Swords From the West (38 page)

Either one would have information that would serve Michael in his plans.

His reflections were interrupted by a light rounding the corner of a building and gliding toward him under his feet. He was surprised to see that he was standing on a wooden bridge. The light was in a gondola passing beneath him.

"Ho, my friends," he called cheerfully, "in what quarter lies the palazzo or whatever it is called of my lord Contarini? I can find it not."

If Michael had dwelt longer in Venice he would not have hailed an occupied gondola in the dark. His shout only caused the rower at the stern to glance up warily and thrust the long craft forward at greater speed. A shutter in the hooded seat was lowered briefly and a face looked out of the aperture.

Then the gondola passed under the bridge.

Michael grimaced, bowed, and was passing on when he hesitated. The light on the gondola had been put out.

This was not altogether strange, if the people on the vessel had believed that footpads, as personified by Michael, were on the bridge. But the keen eyes of the seaman caught a white swirl in the water. He fancied that the gondolier had checked his craft sharply and that it had halted a short distance beyond the bridge.

If the occupants of the gondola had been alarmed by his hail, they would not have chosen to remain in the vicinity. So Michael thought and was ready to smile at his own suspicion, when he heard a footfall and the clink of steel upon stones. From the direction in which he imagined the gondola had halted a man was coming toward him, feeling his way with drawn sword.

Michael planted his feet wide, with his back against a blank wall. Presently he could discern the grayish blur of a face moving toward him over the bridge. There was no sound and Michael knew that the newcomer was taking pains to be silent.

This quietude and the rapidity of the other's approach from the canal were ominous.

Then Michael stepped aside. He had heard rather than seen a swift movement toward him in the gloom.

Steel clashed against the wall beside him and sparks flew. An oath came to his ears as he snatched out his own sword, hung by its baldric on his right side. Long practice had accustomed Michael to the use of his left arm-had given to that limb the unusual strength possessed by onearmed men.

In the darkness he sought the other's blade, found it, thrust and when the thrust was parried, lunged again.

"By the Pope's head!" snarled the stranger.

"Amen," said Michael, drawing back alertly.

His weapon had bent against mail on the other's chest and Michael, who wore no such protection, was fain to risk a leap and come to hand-grips.

But even as he tensed his muscles for the spring he heard footsteps and the darkness was dissipated by the light of a lanthorn which rounded a corner behind him.

For the first time he saw his antagonist, a tall man, very fashionable in the short mantle and wide velvet sleeves and cloth-of-gold cap that were the fashion of the day in Venice. The man's olive face was handsome and composed, his eyes restless, his beard smartly curled.

His right hand held the broken half of a sword, his left a long poniard. Michael was rather glad that, after all, he had not made that leap.

Whereupon Michael frowned, for the other's face, although not his bearing, had a familiar aspect. Sheathing his own sword, the Breton smiled and took his dagger in his left hand.

"Good morrow, signor," he said from hard lips. "The light is better now than when you traitorously set upon me. Shall we resume with our poniards?"

The other hesitated, measuring Michael, noting the width of shoulder and length of arm of the Breton, whose featherless cap was thrust well back, disclosing black curls a little gray about the brows. Under the curls gray eyes, alight and whimsical, met the stranger's stare.

"You ponder, signor," prompted Michael politely. "Perhaps it surprises you that I who bore no weapon on shipboard have now mastered the use of blade and poniard with my one hand. Or perchance your sense of honor and the high courage you display in a crisis prompt you to refrain from matching daggers with a man in a leathern shirt when you wear a mail jerkin."

At this an exclamation sounded behind him. Michael had not failed to glance over his shoulder at the first appearance of the light and had seen only a fox-faced merchant in a long ermine cloak and attended by a brace of servitors who looked as if they would have liked to flee at sight of bare steel.

Now he perceived that the merchant was staring at him round-eyed as if Michael had uttered blasphemy or madness.

"By the rood!" swore the tall stranger.

"By whatever you wish," assented Michael, "so long as you fight like a man. Come, the sight of a coward spoils my appetite for dinner."

