Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Cesare Borgia said: “But where is the noble Giovanpaolo Baglione?”

  He looked at Tizzo, who answered: “He is gone towards Perugia.”

  “And his sister with him?” asked the Borgia, sharply.

  “The Lady Beatrice is with him,” admitted Tizzo.

  “Do you hear, Niccolò?” asked the duke.

  “I said it before the thing happened,” answered Machiavelli.

  “You did,” agreed the duke. “I am going to listen to you more carefully. After all, the Florentine brain is the finest in the world, as all men will admit.”

  “It’s the finest for intrigue, at least,” put in Oliverotto, and stared sternly at Machiavelli.

  He did not like the young statesman. None of the soldiers, in fact, could endure him in spite of the smoothness of his address.

  Machiavelli said: “Oliverotto, you ought to know that intrigue is what unties the strings of the purse, and if the purse were tied up, where would we find the brave Oliverottos?”

  “Now, what the devil does he mean by that?” demanded the captain, turning his back on Machiavelli.

  “I will write it out for you,” said Machiavelli, “and let you study the meaning at your leisure.”

  “Ha?” exclaimed Oliverotto, and turned sharply back to glare at Machiavelli, The passion of the soldier was so great that Tizzo half-expected to see a dagger drawn on the moment, but after looking into the faintly smiling face and the cold, bright eyes of the Florentine for a moment, Oliverotto muttered a few indistinct words and turned his scowling glance back on the road.

  Vitellozzo laughed loudly. “To lose one’s temper is a luxury that most of us have to pay for, Oliverotto,” he said.

  But the other general said nothing.

  V. A MAD DOG.

  WHEN CESARE BORGIA and his army approached Sinigaglia, the first act of the Borgia was to send Lorenzo Ridi, one of his fiercest captains and best fighters, with a dozen picked lances straight through the city with word to gallop the heart out of their horses until they managed to overtake and kill Giovanpaolo Baglione. The orders were secret. The other hired soldiers must know nothing about this, but the Borgia felt, and he was right, that half his work was undone, if the most famous of all the hired soldiers managed to escape scot free.

  So that chosen detachment rushed through Sinigaglia, crossed its moated drawbridges, and swept off on the Perugia road. The word was that Giovanpaolo, since his own army was at a great distance, had left the city with only his sister and perhaps one or two more companions. Therefore the pursuit hastened with red spurs, and they were soon in the hills, with a widening view of the town just behind them.

  So they entered a narrow valley and raised close volleys of thunder from the sides. They rode in a stream that stretched out a full furlong, the best horses keeping well in the van. And as they approached a corner of the valley and the head of their scattered column galloped around the turn of the road, six mail-clad knights with spears in rest charged them.

  Lorenzo Ridi went down with a deep spear-wound in his breast. Two more fell immediately behind him.

  The fall of Lorenzo Ridi in itself would have been enough to unnerve his followers. And when they saw the solid front which the horsemen of Giovanpaolo offered, it seemed to them that they were seeing a wall of steel. This handful of escort had been picked up by the Perugian. With it, he scattered the group of Borgians and sent them fleeing more wildly than they had pursued.

  When Giovanpaolo turned the head of his horse, he saw his sister already on her knees, disarming Lorenzo Ridi and trying to stanch the deadly flow of blood from his breast. The man was young. He had a pale eye and a pale droop of mustaches. He was famous for ferocity and a savage delight in blood. Cesare Borgia used him constantly for desperately important or murderous missions.

  Giovanpaolo dismounted, threw the reins of his horse to one of his men-at-arms, and stood by the prostrate form of Ridi. The other two men who had been stricken from their horses had not even been wounded. They were merely stunned, from their falls.

  Ridi said, calmly: “You held the spear that spitted me, Giovanpaolo.”

  “I held it,” admitted the Baglione.

  “Luck was with you,” said Ridi. “It was the work of the damned armorer that left a weak joint there under the shoulder plate. However — Lady Beatrice, don’t dirty your hands with me any longer. My life is dripping out of me. Nothing can stop it from running. Ah hai! To think of dying like this in a little skirmish at the first shock of the spears!”

