by Max Brand
Giovanpaolo, after this, merely made a mute gesture and argued no more.
“Beatrice is in the inner tent,” he said. “You will want to say farewell to her?”
“No,” answered Tizzo. “If I see her, I’ll fall out of this resolution of mine and be in love with life again. Tell her so after I have gone.”
“I shall tell her,” said Giovanpaolo. “What is your plan?”
“Simply to enter the city and go to the house of a certain Alberto Marignello, in the little lane off the via dei Bardi. This Marignello is the fellow I have given the money to, the one with the keys to the cellars of della Penna. When I have the keys — why, you see that I’ll not know the next step until I come to take it.”
“Tizzo, you are a dead man!”
“I am,” said Tizzo, cheerfully, “and that is why I have come to say farewell!”
He held out his hands, and Giovanpaolo, with a groan but with no further protest, held out his hands to make that silent farewell.
The green, the orange, the yellow and the crimson no longer flashed on the body of Tizzo when he came near Perugia in the twilight of that day. His skin had been darkened with the walnut stain which he had used on the night of the Great Betrayal, and his red hair, darkened also, tumbled unkempt about his face. His clothes were ragged; his back was bowed under a great fagot of olive wood to which was lashed a heavy woodsman’s ax. In the full light of the day a curious eye might have been interested in the blue sheen of the blade of that ax, but in the half-light of the evening the glimmer of the pure Damascus steel could not be noticed.
When he came to the gate, a pair of fine young riders were being questioned by the captain on duty there, but none of the guards paid the slightest attention to that bowed form under the heavy load of wood. A young lad inside the gate bawled: “Look! Look at the donkey walking on two legs!”
In fact, hardly the poorest man in Perugia would have carried such a crushing burden of wood on his back into the town, but Tizzo, with a hanging head and a slight sway from side to side of his entire body, strode gradually up the steep slope of the street. He turned right and left again before he came to the wide façade of the great house in which lived Atlanta Baglioni, the mother of the traitor to his house, Grifone.
In the dusk, he came to the entrance of the courtyard, where the porter merely sang out: “What’s this?”
“A broken back and a load of olive wood,” said Tizzo. “Where shall I leave the stuff?”
He made as if to drop it to the pavement but the porter cursed him for a lout. “D’you wish to litter the street and give me extra work?” he demanded. “Get in through the court and I’ll open the inner door.”
He led the way, but stopped suddenly as he saw the form of a man kneeling on the farther side of the court under a shuttered window, crying out, not overloud: “Mother, whatever I have done, I have repented. If I have sinned against God, he will have his own vengeance. If I have sinned against men, my heart is already broken. But if you turn a deaf ear to me, the devils in hell are laughing!”
“So!” muttered the porter. “Always the same! Always the same! But she is the sort of pale steel that will not bend. This way, woodcutter.”
He led through a doorway, but as he was about to close the door, the man who cried out in the corner of the courtyard rose and rushed to enter behind the burden-bearer. A streak of light from a window flashed dimly across his face and Tizzo recognized the most handsome features of Perugia, the richest of her sons, the pride and the boast of all her youth, Grifone. He was a great deal altered. Even in that faint glimpse, Tizzo could see the pale, hollow face. Then the door slammed heavily and shut out the vision.
“So! So!” panted the porter. “God forgive him for his sins; God forgive my lady for shutting him away; and God forgive me that I have seen such things in my life!”
He showed Tizzo where to carry the wood into a storeroom, and locked the door behind him.
“And now for the payment!” said Tizzo, standing straight with a groan. “I have brought twenty backloads of that wood, now, and I need the money for it, friend.”
He leaned on the handle of the ax and wiped sweat from his face.
“You want money? There is not a penny ever paid out in this household except by my lady,” said the porter. “Do you want me to break in on her now?”
“Brother,” said Tizzo, “there is neither flour nor oil in my house, to say nothing of wine, and I have to walk a league to come to my place.”
“Have you carried that backload three miles?” asked the porter.
“Yes,” said Tizzo, truthfully.
“Well,” murmured the porter, “I shall see what can be done. It is very late, but the lady is kind as milk to every man except to her poor son.”
He left Tizzo standing, leaning against the wall, and finally ran down some stairs and told Tizzo to follow him. “She will see you. But this is a strange thing — that she knows everything and yet she does not know of any twenty backloads of wood of the olive. Well, we shall see.”
He took Tizzo up the stairs and brought him into a little square anteroom where a table was piled with neatly arranged papers of account.
A moment later the lady of the house entered. The Lady Atlanta wore the black of deep mourning with double bands of blackness as though for two deaths. To be sure, her husband had been dead ever since the infancy of her son; she had never married in the interval because she had kept one memory sacred although her great wealth had tempted a number of famous suitors; and now it was plain that she mourned for Grifone, her son, as though he were dead also.
This darkness of the clothes made her face marble. Her brow was as clear as stone, her eyes were unmarked by time, and she wore that faint smile which Greek sculptors knew and loved. At first glance she seemed still in her twenties. In fact, she was not yet forty years of age.
She took her place at once behind the table, sitting straight in a backless chair and resting on the edge of the table a hand of wonderful youth and delicacy of outline.
