by Max Brand
“Beatrice!” he shouted, and leaped into the fight, his head unarmored as it was. “Beatrice!” he cried, and “Beatrice!”
It was his battle cry, and with each utterance, he struck with the terrible swift ax, right and left.
He had come at a good time, for the Borgians were having enough of this fierce struggling and were giving up when he sprang into the lead and rallied them.
And he heard a woman’s voice coming out of a visored helmet and shouting, shrill and high: “Giovanni degli Azurri! There is your man! There is the one who brought all this I ruin down on Forli! There is Tizzo of Melrose! Kill him now, and I swear that this is the happiest day of my life.”
The outcry of the countess inspired all her men. They had been on the verge of retreating; now they made a sudden rally. Two of the Borgians were driven back over the edge of the floor and fell into the well of the stairs; Giovanni degli Azurri put his sword with a downright stroke through the throat of a third. The other pair gave back from the side of Tizzo, and called on him to give up a hopeless fight. But he could not be drawn away. Down the length of the room he saw the big form of his father striding; and Beatrice, helplessly unarmed as she was, hurrying after him.
When he should have retreated, he leaped in suddenly, springing here and there like an erratic dancer. He used the light sword in his left hand like a dagger to ward off blows; the ax in his right hand made lightning circles.
One of these flashing arcs of light glanced against the helmet of Giovanni degli Azurri and staggered that champion.
The second blow would have killed him outright, but here Caterina Sforza herself ran forward and struck a good two-handed blow at the head of Tizzo.
He had not expected actual fighting from the countess. His hastily reared guard received the blow and turned the edge of it, but the force of the flat sword was enough to knock him to his knees.
He heard the scream of Beatrice like a ray of light gleaming across his mind. The two Borgians, inspired by the attack he had delivered, had closed in from the sides and they lustily struck out to protect him. But the decisive blow came from; Henry of Melrose.
He had come in on the rear of the Sforza men on the run. A long lunge drove the point of his sword through the gorget rivets at the back of the neck of one man-at-arms. That fellow was down, never to rise again. And now with a huge stroke the baron dropped a second man-at-arms. That second of interval had put Tizzo back on his feet again. He swerved from the lunging sword of Giovanni degli Azurri and struck with his ax at the junction between the helmet and the gorget. The steel split; the ax sank in; and Giovanni degli Azurri, dropping his sword, clasped his throat with both hands and fell sprawling to his knees.
His fall was the end. The other defenders threw up their mailed hands and shouted for quarter. Only the virago, Caterina Sforza, scorning surrender, lifted her sword over her head and rushed in for a final attack. A side stroke of Tizzo’s ax knocked the sword out of her grip and sent it clanging against the wall. He caught her by the hands and held her fast. She groaned with rage like a man and suddenly stopped struggling.
“There is no justice, there is no God!” cried the countess, “or a redheaded thief could not have robbed me, and then come back to be my master!”
A strange voice called to them from the floor. It was Giovanni degli Azurri, his visor raised so that he could gasp in more air, and the blood-bubbles breaking on his lips. He had risen to his knees, but now he began to sink down again.
“I confess — my God forgive me! — it was your maid who stole the jewels; and I forged a letter in the hand of Lady Beatrice to draw him out of the Rocca; I posted the three men to murder him at the rendezvous beyond the town. And now — now—”
He slipped to his side, Caterina Sforza dropped on her knees and screeched out: “Giovanni, what do you mean? What do you say? You cannot have been such a traitor.”
“Aye — for love of you,” muttered Giovanni.
The countess struck him with her mailed hand across his bleeding face. But he was already past feeling. He fell on his back and died with one groan, one quick updrawing of the knees.
The Countess Riario looked up from his dead face at Tizzo and Beatrice in one another’s arms. The girl was wiping the sweat and the blood from the face of her lover with the puffed velvet sleeve of her dress.
They were laughing together; and the baron stood by them leaning on his sword, smiling faintly as he watched their joy.