He waited for the other's rush. Michael had recognized in his assailant the Italian captain of mercenaries who had struck down his wounded countrymen in the effort to force himself aboard Michael's galley at Nicopolis. The other must have recognized him from the gondola and had sought the revenge he had sworn for Michael's blow.

Instead of resuming the duel, the Italian smiled coldly and stepped back, pointing to his chest where the doublet was slashed over the mail.

"I do not fight with cutthroats, Messer Soranzi," the Italian said to the merchant, who was staring at them, excusing his action. "This sailor beset me on the bridge after hailing my gondola under pretext of asking his way. You can see where he struck me."

The shrewd eyes of the merchant went from one to the other and he fingered his own stout belly tenderly.

"A lie," remarked the Breton promptly, "and a base one, forsooth. This fellow's blade is snapped and you can see on the stones behind me where it broke off."

Soranzi stared at him curiously and uneasily.

"You must be mad, good sir," he observed, "to wish to encounter further Pietro Rudolfo, the famous swordsman and condottiere."

"Faith," grinned Michael. "Is it madness to face the famous Rudolfo, instead of waiting to receive his knife in your back?"

He marked in his memory the name of his enemy. Rudolfo in spite of the open insult did not renew the fight. Instead he muttered that he had no time for night prowlers when he had already been delayed too long on his way to the house of a friend.

The merchant was sidling past Michael, holding up his long skirts, and shot a sharp question at the Breton, once he had gained the Italian's side, accompanied by his men.

"Your name and state, signor?"

Michael nodded at Rudolfo to indicate that the condottiere knew both, but Rudolfo was silent.

"You have an excellent memory, Ser Pietro," the Breton commented, "for it impelled you to let out my blood. Yet must I salve it myself."

To Soranzi he said-

"I am called Michael Bearn, the master mariner."

At this the merchant glanced at Rudolfo in some surprise for it was known from the Rialto to Saint Mark's that the young Breton had been honored that day by the all-powerful council. The interests of Venice and its merchants lay upon the sea, and the dictates of the Maritime Council were law.

Moreover Michael's bearing was hardly that of a cutthroat. Soranzi murmured diplomatically:

"Now that you two worthy captains have reached an understanding it behooves me to press upon my way. I am in haste to hear a most wonderful tale of a voyager who has found a new road to the riches of the East, more vast than those narrated by Ser Marco Polo himself."

Michael bowed, realizing that Rudolfo would not fight now.

"Will you direct me," he asked, "to the fete of my lord Contarini, the leader of the great council? I have lost my way."

Soranzi's lips parted to respond, but Rudolfo nudged him.

"Follow this alley," the condottiere directed curtly, "in the direction Messer Soranzi came for some distance."

With that he turned on his heel, took the arm of Soranzi, and with a backward glance walked away across the bridge. The lanthorn was soon lost to sight around a bend in the street where Michael had been wandering.

Sheathing his dagger, the Breton listened to the retreating footsteps, and laughed heartily but silently in the darkness.

"'Tis a rare jest," he thought. "Soranzi perchance would have directed me aright, but the excellent Rudolfo saw fit to send me mum-chance in the wrong course. Aye, make no doubt they are bound to the Palazzo Contarini themselves."

The reflection that Rudolfo had been at pains to keep him away from the fete caused Michael to wonder whether the condottiere had not had a stronger motive than the desire for revenge in attacking him.

Rudolfo had known from Michael's own words that he was bound for the Contarini Palace.

Of course it would not be particularly pleasing to Rudolfo to have Michael appear at the palace where they would, perhaps, meet. But surely if the captain of mercenaries had merely wished the killing of Michael, his wish could better have been fulfilled by sending bra vi after the Breton when the latter left the palace.

Michael felt sure that Rudolfo had good reason for wanting at some cost to keep him from the palace.

By now Michael was conscious again that he was very hungry. Opposition served to whet his desire to go to the fete. Following the retreat ing footsteps by ear, he passed over the bridge again, into a dark passage he had not noticed before that led him presently out upon a wide terrace overlooking a brightly lighted court.

Chapter IV

Michael Is Admitted

Soranzi and Rudolfo were just disappearing within the gate of the Contarini house. A throng of gondoliers and servitors grouped on the steps that led from the tiles of the court to the door gave back with low bows. Just as ceremoniously a chamberlain, standing within the entrance, greeted them-as Michael observed.