  The girl said nothing. She had grown a little pale. Now she went to a small run of water beside the road, washed her stained hands clean, and brought water to Lorenzo Ridi.

  He thanked her.

  “Put my helmet under my head,” he said. “This is poor business for you, Giovanpaolo. If you could have knocked me over and taken me alive, there would have been several thousand ducats of ransom money to gain for my life. Now you see it’s coined into drops of blood that are worth nothing except to dogs and wolves. Or would you have ransomed me?”

  “I ask you the question back,” said the Baglione. “Would you have held me for ransom if you had captured me?”

  Ridi looked up at him with a contented smile.

  “I would have cut your throat, my friend,” he said.

  “Out of your own malice?”

  “Orders, Giovanpaolo.”

  “From the Borgia?”

  “Yes.”

  “What has happened in Sinigaglia?”

  “Nothing — so far. But in a few minutes the slaughter will start”

  “Ah, I was right in riding away?”

  “Of course you were right,” said the dying man. “There’s no question of your rightness. But why the rest remained for the trap to close on them I can’t understand.”

  “It was Tizzo,” answered Giovanpaolo. “He trusted the Borgia. And the amount of his trust outweighed the fear of the Orsini and the rest.”

  “True,” agreed Ridi. “There’s a strange fellow, now — that Tizzo. As quick as a cat and as strong as a lion; as clever as a sharp knife; and yet he cannot see through the Borgia. He lets himself be turned into the bait that will trap all the hired soldiers — even the trapping of Giovanpaolo, though he loves you more than he loves his own life.”

  “All?” asked the Baglione. “Will Vitellozzo be killed among the rest?”

  “Yes. All. And Vitellozzo among the first. All of them may not be slaughtered in Sinigaglia. A few might be saved to take to Rome and let the people have a look at their deaths.”

  “And Tizzo himself?” asked Beatrice Baglione, putting out a hand to protect herself from the answer she feared.

  “Why, you could answer that for yourself,” suggested Ridi.

  “Do you mean that he will be murdered by the Borgia devil?”

  “Tell me what else could happen?” asked Ridi. “This Tizzo is strangely honest. He cannot fight except for a good cause. The Borgia has hoodwinked him by making him feel that all this war, murders, poisonings and all, has been for the sake of the great, new, united Italy. But when Tizzo finds that the duke has broken his faith and used him for a cat’s-paw, the sword of Tizzo will be out. That axe of his will try to chop its way through the skull of the Borgia. There’s no doubt of that. Once the generals are safely in hand, don’t you see that the Borgia will have to kill Tizzo also, in self-defense?”

  The girl did not cry out. She folded her hands together and stared at the distance. Then she stood up and withdrew, unnoticed. Ridi was turning very pale. His lips parted. His breathing came in gasps.

  “Can I reach Perugia and bring back my army in time to strike?” muttered Giovanpaolo, thinking aloud.

  “What good would your little army do against the Borgia’s forces?” asked Ridi. “And by this time, even, the soldiers of the revolted generals are fraternizing with the Borgians. The townspeople are raising their yell of “Duca! Duca!” And before night the whole army of your friends will be in the
hands of the duke. If you came against him, you would be swept down into the sea.”

  “It’s true,” murmured the Baglione.

  He looked up and took a quick, deep breath.

  The breathing of Ridi came, now, with a distinct, dry rattling.

  “Ridi,” said Giovanpaolo, “you are close to your end. Is there a last wish I can execute for you?”

  “I think not,” said Ridi.

  “Can you tell me why you always have hated me so much?”

  “Because,” said Ridi, “I envied the brightness that always surrounded your name. I wanted to be what men said of you, and the devil in me always made my hand too quick to kill, always thickened my tongue so that I could not use your noble words.”

  “Those are poor grounds for hate,” said Giovanpaolo. “Tell me, Ridi, if there is nothing that will rest your soul, and I’ll surely try to do it for you after you are dead.”

