by Max Brand
Tizzo cast his sword from him. It was a magic little weapon against men in half-armor or less, but this complete suit of plate was impregnable to the needle point. There remained the ax with its curved head of Damascus steel, but the ax was a weapon to be used by a man in full armor who could give all his attention to sheer striking and let his accouterments take care of the counter attack. Yet Tizzo, as he whirled the ax lightly over his head, looked calmly down the long sword of the stranger, and prepared to evade the next blow.
“What are you, brother?” asked Tizzo. “It seems that I’ve fallen into the hands of the Duke. Are you his executioner? Does he wash his chapel every day with blood?”
“It will be washed with yours today, Tizzo,” said a deep, stern voice.
“Ah, you know me?” said Tizzo.
“Know you? Why else have I been leading you on for four days?” asked the stranger.
“Ah ha! You are the man of the gray horse? And leading me on, do you call it? Tell me your name, my friend.”
“I tell it to you gladly,” said the other. “It’s right for you to know my name before I clip the head off your shoulders. I am Dino Sanudo.”
“Then, Dino,” said Tizzo, “you are a lying coward. You were not decoying me. For four days you’ve been running for your life. Step in, my lad, and do your best; but you’ll see that heavy armor is not worth a breath when a coward wears it. Come on, Sanudo!”
Sanudo, under the insults, hesitated, leaned, and then rushed with a tremendous stroke. To avoid it, Tizzo leaped back and up onto a stone bench that stood against the wall. Even so, the sword drove humming past his throat and breast, the sharp point ripping the breast of his jacket. The force of the blow swung Dino Sanudo more than half-way round, for he had struck in the perfect confidence that this time the blade surely would find flesh.
And while Sanudo hung for an instant, amazed, off balance, Tizzo leaped from the bench like a cat, and added the force of his springing body to the full weight he could put in the head of the axe. It struck with beautiful accuracy between the bowl of the helmet and the jugular plate, springing the heavy steel apart or cleaving sheer through it.
Sanudo fell, his sword hurling before him into the corner and his armored weight falling against the blade and snapping it into three singing fragments; Tizzo leaped on over Sanudo and wrenched out the imbedded edge of the ax. He whirled, ready to strike desperately again — and saw his enemy lying with his head at the foot of the altar steps and the blood oozing from the cleft in the armor.
“Dead?” said Tizzo. But before he made sure, he looked to the edge of his ax. It was hardly blunted. The chisel edge remained entirely sound.
“Now God bless the Saracen hands that found the iron and worked it into this steel!” said Tizzo, aloud. “Our Italian stuff is tin, compared with this.”
HE took note of Dino Sanudo again and, lest any of the blood should run out on the altar steps, he took hold of the prostrate body by the foot and dragged it, bumping and clattering, over the floor to the corner of the chapel. Even at that distance from the altar, blood on the floor would be a sacrilege. He stripped off his jacket and laid it under the head of Sanudo. Not until that had been done did he turn the body on its back and undo the visor. When it was raised, he looked a moment on the swarthy, ugly face, now gray green with pallor. Some of the blood had run forward and traced a crimson streak down the face of Sanudo. The eyes were not closed, but slightly open, and that to Tizzo was perfect proof of death. He drew a fold of the jacket over the face of Sanudo and facing toward the altar raised his hands, the ax still gripped in one of them.
“O Lord,” said Tizzo, “I have had the sign. In return for this, if I fail to build a house on earth for some saint, if I fail to fit it out from bell to altar, let me have no more place in heaven than a rat!”
This satisfied his sense of devotion and he began to look about the chapel again until his eye lighted on the stone grille-work of the window, high up on a side wall. The capital of a pilaster projected just beneath this marble open-work and Tizzo measured the distance. First he cased his ax in the holster at his back; his sword he belted around him aslant across the front of his body. Next he laid hands on a wooden bench, put it under the column, and backed across the chapel to the opposite wall. There he paused, gathering in himself the electric strength which could be piled up in the nerves and discharged in one great flash of effort.