“Your name?” she said.
“Andrea,” said Tizzo, bowing until his shaggy hair almost touched the floor. “Andrea the son of Andrea the son of Andrea, the son of Luigi of the millside near the village of La Pietra.”
“Andrea,” said she, “you claim the payment for twenty backloads of olive wood?”
“I do,” said Tizzo, bowing again.
“I have no record of ordering this fuel, my poor friend,” said the lady.
“I carry the order with me,” said Tizzo.
“You carry it with you?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“In writing?”
“In token,” said Tizzo.
He shifted the ax which he still held and drew from his breast on a slender string something which he held in the hollow of his palm so that the porter could not see it but the lady could. What she saw was a broken ring.
She saw, also, the sudden flash of meaning in eyes too bright, too flame-blue for the darkness of the skin and the hair.
She saw this, and instantly looked down at the floor.
“Go to Fortinacci the steward,” she said to the porter, “and ask him what he knows about this affair of Andrea the son of Andrea the son of Andrea. I will talk to Andrea in the meantime.”
The porter disappeared, and Lady Atlanta rose at once.
“What is the ring?” she asked.
Tizzo, with his grimy fingers, laid it at once in the white palm of her hand and she bent over it curiously. She started straight again, suddenly. There was a wide incredulity in her eyes as she said: “It is one half of a broken signet ring of Giovanpaolo Baglioni!”
“The other half,” said Tizzo, “is worn about his neck.”
“In sign of what?” she asked.
“In sign that we are sworn brothers,” said Tizzo.
CHAPTER 34
THE LADY ATLANTA, looking with her cold, steady eyes into the face of the stranger, said to him, suddenl
y: “You are the red-haired man, the Firebrand; you are that Tizzo — and yet you cannot be he! Hair may be stained and skin darkened, but Tizzo is a man who can cleave a thick jousting helmet with one stroke of his ax—”
Here her eye ran down along the arm and the hand of Tizzo to the blue, shimmering blade of his ax.
“Ah, it is true!” she murmured. She smiled with a radiance that made her young as a girl.
She hurried to the door and slid the bolt, whispering: “What is there that I may do? I know that you saved two sacred lives of my family. Now you are risking your head again by entering Perugia. Tizzo, you had better walk into a flaming furnace than into this town!”
“Withdraw the bolt, madam,” said Tizzo. “If you honor me with a private interview, even that is enough to make men look at me, and if they look at me twice, I shall be discovered.”
“True!” she said, and drew out the bolt again, instantly. “But what is there that I can do, Tizzo? Tell me how I can aid you? Whatever purpose brought you to Perugia, I shall make it my purpose!”
“My purpose,” said he, “is to rescue a friend from his prison in the cellars of della Penna.”
“With how many men are you to attack the house?”
“With my two hands and this ax,” he said, smiling. “It is not force that will save my friend. The only thing that will unlock the bolts of della Penna’s house is chance and a little bribery. I am using both.”
“Tizzo, the chance is dreadfully slight. And if they capture you, your head will be on a pike before morning!”
“The chance is very small,” he admitted. “There is a better and a surer way of saving my friend: beating open the gates of Perugia and restoring the city to its rightful rulers.”
“Tell me what way!” she demanded, eagerly.
“You have the means in your own hands. The agent is now in your courtyard calling out on your name and begging you to let him speak to you. Your son Grifone is trusted with half the charge of the walls. He could open the gates easily, and allow the soldiers of Giovanpaolo to enter the town.”
“Since Judas,” she said, “there never has been such a traitor as Grifone Baglioni!”
“He is your own son!” said Tizzo.
“I forswear my claim in him. He is a changeling. My true son was stolen out of my bed and a murderer’s brat was placed on my breast.”
“My lady, if ever the same blood showed in two faces, it is in you and his highness, Grifone.”
“It cannot be,” she said. “Or if I have had a share in the making of his body, I have had none in the forming of his heart. In his own house — at midnight — with his own hand he gave the signal for the butchery — and he led the way — Ah, God, when I gave him birth, what a curse I brought upon my poor Perugia!”
“One word from you, and he would throw himself on the side of Giovanpaolo.”
“Giovanpaolo would not have the traitor’s aid — not for the price of two cities, each twice greater than Perugia.”
“My lady, it is true that Giovanpaolo would never forgive him, but if Grifone will restore the Baglioni to their own, then a peace can be made between them. His highness, Grifone, can withdraw with all his possessions to another place. And time may partly close the breach between them.”
“Death alone can close it!” said the Lady Atlanta.
“Madam, I beg you to think — it is in your power to restore the Baglioni to Perugia.”
“It is the dearest wish of my soul, but shame would keep Grifone from lifting a hand to help the men he has wronged.”
“Be sure that his heart is suffering. There is torture in his face. A word from him will make him repent everything and strive to make amends to all the people of his blood.”
“Tizzo, I have sworn a great and sacred oath never to look on his face, never to speak to him, never to listen to his voice. If I hear him crying out under my window, I run to another room and stop my ears.”
“An oath which is wrong should not be maintained. Every priest will grant you absolution for breaking it.”
