Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Running with his feet along the wall, he started the pendulous swing of the rope. When it had once begun, with the swing of his lithe body he made the rope sway out in wider and in wider arcs. Above him, dimly, he could hear his father’s voice still singing the “Song of the Plough.” The wall rushed back and forth beside him with greater and with greater speed.

  Now his head rose so that he could look into a window that broke the surface of that projecting wall whose roof was his goal. A girl was inside it — a servant, perhaps, ogling herself in a hand mirror while she turned her head from side to side, and lifted or bent it in order to view herself from the most favorable angle. She was an ugly wench and the task was hard, but she kept at it with wonderful patience and seemed to enjoy the work.

  The next swing of the rope brought him to the level of the roof, almost, but he saw that he was much too low on the rope, since it was bringing him in under the projecting eaves. He hauled himself up several arm-lengths and on the next return of the rope, with one hand he was able to reach out and grip the roof gutter under the tiles.

  His weight recoiled with a violent wrench that almost broke his grasp on the gutter; a moment later he was on the roof.

  His father, older and heavier, never could succeed in that athletic effort, he was sure. But the baron would be able to hand himself down the slant of the rope and so come to the roof. Yonder was a trap door set into the slant of the tiles. To one of the projecting beam-ends inside of which the door was set, Tizzo made the linen rope fast. Then he turned and waved.

  At the dimly lighted casement he saw the head and shoulders of his father. A strong strain was put on the rope and set it trembling. A moment later the body of the baron dropped over the casement’s edge and he began to swing himself along the downslant with long arm-hauls.

  He came out of the lamplight into dimness, then closer and closer, until even by starlight Tizzo could see his face and the knotted effort in it.

  XIV. TRAPPED

  HERE A GREAT shout struck across the night. At the casement to which the rope pointed like a long finger appeared a leaning figure; steel flashing bright; the rope was cut across.

  THE BARON dropped instantly on the loose rope. Tizzo heard and felt in his own flesh the shock of the impact as that heavy body struck the wall beneath the eaves.

  Was he gone? No, the weight still strained down on the rope. Tizzo, groaning with hope and fear, reached back and fingered the haft of the ax which he had hung by its noose from about his neck.

  Now a woman’s voice began to screech just below. It was the servant girl, no doubt, who had been called to her window by the noise to see a dark figure struggling in the empty air above her casement.

  Would the baron drop down and try to enter that window, or would he climb?

  The answer was in the appearance of a hand that gripped the edge of the eaves. Another hand joined it. The big man heaved himself up with power, grunting. Tizzo caught the collar of his jacket and pulled with all his might to lighten the work.

  Yonder at the lighted casement, two figures remained, yelling out the alarm. Other shadowy heads appeared at other windows. There was a dim but distinct sound of running feet along corridors.

  “Are you hurt?” breathed Tizzo.

  The baron stood up and pulled out the sheathed sword which he had stuffed inside his clothes.

  “It was a bit of a slap — but it was nothing,” he said. “Here, Tizzo. Do we run along the roof, or do we go down into the wolf-den?”

  “Down into the den,” said Tizzo. “They’ll have twenty men on the roofs before a minute has gone. Here’s the way!”

  He found the lock of the trap door, smashed it with a blow of the axhead, and lifted the door open. Beneath him he saw darkness which seemed to be churning like dusky water. But with hand and foot he found the ladder.

  Down he went into the pitchy blackness with the weight of his father making the ladder creak as the baron followed after. The floor was quickly reached.

  Rough boarding was underfoot. He reached a wall of unfinished stone and fumbled along it.

  The tumult was redoubling through the castle. The pounding sound with the metal clash that accompanied it was made by the armored feet of soldiers, of course. But the most terrible noise was the dreadful screeching of the women.

  To his left, he was aware now of a silver rectangle drawn on the wall, etched in with broken strokes. That must be the leakage of light round the edges of a door. And now, in fact, his hand was on the knob.

