TWICE IN TIME

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 I 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 my 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 balefully.

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 semi-obscured memory. Riposte, that was it—or, rather, the lack of riposte. The movement, the counter-attack made when your opponent's thrust had 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.[4] 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 him. "I'll 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 snapped 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!"

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 gown-like 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— slane!"

Here upon me had ridden Lorenzo the Magnificent, absolute ruler of the city of Florence![5]

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.

"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 of 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 but move as though to leave us"—his voice grew harder still—"my sword will shed your tripes upon the street."