“I did not swear it with thin breath; I swore it with my heart and soul.”
Tizzo, for a moment regarded the beauty, the terrible anger in her face. And he knew that persuasion would be impossible.
“Then I kiss your hand and leave you, my lady,” he said.
She retained his hand in both of hers, the fierce passion dying gradually out of her eyes.
“But you, Tizzo,” she said. “I know what you have done. I know by words, and also, I saw that great jousting helmet cloven to the bottom by your ax-stroke. There is not strength in your hands for such a feat and therefore it must be a strength in your heart. Trust me, that if I know any manner in which I may aid you and help you, I am at your service. There is money here — or jewels which have a greater price — will you have them?” She actually stripped the rich rings from her fingers. But Tizzo shook his head.
“There are men in this house whom I could trust to support you in anything.”
“No, my lady,” said Tizzo. “I have had enough money for my purpose. More would only be a weight in my pocket. And as for men, the thing I have to do is better and more easily managed by one hand than by twenty. Secrecy has to be the point of the sword for me now.”
“Must I feel that my hands are empty to help you?” she exclaimed.
“No, my lady. I shall remember you when I come to the time of need, and that will make me stronger.”
“You will go on this wild enterprise, Tizzo?”
“I must go, at once.”
“Tell me what service I can do, other than this, for Giovanpaolo and his men?”
“Send to my friend, Antonio Bardi, and tell him that Giovanpaolo forgives the part he played in the Great Betrayal. At least, Bardi did no murder on that night.”
“How can Giovanpaolo forgive a single soul who took part in the Great Betrayal?”
“Because he is as wise as he is brave. My lady, send for Bardi. Tell him he is forgiven if he wishes to strike a blow on our side. Send, also, for my foster father, Luigi Falcone. He has taken no stand on either side. But he will ride and fight for me. Those two men inside the city, if they will meet in your house and lay their plans together, may be strong enough to open Perugia to the attack of Giovanpaolo. Farewell!”
“Farewell, noble Tizzol,” said the Lady Atlanta. “If I were a man, I would go at your side, tonight!”
It was easy enough for Tizzo to get down the stairway and out into the empty courtyard, unobserved.
A thunderstorm was rolling over the city, lighting up its towers and mountain ranges of clouds with long ripplings of cataracting lightning. Brief, rattling showers raised a pungent odor of dust in the air, and scurried the people out of the streets, as Tizzo turned away from the great, unhappy house of the Lady Atlanta.
He had never seen, he was sure, a lady so beautiful. Not the young and lovely wife of Grifone, even, was so like an immortal. Compared with such majesty and purity of features, the Lady Beatrice was a mere tomboy. She was a mere prettiness, in contrast. But then it was her spirit that set the hearts of men burning.
Thinking of her, Tizzo turned into the via dei Bardi and there forgot everything except his purpose. From the street of the Bardi, he turned into the alley that branched off from it, crooked and downhill as the course of a stream; and the lofty, irregular front of the houses might well have been a canyon which the running water had worked out of the living rock.
The house of Alberto Marignello had been well described to him. He found it almost at once and was about to cross the street toward it when a slender youth, wrapped in a cloak to defy the rain, said to him: “Tizzo, there have been many men there before you!”
He turned with a half groan of bewilderment and fear. “Beatrice,” he whispered, “in the name of what god have you come to Perugia tonight?”
CHAPTER 35
SHE STOOD BACK with one elbow leaning against the wall, her hat pulled half down across her forehe
ad, her legs crossed, her whole attitude one of super-boyish impudence and mirth. He had seen her so often in man’s clothes, she was so certain to slip into them whenever there was an emergency of importance, that his quickest memory of her was not in dresses at all. She was saying: “I came to Perugia in the name of the great god of the fire, in the name of the Firebrand; I came for Tizzo. Does that answer please you, my most noble lord?”
“Beatrice, listen to me—”
“If you talk so earnestly, people will notice you. If they look at you twice, they’ll soon have you clapped into a fire to burn in good earnest, Messer Firebrand.”
“They will find you in the town. They will surely recognize you, Beatrice. And if they get their hands on you—”
“They don’t murder women,” said Beatrice. “Not even in Perugia.”
“They’ll do worse. They’ll marry you to one of their brutal selves for the sake of your estate.”
“And then comes noble Sir Tizzo and runs my false husband through the gizzard and makes me a widow today and a new wife tomorrow. You see, I risk very little. No matter what road the story starts away on, it will wind up with Beatrice and Tizzo hand in hand at the close.”
“My God, how wild, how foolish, and how charming you are,” said Tizzo. “Giovanpaolo should not have told you where I had gone.”
“I pulled the story out of him like so many teeth. Tizzo, you would sneak away and let yourself be killed? Sneak away without a word of farewell to me?”
“I had not the courage to face you.”
“When I knew you were gone, I was empty,” she said. “I felt, suddenly, as though you had never kissed me, as though you had never said you loved me. I felt as though danger were another woman, and you had gone to her. So I had to come here and meet you in the street.”
“You must go instantly from the city.”
“With you, Tizzo, I would go anywhere.”
“I cannot go with you farther than the walls.”