Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  The mouth of Vitellozzo gaped and his tongue thrust out under the strangling pressure.

  “What do you say to me?” asked the duke through his teeth. He stood up on his toes as he applied more pressure. The collar of the shirt pinched into the fleshy neck of Vitellozzo. Have you no answers? Where are your curses? Where is your ranting? Where are your damned speeches? Talk to me now, Vitellozzo! Speak one word, even, and I grant you your life and your liberty, I enrich you and set you free. Speak to me, Vitellozzo! Oh God, that I could have this pleasure every day of my life and see the faces of my enemies blackened and their eyes thrusting out! Look at him, Machiavelli!”

  “It is a pity,” said the Florentine, “that one of my friends in Florence could not see this mask and make a living sketch of it. Note how the tongue quivers, my lord!”

  The legs of Vitellozzo jumped up and down rapidly. His body writhed. And then he hung limp as dead flesh in the hands of the soldiers.

  They, with white faces of horror, looked down on the man their master had just put to death.

  The Borgia, stepping back, looked down at his hand. It was white from the immense pressure it had just exerted.

  “Send the soldiers out with the carrion, Bonfadini,” he commanded. “And then look in on Tizzo and see how well he sleeps now. This is one of the pleasant nights of my life.”

  XXXI. BONFADINI AGAIN

  CAPTAIN TIZZO HAD dreamed of a garden in the early spring with a delicate fragrance of violets in the air. And yet that fragrance made him so uneasy that he began to smile in his sleep; and at that moment he felt a faint clutch at his hand.

  He was awake and on his feet, instantly.

  Between him and the moonlight, he saw a faint swirling of the thinnest white mist, billowing dimly up toward the ceiling, as the pressure of the wind whirled it. And on the floor at his feet he saw Beatrice, her eyes closed.

  At the same time, a breath of deadly sickness entered his lungs and staggered his brain.

  He dropped to his knees.

  The air was pure, closer to the floor. He could breathe again safely. And as he laid his hand over the heart of the girl, he felt the slow, faint beating of it. Then, wildly rolling his eyes, he marked the flutter of the candle flame. Out of that flame seemed to issue the delicate mist, the fragrance of the violets — and suddenly he remembered another moment when such a perfume had been in the air.

  Holding his breath, he crossed the room and pinched out the flame of the candle. Still without drawing breath, he rushed back to the girl, caught up her body, and ran with the limp weight of it to the first of the open casements.

  Above his head, thin, thin wisps of the vapor continued to float out into the moonlight, but here at the lower casement the air was fresh. He knew that a miracle and the coming of the girl had saved him.

  Her head lay lifelessly in the hollow of his arm. Her lips were parted a little. They seemed purple-gray in the moonlight. When he leaned and put his face close, he could not feel her breathing.

  The boy’s clothes on her slender body were a desecration.

  And how had she reached him through the streets of Sinigaglia, crowded with the men of the duke? How could she have come near to him through a thousand dangers? How had Giovan Paolo happened to let her go?

  Well, it would have been easier to keep a bird in one place in the sky than to control her once her heart was up and her mind resolved. He held her less hungrily to his breast. For it seemed to him that the pressure might keep her heart from beating.

  There was still a gentle and steady throbbing. Was it growing stronger? Was it diminishing?

  He began to pray. All he could say was: “God see me — God forgive me — God have mercy on me!”

  He was praying for himself, but he knew that the prayer was for Beatrice.

  It seemed to him that the ghost of the white hands of Bonfadini was pressed on the throat of the girl, trying to destroy the small fountain of life that began to lift and throb there little by little.

  Then, guardedly, he turned his head toward the next casement, leaning far out.

  He whistled, waited, whistled again. His father was in that room, unless the devilish practices of Bonfadini had rubbed him effectually out of the reckoning of life.

  And then a burly pair of shoulders, a tousled head appeared at the next casement.

  “It is I!” said Tizzo. “Dress and arm yourself quickly. The devil is afoot — murder in the air — get from the palace the quickest way and go to my company of Romagnols. Please be quick, I cannot join you. I must stay here with Beatrice—”

  “Beatrice?” gasped the older soldier.