  “Why, there’s one thing,” whispered the dying Ridi. “Lean closer, Giovanpaolo.”

  THE Baglione leaned far over the soldier, who with a sudden last effort jerked himself up on one elbow. Blood spurted from the frightful wound in his breast as he made the struggle. But with his right hand he snatched out his poniard and drove it straight at the unvisored face of the Baglione.

  The first shadow of death already was dimming the eyes of Ridi, or that stroke would have been mortal. As it was, the needle-sharp point of the poniard stuck in the rim of the raised visor; the fine steel of the dagger burst into a thousand pieces, stinging and cutting the face of the Baglione. But there was no farther harm. Giovanpaolo sprang to his feet; and Lorenzo Ridi dropped dead in the dust.

  “Carry him off the road,” said Giovanpaolo to his men. “Leave his armor on him. He was a mad dog, but he had courage and a great heart. Leave him as he is, unplundered. My heart aches for Tizzo! Where is Lady Beatrice?”

  “She took her horse a few minutes ago,” was the answer.

  “Her horse? Where did she ride? Up the road?”

  “No, my lord. Strange to say, she went down the road a little distance.”

  “Down the road?” muttered Giovanpaolo. “How could that be?”

  “I cannot tell, my lord.”

  The Baglione started and struck his mailed hands together.

  “She would not be insane enough to try to get back to Tizzo with a warning?” he groaned. “She would not try to — but she would! She would! To horse and after her. A thousand ducats to the man who overtakes her!”

  They were in the saddle instantly and thundering down the way, but at the next turn of the road they saw Beatrice Baglione far before them, bent in the saddle, whipping her horse to full speed.

  “My lord!” called one of the men-at-arms. “We are riding straight back towards destruction. And we can’t overtake her. Her horse is fast; she rides as well as a man; and she has not a man’s weight.”

  Still for a moment Giovanpaolo urged his horse forward; but the heavy warhorse manifestly was losing the race against that slender-limbed Arab which carried the girl.

  At last he drew rein, The dust he had raised blew up from behind and swept past him. Bitterly he stared at the dwindling form that fled down the valley road.

  VI. BONFADINI’S PLEASURE.

  A HERD OF cattle bought by the Borgia money, numberless casks of strong red country wine, heaps of fruit, mountains of shining bread made a feast for the army and flooded the pockets of the happy Sinigaglians with hard cash. Song and shouting and laughter rang far away through the streets.

  The feast for the generals was a different matter.

  Cesare Borgia always was a lavish hand, and he was more lavish than ever, on this day.

  He said to white-faced Bonfadini: “Let them swallow their last gifts — we’ll cut open their crops and have the things back again!”

  The generals — his own and those recently returned to him — sat at a long table while a crowd of servants passed around to serve them. The Borgia himself would not sit at the board. Now and again he came to his place at the head of the table and seemed about to take the chair there. But always he passed on again. From in front of the hearth he would lift his cup and pledge one of his generals. Or from the doorway he would be seen as he shouted some pleasantry.

  “You know, my lord,” said Vitellozzo Vitelli, “that some men fear to break bread and eat salt with others against whom they have evil intentions?”

  “Are you there again, my fine raven, croaking?” laughed the Borgia. “Try some new feathers on your back, my friend, and see whether or not I am a friend!”

  He waved his hand. At once two servants came in, carrying between them a long weight of the heaviest gold brocade. The cloth glittered. The pattern was exquisite. It seemed all a mass of jewels and precious metal, and a shout of admiration and of envy went up when the servants bore the little treasure to Vitellozzo.

  The man was so greedy that he choked and could not swallow when he saw the gift. His hands trembled as he ran the tips of his fingers over the tracery. Then he began to laugh. His face became a violent red.

  “I could be a Pope — I could be a king — I could be an emperor on a throne, if I wore a robe made of this!” he shouted. “Ah hai, Cesare, you know my tastes.”

  “Of course,” said the Borgia. “Every one of us would like to sit on a throne.”

