"And I miss stroke, may my sword arm wither!" vowed the sturdy soldier.
"Meanwhile"—and Guaracco's eyes slid toward me—"we have with us a tighter the nonpareil of any. Leo, my kinsman, known as Luca, the admiral of freebooters who has lashed the Moslems to their kennels for six years. He is famed, admired, and he knows more about warfare than any man living. I will place him as our general!"
CHAPTER XIX
The Conspiracy
Quite well I knew now why Guaracco had thought to drag me into his scheme. He would serve himself with my brains and skill, as so often before. It was one more item that made his plot complete. Even I, within minutes, saw how the rebellion would succeed.
The conspiracy was not for a single blow but several, all accomplished at the same moment. Lorenzo and Giuliano, the heads of the Medici were to be assassinated. The Palazzo Publico would be seized and the officers there taken into custody by armed men. The adherents of the plotters would rise in an impressive manner swaying the unsuspecting and perhaps dissatisfied citizenry by their cries and promises. And to guard against the forming of a violent resistance two thousand mercenaries were ready to march into the city.
It could not fail. With the fall of Lorenzo's power my exile and danger would be past. Yet my paramount impulse was to cry out against so ruthless a measure.
But if I spoke so my life would be forfeit. I would not live to get out of the room. I remained silent while Captain Montesecco asked when and where the Medici brothers were to be struck down.
"Tomorrow morning," said Guaracco. "At church."
"Church?" repeated the captain sharply.
"Aye that. Tomorrow is Sunday, you will remember. We cannot be sure of getting them together at any other time. Cardinal Riario[*16] is to say mass at the cathedral, which will insure their attendance. We will be ready for them, each nearest his man. At the moment when the host is elevated, and all attention directed thither—"
"Now, nay!" The leather-clad figure started from the chair. Montesecco's black brows lifted into horrified arches. "I cannot draw swords at that holy moment. God would be watching me!"
Guaracco chuckled, and so did Francesco Salviati, the trowel-jawed man in purple. But Montesecco was not to be laughed out of his impulse.
"I have sworn to help," he admitted, "and I shall do so, or my name is not Giovanni Battista Montesecco. I will command the mercenaries, raid the palace, help to rouse the city—but I cannot and will not do murder in the cathedral!"
"The man of blood shows himself blood-drawn," sneered Pazzi.
"Say you so?" gritted the captain. "If you will take a sword in hand, Messer Francesco, you will end up more blood-drawn than I."
But Guaracco caught Montesecco's leather-clad shoulder in a big, placating hand.
"None call you coward, Ser Giovanni," he assured the mercenary. "Withdraw this part of it if you will— none will blame you—and we can use your talents elsewhere. Bernardo Bandini, you are still ready to deal with Giuliano?"
Guaracco's wise glance shifted to the two men who had not yet spoken. Both were clad in black, and their faces were somber to match.
"What do you say Antonio Maffei? Methinks you lived once on Volterra, which Lorenzo saw fit to sack and destroy?"
My mind leaped back to Volterra. Guaracco had managed its destruction primarily so as to get a crystal of alum for our unsuccessful time reflector, but he must have other plans in connection with that apparently senseless cruelty. For one, he had discredited me when I might have been as a stumbling block.
He was able now also to use the incident against Lorenzo. For Antonio Maffei was saying, with a growling relish, that the smell of Lorenzo de Medici's blood would smell sweet to the saints in heaven.
"He is a devil," he garnished the conceit, "and merits urging to hell."
"Your gossip, Stefano da Bagnone there, will help you?" asked Guaracco. "You make a sign of assent, Stefano, as I take it. And I may provide a third for your dagger party." Again he glanced sidelong at me. "We need not speak further tonight, gentlemen. Let us meet early on the morrow, and then to work."
He let them out by a rearward door. Of the group he detained Francesco de Pazzi for a moment, advising him strongly to keep an eye on Captain Montesecco, who had turned strangely squeamish for a professional killer. Then, when all were gone, he wheeled upon me with a sultry grin of welcome.