Except for Tizzo, the Borgians had rushed on to find less fighting and more loot, herding their new prisoners before them.
And now from the wounded and the dead the blood spread across the floor in widening pools that interlinked and made little flowing streams.
The countess walked straight up to Melrose.
“My lord,” she said, “I have given you the treatment of a common criminal. Will you reward me for it by giving me good advice?”
“Madame,” said the Englishman, “a knight is sworn to serve all ladies.”
“Tell me what to do, then,” she demanded. “Surrender to Cesare Borgia or throw myself from the casement, there?”
“If you were my daughter,” said the baron, “I’d hope to see you leap from the wall and die; but since you are the noble Countess Riario, I expect you to take my arm and let me lead you to the Duke of Romagna.”
She hesitated, glaring savagely at him. Then, with a shrug of the shoulders and a laugh, she accepted his arm.
All day the riot rang and roared through the streets of Forli and through the courts and rooms of the Rocca; but when night came, joy had exhausted itself. A few drunken voices sang in the town and Niccolô Machiavelli listened to them with a pleased smile as he sat by the side of the duke at the casement. Cesare Borgia rather lay than sat in a great chair, his head flung back.
“A successful day,” said Machiavelli. “You have Forli, town and citadel. It has cost you only a few men, and the work has been done by one who has rewarded himself.
“Ah... Tizzo...?” murmured the duke.
“I see him standing on the rampart with the girl in his arms. They are like one bit of black paper, curiously carved and held up against the moon between thumb and forefinger.
“Fools always find happiness in foolish ways,” said the Borgia. “But you see that I know how to used edged tools?”
“This time-yes. But the next time you may cut your hand to the bone!”
XI. MISSION OF DANGER
THE BORGIA LAY on his bed on his back, with a cloth soaked in cooling lotion covering his face down to the bearded chin and lips, because the upper portion was troubled by a hot eruption. Now and then white-faced Alessandro Bonfadini, soft-stepping, thin-fingered, changed the cloth for a fresh one. Except during those moments when the change was made, the Duke of the Romagna remained blinded.
He was saying: “Niccolo, look on the map that’s spread out on the table and tell me what you see on it; tell me where my next step should take me.”
The young Florentine, stepping to the table, looked at the big map which was spread on it.
“I see all your conquests are tinted red, my lord,” said Machiavelli. “You want to know in what direction your next step should take you.”
“Yes. In what direction should the red begin to flow now?”
“Into some adjoining territory so that it will make a solid mass of territory under your rule.”
“Well, name the direction.”
“It should be into a territory where the people hate their present rulers,” said Machiavelli, “and would be glad to turn to you. It should be a place where the least effort would have to be made. Above all, the present ruler should be induced to make the first hostile steps. If you make any further unprovoked attacks all of Italy will be up in arms against you.
“Think of Urbino,” said Cesare Borgia. “It is vastly rich, furnished with a great stronghold on an impregnable rock, and the people hate their present duke with all their hearts.”
“Urbino is impossible,” answered Machiavelli. “The great stronghold you speak of is too strong to be stormed. And while the people hate their duke, they would be afraid to rise against him unless they were furnished with a good leader. Besides, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro is a coward and never would give you provocation to make war.”
“All good reasons, but they could be undone by better ones. Duke Guidobaldo has a weakness for women, particularly for rich ones. Suppose that I make a rich woman fall into his hands.”
“She would have to be both rich and desperate if she wasted herself on that spendthrift of a Montefeltro,” said Machiavelli.
“Remember Caterina Sforza,” said the Borgia.
“Ah?” said the Florentine. “You have deprived her of Forli, here. You have turned her out of her inheritance. She is a prisoner in your hands, and your wise course is to send her to Rome.”
“I have deprived her of Forli, but still she is rich in jewels and in other lands. I should send her to Rome, and in fact it will be on the way to Rome that my envoy in charge of her will stop at Urbino to pay my respects to Guidobaldo.”
