hand. I have already rewarded him, but give him plenty of money when he arrives in honor of a dead man. That is myself.

  The days went very well immediately after the Great Betrayal. The wine ran in the gutters, so to speak; the people cheered the murderers of the Baglioni; the traitors sat high in the saddle and they remembered Henry of Melrose with a good many favors and quite a bit of money. I began to feel that I might spend a happy time here except for the stench of murder which rises in my heart when I think of the midnight work which has been done in these streets.

  However, when I was about to skim the cream off my cup of fortune and go away with it I was suddenly haled before the chiefs of the Great Betrayal — before Jeronimo della Penna, I mean, and Carlo Barciglia. For Grifone Baglioni is no longer accounted anything. Except for him they never would have taken the place, of course, but since the Great Betrayal conscience has been eating his heart; he has turned yellow and is growing old. Every day he goes to the castle of his lady mother and begs her to let him enter and give him her blessing, and every day the Lady Atlanta bars her doors against him and sends him a curse as a traitor instead of a blessing as a son.

  So I was before Jeronimo and Carlo alone, and the information against me was dug up by that double-tongued snake of darkness, that hell-hound of a Mateo Marozzo, who hates you so sweetly and who wears on his forehead the cross which you put there with the point of your dagger. If he remains long out of hell, the chief devil will die of yearning.

  It is this Marozzo who discovered that on the night of the Great Betrayal it was through my gate that there passed the Lady Beatrice Baglioni, accompanied by the main head and brains of the Baglioni family, the famous Giovanpaolo, and that Firebrand, the hawk-brained wild man, Tizzo, who had snatched those two lives from the slaughter.

  I damned and lied with a vengeance and offered to prove my innocence in single combat with Marozzo, but they have seen my sword-work and they shrank from that idea. In brief, out came two eyewitnesses and I was damned at once, and thrown into prison. Here Jeronimo della Penna is letting me lie while he revolves in his mind a punishment savage enough to be equal to my fault. After that, be sure, I shall die.

  In dying, as I run my eyes down the years, I shall see no face more dear to me than that of my young companion who never showed his back to a friend. I shall think of you, Tizzo, as I die. Think of me also, a little, as you live.

  Farewell,

  Henry of Melrose

  CHAPTER 33

  GIOVANPAOLO, WHEN HE had finished readin
g the letter, his voice dropping with an honest reverence as he pronounced the last words, remained for a time with his head bent.

  “I know the brave Englishman,” said he at last. “I know he has been a bulwark of the house of the Oddi. I have seen him in battle and anyone who has watched the work of his sword can remember him easily enough. I know that it was he who allowed us to pass out of the city on the night of the Betrayal. I would give all the jewels and the gold in this place and all I could send for in order to set him free. But that would not help him. Money will not buy a man out of the cruel hands of Jeronimo della Penna. And what can you do, or any other man? We can only pray that we may storm the city and set him free before Jeronimo makes up his mind what form of torment he will use on Melrose.”

  “I must go to him,” answered Tizzo.

  “Listen to me,” urged Giovanpaolo. “How can one man help him?”

  “The man who brought me the letter is an assistant jailer. I’ve bribed him with a fine sum of money. He is going to meet me in Perugia and admit me to the house of Jeronimo, where Melrose lies in one of the great cellars. He will furnish me with a file to cut through the manacles. After that, I must try to get Melrose away.”

  “How will you take him out of the city? Will you use wings?”

  “Chance,” said Tizzo. “I’ve worshiped her so long with dice, I’ve made so many sacrifices in her name, that she would not have the heart to refuse me a single request like this one.”

  “Tizzo — tell me in brief. What is Melrose to you? He is brave; he has an eye which is the same flame-blue as yours in a fight; he is true to his friends. I grant all that. But other men have the same qualities.”

  “Paolo,” said Tizzo, “you and I have sworn to be true to one another. We have sworn to be blood brothers without the blood.”

  “That is right,” nodded Giovanpaolo.

  “Well, then,” said Tizzo, “if I heard that you were lying in prison, expecting death, my heart would be stirred no more than when I hear that the Englishman is rotting in misery in the dungeon of della Penna.”