by Max Brand
He saw his column sink down out of sight into the ditch. And suddenly he was alone in the road with the brilliant moonlight flooding about him and Forli lifting its gilded shoulders in the distance.
He could see the fort of the Rocca looming above the city.
Surprise such a place with a hundred men? He felt as though he had empty hands.
He passed on a short distance toward the town, then turned his horse and let it jog softly back up the road. The carts were in view, now, a whole score of them trudging along, the owners walking at the heads of the horses, the carts piled high with all sorts of country produce; the squealing of pigs sounded, and now and then the drowsy cackling and cawing of disturbed chickens as the carts rolled over a deeper rut or struck a bump with creaking axles.
Tizzo held up his hand when he came to the first cart.
“Halt there, friend!” he commanded.
“Halt yourself and be hanged,” said the Romagnol. “We’re already late for Forli. What puts you on the road so far from a warm bed at this time of the morning?”
Two or three of the other peasants ran up with clubs in their hands to join in any altercation that might follow, but Tizzo knew these hardy Romagnols too well to interfere with them in this fashion. He reined the white horse aside and called out: “Up, lads, and at them!”
The thing was ended in one rush, Tizzo’s voice calling, “Hands, only! No daggers or swords! Don’t hint them, boys!”
So it was done, in a moment; the tough Romagnols, overwhelmed by numbers, were quickly helpless, and over the brief babbling noises could be heard only the voices of several of the farmers’ wives, crowing out their laments as they sat up on the tops of the loaded carts.
Tizzo brought quiet.
He rode up and down the line, saying cheerfully, “Friends, you have been robbed and cheated and taxed by the Countess Sforza-Riario for a good many years. Here I am with some of the men of the duca. If I open the gates of the town with your help, it will belong to Cesare Borgia before midday. Do you hear me?”
A man growled out the short answer: “Why change one robber for another?”
“The Duke of Valentinois and the Romagna does not rob peasants,” said Tizzo.
“All dukes are robbers,” said a peasant.
“Of course they are,” answered Tizzo, chuckling, “but this one only robs the lords and ladies and lets the peasant alone. For the food that his troops need, he pays hard cash.”
The readiness of this reply and the apparent frankness of it brought a laugh from the peasants.
“I leave you your cartloads unharmed,” said Tizzo. “I put a ducat in the hand of every man of you. I leave your women behind you on the road, here. I throw a few of my men into each cart, and we roll on through the gates. Do you hear? If we pass the gates unchallenged, all is well. If one of you betrays us, we cut your throats. Is that a bargain?”
And one of the peasants answered with a sudden laugh, “That’s a soldier’s true bargain. Come on, friends! I’d as soon shout ‘Duca!’ as yell ‘Riario!’ Let’s take the bargain; because we can’t refuse it!”
VII. TORTURE
CATERINA, COUNTESS SFORZA-RIABIO, gathered a big woolen peasant’s cloak more closely about her and raised the lantern so that she could see better the picture before her. It was the Baron of Melrose, naked except for a cincture, and lashed up by the hands so that his toes barely rested on the floor. In this posture he could support his entire weight only for a few moments on the tips of his toes, after which the burden of his body depended from his wrists.
He had been lashed there long enough to be close to exhaustion and now a continual tremor ran through his body, and the big muscles of his legs twitched up and down, and shudderings pulled at the tendons about his shoulders. But still his gray head was carried straight.
The countess broke off a bit of bread and ate it, and then swallowed a bit of wine which a page offered her on one knee, holding the silver salver high.
“How long before the strength goes out of his legs?” she asked. “How long before he hangs from the wrists like a heavy sack tied up by the two ears?”
A tall, powerful man stepped out of the shadows a little and looked more closely at the prisoner. He reached up and felt the shoulder muscles of Melrose, then the trembling, great muscles of the thighs.
“He’ll endure until not long after dawn”, said the executioner.
“And how long after that, Adolfo, before the tendons begin to pull and break in his shoulders?”
