by Max Brand
“Captain! Noble captain! Captain Tizzo!” one of them whispered.
“Louder,” growled someone. “Not even a cat would hear such whispers.”
“He has more ears than a cat. You’ll see,” said the man who had called.
And presently, sure enough, a figure leaned out the window.
“Who goes?” asked the guarded voice of Tizzo.
“Friends, friends, my captain. The fires are burning high; we have a cask of wine five years old and sausages and good bread. Will you come and break the bread and broach the cask with us?”
“Will I not?” said Tizzo. “I’ll drink you under the table and onto the ground, you hulking scoundrels! I’ll show you that a small bag can hold much wine. Wait for me! I come like a thought. Wait for me, hearties!”
They stood waiting, nudging one another, laughing softly for dread lest noise should reach the ears of the terrible duke. And they said to one another, chortling, rejoicing: “We’ll get him to show us a few of his sword tricks.”
“Aye, but when he strikes, he leaves a welt.”
“So the lesson won’t be forgotten.”
“Drink us onto the ground? I drink him into a stupor, or damn me.”
“How could he come to know us so soon and love us so well?”
“Because he is a man. And men know men quickly. Hush! It is he! Alberigo — Tomasso — take him from that side and we from this... master him quickly, because he is a jumping jackanapes... get him up on our shoulders, and we’ll carry him back, no matter how he wriggles. Show him the strength of Romagnol hands!”
THE Baron of Melrose, sleeping heartily in the first strong, deep sleep of the night, filled with a happy dream more than with good wine, was roused in spite of his fumes of slumber by a faint meow. He was a man who hated cats, as it is said that all true men, rough men, bold men are apt to do. So he roused suddenly and sat up, and then he saw, on the inside ledge of his casement, clearly defined in the moonlight, a big round-headed tomcat.
The baron was a man well into middle age, as his gray head showed, but he had some of the workings of youth in his blood and would have until death turned him cold.
He reached over the side of his bed and settled his hand on a heavy riding-boot which he raised, poised, and then squinted his eyes to take good aim.
It was because his glance was so firmly settled that he saw the thing at all. It was no more, say, than a single puff of steam from a boiling kettle; it was a translucence, a sparkling in the moonlight that slipped in a cold flood through the open casement. The cat turned its head and then leaped to the floor.
No, it had not leaped to the floor. A cat is light as a feather — down, and this was the loose fall of a helpless body. Staring, the big baron saw that the slender shape of the cat did not appear. Straining his eyes, he could make out that it lay stretched on one side on the floor, moveless.
Something got the baron out of his bed and into his boots. Being a soldier, he had merely to pull on his doublet and he was dressed.
The evanescent mist was gone from the moonlit casement. He made two long strides across the floor; he was leaning toward the cat when a slight fragrance, a strangeness of perfume entered his nostrils.
That instant his brain reeled, his knees weakened so that he fell into a stagger that took him halfway across the room. His hand touched the wall; he dropped to his knees.
His head was swaying from side to side. He found his whispering voice saying: “Merciful God! Merciful God!”
And, dimly, he was remembering the big tomcat, the little puff as of steam that had floated across the casement. The next moment he could recall that he was in a house with the Borgia!
He shut off his breathing. Terror and rage sharpened his wits and drove the fumes out of his brain. Still with his lungs closed, half stifling, he rose, fumbled, found his sword and belt, and so got to the door.
When he was in the hall, with the door closed behind him, he had to sink to his knees again.
“I am dead,” he kept saying. “Every breath I am drawing is death!”
In fact, he could not draw breath to the bottom of his lungs. And his brain would not function clearly. It was as though he had drunk too much. Ideas came to him, but they came mistily, from far off.
At last he could stand, wavering, supporting himself against the wall with one hand.
He had to leave the Giglio Rosso at once. He had to leave it and at once. That was as far as he could see ahead of him.
But Tizzo — in that room?
He jerked the door open, still holding his breath, and saw that the bed of Tizzo was empty, some of the covering spilling off onto the floor.
He closed the door. It seemed to him that he was shutting away the cold fingers of invisible, deadly hands that reached out toward him.
Now that he had shut them away, he paused for a moment to wonder how his son could have disappeared from the room.
But that thought faded from his mind again. He must get away.
HE went down the stairs to the stable yard, keeping his hand on the hilt of his sword, now that it was buckled to his side. The familiar touch of the roughened hilt restored his wits somewhat, but he was still far at sea. In the stable yard he had not taken a step before a pair of great halberds were crossed at his breast and rough voices demanded his name.
One of the guards, however, instantly struck down the weapon of his companion, muttering: “It is the father of Tizzo. It is the father of the captain! My lord, what will you have? Pardon us, my lord. In God’s name, don’t mention to your son that we have offered steel at your breast. Your face was unseen by us, highness!”
“My horse!” said the baron. “Let me have my horse.”
His tongue was thick. There was a singing in the back of his brain. Only vaguely he heard one of the guards mutter: “Drunk as an Englishman! He is an Englishman. Quick — run and have his horse saddled!”
