Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Not as I hear it now,” said Falcone. “The world is wakening, Tizzo, and great things will come to pass. The new printing press with its moveable types will multiply books throughout the world. Gun-powder knocks down castle walls. A common man with a harquebus may stand at ease and kill with a single shot the knight in complete armor. God alone can tell where the world is tending. But you — Tizzo — how have you ever tended except to mischief?”

  So they sat talking and laughing together while the day ran on towards 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 sword-play.

  CHAPTER VII.

  A STAR OR FIVE POINTS.

  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 re-take 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 kills 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 axe 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 lantern light,” 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 towards 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 axe shafts,” 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 axe with one hand. “And we are masters of ours!” he added. “But have you touched the haft of an axe since we last saw you?”

  “An axe 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 tible 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 axe to use, and if you succeed — why, the axe is yours!”

  Tizzo accepted the axe and looked down on it with attention. Of old, from his boyhood, he had heard about that axe, and he had seen it swung, more than once, in the hands of Taddeo. The steel had a curious look. It was blue, with a strangely intermingling pattern of lines of gray. And the story was that once a fine Damascus blade had been brought back from the Orient, and being broken it had been re-welded by the father of Taddeo, not into a new sword, but into an axe-head. That matchless steel, supple as thought, hard as crystal, had been transformed into a common woodsman’s axe. The blue shining of it seemed to be reflected, at that moment, in the flame-blue of the eyes of Tizzo as he swayed the cunningly poised weight of the axe.

  For two life times that axe had been in use, the handle altered, refined, reshaped, so as to give it a gently sweeping curve. The balance was perfect. It grew to the hand like an extension of the body.

  Tizzo threw down on the ground the purse which he had
just received from Falcone.

  “I take the challenge, and if I fail, that purse is yours, my friends.

  Watch me now, Taddeo. Watch, Riccardo, Adolfo! There are ten enemies; if I miss one of them, the gold in that purse is your gold, and you will all be rich for ten years!”

  So, measuring his distance, swinging the axe lightly once or twice to free his muscles, he suddenly attacked the dim target with no calm deliberation, but with a shower of strokes, as though he stood foot to foot with fighting antagonists. With each stroke the axe bit in deeply; and with the tenth a block of solid wood leaped out from the blazed surface of the tree and fell upon the ground — a perfect star with five points!

  And in the wood of the tree, softly etched by shadow, there was another star incised.

  The three foresters raised a single deep-throated shout and actually fell on their knees to examine the work that had been done. But neither on the fallen star nor on the edges of the blazed surface appeared a single one of the lines which Riccardo had drawn with his knife. True to a hair’s breadth, the axe had sunk into the wood.

  Old Taddeo, standing up, pulled the cap from his head and scratched the scalp in meditation.

  “Wise men should teach only the wise,” he stated. “I have wasted my time teaching these two louts. But when I taught you the art of the axe, I taught two hands and a brain. Take my axe, Tizzo. Take my blue axe, and God give you grace with it. If it will not shear through the heaviest helmet as though it were leather and not hard armorer’s steel, call me a fool and a liar! Keep the edge keen; let it bite; and the battle will always be yours.”

  Tizzo picked up the purse and tossed it to the old man.

  “A gift is always better than a bargain,” he said. “Turn this money into happiness, and remember Tizzo when you drink wine.”

  So he was gone, quickly, and found Henry of Melrose chuckling in the woods not far away.

  “I followed closely enough to see what you did,” said the Englishman. “You understand one of the great secrets; coin is made round so that it may keep rolling. And the best of buying is a giving away!”

  CHAPTER VIII.

  “BEWARE OF ME TOMORROW.”

  JERONIMO DELLA PENNA had a dark, yellow skin, and a mouth which the earnest gloom of his speculations pulled down at the corners. He had large properties, but he was both penurious and absent-minded. His hose was threadbare over the knees, on this evening, but his brocaded cloak was fit for a king.

  He kept striding up and down, and when he greeted Tizzo it was with a stare that strove to penetrate to his soul.

  “Do you vouch for this man, my lord of Melrose?” he asked.

  “I vouch for nothing,” said Melrose, “except for the state of my appetite and the cleanness of my sword. Here is the man I told you about. I found him willing to come. I know he has been driven out of Perugia. Perhaps that makes him fit for your purposes. For my part, I withdraw and leave you to find out about him as much as you please. Come to me later, Tizzo. I have a room in the south tower. We can have a glass of wine together, before you sleep.”

  He went away in this abrupt fashion, leaving della Penna still at a gaze.

  He said: “My friend, it is said that there is a price on your head?”

  “That is true,” said Tizzo.

  “It is said that you have been wronged by Giovanpaolo. But he has a way of winding himself into the hearts of men so that they serve him more for love than for money. If he has dropped you today, can he pick you up tomorrow?”

  “Perhaps,” said Tizzo.

  Della Penna started. “Do you think that he can take you again when he chooses?”

  “How can I tell?” asked Tizzo, calmly. “I am not a man who knows the mind he will have tomorrow. The days as they come one by one are hard enough for me to decipher. Every morning, I hope to find a pot of gold before night; and how can I tell what will be in the pot? The hate of Giovanpaolo, or his friendship? It is all one to-me.”

