Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1940 (5 page)

Lorenzo
the Magnificent

LORENZO and his handsome companion had ridden on. Behind him
rode his retinue, one of them with Gido's limp body across his saddlebow. I
myself, on the gray, with the two guards, brought up the rear.

As we departed, I glanced back at the bottega. The crowd
was moving and murmuring, and in its midst stood Andrea Verrocchio, staring
after me through his spectacles.

We had not ridden much more than two miles, and had made
few turns, before our little procession entered a great paved yard before a
white stone palace. A groom appeared to

lead
away the horses of Lorenzo
and his companion, while the soldiers rode around to a guard-house at the rear,
leading me with them.

Through a small barred door, I was ushered into the palace
building, then through a hallway in which stood a sentry in breastplate and
steel cap.

Finally I was escorted into a small room, finished in
great rough stones and with a single iron-latticed window. It had one stool, no
carpet and no table.

"Await here your punishment," one of my captors
bade me, and I was locked in.

I waited. There was nothing to do but think, and nothing
to think but doleful thoughts. My victory over the bully swordsman, mingled as
it was of luck and knowledge from another century, had brought me not fame but disaster.
Lorenzo de Medici himself had seen fit to notice me, and with anger. I knew
well that this scion of a great and unscrupulous race had the power of life and
death in
Florence
, and that in my
case the power of death was more apt to be exercised than the power of life.

To be sure, I had been drawn on first, had fought only in
self-defense. But what judge would hear me? Lorenzo, who through me had lost a
valued
servant
. What jury would ponder my case? No
jury. I might not be allowed to speak in my own defense, even. A nod, a word,
and I would be condemned to death, with nobody to question or to mourn.

Nobody?
What about Lisa? But I had
to put her from my mind.

Thus I mused, in the blackest of humors, until a faint
stirring sound at the window made me lift my eyes. A small, childlike face hung
there—the face of the deceptively handsome dwarf of Guaracco,

He cautioned me to silence with a tiny finger on his lips,
then, with the utmost suppleness and skill, thrust his wisp of a body between
the iron bars.

How even so small a creature could do it, I have no idea;
but in two seconds he stood in front of me, smoothing out the wrinkles of his
little surcoat.

"What do you here?" I demanded.

"It was easy," he chuckled. "By a vine I
swung from the street and over the wall. In a tuft of brambles I lurked, until
the sentry walked by. I am here with a message from Ser Guaracco, your master
and mine."

"Well?" I prompted, a faint hope wakening in me.
Guaracco had claimed some influence. Perhaps he was bestirring himself on my
behalf.

"The message," said the dwarf, "is this:
Hanging is an easy death and a swift."

"Hanging?" I echoed. "I am to be hanged?"

"Perhaps."
The little
head wagged wisely. "That is the punishment for brawlers, and killers in
hot blood. But there are other punishments." He smiled up impudently.
"A witch, a devil's apostle, for instance, may be burned at the stake. By
comparison,

a
sorry end."

I grew ironic myself. "Your riddles become easy to
read, imp," I said. "Ser Guaracco is anxious that I make no claims of
coming to him miraculously —that I say nothing of being nourished and ordered
to assist him in his intrigues."

"They breed quick minds where you come from,"
said the dwarf.

"Go back," I told him. "Back, and say that
I know his selfish reason, but that his advice is good. I will not involve him
in my ruin. Better to hang than to burn."

THE little fellow nodded quickly, turned and wriggled out
between the bars like a lizard.

Time wore on, and I felt weary and hungry. Finally,
pushing my stool back so that I could lean in the corner, I dozed off. A rough
voice awakened me.

"God's wounds, knave, you do slumber at the very lip
of
death !
Rise and come with me. Lorenzo the
Magnificent has sent for you."

I got to my feet and rubbed my eyes. Night had come, and I
walked out of my dark cell toward the light held at the open door. Two men in
steelmounted leather
waited,
a bristlebearded captain
and a lanky swordsman with a scarred cheek.

Between them I walked away into a long hall, around a
corner, across an open courtyard—it was a clear, starry night overhead—and into
a building beyond. A sentry challenged us in the arras-hung vestibule we
entered. At an explanatory word from the bearded captain, he waved us on
through a curtained doorway.

The room in which we came to a halt was not spacious, but
lofty, and lighted by no less than eight lamps on tables and brackets, or hung
by chains from the groined ceiling. The walls were frescoed with scenes and
figures of Grecian mythology, and the floor was richly carpeted.