  “She is here. Half-dead through one of Bonfadini’s gestures. You know his art. Go quickly. Rouse them, they’ll come. And with them, I may manage to fight my way out—”

  The head of the Baron of Melrose disappeared. From the next room came soft sounds of padding feet, light clinking noises of steel against steel.

  These noises ended with the sound of a closing door.

  But would the baron succeed in passing through the corridors of the palace unchallenged? Was it a madness on the part of the Borgia that the life of the father had not been attempted at the same time as that of the son?

  He forgot these thoughts, and looked down again at the girl. There was no pulsation of the heart. With a groan of mortal anguish, he dropped to his knees. He pressed his ear against her breast.

  Was it her heart that he heard beating or the thunder of galloping terror in his own breast?

  He began to whisper: “Mercy, God! Mercy!”

  And it seemed to him that the icy fingers of the poisoner were closing over his own temples, over his own throat, stifling the breath.

  That was the moment when he heard a light footfall in the corridor and, after that, a slight moaning sound as the handle of the door was turned.

  He laid the weight of Beatrice on the floor. There was still warmth in her flesh, and yet it seemed to him that there was less warmth than he could have thought necessary to life. The touch of the stone was on the back of his fingers. The touch of her body was on the front of them. Putting her down, like this, was to Tizzo like abandoning her, dropping her out of consciousness, out of existence.

  He leaped toward his bed and found his sword beside it. He was crouched there as the door swung slowly open. At first he could see nothing, hear nothing, until at length he was aware of a slight whispering noise, and after that, a lean body looming, a body with skinny legs that stepped half into the moonlight as though into a bath of silvery water. And above the body was clothed in a doublet.

  “Strange!” murmured the voice of Bonfadini. “Strange! Very strange!”

  Tizzo leaped at the sound rather than at the sight of the detestable monster. His sword point found a bone in the body of the man, glanced from it, sank through a softness of flesh.

  He saw a glitter of light in the hand of Bonfadini. He reached with his left hand and caught the wrist of the striking hand. The blade of the dagger went over his shoulder and the arm struck with force. He had a glimpse of the contorted face of the man, and then Bonfadini was away.

  He had struck to kill before he leaped off the death that was working in his body; and he left Tizzo with a warmth of blood running down from his sword blade over his hand.

  The man was almost at the door before Tizzo realized what had happened. Bonfadini must not escape from the room. He must die there, inside the room.

  Strange that the poisoner made no outcry. Not a sound had passed his lips, though his agony must have been mortal. Tizzo raced for him, saw the door opened, slammed. He gripped the edge of it with his hand before it had a chance to shut. He thrust the door wide again and saw before him, in the dim light of the hall lantern, the form of the poisoner running fast, but swaying heavily from side to side.

  He could not run far, in that condition. As he dipped out of sight around the corner of the hallway, Tizzo was racing after him at full speed.

  And it was
then that he heard — from an infinite distance, welling up into his mind like a fish rising through dark waters — the outcry of a voice that pronounced his name.

  “Tizzo! Tizzo!” a feeble cry.

  But that was Beatrice.

  If she were alive now, then she would not die at all, if once he could get her away from this place.

  But the first step to that was to overtake Bonfadini and strike him down before he had raised the alarm.

  Still strange, very strange, that he had made no outcry. The place must be filled with men-at-arms and lesser soldiery ready to answer a summons, but Bonfadini had fled as though he were in the desert and only could save his life by the speed of his heels.

  Fast as a greyhound, Tizzo turned the corner of the hall, and there saw Bonfadini rushing before him through an open, lighted doorway. Tizzo followed with a bound. Before him appeared the lofty height of Cesare Borgia, with Niccolo Machiavelli not far away.

  XXXII. ONE MAN’S POLICY

  THERE WAS A long sword lying across the foot of the bed of the Borgia, encased in its sheath. This the duke whipped out, the motion causing the blade to scream against the metal scabbard. At his feet fell Bonfadini and threw his arms around the legs of his master. He was bleeding horribly. The great red stain sprang out on either side. He was writhing his legs together in the death agony.

