Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Beatrice, I love you to a madness.”

  “You were mad before, or you would never have loved me.”

  “What are we to do?”

  “Giovanpaolo loves you, and with his love you can do anything. He swears that you are one of the immortals.”

  “Will he let me marry you, Beatrice?”

  “He says it would be poor policy, but he will never oppose it too much if he can make the rest of the family agree. I’ve told him that if I cannot have you, I will have nothing. They have showed me a beautiful French duke with more estates than there are between Perugia and Rome, a face like a statue, and a brain like a statue’s, also. They want me to choose him. But I tell them that if I marry such an ass we’ll have mules for children.”

  “Beatrice, stop talking a moment and let me look at you.”

  She put back her head and assumed a proud attitude, but in a moment she was smiling at him.

  “You had to keep yourself in exercise by fighting the proudest highest, harshest, sternest, wildest of the Baglioni — my cousin Semonetto. I heard that you cracked his head for him.”

  “How did you know, that it was I?”

  “Who else would dare such a thing? Who else could do it, with an axe like a woodchopper working on a tree? Besides, I talked to Semonetto, and he told me about it; when he saw that a blue lightning came in your eyes as you fought, when he told me that you fought laughing, I knew that it was my Tizzo, the happy madman. Tizzo, when we marry we shall not have mules for children — they will all be born with a cap and bells.”

  “My God, my God, how happy I am! How I love you, Beatrice! I could forswear wine, or anything, for your sake. But listen to me. I have news for Giovanpaolo.”

  “HAVE you? Then that is my excuse for coming dressed like a boy.”

  “Hush. Be serious. It is hard for me to come to him because there is supposed to be a price upon my head.”

  “I know that. That is what has waked me at night in a cold sweat.”

  “Tell him that I saw della Penna.”

  “The long-faced, sour, discontented grumbler!”

  “He is more than a grumbler. He is a traitor. Besides, he works with a wizard!”

  “Do you believe in such stuff?” asked the girl, her proud lip curling a little.

  “I tell you, Beatrice, that in della Penna’s house I heard things and I saw things beyond credence.”

  “Every man is sure to see as much as his superstition enables him to believe. Tizzo, don’t tell me that you are taken in by the childish tricks of juggling magicians.”

  “I heard my own voice speak out of the rising steam of a magic cauldron!”

  “Magic fiddlesticks.”

  “I tell you, I heard it. And afterwards, della Penna gave part of his trust to me. He sent me to the lord of Camerino to ask him one question: How many? I went there and asked, and the lord of Camerino told me: Two hundred and fifty.”

  “What? Florins?”

  “Armed men, or I miss my guess. Two hundred and fifty armed men, for what and when? For Perugia, I take it, and the danger of all the high and mighty Baglioni, including your sweet self.”

  “If I were not sauced with a little danger, I would never appeal to your palate, I know. Did Camerino speak of two hundred and fifty armed men?”

  “He named the number; he did not speak of the men.”

  “This is horribly serious, Tizzo.”

  “Murder, murder, or I miss my guess. That news from Camerino I repeated today to a designated man in the court of this tavern, a man with a red scarf around his head — and that was Mateo Marozzo.”

  “He was never known for any good.”

  “I have sworn to have the killing of him — but this leads on. I shall see more of them, I’m sure. Before long, having done one mission, I shall be employed on another. When and where they mean to strike we still do not know. There must be other heads of the plot than della Penna. Tell Giovanpaolo that before long I hope to have seen the bare faces of the plotters; and then I shall be able to send him word.”

  “In the meantime, you go in a double danger, Tizzo. A price has been put on your head by my family; and also if the traitors of della Penna’s company suspect you, you will die like a dog.”

  “Danger is the air I was born to breathe. Beatrice, go back with the news I give you.”

  “I cannot leave you, Tizzo. See — I try to walk to the door but my feet will not carry me there.”

  “How can even God have fashioned a thing so beautiful, a mind so noble, a spirit so high? I shall spend my life worshipping you.”

