Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1940

by Twice In Time (v1. 1)

  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.

  CHAPTER V

  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,"

&nb
sp; 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!"

  CHAPTER VI

  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.