TWICE IN TIME

CHAPTER VII 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 steel-mounted leather waited, a bristle-bearded 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, we waved me 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 ceding. 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, Guarracco," 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 cognomen, 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 lilted 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, my 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 cliché.

"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.