“You never will find an envoy foolhardy enough to enter Urbino, knowing how the duke hates you,” declared Machiavelli.
“But suppose that I can do it. Suppose that I can find the right man. What happens after the Countess Sforza finds herself inside the walls of Urbino?”
“Then,” said Machiavelli, “she will use all her beauty, all her persuasion, all her wealth of promises to make Guidobaldo snatch her out of the hands of your envoy, and set her free.”
“Naturally,” said the Borgia, “and the moment that happens, you see that I shall have a good pretext for war?”
“It all would follow, perhaps,” said Machiavelli, “and that would be guessed by any man. The envoy who guides the countess into Urbino knows instantly that his throat will be cut and the countess snatched from his hands within twenty-four hours.”
“I tell you however, that I know of such a man.”
“A fool?”
“Very far from a fool. You know him yourself. A fellow who is all aflame, without fear, never still, and who fills his days with so much action that he’ll hardly take time to sleep in between for fear of missing another adventure.”
“This man you speak of — has he red hair?” asked the Florentine.
“Of course! It’s Tizzo, the firebrand, the key that unlocked Forli for us, the wedge that burst into the citadel of the Rocca. Tizzo is the man.”
“He may have the courage to do it, if you dare him to it,” said the Forentine, “but he’s not stupid enough to venture his neck in such a way.”
“I shall give him a reason,” said the Borgia. “Now that I think of the thing, I’m determined on it. Bonfadini, send orders instantly to the countess to prepare to travel; dispatch a relay of riders toward Perugia together with a very secret message to Giovan Paolo Baglione to gather his forces at once and let them drift a little toward the boundary of Urbino. Do these things, but first of all fetch me Tizzo, instantly.”
Bonfadini left the room and went into the waiting chamber where a few halberdiers were waiting in the half-armor of the foot soldiery. Also, there were half a dozen men-at-arms completely protected in heavy steel plate. Bonfadini clapped his hands to draw attention.
He said, “Half a dozen of you go out to find Tizzo.”
“Half a dozen are not enough,” said one of the men-at-arms.
“There are not so many quarters of the town; and Tizzo is known to everyone,” said Bonfadini.
“Not when he pulls a black wig over the red of his hair,” said the soldier, “and he does that usually. Who can tell where to look for him? He may be with a hawking party outside of Forli, or he may be following the greyhounds, or simply riding his white horse through the hills, or inside the walls he may be flirting with a girl, or at the studio of one of the painters, or watching that new sculptor at work, or teaching his company how to fence and shoot, or in a blacksmith shop learning the tricks of the trade, or drinking with a traveler in a wineshop, or learning a dance from one of the Gascons, or picking a fight with some huge Switzer. Or he may be running a race, or throwing dice, or sitting beside that scholar from Pisa reading out the Greek as gravely as any old man.”
“If you know that he does all these things,” said Bonfadini, “you ought to be the man to find him. But if I were you, I’d go toward the place where there’s the most noise. Off with you, and have him here quickly, or you’ll hear of it.”
They hurried out, and Bonfadini went at once to the rooms where Caterina Sforza was kept under guard. He found her seated with a grim face at a casement overlooking the town that once had belonged to her. When she saw Bonfadini she exclaimed in her strong resonant voice, “Tell your master to send a different messenger to me. The look of your white face is like a poison to me.”
“Madame,” said Bonfadini, “I came by command. The duke asks that you prepare yourself to travel at once.
“Where?” said she.
“To Rome, madame.” —
“With what escort?”
“Tizzo of Melrose,” said Bonfadini, and smiled.
“With him?” she cried. “Go under the escort of the very man who stole my city and gave it to the Borgia? It would stifle me. I would die of rage before I had ridden a mile.”
“Madame,” said the poisoner, “I hope that you’ll die of something more than anger.”