"Welcome home, boy," he cried. "Fine things are to be our doing within the twenty-four hours."
"Murder, you mean?" I flung at him. "Anarchy? Riot?" I walked close to him. "Lisa, under your power of will, brought me hither. I demand that you free her, and at once. She and I will depart before another hour is passed."
"I think not," he said, in his familiar easy manner of a master, but I snarled in scorn.
"I am vastly different from the man you lyingly accused to Lorenzo. I am a killer! Bring on your dwarfs, and see if they frighten me. I came here only to take Lisa away, and by the Saints I shall do so."
"Lisa?" he repeated. "Where is she?"
And I realized that I did not know.
"I was beforehand with you," he continued. "I hold her a hostage for your good will and support. Yet all may be well." He waved toward a chair. "Sit down."
I did so, and he talked. The Pazzi, he said, powerful and extravagant, were on the verge of bankruptcy. They slavishly sought to work under him for overthrow of the Medici, forgetting that when the overthrowing was complete Guaracco would rule through them and could, in good time, overthrow them also.
"Florence is as good as mine tonight," he said. "After Florence, other states. All Italy." He beckoned. "Come."
He led the way down some rough stairs to the cellar where we had once worked together. It seemed stacked with firewood, until he kindled a lantern. Then I saw the stacks were of weapons.
There were rifles and bayonets; boxes of grenades; machine guns; canisters that must hold high explosives and many another baleful thing. Toward Guaracco I turned a wondering face, and he laughed the old superior laugh.
"I quarried these weapons, or the knowledge to make them, from that bemused mind of yours, Leo. I had two years to delve into your trances, and six more to forge and fashion. What ordinary army could stand against me?"
"You have soldiers?" I asked him.
"When first you came, you saw the worshipers I governed by tricks of deviltry. Those, and more like them, will rally at my call to use these arms. After that— But Leo, you cannot demur longer. You and I cannot succeed without each other."
Again he plunged ahead with the wild sketch of his plans. After the subjugation of Italy, the subjugation of France and Spain; a united and submissive Europe would toil for Guaracco, its lord of lords; Cristoforo Colombo would be sought out, given his fleet and sent to America to win its wealth.
"Once you fancied such an empire," he reminded me. "Am I not the true master sorcerer, with whom all things come to pass?"
"Not all things," I demurred. "I remember that I told the defeat for such a master—death. It will come to you."
His eyes turned frigid. "Seek not to kill me, unless you want to lose Lisa. Join me and she is yours. Otherwise I may give her to Bernardo Bandini for stabbing Giuliano. Or I might use her to persuade that overgodly mercenary, Montesecco. You can have her only if you are my devoted lieutenant."
"Lisa loves me," I said stoutly.
"Only at my bidding. My will commands her."
I gazed at him as though I had never seen him before.
Not that I had not known him from the first day as a dangerous scoundrel; not that I had not always hated and feared him; but at last I knew that I must not delay. He must die, for the sake of Lisa and myself and all the world.
In one motion I bared my sword and darted it at him. He reeled back with a cry, but no blood came. My point had turned against a concealed shirt of mail. He extended his arm, dangling the lantern above an open cask.
"There is powder inside," he warned. "Attack, and�
��"
I hesitated only a second, then turned at the sound of pattering feet. His two dwarfs were at me, ducking under the sweep of my sword to close in. But I brought down the pommel of my weapon upon the head of the hunchback, even as he shortened his own blade to thrust. Down he fell, and I sprang across him and darted upstairs.
"Lisa! Lisa!" I cried. Only the roared curses of Guaracco answered me. He was pursuing, a rifle in his hands.
"You cannot catch me!" I yelled, on inspiration. "I go back to my prison!"
I gained the front door and ran out. Away I fled, passed Verrocchio's bottega, around a corner to a broader street, and toward the heart of Florence. For I had only pretended that I was fleeing the city.
What now? Seek Lorenzo and warn him? Dared I show my face to him? Ahead of me loomed the Palazzo Publico, destined for a stirring scene of tomorrow's uprising. I had a sudden hope and plan.