  “We shall spend our lives having tiffs and quarrels, I’m sure. But we love each other, and that’s worth a barrel of French dukes.”

  Here there was a soft, quietly murmuring sound from the corridor, a thin humming noise which Tizzo, his head suddenly high in the air, seemed to recognize as the stir of swords in scabbards. The girl, too, suddenly thrust the bolt home in the lock and whirled about.

  “There are armed men in the hallway, Tizzo!” she whispered, turning white.

  AND at that moment the bolt of the door clanked a little; after that followed a quiet, discreet knocking. Tizzo moved slowly to make his answer, when the inner door of the chamber was thrust suddenly open and Elia Bigi appeared looking like a hungry wolf. His one eye was shrunk by fear.

  “There are a hundred men come to find you!” he muttered. “Come with me quickly. There is still time to escape. The traitor Marozzo is among them to point you out. Quickly, my master. There is still time to pass through this door and down the winding stairs.”

  “Take the lad — the girl — and carry her along with you.”

  “Lad? Girl? You shall come with me!” snarled Bigi, and laid a hand on her arm.

  “Do you know what you do, you fool?” she asked, savagely. Then she added in a whispering passion:— “I shall not leave you, Tizzo! I know you mean to protect my good name or my life, or both. But I shall not leave you! I shall not leave you here to be a rearguard — and to die—”

  Her voice broke, while Elia Bigi stared gloomily down at her and bit his lip.

  Tizzo did not argue. He merely said: “Elia, it is the Lady Beatrice Baglioni. Take her; save her; and quickly.”

  “Hai!” muttered Elia Bigi, and instantly he had grasped her with both hands. “Come with me, my lady! There is no use in argument. You come while I have the strength to take you. You are too fine a hawk to be found in this nest. A Baglioni in a common tavern! Aha! You will struggle? This ends all struggling: Away! Away!”

  Here he literally caught her up in both arms and bore her out of the room.

  The door swung softly shut behind him, and now a heavier hand beat on the door. Tizzo called out: “What’s there?”

  “A friend to see you, signore.”

  “What friend?”

  “A messenger from Antonio Bardi.”

  “How many are with you?”

  “I am alone, signore.”

  “You are alone in your lie, only,” said Tizzo. “The hall is filled with the murmur of armed men.”

  A distinct though faint voice now said out of the distance:— “Guard the lower hallway and the winding stairs. He may try to break out through that way.” Then a louder voice exclaimed: “Open the door, traitor and dog! It is I! It is Marozzo!”

  Whatever the engagements of Marozzo to the friends of della Penna, he had not been able to give over this golden opportunity of mastering his great enemy. The moment he spoke, there was a distinct clinking of steel as the many men who had stolen into the hall with him gave up all pretense at secrecy.

  And a moment later an axe was struck into the door with such force that the edge of it gleamed on the inner surface of the wood!

  CHAPTER XIII.

  MAGIC FIRE.

  TIZZO LOOKED SWIFTLY around him, then sprang for the inner door of the room. He had waited long enough, now, to assure the retreat of the girl and Bigi in safety. But when he snatched the sec
ond door open, he heard, distinctly, the clanking of steel on stone as many armed feet ascended the winding stairs beyond.

  He swung that door shut and thrust home the bolt. There remained the window, which offered to him the blue sky of twilight as a promise of peace. He leaped to the window and looked out, but he saw what he had known he would see — the eaves too far projecting for him to reach them, and under him the sheer, flat surface of a wall of cemented masonry. Not even a cat could have climbed to safety in this direction.

  He turned again, to face the darkening room and the certainty of death. And then the rising night wind blew through the window upon him and gave to him a new inspiration.

  He had noticed, glimmering around the room, a number of large oil-fed lamps. The olive oil in the big bowls must be measured in many a litre. He seized those lamps now and emptied them one after another on the clothing of the bed until the mass of cloth was soaked.