And he bowed himself from the room while she remained standing by her chair, having sprung up in a passion that flushed her handsome face.
Armed men and their horses were gathered in the court; a mule litter and two horses were prepared for the countess and her maid; an hour or more had gone by and still there was no word of Tizzo. At last a messenger came with word. He was a halberdier with a pair of big dents in his helmet, a scared look in his eyes, and a heavy limp in one leg. Bonfadini brought him straight in to the duke and Machiavelli.
“If you saw Tizzo of Melrose, why didn’t you bring him with you?” asked the duke.
“Highness,” said the soldier, “when I saw him, he was fighting a huge Swiss who handled a five-foot sword as though it were a lath and a man stood with six ducats rattling in his hands; Tizzo had given him the money as a wager that he could beat the swordsman and use nothing but a plain stick of wood in the fight. Highness, I thought it was murder and I ran in to stop the fight. Every moment I was sure that a sweep of that sword would murder Captain Tizzo and cut him in two the way a child cuts down a flower. But when I tried to interfere, the Swiss roared out that they would see the battle to a finish; they beat me down and rushed me away. I came back to tell what I have seen, my lord; when you see Captain Tizzo again, he’ll be a dead man.”
The duke pressed the coolness of the wet cloth closer across his eyes.
“What do you say, Niccolô?” he asked. “Is Tizzo a dead man now?”
“A stick against the sweep of a Swiss sword in the hands of a picked man—”
“Why a picked man?” asked the duke.
“Because Tizzo would only fight against the best.”
“Well, that’s true,” agreed the Borgia. “The devil that’s in him will only show its teeth at giants. I suppose that we’ll have to find another officer to ride with the countess.”
But at this moment a knock at the door caused Bonfadini to open it a crack, and then fling it wide, letting in a small uproar from the waiting room. And over the threshold stepped Tizzo, looking as lithe and sleek as a greyhound. He twirled in his hand a slender stick less than a yard in length and rested a hand on this as he bowed to the Borgia.
The Borgia pulled the cloth from his face and suddenly stood, a lofty, massive figure, with a weight in the shoulders that made it possible to believe that he had decapitated a fighting bull with a single sword-stroke.
“I’ve searched the town for you, Tizzo,” said the Borgia. “Where have you been?”
“I was wandering about enjoying the
sights of the town,” said Tizzo.
“Was one of the sights a butchershop?” asked the duke. “There’s blood on that stick!”
“Ah, is there?” murmured Tizzo. He lifted the stick and examined. “Why, so there is. Six ducats’ worth of blood, in fact.”
“If you had lost the wager, you would not be here alive, man.”
“Ah, you’ve heard about it? The fact is that the Switzer kept me leaping about like a dancer. At last he made sure that he had me and swung himself off balance; so I managed to step in and flick him between the eyes with the tip of my stick. Afterward I had to leave him the ducats to heal the wound.”
“How long do you expect to live?” asked the duke, curiously.
“As long as there’s a good dash of excitement in the air,” said Tizzo.
“Let us be alone,” said the Borgia. “Except for you, Niccolô.”
The room, accordingly, was cleared at once.
“It means mischief, Niccolô,” Tizzo was saying to the Florentine. “It means mischief when you’re here.”
The eyes of Machiavelli narrowed a little and gave him for the moment a look more like a cat than usual.
“Why does it mean mischief?” he asked.
“When two cats are together and both of ’em hungry,” said Tizzo, “it usually means that there’s an unlucky mouse somewhere at hand for dinner. Am I to be the meat for you both, my lord?”
He addressed the last words to the duke; and his air, “I hear that I’m called for.” half laughing and half indifferent, took the sting out of the frankness of his talk.
“Shall I tell you the truth, Tizzo?” asked the duke.
“No, my lord,” said Tizzo, “the truth from so great a man would be more than I could stomach. Tell me only what you wish me to believe and I’ll swallow as much of it as I can at one good, long draught.”