Unbuckling my sword, I hid it in a bush. Boldly I went to a side door and knocked. A porter opened to me.
"I am the locksmith," I said. "I come to fix the antechamber door."
"I heard no orders," he temporized, but allowed me to enter and mount the stairs to the upper floor.
Here was a reception hall and a door opening to the left. Guaracco had designated it as an ambush for the bravos who would follow Francesco Salviati. I examined its heavy lock, and with my dagger made shift to drag it partially from the door. Still watched by the suspicious porter, I tinkered with its inner works.
"Now it will serve," I told him, and went my way.
To all appearances I left the lock as it had been. But I had bent a spring and pried out a rivet. Any man or men, going into that room and closing the door behind, could not get out again without the aid of even a better locksmith than I.
After that, I sought a livery stable, and with a few coins that were left in my pouch hired a horse. Somehow I wheedled my way past the watch at a gate, and made the best time darkness would allow to the old familiar country house which Guaracco still kept.
A single caretaker opened to my thunderous knocking. Without ceremony I drew my sword and swore to cut out his liver if he forestalled me by word or deed. He tremblingly made submission, and I locked him in a closet. Then I took a lamp down to the cellar workshop where Guaracco had tested my scientific knowledge on our first day of acquaintance.
It was in a dusty turmoil, but in a corner among odds and ends of machinery was what I had hoped to find—the remains of our unsuccessful time reflector. I checked the battery, found it in bad shape, but materials were at hand to freshen it. When I had restored it to power, I procured salt from the kitchen and mixed a great basin of brine. Finally I attached two wires to the terminals of the battery, and thrust their ends into the liquid.
I watched carefully. Electrolysis commenced. The bubbles that rose at the negative wire would be liberated hydrogen. Those at the positive end were what I wanted. From a bench I brought a glass bottle, holding more than half a gallon, filled it with brine and inverted it above this stream of bubbles. Steadily the gas crowded out the salt water, showing greenish yellow. I stoppered the bottle as it filled, then charged a second and a third. Finally I drew the wires out. The bottles had earlike rings at their necks; and I strung them on a girdle under my cloak.
They were now a weapon for me that Guaracco had not dreamed of; for I had produced chlorine gas, such as had poisoned armies in the World War, the war that was still centuries ahead of me.
As I finished the work, Sunday dawned grayly. I released the frightened caretaker, and rode once more to Florence.
Notes:
*16 - Cardinal Riario ivas a nephew of Sixtus IV, then Pope of Rome. Some have tried to connect him with the Pazzi conspiracy, but the great mass of evidence shows that he had no other connection than that a cardinal's presence at the cathedral would insure the presence of the two brothers Medici.
CHAPTER XX
Turmoil
Undoubtedly, as I have said, Il Duomo—Saint Mary's of the Flower—was the second cathedral in all Christendom. I was there, gas-bottles and all, the next morning before Cardinal Riario began to say mass.
I tried to lose myself among the throngs of worshippers who strolled most informally among the banks of seats in the octagonal choir space beneath the great open dome. For once I was glad of the natural darkness that clung in the cathedral, lighted only by the ornate upper windows.
At the high altar the cardinal, young and handsome for all his high dignity, was intoning the service. I found a shadow beside a carved wooden screen, and tried to shrink my height by bowing my shoulders under my mantle.
More worshipers appeared, and more, brave in all the colors and fabrics of Sabbath costume. A tall, ruddy head and beard showed among them—Guaracco, I saw at once. In my heart I prayed that he fail to see me, and he did. He was looking for other things, and perhaps he believed that I had indeed fled Florence.
Then, on the other side of the choir, a flash of blue velvet, a smiling, handsome face. It was Giuliano de Medici,[*17] and his arm was linked with that of Francesco de Pazzi, as though with a close friend. On the other side of Giuliano, and a little to the rear, walked Bernardo Bandini, the dissolute young gentleman on whom Guaracco threatened to bestow Lisa. Would Guaracco do so? Would Lisa consent?