“He is a heavy man,” said the executioner, “but he is well muscled. You see that right arm, particularly?”
“That’s the arm of a swordsman,” said the countess. “And I hear that he’s a famous fellow with a sword.”
“After the middle of this morning, he never will be famous again,” said Adolfo.
“Will his arms be ruined?”
“Forever,” said Adolfo. “Until he dies, he will have to be fed like a baby.”
“Do you hear that, my lord?” asked the countess.
Melrose looked at her, with the sweat of the long agony running down his face. He said nothing.
“There is something Christian in the sight of suffering like this,” said the countess. “After watching you, my lord, I’ll be able to say my prayers with more feeling, for a long time.”
“Of course you will,” said the executioner. “I always go to church after I’ve killed a man in here.”
He looked without a smile over his domain, the gibbetlike beams that projected from the wall here and there, and the iron machines with projecting spokes, the iron boots, also, together with the little wedges which are driven between the metal and the knee, gradually crushing the bone as wedge after wedge is added. And there were other devices such as strong gloves which pulled on easily but were fitted with fishhooks inside; in fact, there were a thousand little devices that helped Adolfo to play on human flesh and nerves like a great musician.
But best of all, the foundation of all the most perfect torments, was the great rack, whose sliding beams could be extended through the pressure exerted by a big wheel which worked against a screw. Here the body could be drawn out to the breaking point — or literally torn in two. But, when the flesh was all taut, the accepted practice was to strike the limbs and the joints one by one with a small iron bar, so breaking the tensed bone with ease. Sometimes the leg and arm on one side would be wrecked forever before the prisoner “confessed.” Sometimes both legs went. Sometimes a single stroke of the bar made the screaming victim begin to shriek out whatever he could remember, whatever he could invent — anything to end the torture.
Adolfo, looking over his possessions, had good reason to smile. He felt like a miser in the midst of his hoard.
“How long will it be before dawn?” asked the countess. “Very often they go to pieces when the gray of the morning commences to strike their faces.”
“Another half-running of the hourglass, highness.”
“Very well.”
“No, it is beginning even now,” said the jailer.
“The day is about to commence,” said the countess to Melrose. “Will you tell me now, my friend, where I’ll be able to find Tizzo, and who it was in my castle that let him go free from it?”
Melrose, staring at her, parted his lips as though to speak, but he merely moistened them and set his jaws hard again. His eyes were commencing to thrust out from his head under the long-continued pressure of the torment.
Here a confusion of tumult broke out in the town.
“What’s that?” asked the countess. “Are my silly people starting a fiesta before sunrise?”
Adolfo, running to the casement, leaned into it and listened. He started to cry out, “This is no fiesta, highness, but a trouble of some—”
But here the countess herself cried out, “Do you hear it? They have passed the wall — they have broken into Forli.... Oh, the careless, treacherous, hired dogs that are in my army!... Do you hear?... Ri
ng the alarm bells.... Call for-”
The uproar was washing rapidly across the lower level of the town, and the voice of the crowd streamed like a flag across the mind of Melrose. He could hear the shouting grow from confusion into syllables that were understandable: “Duca! Duca! Tizzo! Tizzo! Tizzo!”
It seemed to him that the voices were pouring from his own throat in an ecstasy. And in fact they were. He was shouting involuntarily, “Tizzo! Tizzo! Tizzo!” and he began to laugh.
The countess had jerked a door open and was crying orders to the men-at-arms who waited outside it; Adolfo leaned, fascinated, at the casement and still was there when the countess slammed the door and hurried back into the torture chamber.
“The redheaded wilcat has come into Forli to claw us all to death!” cried the countess. “Set his father free — quickly, Adolfo! Suppose Tizzo dreamed what had been happening here — he would make the stones of the Rocca melt away and come in at us with all his devils behind him.”
Melrose, released from the ropes that held him, leaned feebly against the wall, breathing hard, his head for the first time bowed.