  The lock had not been turned. He pushed the door open and looked out onto a long, narrow corridor.

  As he stepped out into the hallway, a whole bevy of the female servants not five paces from him threw up their arms and fled, screeching with terror.

  They were crying for help, they were shouting that the two were there — there in the hall — murdering the women.

  And the answering shouts of men came in quick response, from close at hand.

  “Which way?” muttered the baron.

  “The first way!” said Tizzo, and running round the first elbow turn of the hall, he leaped across a faintly lighted threshold the larger size of whose doorway seemed to indicate that it might be the entrance to another corridor.

  And as he entered with his father behind him, he heard the armored uproar of the men-at-arms come pouring into the hallway which he had just left.

  But it was not another hall. It was a narrow little room with a table across one end of it. On the table were piled old clothes and near it sat a crone bent over her work of patching with much care a pair of hose, frayed about the knees.

  She did not look up, but pursed her lips tighter as she made the next stitch.

  Tizzo and the baron backed into the thick shadows of the corner and waited. The sword was unsheathed in the baron’s hand, now. And Tizzo’s ax was ready. It was the last fight, perhaps, but at least they could make it together.

  “Deaf!” whispered the baron at Tizzo’s ear. “She’s deaf!”

  The noise of the manhunt thundered in the hall. Two steel-clad figures lurched a step into the room, saw the seamstress, and recoiled again.

  A false alarm drew the flood of searchers off to the left. To the right there were the babbling, squealing women, their voices growing dimmer as they retreated.

  “Now?” asked Tizzo.

  “Hush!” said his father.

  The flight of figures down the hall seemed to have caught the eye of the old woman at last.

  And as the thunder of the mailed feet surged back again, she left her chair and went to the threshold of the room, standing there with her hands on her hips, shaking her white old head at the mad confusion.

  There seemed to be no fear in her.

  A crowd of soldiery poured past her. Half a dozen times she was hailed: “Have you seen them?”

  But she answered with the continued wagging of her head.

  The manhunt left that portion of the palace and ebbed down to a lower level. Through the casement, Tizzo could hear more sounds of war rising from a court or open street. Voices were shouting commands.

  And as the tumult grew less, the seamstress returned to her chair again.

  Some brazen-throated fellow was bawling out beneath the window:

  “Five hundred ducats-for the Englishman, Melrose! Five hundred ducats for him and his son! A hundred for the baron; a hundred ducats for the baron! Four hundred for the red head of Captain Tizzo! Money and the duke’s favor! Money and the duke’s favor! Five hundred ducats!”

  It was like the crowing of a rooster, a sound that cut through the increasing tumult. It was as though an auctioneer were asking for bids.

  “Dead or alive, five hundred ducats! Five hundred ducats!” The old woman went to the casement and seemed to be listening to that proclamation, but since she was deaf, no doubt she merely was watching the dimly lighted figures in the street or the court below.

  She turned from the window and faced straight toward the corner in
which the two fugitives remained, pressed close together. Did her old eyes pierce the shadows? Could she indeed see them?

  “Five hundred ducats is a world of money,” she said. Tizzo shuddered.

  After all, she had good ears. How had she failed, then, to hear them when they first bounded into the room.

  “Four hundred ducats for a redheaded lad!”

  She went to the door, and shut and locked it.

  “Well,” she said, turning, “I think I shooed the hawks away from a pair of helpless chickens that time. Come out here and let an old woman bless her eyes with the sight of two men saved from the grave.”

  They moved slowly forward, neither of them glancing at the other. The brain of Tizzo had stopped.

  “Mother,” he said, “except for you, our blood and brains would be smeared on the floor long ago.”

  “I hate a screaming fool of a girl,” said the crone, “and so I learned to hold my tongue when I was a youngster.... Five hundred ducats!... A great deal of money... a great purse of money... a farm, and a peaceful life.”