And then someone strolled past me. Lorenzo, a gorgeous figure in a crimson houppelande, sword at side, chatting with a crooked, smiling young man— Agnolo Poliziano, the poet. Behind them, tense and pale, slunk two dark-clad figures, the assassins Maffei and Bagnone.
I took a step toward the ruler of Florence. I drew in my breath to shout a warning, in the midst of the holy service. I saw Guaracco approaching beyond some chairs.
It was then that the host was elevated at the altar. The young cardinal's voice rang out the prayerful words that, all unknowing, would signal for violence:
"Ite, missa est!"
Maffei, the vengeful Volterran, who was closer to me than Bagnone, stepped suddenly forward, clutching at Lorenzo. His dagger twinkled in air.
I seemed to move of an involuntary stimulus. Had I been a true Florentine, I would have paused to draw sword, and that would have been too late to save Lorenzo. Being an American, and from the Twentieth Century, I struck with my fist. Maffei staggered under the blow, his thrust went awry. It glanced along Lorenzo's neck.
"Beware, Your Magnificence!" I cried, and struck Maffei again, a roundabout right.
He turned halfway toward me, catching my knuckles on the point of his chin. Down he floundered in a flurry of black robes, and I set my foot on his dagger hand. The weapon clanked on the floor, and I kicked it away.
All had become howling confusion. My gas, I saw, would not affect only Guaracco's party, but the whole congregation. I dared not release it. At last I thought to draw my sword.
Across the octagonal space, chairs were overturning and horrified people were scurrying and gesticulating. For a moment I saw Giuliano's blue velvet form struggling on the floor, while Francesco de Pazzi, with his knee on Giuliano's breast, struck viciously with his dagger. Other swords were out on all sides.
"Down with the Medici oppressors!" I heard Guaracco trumpeting.
A cheer answered him, for the service had been liberally attended by members of the conspiracy. The cardinal, his young eyes wide with horror, was drawing back from the altar, and a priest in black robes was trying to lead him away. Maffei had risen, and was running before my sword-point. I turned to see what was happening to Lorenzo.
He had drawn his own sword, and was parrying the wild dagger thrusts of Bagnone, but his wound streamed blood and the terrified Poliziano hampered him by clinging to him.
I hurried to them and thrust hard at Bagnone, but my stroke was turned, for as Guaracco had done the night before, this conspirator wore mail under his gown. Yet the digging jab drove him back. I gestured Poliziano toward a doorway with my weapon.
"Is that the sacristy?" I shouted. "Get him in there and bolt the door!"
"Giuliano!" Lorenzo was shouting back. "Is Giuliano safe?"
But I gave him an unceremonious shove, and a moment later Poliziano had dragged him to the threshold.
"Down with the Medici!" yelled Guaracco again.
His voice was near, and I faced around upon him and half a dozen of his supporters who were rushing to cut Lorenzo off. I threw myself in their way, quickly wadding my cloak into a shield, and engaged several blades at once. I heard the clang of the door behind me, and the shooting of the bolts.
"Medici! Medici!" I roared, fencing off my assailants. "Murder! Help, honest men, murder is being done!"
"Medici!" someone echoed, and never have I heard a sweeter voice.
A robust cavalier in plum-purple hurried to my side. He, too, had a sword, and struck manfully at the conspirators. His example fired others. In a trice the entire floor of the choir was a melee of jabbering voices and clashing steel.
Several armored guardsmen made their appearance. I saw Guaracco fleeing. I followed suit, for I remembered that Lorenzo, whose life I had just saved, had doomed me.
The public square outside the cathedral was swiftly jamming with people, some armed and angry, others frightened and mystified. All were talking at once, and nearly all were shouting "Medici! Medici!" In this quarter, at least, the people were for their ruler.
A fellow in a jerkin of falding, with gray hair and a cast in his eye, stopped me with a fierce clutch even as I emerged from the cathedral.
"Is it true that Ser Giuliano de Medici is slain?" he asked.
"I fear so," I replied. "I saw him struck down."
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