At a table of polished ebony with inlaid
borders and figures of ivory, sat Lorenzo de Medici, in a magnificent dove-gray
houppelande with furred neck and wrists.
His ugly face was toward us.
Beside him was stationed a scribe or secretary, in the hooded gown of a monk,
busy with pen and ink.

But, standing before the table with back toward us, was a
long, spare man with a red pate. He could be none but Guaracco. And he was
speaking as we entered, in the gentle, plausible manner he could affect so
well.

"Magnificence," he was saying smoothly, "if
to be related to the young man is a crime, I must plead guilty. It is true that
I arranged for his education, as Ser Andrea Verrocchio

testified
before you just now. But
concerning this butchery of your poor servant, I must say that I have no reaction
save surprise and sorrow."

He was clearing his skirts of me then.

Lorenzo leaned back in his chair of state. It was a
square-made armchair of massive carved wood.

"I wonder, I wonder," the ruler of
Florence
almost crooned. His eyes probed Guaracco like sharp points, and if anything
could unsettle the sorcerer-scientist's aplomb, it would be such a regard.
"It is possible," continued Lorenzo, "that you assigned him to
the task of murdering Gido? But here is the young man
himself
.
His story may be revealing."

The captain who had brought me now thrust me forward with
a push of thick knuckles in my back. Lorenzo's eyes met mine, and I returned
him as level a stare as possible.

"Stand aside, Guaracco," commanded Lorenzo.
"Now, young man, your name?"

"Leo Thrasher," I replied.

"Leo—what?"

And Lorenzo shook his head over my surname, which all
Italians have found difficult. The clerk, pen in hand, asked me how to spell
it.

"A barbarous cognpmen, which bespeaks the barbarous
fellow," remarked Lorenzo sententiously. "What
defense
have
you to offer?"

"Only that I did not murder your guardsman, but
killed him in a fair fight," I made respectful reply.

GUARACCO, standing against the wall, gave me a little nod
of approval and drew in his lips, as though to council prudence.

Lorenzo turned and took several sheets of writing from his
monkish companion.

"According to the testimony of others, you were the aggressor,"
said he. "You interfered, and struck him after he had fallen from his
horse."

"He flogged the beast cruelly," I protested.
"I used my bare fist upon him, and he drew his sword. I say, I but
defended myself."

"Do not contradict His Magnificence," the
middle-aged clerk cautioned me bleakly.

"And do not traduce the name of poor dead Gido,"
added Lorenzo. His eyes still raked me. "I have lost a good servant in
him."

"Perhaps," I said, on sudden inspiration, "I
can make good his loss."

"How?" exclaimed Lorenzo, and his black eyes
narrowed.
"As a swordsman in my guard?
But Gido
had conquered hundreds."

"I conquered Gido," I reminded him, despite the
fact that Guaracco was signaling again for prudence. Lorenzo saw those signals,
and turned in his chair.

"Ha, Guaracco, by the bones of the saints!
I do begin to understand it. You'll have planned that this creature of yours
might rise on the dead shoulders of his victim, and be taken into my service as
an invincible blade. Then, being near me, and myself unguarded—"

"As heaven is my judge, this is not my doing!"
exclaimed Guaracco, unstrung at last.

I spoke again, to save myself and him, too.

"If I cannot be trusted to guard Your Magnificence, I
have other worthy gifts." I thought a moment, marshaling what latter-day
science my memory still retained. "I can build bridges. I can make war
machines of various kinds. I can show you how to destroy fortresses—"

"Indeed?" broke in Lorenzo. "How came you
by all this knowledge? More of Guaracco's doing, I make no doubt. He is
whispered to be a sorcerer."

Another of his darted sidelong looks made the tall man
shake violently.
"You, too, young man?
Death is
the severe penalty for black magic."

I recognized defeat, and shrugged my shoulders in
exasperation.

"I shall not weary you with further pleas, Your
Magnificence," I said. "Call me wizard as well as murderer. I am
neither, but you are determined to destroy me. As well be hanged for a sheep as
for a lamb."

The captain at my elbow made a motion as though to drag me
away, but Lorenzo lifted one long, white hand, with a many-jeweled ring upon
the forefinger.

"Wait! Tell me—what was that you said?"

"I said, as well be hanged for a sheep as for a
lamb."

"Hanged for a sheep as for a—" A grin came,
slowly, as if it did not well know the way to that rugged face. It made Lorenzo
strangely handsome.

"Neatly said, by Bacchus!"
He spoke to the clerk. "Write that down. Here we have one gift that was
never won from yonder dull Guaracco."

I was stunned at the zest with which he repeated the
cliche.

"Why,
Your
Magnificence!" I said, wonderingly. "It is but a saying, a handful of
old words."