He cast a swift glance around the court. It fronted a canal by which the guests were coming to the fete. In one corner some fiddlers and fluteplayers assisted by a bedraggled dancing bear were amusing the waiting servants and helping to empty a huge table of its meat and wine.

It was this music he had heard from the alleys in the rear of the establishment.

Near at hand a fat Turkish gymnast in a soiled silk khalat was making the commoners gape by balancing two swords, one above the other, on his forehead and squealing shrilly as if to call attention to his prowess.

From a window of the palace the low sound of a woman's laugh floated out over the court. It was not a pleasant laugh, holding as it did a veiled note of discontent.

"That would be the new donna, my lord Contarini's choice of a mistress," observed one lackey in the throng about the sword-juggler to another.

"A redheaded she-fox," mumbled a second who had had his share of red wine.

"Grant I stumble not over her train-"

"Or spill aught on her finery. 'Tis said she craves jewels as ye thirst for the flagon. She it was that coaxed my lord-who is made o' drier stuff, -wot-to have the voyager tell his tale."

"Nay." The lackey nodded solemnly over a tankard. "All Venice repeats that the riches of Cathay are found at last. Hide o' the , 'twill do us no good, but Messer Rat-Face Soranzi has come running holding up his skirts like a woman-"

Both laughed and Michael smiled at the description of the stout merchant with the thin face. He was ascending the steps confidently when the chamberlain stopped him at the door.

"I know not your face, signor. Were you bidden to the palace this evening?"

Michael halted, his foot on the top step.

Looking down the long hall within, he could see groups of the guests, young men in short cloaks of every hue, wearing under these tight tunics of crimson velvet and gold cloth, elderly men in long fur mantles, women in the jeweled exuberance of dress and with the red-dyed hair that was a fad of the time.

The splendor of it caused him to gasp. Meanwhile the chamberlain was insolently eyeing Michael's boots of soft leather and his ragged mantle.

"I have the freedom of the city," murmured Michael, still intent on the spectacle within.

It was the turn of the worthy chamberlain to gape and seize his long staff in righteous wrath. A commoner sought entrance to the fete at the Palazzo Contarini!

In another moment the guardian of the gate would have shouted for the servitors to fling Michael into the canal. It was well, perhaps, for all concerned that a diversion occurred at this point.

A group of lackeys approached the door from within, hauling along a shrinking, stumbling figure in grotesquely striped attire. It was the figure of a hunchback wearing a jester's cap.

Behind the lackeys and their captive strolled several courtiers, smiling expectantly.

"Give him to the bear to play with!" cried a servitor.

"Nay, set the dogs on him."

"Aye-the dogs, the dogs! " cried the courtiers. "'Twill be better sport than bear-baiting itself."

Michael saw that the craggy face of the jester was pale and that he winced at mention of the dogs. The anxious glance of the hunchback met his and then circled away as if vainly seeking some avenue of escape.

"Hold," spoke up the chamberlain irresolutely, addressing the courtiers and ignoring Michael in the more pressing matter at hand. "This is good Bembo, my lord's fool and favorite. Would you slay him, signori?"

"Verily is he a fool," answered one of the young nobles carelessly, "and so must pay for his folly."

"Not so. He is no man's fool," corrected another, "and so the dogs will have his limbs for their sport. 'Tis an ill-shapen thing, by the archangel!"

"Bembo," whispered a lackey, "had the cursed luck to spill a dish of syrup of figs on the train of the Donna, who is in a rage thereby. To appease her my lord has cast off the ill-begotten fool and my lady has bidden us make sport of him. The dogs-ho, the dogs!"

While one varlet ran eagerly out of the hall, evidently to fetch the dogs of the household, the courtiers dragged Bembo to the door and called the crowd below in the court to witness the coming spectacle.

A joyful shout went up and the servitors deserted both table and Turk to enjoy the more attractive spectacle of a human being worried by the teeth of animals. Michael had a swift recollection of his own torture at the hands of Bayezid's men and the way in which the slaves thronged to watch his suffering.