  In the meantime, the wood was being hewn away in chunks. And the voice of Marozzo at the door was calling out: “Busily, axes! One moment and we bear down the door with our shoulders and get at the rat. Remember that he has teeth! Beware of him. Use the point before the edge! Remember, there is a reward of two thousand florins and that’s enough to keep you all drunk for six months. I give you my half share in the reward. I put it all into your hands! Cheerily now, axes!”

  Tizzo swept the bedding onto the floor of flags and with the flint and steel beside the fireplace, struck a shower of sparks onto the oil-drenched material.

  The flames caught, ran lazily, cast upwards a thick smudge of black smoke that rapidly began to cloud the room.

  “Tizzo!” shouted Marozzo, as a hail of blows fell upon the door thickly. “Do you hear? It is II It is Mateo Marozzo! I have come to see you at your finish, Tizzo! Do you hear me laugh?”

  In fact, the loud, long, wailing laughter of Marozzo rang mocking above the tumult.

  Tizzo, the woodsman’s axe in his hand, pulled the flaming mass of the bedding closer to the door. Then, with his left hand, he thrust back the bolt, hurled the door open. He saw before him a closely packed mass of steel-armored men-at-arms. On this occasion, Mateo Marozzo was taking no chances, but having cornered his quarry he was making sure that he had enough trained soldiers beside him to finish his game.

  Into the faces of these men, with the hooked blade of the axe, Tizzo flung the flaming mass of the bedclothes.

  Before the fire, the dense, thick, oily smoke was blown by the draught into the faces of the men-at-arms. And now the flames themselves followed. Even drawn visors were no sure protection against the spattering drops of flying, flaming oil which searched every crevice of all the armor instantly. The surcoats were flaring fires at once. And the gust from the window, pouring through the door, fanned the fire and drove all the smoke in a headlong cloud.

  Through that whirling, dense mist Tizzo leaped with his axe. The edge would be swift death wherever it struck, but it was too apt to lodge in the cut it made. Therefore, with the back of the axe as with a heavy sledge hammer, Tizzo dealt blows right and left and the shock of the impacts on the heavy steel helmets dropped a man before him at every blow.

  But it was not from his fighting that they turned. It was the sudden appearance of a flaring hell-mouth at the door of a common tavern room that made the men-at-arms bolt.

  “Magic! Black magic!” one of them yelled.

  That shout was taken up by all the rest. It was an ample excuse for flight, and the whole mass of men poured down the hall.

  TIZZO, by dint of his axe-work, was ahead of the rest. He was down the stairs like a leaping wild cat. He was in the courtyard where stupidfaced grooms held the bridles of horses and stared up in wonder at the black pouring of smoke through the windows of the corridor above them.

  Not the blow of the axe but the merely swinging flash of it was enough to give Tizzo a horse. He raced the animal through the gaping gate of the courtyard and out onto the street. And behind him he heard the wild cry begin to go up: “Treason! Treason! Treason to the Baglioni! Follow, in the name of God and two thousand florins!”

  Down half a dozen of the swift-sloping streets of Perugia which turn and angle dizzily, like the courses of mountain torrents, he twisted and turned his way until the noise of the pursuit was dimmer behind him. Then he leaped to the ground and let the horse gallop furiously down a slope, sliding and twisting and slipping over the smoothness of the pavement.

  But Tizzo had gone on straight to the house of the rich della Penna.

  Compared with the country villa of the same family, this house was small. But it offered him the one point of safety he knew about, unless he chose to make his way a greater distance to the residence of his dear friend, Antonio Bardi. But to go to Bardi’s place to involve Antonio in the same difficulties which faced him, and this he preferred not to do.

  To the two armed porters who kept the main door of the house, he merely flashed the face of the signet ring of their master and they let him pass through at once. One of them conducted him to a hall on the second floor above the street; and then went to fetch della Penna himself who, he said, had just returned from the country that day.