"Yet the thought is new, a new thing under the sun.
Say on, Leo the Witty. If you are an assassin set to kill me, your tongue is as
tempered as your sword."

HE called the phrase new and, of course, it was. The
Fifteenth Century had never heard it before. Every cliche must have been
devastating in its time.

I groped in my mind for another, and the works of William
Shakespeare, a good century in the future, came to my rescue.

"Since I am graciously permitted to plead my case
once more," I said, "let me but remind Your Magnificence that the
quality of mercy is not strained; it drops as the gentle rain from heaven upon
the earth beneath—"

"Excellent!" applauded Lorenzo. "Clerk,
have you written it all?" He smiled upon me the more widely and winningly.
"You go free, young sir. Swordsmen I can buy at a ducat a dozen, but men
of good wit and ready tongue are scarce in these decayed times. Tomorrow, then,
you shall have a further audience with me."

I BOWED myself away, scarce crediting my good fortune.
But, as I walked down the palace steps and through the gate, Guaracco fell into
step beside me. Under his half-draped black cloak I caught the outline of that
pistol he had invented.

"I have nothing to say to you," I growled.
"I have washed my hands of you. And you washed your hands of me yonder,
when my life hung by a thread."

"I never pledged myself to you," he reminded,
"nor did I demand a pledge of you—only obedience. Instead of death, you
win favor from the Medici. When you go back tomorrow, you go under new orders
from me."

And thus I was deeper than ever in his strong, wicked
clutch.

The
Court of Lorenzo

PERHAPS it is odd, and yet not so odd, that I remember no
more of that particular walk, of my warm disgust at Guaracco's confident leer, of
his insistence on my aid to him. It is my fixed belief that, during our
conversation, he found and took the opportunity to throw upon me his hypnotic spell.
He could do that almost as well as the best Twentieth-century

psychologists
.

Walking together thus on the way to Verrocchio's bottega,
I entranced and somnambulistic, he alert and studied, there must have been
strong talking by Guaracco and receptive listening by me. He must have planted
in my dream-bound mind that I was his friend and debtor, that I must share Lorenzo's
favor with him, Guaracco.

What I do remember is the next afternoon, and an equerry
from the palace presenting himself before an impressed Verrocchio, with a
message summoning me to his master. I went, clad in my simple best—the decent doublet
and hose which Guaracco had given me on my first evening at his house, my red
mantle, and
a flat
velvet cap with a long drooping
feather.

With a little shock of pleased astonishment, I saw that
the equerry had brought me a horse—the same fine gray over which I had fallen
out with the late lamented Gido.

"The beast is a present from the Magnificent," I
was informed as I mounted.

To the palace we rode and there, while my horse was cared
for by the equerry, I was conducted through a great courtyard to a rich garden
among high hedges of yew, trimmed to a blocky evenness, with nichelike hollows for
stone seats or white statues of Grecian style. There were roses, both on bushes
and climbing briars, flowering shrubs in clumps and ordered rows, a perfectly
round little pool with water lilies—all luxurious and lovely, though perhaps a
bit too formally ordered.

In the center of this, under a striped
awning.
lounged
Lorenzo and his friends on cushioned
seats of gilded wood and leather.

To
the four other guests I was introduced as Ser Leo. His Magnificence still shied
at pronouncing my barbarous surname. And I bowed to each as his name was
spoken. First there was Lorenzo's younger brother and codespot, Giuliano, the
same cavalier who had ridden with Lorenzo upon me at the moment of Gido's
death. He was one of the handsomest men I have ever seen, even as Lorenzo was
one of the ugliest.

Almost as highly honored was an elderly churchman with a
fine, merry face and plain but rich vestments—Mariotto Arlotta, the
aristocratic abbot, of the woodland monastery of Camaldoli.

His repute, I found, was that his repartee was the
sharpest and readiest in all the state of
Tuscany
,
and indeed he jested in a lively, though ecclesiastical, fashion.

Close beside him stood a plump, courteous young man in his
middle twenties, Sandro Botticelli the rising court painter.* Him I found
friendly, though moody.

The last man of the group, and the youngest, was an
adolescent poet, Agnolo Poliziano. Uglier even than Lorenzo, he was wry-necked,
crookedmouthed, beak-nosed and bandylegged
.*
*

Yet, for all this sorry person and ungrown youth, he was
eloquent and thoroughly educated. From him I was to learn, in after days, much of
what a man must know to shine as cultured in Fifteenth-Century Florence.

•Botticelli's most famous paintings are .those of Giuliano's
sweetheart, Simanetta Vespucci. He was a favorite of Florentine society, and a
loyal friend of the Medicis.

