TWICE IN TIME

CHAPTER XVIII Return to Florence

Just as soon as my feet were on deck, my enigmatic friend hustled me into the cabin, where he left me alone. I heard his shouted orders on deck, felt the ship move. We sailed out, unchallenged and unchecked, and headed northwest. I heard the muffled noise of a fresh attack on the fortress, but we were not pursued.

After some time, the master of the vessel appeared. He offered me a razor, with which I thankfully took my first decent shave. A mirror showed me my face smooth again, but no longer fresh and boyish. My brow was cleft with a frown mark, my nose and chin had hardened, and my eyes blazed as with challenge and truculence. Over one temple rose a purple bump, where the Turkish slinger had struck me. Not a pretty face.

My rescuer was offering me new clothes. I pulled on dark green hose, a velvet doublet, and then looked in surprise at the cloak he offered—a cloak of Florentine scarlet.

"Why it—it is mine!" I cried. "I wore it before. It was given me by—"

"By Guaracco," he supplied. "Yes. From him I took it."

"But Guaracco caused my imprisonment," I protested.

"He now causes your release," was the answer. "He knew, through spies, that the Turks would attack. He arranged that I come to the fortress in good time for that event, with instructions to help you escape. It took but a word to draw you out of cell and into the ranks of the defenders. After that— But you will know all anon. Stay in this cabin, for it would be ill for any sailor to see you and gabble in port."

I stayed, perforce, all that day and for some days following. We talked no more about my strange rescue, and I could learn nothing at all of the reason for it. At last, on the morning of April 25th, we docked. Peeping through a porthole, I watched the mariners tie us up to the pilings.

I raked the shore with my eyes, on the lookout for Guaracco. I wondered what I would find to say to him.

In the midst of this, my companion entered.

"Here is a fellow-passenger of yours, whom I at last show you," he said.

With him was a slender figure, cloaked and masked, as at a carnival. Saying nothing, this figure handed me a folded and sealed parchment. On the outside was the address, written in fashion of the time:

Wondering, I broke the seals and read:

I looked up again, with an exclamation. The figure had unmasked and dropped the cloak. It was Lisa. Her deep, dark eyes looked into mine.

"I have come to take you back to Florence," she said mechanically.

I stared at her, and my eyes must have been like those of a frog.

"What is the matter, Lisa?" I asked.

Because something was the matter. She seemed to move and talk in a dream.

"I have come to take you back to Florence," she said again. * * *

Guaracco had done it—put his spell upon her, and sent her here. Nay, he had sent her all the way to that perilous fortress to assure my own obedience to his call. I gazed at the letter, crumpled it in my hand. It was baleful, foreshadowing tricks and traps.

"Will you come?" Lisa was asking me.

She spoke in the measured tone she might have used when purchasing meat from a butcher. Her eyes were upon me, drawing my gaze to them, but they only half knew me.

I could not refuse. Guaracco had known as much when he had sent her after me in this state. I felt fear and rage and mystification, but I could not send her back alone.

"Come," I said, and flung my red mantle around me.

We went ashore. Another familiar figure was on the dock—a tiny figure. Guaracco's uglier dwarf.

"Welcome," he greeted me softly. "Our horses are ready at yonder hostler's." He silenced my question with a finger on his twisted lip. "Guaracco will tell you all. Trust him."

Trust Guaracco! I did not know whether to laugh or curse.

We rode swiftly away in the brightening morning. Lisa and the dwarf and I. The horses were good and I found mine easy to manage, for all I had not put foot in stirrup for six years. Lisa must have worn men's clothes beneath her long cloak, for she rode cross-saddle, and she neither spoke to me nor looked at me. The dwarf led the way, hunched on his mount like a trained monkey.

We took the road that once I had galloped with Lorenzo's officer. This time we paused once, at an inn where fresh horses awaited us. We changed to them, and took a cup of wine and some bread and goat's cheese as we sat in our saddles. Eventually, as sunset came, we rode into the valley of the Arno, and in the dying daylight I saw Florence yet again, a white city caught midway on the silver cord of the river, with green fields all around.

But as we came near a gun sounded, and the dwarf grumbled that a watch would be set at the gates. For my sake, he said, we must not enter there. I might be recognized, for all the change in my appearance.

We turned therefore into the yard of a waterside house above the city where our hideous little guide whispered to certain acquaintances of his. We left our horses and boarded a small barge. It dropped down river with us, drifted stealthily within the walls and under the bridges, and came at last to a wharf where we disembarked. Almost immediately at hand was a house I knew, the house where Guaracco had once offered me the hand of Lisa, where we had experimented and quarreled together, where he must now be waiting for me.

We walked along the street that led to the front door, and there at the door we paused. Still Lisa did not speak.

"Knock," the dwarf bade me.

As I did so, I divined the presence within of a watcher. But there was no response, no audible movement even. It was only when Lisa, prompted like me by our companion, spoke her name aloud that we heard a clang of bars and the door opened a trifle, to show a face.

It was Guaracco's other dwarf, the handsome one who acted as porter. The ugly little man came close to my side. Both of them held drawn swords, and their eyes, turning up to me, were bright and hard.

"Come in," whispered the one who acted as porter. "They wait for you." * * *

I started to speak to Lisa, but she was walking around the side of the house. I entered the front hall, to learn what was in store for me.