It was a big, powerful brute that they led out, saddled, but the stunned brain of Melrose still was recuperating, and as he looked back at the massive, high, square shoulders of the tavern, he recalled other things. His son was somewhere, and there was Beatrice, also. They were both still within the coil of the dragon.
“Two more horses — the best — and one of them Falcone,” he directed.
“Falcone. The horse of your son?” asked the sleepy groom who had been wakened for this service.
“Do as I say,” said the baron. “I am going back into the tavern.”
And he turned and made long, resolute strides toward the inn.
CHAPTER IX. MELROSE AND BORGIA
HE WAS NOT half himself. In the great engine of the mind remained some stoppage that could not be swept away. Physical strength was returning; there was only a slight blur across the eyes, a slight dimness of the brain. If he had been drinking steadily for many hours, his condition would have been somewhat the same. Perhaps the fierceness of one great effort would clarify his wits again. He felt the fierceness in him, but he could not find an object for it.
There was Beatrice, first of all. He tapped at her door. Almost instantly he heard her come, the sweep of her gown like a softly passing wind.
“Who is there?”
“Speak quietly. It is I. Open the door.”
The bolt slipped through well-oiled wards; the door opened and let out to him a delicate breath of fragrance. Moonlight sweeping through one tall southern window, and the girl between, with a cloak held loosely about her. The touch of perfume sickened him almost to nausea. He would never be able to endure sweet odors again, he was sure, for it was with sweetness that the poison had slipped into his brain.
“Yes? What is it?” she whispered. “Is Tizzo—”
“Say nothing. Dress. Go down to the stable yard. There are three horses there.”
He turned away.
“But what—”
Her hand had touched him but it fell away again instantly from the hard rock of his shoulder. It was not for nothing that
she had lived through the midnight murders of the Great Betrayal and the re-winning of Perugia. She would be steady as a man, and as quick.
He could forget her, now. But there was Tizzo — no, Tizzo was away and that meant — in fact, he could not tell what it meant. The important thing, now, was the Borgia — or so it seemed to Henry of Melrose.
The moment his mind closed on that point, he was oblivious to all other things in the world. Cesare Borgia must die. This night must be made famous in the history of the world by the slaughter of that damned deviser of death.
The baron gripped his sword hard and strode straight up the stairs and then down the corridor to the room of the Duke of the Romagna and Valentinois. There was a single soldier on guard. He brought his halberd to the ready and put the point of it at the breast of the Englishman.
“What will you have in this part of the building, my lord?” asked the soldier.
“A word with the Duke,” said Melrose.
“The Duke is employed,” said the soldier.
“Employed with what, rascal?” asked the baron.
“With sleep, my lord,” said the guard casually.
With his left hand, Melrose put the spear-head of the halberd to one side. With his right he drew a dagger and struck not with the point but with the pommel, twice, right against the forehead of the sentry. The first blow stunned him; the second dropped him in a heap before the door.
Melrose tried it. It was locked.
He tried to think. Some voice in his soul was striving to draw him back from his virtuous labor of destroying the Borgia. Perhaps the argument within him had something to do with Tizzo, but he still was not able to focus his brain on the two subjects at once. There was the Borgia to be rid of first — the damned Borgia who poisoned by night, killing with a sweet breath of perfume!
He looked down at the guard. The fellow’s face was visible in the shaken light from a hanging lamp. There was a sort of bewildered grin on the looseness of the mouth; the blood ran in radiating, thin lines from the battered wound on the forehead.
The baron picked up the halberd, set the edge of it into the crack of the door, and bore down. The steel blade snapped with a light, singing, bell-like sound. It was echoed — very faintly from within the room — by a slight groan. Melrose jammed the broken axe-blade into the crevice which had opened a little wider. The steel was far thicker and stronger, now. It stood the strain. The wood began to tear, ripping out like cloth, and the door lurched open with a staggering sway.
Melrose passed with a long stride over the threshold; he pushed the door shut with one hand. Before him he could see only a step from the window by the moonlight but there was also a hooded lantern which sent out a few yellow rays. These showed the bed, and the great form which was rising from it. “Bernardo?” said the Borgia. “Let me give you more light, my lord,” said Melrose. “I want you to see well enough to die!”
He jerked the hood from the lantern; the sword was already in his hand and as he turned, he saw the Borgia leaping at him like some agile, vast, four-footed beast with a long, drawn blade in his grasp. Melrose met the attack with a high parry that caused the stroke to slip harmlessly aside. His own point drove for the throat. He wanted to get the steel through that dense beard into the soft of the flesh, but he missed his aim a little, and the point, instead, drove home hard against the breast of the Borgia.
The force of the lunge drove the Duke gasping back but the sharp steel had not entered his body; it had been stopped by a double weave of the finest Spanish mail.
The Borgia, catching up a bed covering around his left arm, to act as a shield, rushed in again; and again his attack slid vainly away from the wise sword of Melrose.
From the counter-attack, Cesare Borgia saved himself partly with the muffled folds of the cloak that was wrapped around his arm, and far more by the activity which enabled him to leap far back from the assault. But he would not have space in those quarters to evade many more of these murderously cunning attacks. He opened his throat and thundered a call for help; and by the lantern light he saw Melrose laughing like a devil, and coming swiftly in to finish the business.