** Poliziano.
in
later life, was
a tutor to the children of Lorenzo, and remained in the Medici household until
the death of his patron.

"A YOUNG sparkle-wit, friends," Lorenzo told the
others in presenting me. "He was thrown in my way, I nothing doubt, with
the thought that he might assassinate me.
Yet am I drawn to
him by the lustrant wisdom of his speech.
‘As well hang for a sheep as
for
a
Iamb,' he defied me yesterday."

He paused, while the saying went around the delighted
group, from mouth to merry mouth.

"If he is dangerous, yet shall I keep him, as I keep
the lions at the Piazza del
Signoria.
Guard me, all of
you, from any weapon save his tongue."

Once more he turned to me. "What of that sorcerer
cousin of yours, Guaracco?"

To my own surprise I found myself pleading earnestly and
eloquently for Guaracco. It was as if I had been rehearsed in the task, and
indeed I probably was, by Guarracco himself. Hypnotists, I say again, can do
such things.

In the end Lorenzo smiled, and seemed far less ugly.

"By the mass, I wish my own kinsmen spoke so well on
my behalf," he said to the others. "Ser Leo, your eloquence saved you
yesterday, and today it recommends Guaracco. He is dull, I have thought, but he
knows something of science. I am minded to send for him, for all he is a
wizard."

''Sorcery cannot prevail against pure hearts,"
contributed the Abbot Mariotto, at which all laughed heartily.

The equerry who had conducted me was dispatched to search
for and bring Guaracco. Meanwhile I was served with wine by a bold-eyed maid
servant in tight blue silk, and entreated to join the conversation. It was
turning just then on the subject of a new alliance of the Italian powers
against possible Turkish invasion.

"The threat of the infidel comes at an opportune
time," Lorenzo pointed out. "Taunted and menaced, we Christians forget
our differences and draw together for our common safety. The Sultan dares not
attack us, we dare not quarrel among ourselves, and peace reigns." *

"Your Magnificence does not like war, then?" I
ventured.

He shook his ugly crag of a head. "Not a whit. It is
expensive."

"And vulgar," added Botticelli.

"Aye, and dangerous," chimed in the poet
Poliziano.

"And in defiance of heaven's will," sighed the
abbot, as though to crown the matter.

"And yet," Lorenzo resumed, "I bethink me
that it is well for a state to prepare for war, that others may fear, and be
content to keep peace. I have it in mind, Ser Leo, that you spoke yesterday of
war engines."

"I did," was my reply, but even as I spoke I was
aware how poorly my scrambled memory might serve me.

"For instance, I might design a gun that shoots many
times."

"Ha, some of Guaracco's witchcraft!" exclaimed
Lorenzo at once.

"Not in the least," I made haste to say.
"Nothing but honest science and mechanics, may it please Your
Magnificence.
"

In my mind the form and principle of machine-gunnery
became only half clear. I wished that I had mentioned something else.

* Lorenzo was later able to bring about this alliance, both
for peace among the Italian powers acid safety from the Moslem raiders.

BUT Lorenzo would not be dissuaded from knowing all about my
oft-shooting gun. He sent Poliziano for paper and pencils, anfl ordered me to
draw plans. I made shift in some fashion to do a picture of a guncarriage, with
wheels, a trail and a mounting of, not one barrel but a whole row, ten or more.

"It is nothing of particular brilliance," objected
the poet. "A rank of arquebusiers would serve as well."

"Aye, but if we have not overmany ranks of
arequebusiers ?
" countered Lorenzo, and gave me a most
generous smile. "A single man, I think, could serve and aim and fire this
row of guns. Ten such machines could offer a full hundred shot. Well aimed and
timely discharged, that hundred shot might decide a great battle."

Encouraged, I offered a variation of the idea, a larger
and wider gun emplacement with, not small barrels, but regular cannon placed in
a row and slightly slanted toward the center. These.'I suggested, could be so
trained as to center their fire on a single point. The bank of cannon, wheeled
into position and the fuses lighted in quick succession, could throw a shower
of heavy shot against a single small area upon a rampart or wall, battering it open.

"Right you are!" applauded Lorenzo. "It
would outshine the greatest battering-ram in all Christendom."

"It may be improved," I continued, "by
explosive shot in the cannon."

"Explosive shot?" Giuliano repeated in sharp
protest.
"How, Ser Leo?
Is not all shot solid?
Can lead and iron explode?"

"Yes, with powder and a fuse inside," I said at
once, though none too surely.