  “And yet Melrose brought you to me!” pondered Jeronimo della Penna. “Tell me, Tizzo — because I have heard some rare tales of your courage and strength and wild heart — are you a man to pocket an insult?”

  “I am not,” said Tizzo.

  “Are you a man to return wrong for wrong?”

  “I am,” said Tizzo.

  “Are you a man I could trust?” pursued della Penna.

  “I’ve never betrayed a friend,” said Tizzo.

  “Ah! You won’t answer me outright?” exclaimed della Penna.

  “Signore, you are a stranger to me,” said Tizzo. “Why should I boast about my faith and truth? You must do as I do — take you as I find you. If you can use me for things I wish to do, I hope to shine with a very good opinion. If you try to ride me up hill against my wishes, you can be sure you’ll be sooner weary of spurring than I of following the road.”

  Della Penna scowled.

  “You are one of these fellows,” he said, “who have been praised for speaking your mind right out, like an honest man.”

  “Sir,” said Tizzo. “I think that only a fool trusts the man who is out of his sight.”

  “Do you know why I have sent for you?”

  “I guess that you plan something against Giovanpaolo or some others of your own family who have the control of Perugia.”

  “If that were the case, what do I know of you?”

  “Nothing except that you think I have a grievance against the same people. I make no promises; I ask none from you. If there is mischief abroad, perhaps each of us will make his own profit.”

  Della Penna smiled, faintly. He had found something in the last speech that appealed to him very much. Now he said: “There is one man in the world who can tell me the truth about you. But before he is through searching you, you may wish that you had let your soul be roasted on a spit in hell. Come with me, Mr. Honest Man.”

  THEY went down a corridor which communicated with winding stairs and came up these to an open tower from which Tizzo could look across the dark heads of the hills to a little group of lights which, he knew, shone from the village of Falcone. On this top story of the tower there was a fat old white-headed man with a red nose and a very cheerful smile, who greeted della Penna warmly, turning from an iron kettle in which he was stewing some sort of a brew over a little corner hearth.

  Tizzo was about to step forward to acknowledge the greeting when della Penna caught his arm with a hand of iron and checked him. Looking down, he saw that he had been about to put his foot inside a circle which was chalked upon the floor and which was filled with strange signs.

  A chill of horror passed like a night wind through the blood of Tizzo. He remembered strange tales in the village, years before, of the wizard who lived in the tower of the della Penna castle. When a blight fell on the grapes, when oxen fell dead at the plough or weevils got into the stored grain, the peasants were apt to look up with a curse towards the distant della Penna tower.

  “Messer Baldassare,” said della Penna, “I have brought—”

  “A good sharp blade that will be useful unless it cuts the hand which tries to use it.”

  Della Penna was so struck by the saying that he turned sharply about towards Tizzo, but Tizzo was too busy staring into the white circle to pay the least attention. It seemed to him that that great white sign upon the floor was as dangerous as the entrance into hell itself. It was a pit of damnation on the verge of which he stood and, covertly, he crossed himself.

  “How do you know,” asked della Penna, “that I wish to use this man? You have cast no horoscope for him nor even consulted your herbs on his behalf or on mine. Explain what you mean?”

  This sharply inquiring tone did not upset the magician in the least, and he turned his red, jovial smile on della Penna as he answered.

  “I have served your father and you for so long that when great good or evil come towards you my invisible agents are apt to whisper something in the air, indistinct words. I was about to make those words become clea
rer. I was about to force the spirits to speak to me in real language. I had drawn the circle on the floor and heated the broth, as you can see for yourself, when you appeared with the very man about whom I heard the whisper.”

  “How do you know it is the very man?” asked della Penna.

  “Look!” said the magician.

  He extended his hand above the steaming pot. In an instant the steam had turned crimson, and the hand of Messer Baldassare was gilded red, also.

  Tizzo uttered a faint, choked exclamation. His knees grew weak. He was terribly certain that now he was beholding the handiwork of the devil.

  “When I saw the red light strike my hand,” said the magician, “I knew that you were near — on the very stairs about to open my door. I had barely time to put my hat on my head before you came into the tower.”

  He was wearing a square, yellow, high hat with certain cabalistic signs worked in black upon it; Tizzo remembered the saying that it is not safe for common men to look upon an enchanter when he is serving the devil with his arts.

  “Look into this man, Baldassare,” said della Penna. “Shall I have good or evil fortune from him?”

  “Better than for me to speak, I can force him to speak for himself and to utter the truth.”

  “Force him, Baldassare?” demanded the patron.

  “Give me three drops of your blood, young man,” said the enchanter. “Come, and let me put them into the pot. Come without fear. In the circle, there is no harm for you!”

  But Tizzo nevertheless chose to edge cautiously around the circle and so come to the caldron.

  “Give me your hand!” said Messer Baldassare in a sudden, loud, and terrible voice.

  HE caught the right hand of Tizzo and stared straight into his eyes. The very soul of Tizzo was shaken, but he looked back and thought that the face of the enchanter had turned into the face of a frowning lion. The eyes were sparks of fire.

  “Now,” said Baldassare. And drawing the hand of Tizzo until it extended over the pot, Baldassare plucked out a bodkin and pricked a finger until the blood ran. The running of the blood he watched carefully and suddenly threw the hand from him.