At last he crouched, ran forward, stamped on the top of the bench and hurled himself high up. His fingers brushed the edge of the capital, but he could get no secure hold, and his body struck heavily against the wall. He dropped, half stunned. On one knee he waited a moment for the shock to pass; and again he stepped back to examine the problem. He began to sing a little, very softly. And now and then his glance flashed toward the door which might open at any moment and let danger pour in at him.
He rearranged the bench, now, putting it at a slant between the floor and the side of the pilaster, the two ends braced as firmly as he could manage. Afterward, he went to the little marble bowl of holy water, sunk in a niche in the wall.
“May it be forgiven, O Father in Heaven!” said Tizzo, and with some of the water he carefully moistened the soft leather soles of his shoes so that they might stick better to wood. Now, again, he took his place opposite the bench, waited the vital instant, felt the full charge of energy built up in his nerves, and raced across the room once more.
This time, he ran up the sharp slant of the bench, leaped, and caught the head of the pilaster easily. One more arm-haul set his grip on the stone grille of the window.
Through the white bars, he could see the little semi-circular chamber where the lord of the house might come to attend divine service at his pleasure, unhampered by the public presence of many people.
Still hanging by one hand, he slipped the ax free over his shoulder and with the hammer-head that balanced the blue blade of it, he tapped carefully on the stone rods until they cracked, broke, dropped down on a floor where the noise of their fall was muffled by a carpet or prayer rug. His shoulders were aching before he managed to break out a portion sufficient to allow even his lithe body to wriggle through. But now he stood in the little room with a passage slanting away from it into dimness. He paused only to take a few deep breaths. Then, with the ax again holstered and the slender sword in his hand, he made forward through the obscurity.
A door stopped him. And it was locked! He gave his shoulder to the wood. It was so heavy that it would take a number of strokes to cut his way through it. Besides, the noise he made would be as fatal as beating on a drum.
He paused for thought, singing softly, drumming the thin, hard tips of his fingers against his chin. The key was not on his side of the door, of course; and the lock itself was secured inside a big, square plate of iron which was screwed strongly into its socket.
The screws were the vulnerable part. With a corner of his ax set into the grooves of the screws, he turned them out of their holes one after another, until the lock came freely into his hand. Once it was exposed, nothing was easier than to manipulate the rusted old springs inside it and so move the bolt.
Cautiously, therefore, bit by stealthy bit, he opened the door until he made sure that there was a deep obscurity beyond it.
When he discovered that, he advanced more confidently and closed the door behind his back.
The room was very dark, but there were things in it that surprised his senses. This was full daylight that must be shuttered and curtained out with much care in order to produce this darkness and yet the room did not have the musty air of a chamber that has been sealed up for a long time. Instead, there were various savors that were very pleasing. With an accurate sense he numbered them to himself — the fragrance of fruit — of apples, and a dusty sweetness that might come from plums. The thin, sour-sweet of a wine, a red wine, was dimly in that air, together with that slight taint of soot which is left when a candle has been burning for some time, or a lamp with too long
a wick. Beyond this, he thought he could make out, more obscurely than the rest, the presence of some unknown perfume, an unnatural, blended fragrance.
He stooped and touched the floor. It was tiled and the tiles were smooth with wax. It had been polished within a day or two, at the most.
This thing had become a mystery. It was a habitable room, one ordinarily in constant use, perhaps, and yet today it had been darkened. Not merely darkened for coolness in the middle of hot weather, but actually closed up so that not a ray, no matter how he turned and looked in all directions, could be found.
The wall would guide him somewhat. He went along it with poised, reaching steps, feeling his way by hands and feet together. So it was that he found a chair.
The wood, by the rough of the grain under the seat, was probably oak; the cushion was silk velvet; the back of the chair was covered with intricate carvings, not deeply incised. And at the base of the chair, on the floor, he found a pair of soft cloth slippers such as one might wear in a bedroom. He slid a hand inside one of the slippers. No woman was apt to wear slippers of such a size. He was in a man’s bedroom, then.