“Have him taken to the Lady Beatrice,” said Caterina Sforza. “Guard them both as you would guard the balls of your eyes. Hai! How they yell in the streets! Are the Borgia and Tizzo saints and deliverers to my own people? Ah, if I were only a man — but today I shall be a man!”
The day had in fact begun, the green-gray of the dawn glowing on the edge of the sky as she ran from the room and down the stairs.
Adolfo was saying: “Noble Signor Melrose, you will never forget that I have done nothing for my own pleasure, but all by command? Lean on me, highness. Step slowly. So! So!”
VIII. A SPARTAN MOTHER
THE CAPTAIN OF the gate was something seldom seen in Italy in those days — an honest fighting man worthy of his hire. And when the string of carts halted just inside the walls and out of the greens tumbled armed men, the captain had the trumpet sounded, called for a charge, and headed that charge himself in valiant style; but one of Tizzo’s Romagnol pikemen drove a spear straight through the unguarded throat of the captain and that was the only life lost at the winning of the gate. The rest of the hired soldiers threw away their weapons to lighten their heels and ran as hard as they could.
The holding of the gate was the important thing. Tizzo put a score of men in the towers on either side of it, and the first shout from them emptied the nearest guard towers and sent more of Caterina Sforza’s fighting men scampering for the Rocca with shouts of “Treason! Treason!”
With half of his pikes and arquebuses, Tizzo marched straight on into Forli, his men beginning that shout of “Duca! Duca! Tizzo! Tizzo!” And the results were amazing. For on every hand shutters were opened and doors thrown wide. Women stood in the casements yelping, “Duca! Duca!” to show that that house was in favor of the assailants; and the men came out, half-dressed, each one with a weapon. For all of these fellows in the Romagna had the making of tough soldiers in them. In five minutes Tizzo had five hundred volunteers about him to reinforce his band; and now, as the dawn came glimmering out of the mountains, Cesare Borgia and his picked horsemen streamed in through the captured gate. Forli, almost without a blow, had fallen into the hands of the duke. By actual count, one of the defenders had been killed, and one of the assailants in Tizzo’s little company had been wounded in the head by the accident of a falling tile. At this small cost the rich town of Forli was in the hands of the Borgia. The riders about him were laughing as they came under the walls of the Rocca and found there Tizzo and his white horse ranging up and down, calling on volunteers to help him in an attempted escalade.
But that was wild-headed folly and the calm eye of the Borgia saw at once that no sudden attack could sweep the walls of the fortress. The soldiers of Caterina Sforza might have been unwilling to maintain the walls of the town with a population behind them filled with hatred of the Sforza rule; but the Rocca was a different matter. It looked like an impregnable height, with arquebuses at every shot window and loophole and casement, and heavy guns already being trained down on the town.
The Borgia, with cat-faced Machiavelli always beside him, called Tizzo back from the attack.
“You’ve done very well, Tizzo,” he said. “You’ve put the nut inside the jaws of the cracker; but we have to smash the shell before we can eat the meat. Listen! The guns are coming up and getting into position every moment!”
The rumbling, great wheels of the gun carriages rolled nearer and nearer to the ears of Tizzo. But he looked anxiously up toward the armed heights of the walls and made no answer to his master.
“We can try another trick of fence, now,” said the Borgia. And turning in the saddle, he called out, “Bonfadini! Sound the trumpets for a parley and bring out the brats of Caterina Sforza!”
Straightway, the horns began to blow, and Tizzo saw a pair of young boys, both sleek and and slim in red velvet, brought forth to the mouth of a street near the Rocca. When they appeared, a great shouting of dismay resounded from the castle. A moment later Tizzo had the news: They were the sons of the countess and in exchange for them the Borgia would ask for the fortress. That same night, a raiding party of his had surprised the children in the Apennine dwelling where they were kept. They were the prizes, now, which ought to settle the business of the fortress of the Rocca very quickly.