For Tizzo that night visit to his men was as pleasant a thing as he could remember. It was high time for the tired fellows to be asleep, but they were all out in a crowd around a single huge campfire. At the edges of this blaze, some of them were toasting the sausages; others were broaching the cask of wine; and some of the tall Switzers strode about among the rest making a great, foreign, roaring noise. And that whole crowd cheered itself hoarse when it saw the captain coming among them, borne high on the shoulders of some of their comrades. They bore Tizzo twice around the camp, yelling like savages, and finally put him down. The big cups were out and filled to slopping over with the strong, coarse red wine.
Tizzo, with cup in one hand and a hot sausage in the other, ate, drank and laughed and chatted with the huge peasants. Among them, his shorter inches and his slenderness made him appear like a child.
But the little festival had hardly started when some of the soldiers had to be at their rough games again. Here was one who swore that he, at last, knew how to break down the guard of the commander with a good, full, two-handed halberd stroke, for instance. So he had to take his chance, letting drive full with the big weapon at the head of Tizzo, only to see the ponderous stroke baffled and delicately turned aside by the slender blade of the captain’s sword. And, in return, though he struggled desperately to leap away to a safe distance, the flashing, unavoidable counter followed — a sweeping stroke that rapped both shins of the peasant, though but with the flat of the blade. Even so, he howled and hopped, but laughed with all the rest at the result of his attack.
BUT the sword tricks of Tizzo were not enough. These fellows had heard strange tales of axe-work of which their master was capable — of the blue-bladed axe with which a man could shear through even the guarded and trebled thickness of a jousting helmet. That is, the blade would cut through if the hand that wielded it were clever enough. Could they, therefore, see Tizzo swing the axe? Could they have the blue flash of it once in their eyes, to remember?
Well, it was not far back to the tavern, and Tizzo was willing enough. A dozen of them poured at his heels as he returned to the tavern to get the weapon.
And all the way back to the Giglio Rosso, he was flexing his hands, preparing them once more for the familiar weight of the ax, and calling into the tips of them all that craft which he had learned from the woodsmen on the estate of his foster father. He might need it all, now, because he could surmise that one of the Swiss would bring out such an Austrian helmet as their own vast two-handed swords, with a five or six-foot blade, could not cut through or crush. The stunning weight of those sword-strokes might beat down both horse and man, but the ponderous helmet of the Austrians usually kept the sword edge from cleaving to the brain.
Would his lighter ax bite into such thick steel as that, or would his stroke glance harmlessly away?
He was full of a nervous tension, thinking of this. So far, he had been to his men an invincible figure. He never had failed them. And he would give a quart of blood rather than fail them now.
Perhaps it was the wine that warmed him, but he thought that he never had seen such a perfect night, stars so showering the sky with golden points, the moon so brilliant, the world so fair. And yonder, inside the Giglio Rosso, was Beatrice and the very happiness of his soul.
At the entrance to the tavern he left his followers. He would be only a moment, he told them, as he ran up the stairs. And behind him, following dimly even after he had shut the door of the inn, he could hear the old Italian love song which every Romagnol knows.
Fatherless, motherless,
She came from the mountains.
Carrying blue heaven
The river ran by her.
The sea has the river
And I have the maiden
The wind has our laughter.
This softened music came to him very fa
intly as he hurried up the stairs inside the tavern, and it was then that he heard the deep and sudden resonance of the voice of Cesare Borgia himself, calling for help.
CHAPTER X. THE TURN OF A BLADE
LONG BEFORE HE reached the doorway, Tizzo heard the clashing of the swords; and above him the sound of the rousing house, the slamming of doors, the calling of muffled voices, then the noisy beat of armored footfalls.
On the floor of the hall — moveless, dead it seemed — lay a halberdier with his broken weapon beside him. The door was slightly ajar, and through it Tizzo sprang with his sword.
The unhooded lantern threw an indifferent light, like a dull yellow mist, compared with the silver pools of moonlight that lay beneath the windows; and through the dimness he saw the lofty figure of Cesare Borgia fighting for his life, striking great strokes with a heavy sword, and at this moment warding off a dangerous blow delivered by a man nearly as tall, more heavily made, his face obscured by the flaring folds of a cloak which had been caught up around his left arm.
Tizzo, with a groan of anxiety, ran into the fight.
The Borgia had warded the last blow, but crowded as he was into a corner, his feet slipped from under him as he made a vain effort to retreat farther. He was sprawling on the floor with the sword of the enemy sweeping down over his head when Tizzo stepped into the path of that great stroke and caused death to glide harmlessly down his own slender weapon.
He heard a muffled curse from that obscure assailant; then he sprang in with his attack.
It never failed him in battle — the first thrust high, the lunge low, and then that singular, hanging, double-stroke which was his masterpiece. In the broad, unarmored breast of the other swordsman, he knew that his blade would go home to the hilt — but his knowledge was wrong!