There stood a sizeable oblong table, littered with papers, and men sat in chairs along its sides, seven of them. Guaracco alone I knew, and he stood up at the head of the board, his face toward me. He did not seem changed in so much as a red hair of his beard, or a gaunt line of his figure. At sight of me, he cried out as if in joy, and bustled around the table to me. Before I could move, he caught me in his arms most affectionately.

"My cousin! My cousin!" he was saying, and his grin was within six inches of my face. "You have come, as I begged to help me in my great triumph!"

His right arm, clasping me around the body, had slid under my loosened mantle. Now it pressed something against the middle of my back—something round and iron-hard. The muzzle of a gun. If I moved quickly, or denied him, I would die on the instant.

With that pistol-bearing hand urging me forward, as though he still embraced me in loving fashion, he led me to the head of the table, and there kept me beside him.

"This is my kinsman Leo, gentlemen," he introduced me to the company. "He is the man I told you of, whose wonders you have heard speak of in times past. He has more scientific miracles at his fingertips than all the saints in the calendar."

"I know him," said a fragile, shifty-eyed man in black and crimson. "He was once pointed out to me at the palace, and it was said that Lorenzo set great store by him."

"Are you then satisfied?" Guaracco asked the company. "With him as our helper hereafter, can we fail?"

"If he is true to us—" offered another.

"I vouch for that," promised Guaracco, his gun prodding me.

Their silence gave him consent, and he went on:

"All is agreed then. By this time tomorrow night we shall be in full possession of Florence, and in a position to dictate to Tuscany as a whole. The oppressors will have shed their last drop of blood, the magistrates will speak and act only as we see fit to bid them."

His embrace relaxed, his pistol ceased to dig into my backbone, but I knew that it was still at the ready in his hand.

"The people?" asked a thickset man in a leather doublet. His eyes burned from under black brows the width of a thumb.

"The people will offer no trouble, even if we cannot rouse them," Guaracco returned. "Was it not you, Captain Montesecco, who have had charge of gathering two thousand hired soldiers outside the walls?"

"I had charge, and I have done so," replied the man addressed as Captain Montesecco. "It is well we strike at once, ere so many armed men cause suspicion. Yet, Florentines are many and valiant—"

"We can count on many supporters in the city," interrupted the fragile man in black and crimson. "We Pazzi have servants and dependents to the amount of several hundred. Our houses are close together in one quarter, and a rising of our households would mean the rising of all that part of Florence." * * *

As he mentioned his family name I was able to identify him as Francesco de Pazzi. He was one of a family of Florentine bankers, not as rich or powerful as the Medici, but quite ambitious.

"All of us stand ready," he was continuing, "with influence, men, and arms—all, that is, but my cousin Guglielmo. You, Ser Guaracco, advised against telling him of our plan."

Guaracco's rufous head nodded. "He is married to Lorenzo's sister. Later, with his brother-in-law and the rest out of the way, Guglielmo will be glad to join us. But not now. Your uncle, Giacopo, the head of the Pazzi—what is his temper tonight?"

"Of course, I did not bring him here," said Francesco de Pazzi, "for he has archaic ideas about fair play. Howbeit, he knows that there is to be an arising against the Medici whom he has ever hated as upstarts and thieves. He will lead the muster of our men."

Another of the group about the table gave a little nod of approval. He was tall and high-shouldered, a scraggy-necked fellow in a purple houppelande, and he had a shallow, pinched jaw, like a trowel.

"What is my task?" he inquired eagerly, as though concerned lest all the blood be split by other hands.

"A task worthy of Francesco Salviati of Pisa," Guaracco flattered him. "I rely upon your eloquence and courage. Either may suffice; both will be invincible."

"You intend," said Pazzi, "to assign him to the palace?"

Guaracco nodded. "I shall put some of my best blades in your charge, Salviati," he announced. "At the appointed time, go to the Palazzo Publico, where the magistrates live and sit in judgment. Look, I will draw a diagram."

Dipping pen in ink, he began to sketch on a white sheet for all to see. "Once up the stairs," he instructed, "you come into a hall. There ask the guard to summon the magistrate of the day. While he is gone, let your men pass through this door which you will see upon your left hand." He pointed with his pen. "It leads to an antechamber large enough for them all to wait. The magistrate will arrive, and you will tell him that liberty is at hand for Florence. If he will, he can join us. If not, call forth your band to make him see wisdom."

"And my assignment?" prompted yet another, one of three who sat together at the right hand of Guaracco. He was a youngish, hook-nosed fellow in good clothes, with a look about him of line breeding gone slovenly. "I have a sure hand with a dagger, mind.

"I mind it well, Ser Bernardo," Guaracco said, and smiled. "You and Ser Francesco de Pazzi will strike down Giuliano, and see that he does not rise again. Have I your approval, Bernardo Bandini?" It was plain that he had it, and he turned his smile toward Captain Montesecco. "Our friend the captain promises to deal Lorenzo his death."

"And I miss stroke, may my sword arm wither!" vowed the sturdy soldier.

"Meanwhile"—and Guaracco's eyes slid toward me—"we have with us a tighter the nonpareil of any. Leo, my kinsman, known as Luca, the admiral of freebooters who has lashed the Moslems to their kennels for six years. He is famed, admired, and he knows more about warfare than any man living. I will place him as our general!"