  “You shall have it, friend,” said the baron, “if you can show us the way out of the palace — any secret stairs — any back, unregarded way — do you see this gold chain? A thousand ducats would never buy it. And you shall have it. Here it is in your hand, now.”

  She took the chain and weighed it, grinning.

  “Suppose that I took it,” she said. “For every bead of it how many times do you think they’d make me scream on the rack?”

  She gave back the chain into the big hand of the baron and shook her head.

  “Besides, what would I do with a farm and quiet?” she asked. “I’ve had the city and the palace all the days of my life. I’ve had the processions, and the smell of incense in the churches, and the music, and the pretty girls, and the slim lads, and the babies in silk and the old men in brocades, and the marriages and the murders, and the civil wars, and the stabbings in the dark, and the night cries where some poor devil found his end in a dark alley... how could I change all of this for a farm, and the smell of the wet ground or the dust instead of the perfumes and the stenches of the palace? No, no — I don’t need five hundred ducats to end my days on. A prayer would be a greater help to me, my friend.”

  “You shall have our prayers, mother,” said Tizzo.

  She looked at him with a smile that made her withered old face more horrible than ever.

  “The first lover I had in all my life, he had a head of red hair, like yours. When I saw the flash of that flaming head of yours, I thought for a moment that it was a ghost coming out of the past to me, and that I was a pretty young thing again; and the thought took the breath out of me and made me miss a stitch. That poor Adolfo — he was a beautiful lad, except that he talked all on one side of his mouth. But he stole one of my lady’s rings, and they cut his soft throat for him. That was the day I cried my eyes red! And my heart ached for a week. Ah, well, I never see red hair that my heart doesn’t jump up stairs like a wild ragamuffin. What shall I do with the pair of you?”

  The noise of the search that had sunk away now boiled up higher inside the walls of the castle and flowed suddenly once more down the corridor beside them. And here a hand tried the door, then beat against it.

  “Open!” called a voice.

  “Ah?” murmured the woman. “Five hundred ducats?

  She weighed the key in her hands, and in her eye she weighed the lives of the two. Then she opened the door.

  XV. AGNES-ONCE EVE

  TIZZO TAKING HIS father’s arm, drew him down behind the table which was heaped high with clothes that needed repair. They were not perfectly concealed from the man who stood in the doorway now. Tizzo, from beneath the table, could see the armored legs of the man as high as the hips. They made him think of the legs of a great beetle, such as those he had watched crawling when he was a lad — sleek, glossy metal. He used to turn these beetles over and then watch them flopping helplessly on their backs, kicking their legs. He had an insane desire to try to steal out and trip up this spendid soldier.

  And yet, behind the man and up and down the hallway, moved an armed number of other fighting men.

  “Ah, mother,” said the man-at-arms, “what are you doing up so late?”

  “Mending your worn-out clothes,” she answered.

  “Have you seen a pair of men — one old, one young?”

  “Certainly,” she answered. “Look yonder, under the table.

  Tizzo heard his father catch breath, and gripped his arm with a sudden pressure, to seek to restrain the sound.

  The soldier broke into laughter.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Agnes.”

  “Agnes, I don’t suppose that the two were hunting are here in the room with you. But I wondered—”

  “Why don’t you suppose so?” asked Agnes.

  “Because they’d twist your old windpipe before they’d let you open the door. But I thought—”

  “Not if they were real men. Real men don’t murder old women,” said the hag.

  “Agnes, I wanted to know if you’d seen any glimpse of them. That’s all.”

  “Certainly. I saw them come into my room and stand in the corner. When I went to the window, they sneaked under the table.”

  The soldier laughed again.

  “You’re an old one, and all the old ones are hard,” he said. “Well, God be good to you.”

  “God give you better sense to understand women,” said Agnes.

  He laughed again, and walked from the room. Agnes closed the door after him, and locked it again.

  And down the stairs at the end of the corridor, Tizzo heard the noise of the manhunt passing, dwindling, descending. He stood up with the baron beside him.

  “Well, you see what truth is worth in Urbino,” said the hag, grinning at them.

  She had only one tooth in the middle of her mouth, and when she grinned it showed as yellow as old ivory, and her eyes disappeared in nests of wrinkles.

  “You could have pointed, instead of speaking,” said the baron. “A motion of your hand would have started him, like a hunting dog. And he would have found us. You would have had your share in the ducats.”

  “I’d hate to show a man to a hunting dog,” said Agnes. “But if I had, there would have been a pretty thing to see. Would that sword of yours have found a way through his armor? Would that ax of Captain Tizzo have cut through his helmet? Yes, I think it would. Redheaded men are better than all the rest. I remember when a redheaded man fought for me in the street, yonder. I was not what I am now. I had feet under me as quick as a cat. And I was as sleek as a fish, all over. Hand or eye could not touch me without pleasure. But now what am I to do with you?”

  “You’ve given us a chance to draw breath and turned the hunt another way,” said the baron. “We’ll find our own way out, now.”

  “You talk like a fool,” said Agnes. “Do you think that every inch of the castle won’t be hunted over again, now? You don’t know the noble duke. There’s a patient man for you. There’s a fellow who’ll wait longer than a fisherman or a cat at a rathole.... Well, let me think a little.”

  She propped her chin on one hand and frowned. The frown swallowed her eyes in black shadows. At last she said: “Old clothes. I’ve nothing to work with but old clothes.”

  In fact, on shelves at either end of the room appeared big bundles.

  “Those are for the hospitals. But why shouldn’t they be carried to the hospital now?” muttered Agnes. “Listen to me, Captain Tizzo — are you the man who rode through Perugia at the side of the Baglione and cut through the chains of the streets with your ax?”

  “That’s true,” said Tizzo. “There’s a gift in this ax. It laughs at all other steel.”

  “Redheaded men laugh at everything,” said Agnes. “But who would see Tizzo of Perugia in the form of a porter carrying bundles of old clothes on the top of his shoulders.... Wait!... Now see yourself!”

  She pulled
out a ragged mantle, which she threw over the shoulders of Tizzo.

  Upon his head she drew down an even more ragged hat that covered his face to the eyes.

  “Now, now!” she exclaimed, inviting the attention of the baron, “would you know your son, my lord?”

  “Never!” said Melrose, smiling. “And then?”

  “Then I take you down the little winding stairs at the back of the palace. I let you out at the small door. There will be guards, of course, but there is my tongue, also, and two simple, honest poor men carrying old clothes.”

  She began to outfit the baron and then to throw down from the shelves bundle after bundle of the old clothes which had been cast off by members of the ducal household.

  From beneath the window, the bawling voice of another crier began to sound out: “Five hundred ducats for the English baron and Captain Tizzo. Five hundred ducats, dead or alive!”

  “Hail” grunted Agnes. “Do they have to maunder on about ducats? I was tempted once by ducats and I’ll never be temped again. Five wretched years — five years — where did they fly to, Lord God? Five mortal years. They found me a girl and they left me a woman with age pointing my chin and misting my eyes.... Oh, God, how quickly the pollen is shaken from the flower and the bloom wiped from the petal and the fragrance gone, gone, gone! Well, I’ve been young. That’s all there is to it. I’ve been young. I had the lightest pair of heels in Urbino and the prettiest pair of legs and I didn’t care who knew it.... Lord, Lord, the withered old shanks that carry me around today.... But if a girl wants a lover she should find a man with red hair.... You’ll make some lass happy, Captain Tizzo, for a week or two — before you smell flowers of a new sort behind some high garden wall.... Walls are made to be climbed; women are made to be hunted... to run away and laugh over their shoulders. And only the swiftest foot shall catch ’em. Oh, I know about it! Are you ready?... Look at my heels and never higher. Walk slowly. Trust the talking to me.”