  Tizzo, left alone, helped himself to wine which stood on a corner table and walked slowly up and down the big apartment. Outside the window, the twilight sky was turning a deeper, darker blue and by the uneven light of two lamps Tizzo looked on such a room as might have been seen, at that time, in the house of any rich Italian. On the walls were paintings and tapestries. The very ceiling was all one great fresco. And in the center of the hall there was a priceless old Greek bronze which had been fished up out of the bay of Naples. Not a bit of furniture except hard wood, hand-carved, graced that hall. And in the tapestry which covered the end wall, designed to show the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, there was a masterpiece worth a dozen fortunes to-day.

  But Tizzo, though he had an eye for such things, had other things than luxury and art of think of. He heard a swift stride, presently, and into the hall came the tall frame of della Penna.

  He was one of those men who like to stand close to any conversational partner, as though to awe the other by the keenness of his eye and the dignity of his presence. He might as well have stared into the eyes of a hawk as into the eyes of Tizzo, where the faint blue flame of battle was still dancing.

  “Did I tell you to make my house your resort?” demanded della Penna.

  “I was chased from the Sign of the Golden Stag,” said Tizzo, “and I came here to report the thing to you.”

  “As for your tavern brawls,” said della Penna, “they do not enter into my accounting.”

  “Does the honesty of your brother traitor, Marozzo — does that enter into your accounting?” demanded Tizzo.

  The whole phrasing of the sentence was such an affront that della Penna fell back a stride, as though from a blow.

  “Marozzo?” he said. “What has filled your mouth with language like this? In what way do you dare—”

  “LISTEN to me, my friend,” said Tizzo. “That you are older than I, I admit; that you are wiser, I am ready to grant; but if you try to beat me with your tongue first, you will have to beat me with your sword in real earnest afterwards. I’ve come to bring you news. If you want to hear it, well; if not, may you and your entire faction be damned. I leave you at once.”

  “Wait — wait!” panted della Penna, yellow with rage and yet hard bound with curiosity, also. “You forget that men who are deep in dangerous affairs—”

  “Have dangerous tongues? Well, I’m willing to forget the first manners so long as the second ones are better. Do you wish to hear me?”

  “If you please,” said della Penna, still breathing hard.

  “I tell you that I gave your message from Camerino to Marozzo—”

  “What was it?”

  “Two hundred and fifty.”

  “Good! Ah, that is news which men who are now in the house will be glad to hear. Two hundred and fifty?”

>   “That is what he said.”

  “You gave that to Marozzo? Why did not the madman carry me the sword at once?”

  “Because he recognized my voice, if not my face in spite of walnut stain and black hair. Hatred washes the eyes very clear, Signor della Penna. And a little later he was back at the tavern, outside my room, with twenty armed men.”

  “Twenty? How in the name of God did you escape? Through a window?”

  “I’m not a bird,” answered Tizzo. “I managed to throw some fire in their faces, and then I came away. It does not particularly matter how. The important thing is that you now know what the lord of Camerino will do for you.”

  “Two hundred and fifty!” muttered della Penna. “Then the thing is as good as done — ah, Astorre Baglioni! May I see your face before you have ended dying!”

  As he spoke, forgetting himself in a transport, he shook his clenched fist above his head. Then he took Tizzo hastily by the arm.

  “You have done enough,” he said. “You have done quite enough. You shall come in among the others with me and tell your news. If Camerino is with us, we shall surely win!”

  Tizzo followed, his mind whirling. Whatever he had guessed before, the naked truth, as the first glimpse was revealed to him, dazzled his eyes with horror. For it was plain that an attack on Perugia was planned and that Astorre was to be murdered in the midst of his wedding festivities.

  But now he was taken through a doorway into a large room, well-lighted. The first face he saw was that of Baron Henry, of Melrose.

  With the sight of the second face his brain reeled and refused all thought. For the host in whose house Astorre, Beatrice, Giovanpaolo, Messer Guido, and more than half the great names of the Balgioni were gathered as guests for this night, himself the richest of all the name, young, rich, famous, beautiful Grifone Baglioni stood there among the plotters against his own blood!