  He waved his hand again and two men carried in a fifty pound salver of solid silver and put it down in front of Paolo Orsini. The general weighted the thing and then shouted aloud. He began to catch up quantities of fruit from the center of the table where it was piled and make a bright mountain to top the silver tray. And still he was shouting.

  All that shouting ended when on a little blue cushion a page, on one knee, presented to Oliverotto a single pearl.

  He picked it up with a bewildered air. Then he rushed to the window and held the jewel in the cup of both hands. The sunlight, streaming through, made the pearl a mass of milky fire. The sheen of it seemed to strike Oliverotto to the soul; and the radiance poured again out at his eyes. He began to do an impromptu dance. Everyone left the table and rushed around him. Their eyes and teeth flashed as they saw the shining of the gem; but into the midst of this tumult more presents were carried, as varied as the taste, as rich as the magnificence of the Borgia could afford. And before and after every gift was presented, there was another round of wine.

  And who was there to notice the pale face and the slender, dark form of Bonfadini, the poisoner, in the corner of the room?

  To crown all, in came a pair of magnificent war-horses, each the purest white, in complete harness, with magnificent suits of armor tied to the saddles. The wooden floor shook and thundered under the striding of those great animals. Every man at the board felt himself three times an emperor. The Orsini who received that regal gift leaped up and made a speech.

  He said: “Glorious Cesare! You are the last of the Romans and the first of the Italians. Who were the fools who told me to fear you? I shall take Italy for myself — from Torino to Palermo. Let Oliverotto have France. Vitellozzo can take Spain. And you, my lord, shall have the world.

  “We will conquer it for you. You will have an army to send against Asia. You will trample the Turks to dust on the way and free Constantinople, liberate Jerusalem on the way. What way? The way to India and China. The way to forests of gold that bloom with jewels.

  “You shall have a hundred thousand fierce French cavalry in your arm, a hundred thousand English axes and bows, a hundred thousand German and Flemish pikes, a hundred thousand Swiss and Italian arquebuses, and light cavalry.

  “That is the way for my lord Cesare to conquer the world, while we lead on the divisions of the army. Life is beginning. The world is beginning. Rivers of gold are about to pour. Joy is the only air that we breathe!”

  HE seized a great two-handled cup, lifted it, started to drink, found mere drinking too slow, and poured a red flood over himself from neck to foot. Then, staggering with drunkenness and joy,
he began to laugh and wave the cup. It clipped a page in the head and knocked the lad senseless. The Orsini kicked the fallen body.

  “Stand up, dog!” he shouted. “Do you lie down in the presence of the king of Italy?”

  The whole crowd began to roar with laughter.

  And Cesare Borgia said to cat-faced Machiavelli: “Do you see the token, Niccolò?”

  “The token is red, my lord,” answered Machiavelli. “I see it clearly. A flood of red!”

  The Borgia smiled and passed on, always striding about the room.

  That entertainment had been rapidly improvised but it was complete. There were not the gifts only, but there were musicians to fill up the interludes of happiness. There was a flock of slim dancing girls with wings of gauze fluttering behind them. There was a negro who ate fire, a juggler who filled the air with swords that never reached the floor.

  And so the day wore on towards its conclusion, and as the evening approached wine and too much happiness began to overcome the feasters.

  The Borgia made a speech to close the occasion. He said: “My friends, I have been at a little expense to show you how my heart stands towards you. If there ever was trouble in your minds, like yellow mud in a clear river, I hope it is all washed away to sea now. Clean rivers and a clean sky. Clean eyes and clean hopes. And our hands linked together will be a force to crack the back of all opposition. Go to bed, my friends. Sleep. Have happy dreams, and tomorrow we will start turning those dreams of yours into a bright reality.”

  They began to troop out. As they passed, the Borgia called to Tizzo. He was left alone in the big room, littered with scraps of food, overturned chairs, broken wine cups, the floor wet with the spilled wine, the air sour with the smell of it. A fire began to crackle cheerfully on the hearth and there was now no other light. In the midst of that confusion, Tizzo was left alone with Bonfadini, the poisoner, with Machiavelli, and with Cesare Borgia.