  Niccolô Machiavelli drew a short sword that was hanging at his side and stood on guard without taking a step forward.

  “Ah!” said the duke. “Tizzo — and a short shrift for him! This for you, dog! This, and this!”

  With each gasp of breath he struck heavily with the full length of the blade, reaching; master strokes which would have shorn the head clean from a wild bull.

  They would have cloven Tizzo in twain if they had reached him, but he avoided those strokes with swift flexions of the body. His own light sword-point reached for the throat of the duke and made him spring back.

  “Niccolô, come in on his back!” gasped in Borgia.

  “I am a man of words, not of action,” said the great statesman. “I cannot use my sword except to save my life.”

  “I’m murdered!” breathed the Borgia. “Help! Help!”

  For Tizzo, dipping under the full sway of a mighty stroke, leaped in. He had had to use his sword blade to parry the blow. The hilt was nearest the target. Therefore he struck with the hilt, and the metal landed full between the masked eyes of the duke. He dropped to one knee. His sword, with a long shivering sound, fell to the floor.

  And Tizzo, measuring the distance of Machiavelli with a glance, drew back his weapon for the final thrust.

  And then he heard a rain of footfalls in the corridor.

  “Back with them!” said Tizzo. “Send them back.”

  The shiver and the clatter of armor could be too plainly heard. He had the life of the Borgia under the edge of his sword, but that meant his own life, the life of Beatrice lost also.

  The duke, half-stunned, looked wildly up at Tizzo, made a brief gesture of surrender, and then shouted: “Get out from the hall! What do you mean by maundering through the palace at this hour? Out!”

  The footfalls stopped. The metal of armored feet screeched on the stone of the pavement.

  “Pardon, my lord!” called a voice. “We thought we heard a cry for help—”

  “Out! Out!” thundered the duke.

  The footfalls hastily, noisily retreated.

  Cesare Borgia slowly rose to his feet. His sword lay on the floor. He had no weapon now, except the dagger on the table beside him, and Tizzo backed him into a corner of the room.

  “Hush!” said the duke. “Bonfadini is speaking. You have killed him, Tizzo, and I feel that you’ve killed my soul with him. Alessandro! Alessandro! Do you hear me? Can you speak?”

  The gasping voice of the poisoner answered: “Oh, master, I am going to hell such a long time before you.”

  “Every day of my life I shall remember you!” groaned the duke. “Did this cursed devil of a Tizzo murder you?”

  “As I went to look at his dead body, it leaped at me from beside his bed. For once, master, I have failed,” gasped Bonfadini. “Misery — how my heart burns!... My pearls... my uncompleted necklace... my love... ah, Borgia...”

  The last bubbling gasp gave inexpressible proof that he had died.

  Cesare Borgia leaned a hand against the corner of the wall and muttered slowly: “He is gone — Bonfadini... I never dreamed that sword could penetrate that devil’s body... but he is gone and I think that I’m gone with him.... Machiavelli, how was it that you would not strike a stroke in my behalf?”

  “My lord,” said the Florentine, calmly, “to admire murder from a distance when there are reasons to enforce it is philosophy and good political thinking. But to assist at murder is a crime. If a thousand Borgias, steeped in crime, where threatened by a Tizzo, still it would be a crime to help the Borgias against him.”

  “This is your praise and your almost worship of me?” demanded the Borgia.

  “My lord,” said Machiavelli, “I admired you to the limit of mortal power while you were still victorious and always successful. This morning and evening you were a most politic murderer. Now you are a most damnable villain. That is the penalty of every bad man who fails. My lord, I bid you farewell.”

  And Niccolô Machiavelli passed out of the room.

  The duke nodded his head. “Bonfadini is gone, and Machiavelli is gone. At one stroke I lose the right hand of my body and the right hand of my wits. And through you, Tizzo! God mark the day in black when I first laid eyes on you! Who are those swarming and making noise in the courtyard?”

