Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1940 (12 page)

Return
to
Florence

JUST as soon as my feet were on deck, my enigmatic friend
hustled me into the cabin, where he left me alone. I heard his shouted orders
on deck, felt the ship move. We sailed out, unchallenged and unchecked, and headed
northwest. I heard the muffled noise of a fresh attack on the fortress, but we
were not pursued.

After some time, the master of the vessel appeared. He
offered me a razor, with which I thankfully took my first decent shave. A
mirror showed me my face smooth again, but no longer fresh and boyish. My brow
was cleft with a frown mark, my nose and chin had hardened, and my eyes blazed as
with challenge and truculence.

Over
one temple
rose
a purple bump, where the Turkish
slinger had struck me. Not a pretty face.

My rescuer was offering me new clothes. I pulled on dark
green hose, a velvet doublet, and then looked in surprise at the cloak he
offered—a cloak of Florentine scarlet.

"Why, it—it is mine!"
I
cried. "I wore it before. It was given me by—"

"By Guaracco," he supplied. "Yes. From him
I took it."

"But Guaracco caused my imprisonment," I
protested.

"He now causes your release," was the answer.
"He knew, through spies, that the Turks would attack. He arranged that I
come to the fortress in good time for that event, with instructions to help you
escape. It took but a word to draw you out of cell and into the ranks of the
defenders. After that— But you will know all anon. Stay in this cabin, for it
would be ill for any sailor to see you and gabble in port."

I stayed, perforce, all that day and for some days
following. We talked no more about my strange rescue, and I could learn nothing
at all of the reason for it. At last, on the morning of April 25th, we docked.
Peeping through a porthole, I watched the mariners tie us up to the pilings.

I raked the shore with my eyes, on the lookout for
Guaracco. I wondered what I would find to say to him. In the midst of this, my
companion entered.

"Here is a fellow-passenger of yours, whom I at last
show you," he said.

With him was a slender figure, cloaked and masked, as at a
carnival. Saying nothing, this figure handed me a folded and sealed parchment.
On the outside was the address, written in fashion of the time:

THIS TO THE HAND OF MY

KINSMAN, LEO,

QUICKLY,

QUICKLY,

QUICKLY,

Wondering, I broke the seals and read:

My dear cousin and partner:

Do not think me neglectful if I have left you, like a
dagger in a sheath, until the time was ripe to use you. For the ill you have known
at my hands, I now make full amends. I have prospered in
Florence
,
and power shall be mine and yours. Come and aid me, as I shall aid you.

Guaracco.

I looked up again, with an exclamation. The figure had
unmasked and dropped the cloak. It was Lisa. Her deep, dark eyes looked into
mine.

"I have come to take you back to
Florence
,"
she said mechanically.

I stared at her, and my eyes must have been like those of
a frog.

"What is the matter, Lisa?" I asked.

Because something was the matter.

She seemed to move and talk in a dream.

"I have come to take you back to
Florence
,"
she said again.

GUARACCO had done it—put his spell upon her, and sent her
here. Nay, he had sent her all the way to that perilous fortress to assure my
own obedience to his call. I gazed at the letter, crumpled it in my hand. It
was baleful, foreshadowing tricks and traps.

"Will you come?" Lisa was asking me.

She spoke in the measured tone she might have used when
purchasing meat from a butcher. Her eyes were upon me
,,
drawing my gaze to them, but they only half knew me.

I could not refuse. Guaracco had known as much when he had
sent her after me in this state. I felt fear and rage and mystification, but I
could not send her back alone.

"Come," I said, and flung my red mantle around
me.

We went ashore. Another familiar figure was on the dock—a
tiny figure.
Guaracco's uglier dwarf.

"Welcome," he greeted me softly. "Our
horses are ready at yonder
hostler's
."

He silenced my question with a finger on his twisted lip.
"Guaracco will tell you all. Trust him."

Trust Guarcco! I did not know whether to laugh or curse.

We rose swiftly away in the brightening morning, Lisa and
the dwarf and I. The horses were good and I found mine easy to manage, for all
I had not put foot in stirrup for six years. Lisa must have worn men's clothes
beneath her long cloak, for she rode cross-saddle, and she neither spoke to me
nor looked at me. The dwarf led the way, hunched on his mount like a trained
monkey.

We took the road that once I had galloped with Lorenzo's
officers. This time we paused once, at an inn where fresh horses awaited us. We
changed to them, and took a cup o£ wine and some bread and goat's cheese as we
sat in our saddles. Eventually, as sunset came, we rode into the valley of the
Arno
,
and in the dying daylight I saw
Florence
yet again, a white city caught midway on the silver cord of the river, with
green fields all around.

But as we came near a gun sounded, and the dwarf grumbled
that a watch would be set at the gates. For my sake, he said, we must not enter
there. I might be recognized, for all the change in my appearance.

We turned therefore into the yard of a waterside house
above the city where our hideous little guide whispered to certain
acquaintances of his.

We left our horses and boarded a small barge. It dropped
down river with us, drifted stealthily within the walls and under the bridges,
and came at last to a wharf where we disembarked.

Almost immediately at hand was a house I knew, the house
where Guaracco had once offered me the hand of Lisa, where he had experimented and
quarreled together, where he must now be waiting for me.

We walked along the street that led to the front door, and
there at the door we paused. Still Lisa did not speak.

"Knock," the dwarf bade me.

As I did so, I divined the presence within of a watcher.
But there was no response, no audible movement even. It was only when Lisa, prompted
like me by our companion, spoke her name aloud that we heard a clang of bars
and the door opened a trifle, to show a face.

It was Guaracco's other dwarf, the handsome one who acted
as porter.

The ugly little man came close to my side. Both of them
held drawn swords, and their eyes, turning up to me, were bright and hard.

"Come in," whispered the one who acted as
porter.
"They wait for you."

I STARTED to speak to Lisa, but she was walking around the
side of the house. I entered the front hall, to learn what was in store for me.
There stood a sizeable oblong table, littered with papers, and men sat in chairs
along its sides, seven of them.

Guaracco alone I knew, and he stood up at the head of the
board, his face toward me. He did not seem changed in
so
much as a red hair of his beard, or a gaunt line of his figure. At sight of me,
he cried out as if in joy, and bustled around the table to me. Before I could
move, he caught me in his arms most affectionately.

"My cousin!
My cousin!"
he was saying, and his grin was within six inches of my face. "You have
come, as I begged to help me in my great triumph!"

His right arm, clasping me around the body, had slid under
my loosened mantle. Now it pressed something against the middle of my
back—something round and iron-hard.
The muzzle of a gun.
If I moved quickly, or denied him, I would die on the instant.

With that pistol-bearing hand urging me forward, as though
he still embraced me in loving fashion, he led me to the head of the table, and
there kept me beside him.

"This is my kinsman Leo, gentlemen," he
introduced me to the company. "He is the man I told you of, whose wonders
you have heard speak of in times past. He has more scientific miracles at his
fingertips than all the saints in the calendar."

"I know him," said a fragile, shiftyeyed man in
black and crimson. "He was once pointed out to me at the palace, and it
was said that Lorenzo set great store by him."

"Are you then satisfied?" Guaracco asked the
company. "With him as our helper hereafter, can we fail?"

"If he is true to us—" offered another.

"I vouch for that," promised Guaracco, his gun
prodding me.

Their silence gave him consent, and he went on:

"All is agreed then. By this time tomorrow night we
shall be in full possession of
Florence
,
and in a position to dictate to
Tuscany
as a whole. The oppressors will have shed their last drop of
blood,
the magistrates will speak and act only as we see fit to bid them."

His embrace relaxed, his pistol ceased to dig into my
backbone, but I knew that it was still at the ready in his hand.

"The people?" asked a thickset man in a leather
doublet. His eyes burned from under black brows the width of a thumb.

"The people will offer no trouble, even if we cannot
rouse them," Guaracco returned. "Was it not you, Captain Montesecce,
who have had charge of gathering two thousand hired soldiers outside the
walls?"

"I had charge, and I have done so," replied the
man addressed as Captain Montesecco. "It is well we strike at once, ere so
many armed men cause suspicion. Yet, Florentines are many and valiant—"

"We can count on many supporters in the city,"
interrupted the fragile man in black and crimson. "We Pazzi have servants
and dependents to the amount of several hundred. Our houses are close together
in one quarter, and a rising of our households would mean the rising of all
that part of
Florence
."

AS he mentioned his family name I was able to identify him
as Francesco de Pazzi. He was one of a family of Florentine bankers, not as rich
or powerful as the Medici, but quite ambitious.

"All of us stand ready," he was continuing, "with
influence, men and arms—all, that is, but my cousin Guglielmo. You, Ser
Guaracco, advised against telling him of our plan."

Guaracco's rufous head nodded. "He is married to
Lorenzo's sister. Later, with his brother-in-law and the rest out of the way,
Guglielmo will be glad to join us.
But not now.
Your uncle,
Giacopo, the head of the Pazzi—what is his temper tqhight?"

"Of course, I did not bring him here," said
Francesco de Pazzi, "for he has archaic ideas about fair play. Howbeit, he
knows that there is to be an arising against the Medici whom he has ever hated
as upstarts and thieves. He will lead the muster of our men."

Another of the group about the table gave a little nod of
approval. He was tall and high-shouldered, a scraggy-necked fellow in a purple houppelande,
and he had a shallow, pinched jaw, like a trowel.

"What is my task?" he inquired eagerly, as
though concerned lest all the blood be spilt by other hands.

"A task worthy of Francesco Salviati of
Pisa
,"
Guaracco flattered him. "I rely upon your eloquence and courage. Either
may
suffice ;
both will be invincible."

"You intend," said Pazzi, "to assign him to
the palace?"

Guaracco nodded. "I shall put some of my best blades
in your charge, Salviati," he announced. "At the appointed time, go
to the Palazzo Publico, where the magistrates live and sit in judgment. Look, I
will draw a diagram."

Dipping pen in ink, he began to sketch on a white sheet
for all to see. "Once up the stairs," he instructed, "you come
into a hall. There ask the guard to summon the magistrate of the day. While he
is gone, let your men pass through this door which you will see upon your left
hand." He pointed with his pen. "It leads to an antechamber large
enough for them all to wait. The magistrate will arrive, and you will tell him
that liberty is at hand for
Florence
.
If he will, he can join us. If not, call forth your band to make him see wisdom."

"And my assignment?" prompted yet another, one
of three who sat together at the right hand of Guaracco. He was a youngish,
hook-nosed fellow in good clothes, with a look about him of fine breeding gone
slovenly. "I have a sure hand with a dagger, mind."

"I mind it well, Ser Bernardo," Guaracco said,
and smiled. "You and Ser Francesco de Pazzi will strike down Giuliano, and
see that he does not rise again. Have I your approval, Bernardo Bandini?"
It was plain that he had it, and he turned his smile toward Captain Montesecco.
"Our friend the captain promises to deal Lorenzo his death."

"And I miss stroke, may my sword arm wither!"
vowed the sturdy soldier.

"Meanwhile"—and Guaraeco's eyes slid toward
me—"we have with us a fighter 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!"

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 * 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?"

*Cardinal Riario was a nephew of Sixtus IV, then Pope of
Rome. Some have tried to connect him with the Pazii 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.

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 in 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
w«uld toil for Guaracco, its lord of lords; Cristofor 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 Cottega, 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 bad 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
.