Tizzo, pressing up to the side of the Borgia, said to him rather curiously than fiercely, “Would you cut the throats of those lads in sight of their mother, if she fails to give up the Rocca?”
The Borgia looked at him with a cold eye and then turned to Machiavelli.
“Tell me, Niccolô,” he said, “what should I do in a case like this? Of course the woman will surrender the fortress in exchange for the safety of her sons. But suppose that she should refuse?”
“There are certain matters,” said the Florentine, “in which a prince should keep his word. Promises of money, of favor, of lands and estates may be forgotten. But promises of blood and vengeance never should be allowed to fall lightly to the ground.”
The Borgia looked back to Tizzo. “Do you hear?” he asked.
“The English part of me refuses to listen,” said Tizzo. “Tell me in exact words — would you murder the two boys?”
“Murder?” said the Borgia, smiling. “I never do murder. I only do justice — the sort of justice that stiffens the backs of my friends and turns the blood of my enemies to water. Never say murder to me, Tizzo!”
Here the noise of the trumpets was answered by a snarling of horns from the walls, sounding thin and far because of the height from which they were blown; almost at once there appeared on the walls a party of halberdiers and arquebusiers, with Giovanni degli Azurri at their head. Beside him stepped a warrior of something less than middle height to whom the other soldiers gave precedence. This figure now raised the visor and showed Tizzo the face of Caterina Sforza. From the soldiers of the Borgia came a brief shout; but the townsmen raised a wild and prolonged howling at the sight of the tyrant they hated.
In answer to this cry, the countess walked calmly up and down the wall until the noise sank down to a silence through which came only the distant rumbling of the gun carriages.
Then she called out in a melodious, clearly audible voice: “Do you yell, you dogs, when you see your mistress? You will yell again when I have brushed the Borgia pest away and laid my whip on your back once more!”
A fresh outburst of fury came from the townsmen, but the countess merely laughed, as though she enjoyed their clamoring. And a singular admiration rose in the breast of Tizzo as he watched her. Her hands might even now be freshly washed after the murders of Beatrice and his father. He could not tell. And yet he could say to himself that he hated her only in part.
The Borgia rode his horse forward a little and in his turn lifted the pointed, long visor of his helmet, which made his head look like that of an immense ant.
“Caterina — my dear lady!” he called.
“Ah, Cesare?” said the lady. “You look well, you Spanish dog. Have you been drinking plenty of raw blood, lately? Where is your poisoner? Where is your Bonfadini? Will he poison the air that blows toward the Rocca?
“If you’ll look here beside me,” said the Borgia, “you’ll see something that ought to interest your eyes a good deal more than Bonfadini. Stand out, lads. Lead them forward, Bonfadini.”
They were taken from behind the horsemen and exposed to the eyes of their mother. Tizzo saw the poor woman strike her hands suddenly together and heard her cry out, “My dears — my dear boys — ah, what a cruel God is in heaven! Has the Borgia put his hand on you?”
“You see them, Caterina,” said the Borgia. “Will you have their throats cut, or will you hand over the Rocca to me with no further talking?”
“Ha!” cried the Countess Caterina. “Give you the entire Rocca for the sake of two lives — and such young ones as those? Make the bargain of a fool with you? Who are you speaking to, Cesare? To a witless, doddering old woman or to Caterina Sforza?”
“Stand out, executioner!” called the Borgia, loudly.
A tall man strode forward and caught the children by their arms. He was all in black, and the darkness of his figure made the red velvet of the children shine more brightly through contrast.
“You see them, madame,” said the Borgia, calling up to her. “And now I give you your choice. To let them live and give me the Rocca, or to let them die here, before your eyes.”
He added, “Be ready, executioner!”
The man in black caught a wrist of either child in one capacious hand and with the other drew out a scimitar with a blade four fingers wide. This great weapon he poised and looked up toward Caterina Sforza.
Tizzo pressed close to the Borgia.
“This is your little joke, my lord?” said Tizzo.
“Joke? And why should it be a joke?” asked the Borgia.