  “Look for yourself, my lord. I am not fool enough to turn my back to you and your murders.”

  The duke turned to the window, muttering: “Bonfadini dead! And that keen Machiavelli leaving me with a curse of impotence. Am I at the end of my tether? No, by heaven! Those are my own men! Those are my own Romagnols! And still the place is in my hands!”

  “They are the Romagnols of my own company,” said Tizzo. “If you doubt it, call down to them. Call the name of my father.”

  “Good Bonfadini accounted for him long ago. He is dead, Tizzo,” said the duke.

  “Call his name, nevertheless,” said Tizzo.

  “Melrose!” called the duke.

  And the deep, hearty voice of the baron rose in answer.

  The duke staggered a little. He turned slowly back toward Tizzo. —

  “What sort of damned black magic have you used, Tizzo?” he said. “But still you never can escape from me. My voice can bring a thousand armed men.”

  “True,” said Tizzo. “I never could escape — but they would find you dead. Policy, my lord, policy! That was always your word and the word of Machiavelli whom you admired so much. Policy, my lord, dictates that you should save your life even if the cost spoils some of the charms of your vanity. Tell my father to lead some of my men to my room and take the Lady Beatrice from it. She is ill — for a reason that you may guess — after breathing the poisoned air.”

  Cesare Borgia hesitated a moment, and then leaned from the casement to speak.

  It seemed always to Tizzo a miracle that he and his company of the stout Romagnol peasants managed to escape from the town. For, after they marched away from the palace, with the white horse of Tizzo dancing in their midst and Beatrice supported by strong hands as she reeled in the saddle, the duke could have had fifty times their number to crush them.

  Tizzo could not know that the great duke sat, at that time, cross-legged on the floor, holding the thin, cold, white hand of Bonfadini the poisoner. And even thoughts of vengeance, which always had been the nearest and the dearest to the duke’s heart, were for the moment forgotten.

  The Pearls of Bonfadini (1935)

  CONTENTS

  I. A STRANGE POISON

  II. STATECRAFT EXTRAORDINARY.

  III. ARRIVAL OF TIZZO.

  IV. THE SHREWD MACHIAVIELLI.

  V. A
MAD DOG.

  VI. BONFADINI’S PLEASURE.

  VII. A CAT IN A TREE.

  VIII. THE BURNING OF A CANDLE.

  IX. THE PEARLS.

  X. BONFADINI AGAIN.

  XI. ONE MAN’S POLICY.

  The magazine in which this novel first appeared: Argosy, August 24, 1935

  I. A STRANGE POISON

  CESARE BORGIA, ALL in black, except for the white ruff of collar about his neck, black-masked also, across the upper part of his face, lolled in a big chair that had the dimensions and gave the effect of a throne. Always one who loved shadows, he had the room lighted by a few candles only and they cast on the wall wavering shadows of the men who stood near the chair of the duke of Romagna. Only Bonfadini’s face could be seen clearly; it was so bone-white that it seemed to be illumined from within. The poisoner’s expression was always one of still attention.

  Before the duke stood Giovanni Malatesta, the waver and some of the sooty smoke of the candles in his face, a captain in the employ of Oliverotto, the hired soldier. He was completely in plate armor. His helmet was plumed. His raised visor exposed a stern young face, fearless of the great man whom he was to address.

  The Borgia said: “We’ve had enough compliments, Malatesta. Now let’s have the letter.”

  Malatesta bowed, unrolled a scroll of paper, and read aloud: “To the most noble Cesare Borgia, duke of Valentinois and the Romagna, we who are signed below send greetings, set forth certain complaints, and declare the action which we are about to take.

  “Among our complaints the first is that no man’s life is safe when he comes near the noble duke, whether he be an enemy or too great a friend.

  “Second, the money which the noble duke promises for service is paid in full, always, but his other promises are neglected.

  “Third, his ambition is so great that presently there would be room for only one man in Italy.

  “For these reasons we have determined to serve him no longer but to stand together against him. For this purpose we sign our names: