Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1940 (4 page)

In the midst of my work, a boy came in from the street. He
approached and said, very softly, that he had a message.

"A message?"
I
demanded, turning.
"For whom?"

The little fellow bowed.
"For you, Ser
Leo.
I am ordered to conduct you to a place in the next street."

"How do you know my name?" I asked, and looked
sharply at him.

Then I saw that it was no boy, but the dwarf who had once
opened Guaracco's door to me, and whom I had then mistaken for a handsome
child.

"Come," he persisted, "you are awaited."

Turning from my work, I asked Verrocchio if I might be
excused for a few moments. He glanced up from the bench where he and two other
students were studying the plans of a chapel, and nodded his permission.

"Is it Guaracco who waits to see me?" I asked
the dwarf as we emerged from the bottega into the sticky sunlight, but he
smiled mysteriously and shook his little head.

HE walked along the street, my guide, trotting in front,
and turned a corner.

There, at the brink of the river, was a small dwelling
house surrounded by a green garden,

"Go in, Ser Leo," the dwarf bade me, and ran
around to the back with the nimble suddenness of a dog. Left alone, I knocked
at the door.

There was no answer, and I pushed down the latch and went
in. I found myself in a cool, dark hall, paneled in wood. On a
leather-cushioned sofa sat Lisa, the ward of Guaracco.

Her feet were pressed close together under the hem of her
wide skirt, and her hands were clasped in her lap. About her whole attitude there
was an air of tense, embarrassed expectancy. She looked up as I came in, and
then quickly dropped her gaze, making no answer to my surprised greeting.

As I came farther into the room, approaching the girl, a
pale oblong caught my eye—a folded paper, lying on a little round center table.
Upon it were written three large letters:

LEO

"Is this for me?" I asked Lisa, who only bowed
her head the lower. I began to catch something of her embarrassment.

"Your pardon for a moment," I requested, and
opened the paper.

The letter was brief and to the point. It read:

My dear Adopted Kinsman:

You have thus far pleased me much, and I have high hopes
of great advantage from your acquaintance and endeavor. It occurs to me to make
you a present. In the short time you were my guest, you saw my ward, Lisa. She
likes you, and you are not averse to her society. Take her, therefore, and I
wish you joy of each other.

From

Guaracco.

The
Gift of Guaracco

THE first sentence of the letter astonished me beyond
measure. The last had two effects, overwhelming and sudden in succession, like
the two reports of a great double barreled gun.

For my primary impulse was to rejoice, to be glad and
thankful. Why had I never realized that I loved Lisa?

Thinking of her now—how could I help but love her? But my
second reaction was one of horrified knowledge of what Guaracco meant by such a
gift.

"Lisa, fair mistress," I said, "this letter—you
know what it says?"

She nodded, and the living rose touched her ivory skin.

"It cannot be," I told her soberly.

"Cannot?" she repeated, no louder than a sigh.
It might have been a
protest,
it might have been an
agreement.

I overcame an impulse to fall on one knee before her, like
any melodramatic courtier of that unrestrained age and land.

"Lisa," I said again, desperately choosing my
words, "first of all, let me say that I am deeply moved by the mere
thought of winning you. Guaracco appears to mean what he says, and you appear
to be ready to consent."

Watching her, I saw the trembling of her lips. "But I
cannot take you at his hands, Lisa."

At last she looked me full in the face. She, too, began to
comprehend.

"That subtle wizand, Guaracco," I went on,
growing warm to the outrage he would wreak, "tries to rule us both by
fear. He sees that he is not successful. We yield slowly, biding our time, for
orders are orders until there comes strength for disobedience. And so he seeks
to rule us by happiness. Confess it, Lisa. For a moment you, too, would have
wanted love between us!"

She gave me her sweet little smile, with unparted lips,
but shyness had covered her again and she did not answer me.

"We cannot, Lisa," I said earnestly. "It
might be sweet, and for me at least, it would be the easiest course in the world.
But Guaracco's touch upon our love—heaven forefend that we be obligated to
him!"

"Eloquently said, Leo, my kinsman!"
It was the voice of Guaracco. I spun quickly around, ready to strike out at
him. But he was not there. Only his laughter, like the whinnying of a very
cunning and wicked horse was there, coming from the empty air of the room.

"Do not strive against nothingness, young hero,"
his words admonished me out of nowhere, "and do not anguish me by spurning
my poor, tender ward. She loves you, Leo, and you have just shown that you love
her."

Such words made it impossible for me to look at Lisa, and
therefore I looked the harder for Guaracco. In the midst of his mockery, I
located the direction of the sound. He spoke from the room's very center, and I
moved in that direction.

At once he fell silent, but I had come to a pause at the
point where the final syllable still echoed, almost in my ear. I glared around
me, down, and upward.

A cluster of lamps hung just above my head, held by
several twisted cords to the ceiling. Among the cupped sconces I spied what I
suspected—a little open cone of metal, like a funnel.

I am afraid that I swore aloud, even in Lisa's presence,
when I saw and knew the fashion of Guaracco's ghostly speaking. But I also acted.

With a single lunge and grasp I was upon the lamps, and
pulled with all my strength,

THEY came away and fell crashing, but not they alone. For
with them came a copper tube that had been suspended from cords and concealed there.
I tore it from its place in the ceiling. Beyond that ceiling, I knew, went
another tube that went to the lips of Guaracco, in hiding. I cast the double
handful of lamps upon the planks of the floor.

Once
again Guaracco laughed, but this time from behind me in the room itself. Again
I turned. A panel of the woodwork had swung outward, and the man himself
stepped through, all black velvet and flaming beard and sneering smile.

"You are a quick one," he remarked. "I have
fooled many a wise old grandfather with that trick."

I gathered myself to spring.

"Now nay, Leo," he warned me quickly. "Do
nothing violent, nothing that you would not have set down as your last act on
earth." His hand lifted, and in it was leveled a pistol, massively but
knowingly made. I stared for a moment, forgetting my rage and protest at his
villainous matchmaking. Surely pistols were not invented so early. . . .

"It is of my own manufacture," he informed me,
as though he read my mind. "Though short, it throws a ball as hard and as
deep as the longest arquebus in Christendom. Do not force me to shoot you.
Kinsman."
His lips writhed scornfully over the irony of
our pretended relationship.

"Shoot if you will," I bade him. "I have
said to Lisa, and I also say to you, that I shall not be led by love into your
deeper hateful service."

He shook his rufous head with a great show of melancholy.
"Alas, young Cousin!
You do great and undeserved wrong
to Lisa and to me. Only this morning she was disposed to thank me for the
thought, to scan by way of rehearsal the marriage service. . . . Ah, I have
it!" He laughed aloud. "You do not think that a poor art student like
yourself can support a wife and household."

He held out his free hand, as warmly smiling as any
indulgent father. "Take no further thought of it. I myself shall provide a
suitable dowry for the bride!"

Even poor wretched Lisa exclaimed in disgust at his evil
humor, and I started forward suddenly, coming so close to Guaracco that I found
the hard muzzle of his pistol digging into the pit of my stomach.

"Back," he commanded, with quiet menace.
"Back, I say, at once. . . .That is better. What fantastic
objection have
you to raise this time?"

"You add money to beauty and love in the effort to
buy me!" I cried in new disgust.
"Dowry!
A
bribe to
marriage !
Oh, you are infamous! Surely we
are living in the last days of the
world !"
I
flung wide my arms, as though in invitation of a shot. "Kill me,
Guarracco! You said once that you would kill me if I disobeyed you. Well, I
disobey, and with my last breath I do name you a sorry scoundrel!"

He shook his head, and moved back. "No," he
demurred gently. "Perhaps, after all, the fault was mine. I was too abrupt
for your dainty nature, Leo." He turned his eyes, but not his head, toward
the unhappy Lisa where she sat in mute and woeful confusion. "Forgive this
ungallant fellow my child. Perhaps another time—"

"There shall be no other time," I said flatly.
"I refuse, once and for all."

"Then go," Guaracco bade me, and he simulated a
bored yawn. "You have disappointed me, and shamed Lisa. Return to your
labors among the arts, and when your heart is cooler we shall talk again.
Go,"

I WENT, and my nature was
more fiery
hot than the waxing sun overhead. Guaracco had spoken this much truth. I had
brought shame to Lisa. Apparently she had been ready to accept me as a mate,
and whether this was at Guaracco's hypnotic suggestion or not made little
difference in the way my reaction must have affected her. She had come to meet
me, hoping to hear my praises and pledges, to stand with me before a priest.

Undoubtedly she understood my refusal to be her lover, but
could I not have been more kindly toward her?

Could I not have said, parenthetically, that it was in
reality Guaracco I refused, and that on some happier occasion— like many a man
leaving a stormy scene, I was aware of fully a score of things I should have
said and done.

I was also aware that I loved Lisa.

No getting away from that, even when I tried to say that
it was all Guaracco's adroit suggestion, that he may have hypnotized me as well
as Lisa, from the first day he had introduced us to each other.

Conjectures about it were only the more disturbing.
Finally, I gave up the struggle against my hew realization.

I loved Lisa, and probably I had lost her. There was
nothing I could do about it, I told myself as I drew near to the bottega,
turned my footsteps to enter at the door.

A final glow of rage swelled all through me. I yearned
wildly for an opportunity to catch Guaracco off guard, to strike and throttle
him. A mood, rare in me, made my heart and body thirst for violent action.

As Fate would have it, violent action was about to be
provided for my needs.

A horseman came cantering along the street. His horse, a
handsome gray, spurned a loose stone from its place among the cobbles. Another
moment,
and the beast had stumbled and fallen, throwing its
rider headlong.

A crowd of strolling pedestrians within view of the mishap
all hurried close,
myself
among them. My hand went out
to lift the sprawling man, but with a grunt and an oath he had scrambled to his
feet and was tugging at the bridle of his horse. It would not rise.

"The beast is hurt," I suggested.

"Not this devil-begotten nag," growled the
rider. He dragged on the bridle again,
then
kicked the
animal's gray ribs with his sharp-toed boot.

Harshness to animals has never pleased me and, as I have
said, my anger was ready to rise at anything. I shouted in immediate and strong
protest.

The man turned upon me. He was tall and sturdy, with a
forked black beard and two square front teeth showing under a short upper lip.
He wore a long sword under his cloak of brown silk, and had the look of a tough
customer.

"Do not meddle between me and my horseflesh," he
snapped, and once more heaved at the bridle.

The injured horse struggled up at last, driving the little
crowd back on all sides, and the master laughed shortly.

"Did I not say he was unhurt? Belly of Bacchus, it
was his careless foot that threw us—curse it and him!"

He clutched the bit of the poor beast, and struck it
across the face with.
his
riding whip.

"Stop that!" I shouted, and caught his arm. He
tried to pull loose, but I was as strong as he. A moment later he had released
the horse, which a passerby seized by the reins, and cut at me with the whip.
My left hand lashed out, as
quick
as impulse. It smote
solidly on those two front teeth, and the man-at-arms staggered back with a
roar.

I would have struck again, perhaps stretching him on the
cobbles, had not Andrea Verrocchio himself, running from his door, thrown his
arms around me. Meanwhile, the black-bearded man had whipped out his sword and,
swearing in a blood-curdling manner, was struggling to throw off two voluble peacemakers
and get at me.

"Have you gone mad, boy?" Verrocchio panted in
my ear. "That is Gido, the first swordsman of Lorenzo's palace guard!"

Swords
Beside
the River

WHEN I say that I did not flinch at Verrocchio's warning,
I do not call myself brave—only possessed by a white heat of anger. For a
moment I made as if to rush fairly upon the point of Gido's
sword
;
but a saving ounce of wit returned to me.

My eye caught a gleam at the hip of one of the growing
throng of watchers.

I made a long leaping stride at the fellow, and before he
knew I was there I had clutched and plucked away his long, straight blade.

"Thank you, friend," I said to him hastily.
"I will return this steel when I have settled accounts with Ser Gido the
ruffler."

Gido was roaring like a profane bull. He cursed me by
every holy Christian name, and some that smacked of the classic Greek and
Roman. But by now I had recovered my own self-possession, enough to make me
recognize my danger and face it. I thrust away Verrocchio's pleading hands, and
interrupted Gido in the middle of a sulphurous rodomontade.

"You talk too loudly for a fighting man," I told
him. "Come, I am no wretched horse or weaponless burgher. Let him go, you
good people. He needs blood-letting to ease his hot temper."

"There shall be blood-letting enough and to
spare!" the palace guardsman promised me hatefully.

Verrocchio pleaded that there be no brawl outside his
house, but Gido loudly claimed that there must be a back courtyard where we
could have quiet for our work. And, with the

crowd
clamoring and pushing after
us, to that back courtyard we went, through a little gate at the side of the bottega.

There was a level space flagged with stones, at the grassy
brink of the
Arno
.

All the spectators jammed close to the walls of the house
and its paling at the sides, while my adversary and
myself
stood free near the water.

Gido gave me a quick, businesslike scrutiny that had
something in it of relish—the sort of gaze that a carver might bestow upon a
roast. With a quick flirt of his left arm, he wound his brown cloak around his
elbow, to serve as buckler.

"I will teach you to defy your betters, Master Paint-
smearer !
" he promised.

"Teach on!" I urged him. "I may be a good
enough pupil to outshine my teacher."

All this time I was telling myself to be calm, ruthless
and wide-awake, and that I must not fear the raw point. I had done some fencing
in prep school and at my university, and it was another thing that I remembered
fairly well, with my hand if not my head. I felt that I had a certain
advantage, too, in being left-handed.

We moved toward each other by common consent gingerly
taking the stylized paper-doll pose of fencers. As my left hand advanced my
sword, Gido saw that he would have trouble shielding himself with that wadded
cloak.

"Fortune favors the right," he muttered, and his
square front teeth gleamed with pleasure at his own pun.

For answer I made a quick, simple attack. It was no more
than a feeling thrust, and he swept it aside with an easy shifting of his
straight blade. At once I made a recovery, ready to parry his riposte.

The riposte did not come. Instead, this crack swordsman of
the Medici tried to beat down my weapon and so clear the way for a stab at my
breast.

I yielded a little before his pressure, disengaged,
parried in turn, and dropped back. Another of his slashing assaults
I
only half-broke with my edge, and felt the delicate sting
of his edge upon my left forearm.

"First blood!" yelled one of the watchers, and a
little cheer went up for my enemy. The Florentines were enjoying the sport.

BUT I was not injured, so far as my activity was
concerned. As Gido rushed to follow his advantage, I was able to parry cleanly.
Immediately, while he was yet extended in his forward lunge and well within
reach, I sped my riposte. It caught him unprepared, and he barely flung up his cloak-swaddled
left arm in time.

Through half a dozen thicknesses of brown cloth my edge
bit its way, and Gido swore as his blood sprang out to dye the fabric a deep
red.

"He who bleeds last bleeds longest," I
paraphrased, and made a sweeping slash on my own account.

Gido had to spring all the way back to escape, and upon
his face had
dawned
an expression of perplexed concern.

Was this the best swordsman that the Medici could send
against a raw student of the arts? I felt a little perplexity on my own
account. Gido had the look and, with Verrocchio at least, the reputation of a
seasoned fighter. Yet he was doing no more than enough to hold his own against
my sword. He had missed a chance to riposte at my first attack, a moment later
he had been foolishly open to my own riposte.

As our blades grated together again, I found the answer in
my own semiobscured memory.
Riposte, that was it—or
,
rather, the lack of riposte. The movement, the counter-attack made when your
opponent's thrust has been parried and he has not yet recovered, is in great
measure instinctive. But in these Renaissance times it was not rationalized,
was not yet made a definite pseudo-reflex of sword-play.* I, knowing the formal
science of it, had a great advantage. I could win by it.

"Fight, you knave!"
I
taunted Gido, as my steel pressed against his. "I’11 cut you into flitches
like a pig."

Again he thrust wildly in his angry terror, and again I
warded. And, with a quick straightening of my arm, I touched him before he
could recover. My point snagged his bearded cheek, and a thread of gore showed.
This time the onlookers cheered for me.

Gido
retreated once more, two paces this time. His face frankly showed terror.

"He is a devil," he choked out. "He knows a
secret thrust. Unfair!"

"I will show you my secret, drive it to your
heart," I growled back, pressing forward after him. "Fight, man, or I
will butcher you!"