He started forward again and had made one or two of those stealthy, gliding steps when he heard a sound of metal scraping against metal; a yellow cone of light sprang out into the room, flashed across his eyes, returned to catch and hold him as with a bodiless hand.
He could see, now, that he was lost. Four motionless figures on the farther side of the room, holding up big-headed halberds, were not dummies with waxen, painted faces. They were living men in stout half-armor. They were more to deal with than his single pair of hands could cope with, and yet they seemed nothing compared to the figure of the big man who sat in a chair near the wall between two shuttered windows, with a mask over his face.
CHAPTER IV. SACRIFICE FOR ITALY
THE SHOCK OF the sudden burst of light from the unhooded lantern perhaps had had an effect in straining the nerves of Tizzo more than a little; but at any rate the vision of this man poured in and in through his mind with a sensation like the cold of the wind at dawn, touching flesh that is warm and tender from the bed.
He could not see the eyes of this man clearly behind the mask, but he felt them as he never had felt a man’s eyes before.
Tizzo dropped the point of his sword, put his left hand on his hip, and waited.
He could not go forward. It was foolish to turn back because he knew where the passage led.
“Open the windows,” said the masked man.
They were flung open at once. The keen daylight shocked the eyes of Tizzo for a moment — he had been straining his pupils in order to pierce the darkness of a moment before.
And now from the masked man came a deep, resonant, slow-speaking voice again, which said: “There is enough of this childish game. The rest of you, begone.”
The soldiers moved instantly from the room. There remained in a corner a slight, pale-faced fellow who kept his bright eyes constantly on the face of Tizzo.
“You, also, Alessandro,” said the master, and the slender man with that dead-white face passed from the room in turn.
And now Tizzo became very keenly aware that he had a naked sword in his hand while the big man in the chair was unarmed except for a dagger which he wore hanging from a golden chain and cased in a golden scabbard richly worked over with emeralds. Except for that single ornament, his clothes were not rich — a pair of muddy riding boots were on his feet. He sat half sprawling, and yet with an effect of powerful dignity.
“An armed man, a barred window, a locked door could not hold you, Tizzo,” said that deep voice. “You are free. Leave when you wish. Not a hand will be raised to stop you. I have given the order to the soldiers, and I am the Duke of Valentinois and the Romagna.”
Tizzo unbelted the scabbard of his sword, placed it again around his hips, and slipped the blade back into the scabbard.
“My lord duke,” he said, “shall I be grateful to you, or shall I ask if you sent Dino Sanudo in full armor to murder a naked man?”
“I sent him to you,” said the Borgia.
“In the name of God, will you tell me why?”
“You had injured a servant of mine; you had driven Sanudo for four days, like a dog.”
“In that case, if you wished to have me dead, why do you set me free?”
“Because I would rather please you than please the ghost of a dead coward.”
“My lord, you stood behind the barred windows and watched us fight.”
“I did, and then sat here in a darkened room to wait for you to enter the trap, when I saw that you had courage and wit enough to break into it. But when it closed on you, you neither ran like a woman, nor tried to fight the impossible like a fool. By the light of that lantern, I saw a man. That is why you are free. If you had shrunk — if you had tried to storm out of the room—” He paused.
“I would by this time be hanging by the neck in your courtyard?” asked Tizzo.
“You would,” said the Borgia. “You would have been hanged properly for murder.”
“But as it is?”
“A brave man can do no wrong in my Romagna,” said the duke.
“You’ve said a number of friendly things, my lord,” said Tizzo. “And you are doing things that are more friendly than your words. From now on, if I ever hear words against Cesare Borgia, my hand will be against the speaker. May I ask you a final favor?”
“You may,” said the Borgia.
“My lord, Sanudo I was chasing for the sake of the horse he rode. May I buy him at your own price?”