"Now nay," he argued. "What would prevent
such a shot from exploding in the very mouth of the cannon, belike splitting
its barrel and doing injury to our own soldiers?"

I had to shake my head, saying that I coulinot answer
definitely just then.

"Then answer another time," said Lorenzo kindly.
"In the meanwhile" —he picked up my two drawings—"these will go
to my armorers, for models to be made. Ser Leo can draw

us
other things, as well."

"He draws notably," contributed Botticelli.

Evening had drawn on, lamps were lighted, and we had
supper in the garden, a richer and spicier meal than I care for. There was
plenty of wine, and all drank freely of it, not excepting the abbot. Finally
some fruits and ice-cooled sherbet were brought, and at this dessert we were
joined by five or six ladies.

Most beautiful and arresting among these was the famous
Simonetta Vespucci, the reigning toast of
Florence
.
She was no more than eighteen years old, as I judged, but mature in body and
manner, a tall, slenderly elegant lady, a little sloping in the shoulders but
otherwise beyond criticism in the perfection of her figure. Her abundant hair
gleamed golden, and her proud face was at once warmly and purely handsome.

All the men were her frank and devoted admirers. I have
heard that the very shopkeepers and artisans who saw her pass on the street
were wont to roll their eyes in awe at her loveliness, and even to fight
jealously over this noble creature they dared not address.

Of those present, she appeared to prefer the dark, dashing
Giuliano de Medici.

"I FEAR that it will be a hot summer," she
mourned as she finished her sherbet. "There will be little ice left in the
storehouses, even now."

"Nay, then," I made haste to say. "Ice may
be kept through the hottest months, if it is placed in houses banked with
earth." I quickly sketched such a half-buried shed. "And also let the
ice be covered deep with sawdust and chaff."

"How?" demanded the painter, Botticelli. "I
have known chaff to be placed over fruit in a shop, and so keep it from
freezing. If chaff keeps fruit warm, will it also make ice cold?"

I was on the point of launching into a discussion of
refrigeration and insulation, but prudently stopped short. "It does indeed
bring coldness," I assured him. "Or rather it keeps the coldness that
is there already."

"Black magic/' muttered Abbot Marriotto, crossing
himself with a beringed hand.

"Nay, white magic," decided Lorenzo, "for
it does
good
on earth, does it not, and no harm to any
creature? Ser Leo, do you guarantee that ice will thus remain through the
summer, and not perish?" He turned to a servant. "Go you," he
ordered, "and summon a secretary." And then to me: "He shall
make notes of what you say, young sir, and tomorrow shall see the building of
such a house. Therein my ice shall lie, with good store of chaff to insure its
cold."

"This strange young man is a learned doctor,"
said the silvery voice of a lady, who toyed with a goblet of jeweled gold.

"Does he not know of more exalted things than chaff
and houses buried in the earth?" asked Simonetta Vespucci, deigning to
smile upon me. "Ser Leo —for so you seem to be called—can you not tell us
a tale of these stars, which now wink out in the sky and float above our
earth?"

Her eyes and her smile dazzled me, understandably, along
with any man on whom they turned. Perhaps that is why I ventured to dazzle her
in turn.

"Madonna Simonetta," I said, "
permit
me to say that those stars are worlds, greater than
ours,"

"Greater than ours?" she cried, and laughed most
musically. "But they are no more than twinklets, full of spikes and beams,
like a little shining burr."

"They are far away, Madonna," I said. "A
man, if only at the distance of a hundred paces, appears so small that he can
be contained within the eye of a needle held close before you. So with these
bodies, which are like the sun—
"

"The sun!" she interrupted. "The sun, Ser
Leo, is round, not full of points like a star."

There was applause of her lively protest, from all the men
and most of the women.

For answer, I took up a sheet of the paper on which I had
been sketching, and asked for the loan of a pin. One of the ladies had a silver
bodkin in her cap, and offered it. With this I pierced a hole in the paper.

"Madonna," I addressed Simonetta, "
hold
this hole to your eye, and look through it. The
smallness of the opening will shut away the glitter . . . So, you do it
correctly. Now"—I pointed to where, in the evening sky, hung shimmering
Jupiter—"look yonder. Is that star, seen through the hole in your paper, a
burr or a small round body?"

"This is marvelous," she exclaimed. "It is
indeed round, like a gold coin seen from a distance."

THE others cried out in equal astonishment, and each
must needs
look through the hole in the paper at Jupiter. I
turned over in my mind the possibilities of explaining a telescdpe, but decided
not to offer another foggy theory that I could not suppolrt with exact plans or
models. I contented myself with attempting to lecture on astronomy.