* No scientific treatment of the riposte in swordplay is
to be found in any manual of the exercise before the late Seventeenth Century.

He tried for a moment to oppose me,
then
fled again from my menacing point. Now that his nerve was gone, he could barely
hold up his sword.

"I cannot stand against you," he mumbled
wretchedly

"Show him mercy," called Verrocchio to me, and I
half lowered my weapon.

Gido saw, and struck. Only a quick recovery of my guard
saved my life.

I roared wordlessly, and sprang upon him. My first
sweeping slash he parried, the second almost cut away his left arm. He
staggered back and tried unsuccessfully to hold off my long point thrust, but I
got home deep between his ribs. Pulling away, he ran, like a boy caught
stealing fruit, and I after him.

He gained the gate that led to the street, leaning for a
moment upon it.

Half a dozen of the onlookers rushed to bar my way,
pleading that I was already the winner, but my rage was up again. I struggled
through their arms and after Gido.

He had gone through the gate, fallen through it. As I came
into the street, with the throng at my heels, I almost trod upon my adversary.
He lay sprawled across the curb and into the gutter, his sword under him, blood
gushing from his mouth and drenching his black beard. He had only life enough
to grope in his pierced bosom, pull forth a crucifix of silver, and try to kiss
it.

THE fight and the fury went out of me as I watched him
die, for it was the first violent death I had ever witnessed.

I looked around at the staring, scared faces, and saw
among them that of the man whose sword I had snatched.

"Take back your weapon," I said to him, but he
drew fearfully away from me.

Hoofs were thundering on the cobblestones.

The knot of people pressed back to the front of the
bottega, and let a little cloud of horsemen approach.

A voice shouted
commandingly,
and
there was a quick, orderly dismounting. One of the armored men stopped to gaze
at the body,

"Gido!" he grunted.
"And
slain!"

"What?" demanded a voice from
behind.
"Gido, you say? Who slew him?"

Two men, richly dressed, had remained upon their superb
horses. One of them reined in almost above me. He was a handsome dark
youngster, no older than I, with abundant curls descending from under his
plumed velvet coat to the shoulders of his plum-colored houppelande, or
gownlike outer garment. His belt, gloves and boots were embroidered with massy
gold. He stared at the body of Gido, at me, and at the bloody sword I still
held.

It was the other, sitting his steed just beyond, who had
spoken. He was also young, tall and rugged, with harpies blazoned richly upon
the breast of his surcoat. His strong face, framed between sweeps of straight black
hair, had broad, fiercely ugly features. Above the right corner of his mouth
grew a wart. To me his appearance suggested something of my former life—a
painting or statue.

"Gido," he said again.
"My
own peerless Gido—slain!"

Here upon me had ridden Lorenzo the Magnificent, absolute
ruler of the city of
Florence
!*

And now, the eyes of this great despot, prince in all but
name, had fastened upon me. Bright, deadly intent flared from them, like fire
from black flint.

"Is that the assassin?" he demanded. "Seize
him, some of you."

I turned toward him. "I am no assassin, Your
Magnificence," I protested. "It was a fair fight, and this guardsman
of yours forced—"

But as I began to speak, two of the men in mail and
leather moved swiftly to my right elbow and my left. The iron gauntlet of one
snatched away my sword, and the other man roughly caught my shoulder.

* Lorenzo de Medic!, who ruled with his brother Giuliano
in Florence since 1469, was the true founder of Florentine greatness, and was a
most benevolent despot until his death in 1492.

"Silence!" he growled in my ear. "Speak
when you are spoken to."

Others of the party were busy questioning witnesses, who
were many and unfriendly. Lorenzo de Medici, after favoring me with another
long, searching look, turned away.

"Bring that fellow," he ordered my captors.

"Can you ride?" I was asked, and when I nodded,
the gray horse of Gido, the same over which we had quarrelled, was led forward.
I mounted, and one pf the men-at-arms caught the bridle reins in the crook of
his arm.

The other sidled his horse against me. "Come,"
he said, "you are going to prison. If you try to escape, if you nbut move
as though to leave us"—his voice grew harder still—"my sword will
shed your tripes upon the street.