“A very good horse?”
“A very good horse, my lord. You may have what’s in my purse and my pledge to pay more.”
“This stallion is something you have fixed your heart on, Tizzo?”
“Aye,” said Tizzo, “and until I’ve sat on his back — by God, until he’s run up perpendicular walls with me — and jumped whole rivers — why, until then I’ll never live as a happy man.”
“In that case,” said the duke, “you shall have him. Is that he, now?”
He pointed out the window, and there Tizzo saw the unsaddled stallion passing, led by a pair of grooms; and two were necessary, for the gray was dancing as though he wanted to leap into the sky.
“Yes — yes — yes!” cried Tizzo. “That is he! See how he steps with wings instead of fetlocks — that light on his flanks runs through my soul like a sword — and all that life and glory in him after four days of running with the weight of a coward in armor on his back! Four days of work — and then this! Why, if they turned him loose, he’d jump to the head of that hill with the first bound, and hop onto the back of that cloud with the next!”
“He is yours, Tizzo,” said Valentinois.
“I thank you from the bottom of my heart. This is noble of you, my lord. I can see in your own eye that you know a horse — but now, to let me buy him—”
“You cannot, Tizzo,” said the duke. “I’d rather sell flesh cut from my own body than such a horse as that. You cannot buy him, but it will enrich me to have him ridden by a friend.”
Here Tizzo started, and struck a hand over his heart as though to cover a wound. “A gift, my lord?” he said. “A gift of that gray beauty — that living flash of silver — that winged glory? I cannot take it.”
“Can you not?” asked the duke. “You have heard some dark things about me, Tizzo. A gift from me would make you feel unclean?”
“I have heard tales, my lord,” said Tizzo, keeping his head at an imperious height.
“Poison — stabbings in the dark — murder, murder, murder, lechery and murder?” The duke smiled.
And suddenly Tizzo cried out: “Tell me that they are lies, my lord, and I shall forget them — they have no existence for me!”
“You would wash my memory and reputation clean with enthusiasm, Tizzo,” said Cesare Borgia, “but I must tell you the truth because I want it to be a friend that rides away on the gray stallion. So I must tell you the t
ruth. If I buy your friendship with a lie today, I lose it at the first touch of truth tomorrow. They have made a beast out of me with their talking; they have exaggerated; but the truth is that I have been the death of many men.”
Tizzo burst into a sweat. He shuddered.
“By poison — and stabbings in the back?” he asked.
“Well, yes. By many ways. By wine at my table, by a strange fragrance in the smoke of a candle after it is snuffed; or, again, an accident on shipboard, or a sudden rush of ruffians in a dark alley. In many ways.”
Tizzo peered at the eyes of this man; a shadow fell over them from the mask, but through the shadow they could be felt. Then the word, the only word for it, came with horror out of the stiffening throat of Tizzo: “Murder!”
“No,” said the Borgia, “sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice? To what?” asked Tizzo.
“To Italy,” said the duke.
And when he saw that Tizzo had been struck to a silence, he said: “They have cut the garment of God into pieces and thrown dice for it. And a few of the dicers have been removed — by me! Look!”
He pointed out the window, and the eyes of Tizzo glanced over the deep green of the rolling land, enriched with vineyards and orchards and bright here and there with the gold of grain-fields. “Florence, Venice, Naples, Rome at the throats of one another fighting with hired soldiers, borrowing the help of Spaniards and Frenchmen who suck out the blood of our land. Do you see? Italy is my mistress, and I see dogs eating her beautiful body. There will be no great Italy till it is free and united; it will never be free until Italians fight Italian battles. And here in the little Romagna, away from the eye of the world, hidden by the mountains, I have taught the peasants to fight as steadily as Spanish pikemen, as gayly as the French, as furiously as the Swiss. Here, in the ranks of those drilled peasants of mine, begins the real life of Italy. Old Rome shall be born again. The tyrants of the cities shall be swept away. Italy shall be her own!”