Brazenhead in Milan/Chapter 8

Egyptian, who had been lying his length upon the sack, destined, as he hoped, to receive him alive, and who had lost nothing of the conversations between his fellow-prisoners and their great opponent, now arose to his feet and came wheedling to Captain Brazenhead.

"You shall spare me also, noble Captain, if you please, to be a credit to you yet." "That," said Captain Brazenhead, "will you never be."

The Egyptian sighed. "Who knows?" he inquired. "Sir, if you will but listen to my tale"

The Captain frowned upon him. "Fair and softly with your tale," he said. "Why should I listen to thee, rascal, since thou must die?"

"Die, Captain! Oh, Captain!" The Egyptian shivered.

"Aye," said Brazenhead, "die is the word." He was irritated with the man. "Cock's wounds!" he cried out, "am I Executioner to the Duke of Milan, and execute no man? Is it to be said of me: 'Testadirame is an unprofitable servant'? Never in life! Dog, thou diest!"

The Egyptian shook like a straw in the wind. "But, sir, having spared the life of a Spanish renegado" he began to plead.

"Pooh!" says the Captain. "I trifled with his aunt." "Alas!" said the Egyptian, "alas! that I am an orphan! But so it is that when I left Lutterworth in fair, green England—" Here he paused and scanned the stern man's face to see if Lutterworth were to help him. It was not; he had touched no chord. Captain Brazenhead's features were marble. "Proceed, Egyptian," he said; "I listen. When thou leftest Lutterworth"

"When I left Lutterworth, and went to seek my fortune in London, I lived happily enough with a brave company gathered in Houndsditch, in the fields there and about the 'Old Cat' tavern—does your honour not remember Catherine—Kate Wryneck, called also 'Drink to me only'?"

Captain Brazenhead spoke as one in a dream. "I do not," he said. "Get on!"

The Egyptian, most uneasy, shifted his ground. "Alack the day, noble Captain, in the which I left that proud city and went down with a horse to sell—to Bristol"

Captain Brazenhead started, snorted, and pounced upon him.

"That horse thou stolest, vile thief! He is branded on thy shoulder; thou art a dead man. A flea-bitten white gelding—that screwed the off-hind foot"

"Oh, sir, oh, sir!" cried the Egyptian, falling on his knees. "That horse was never yours!" His case was parlous; you may touch the chords too often, it seems. But no!"

"By Cock, and it was not," said the Captain, "but I knew the horse. The man that owned it—or called himself the owner"

"Aye, sir," said the young man, with gleaming eyes—"aye, sir, right, sir—so he called himself; but he lied, sir."

"I'll warrant that he did," said Brazenhead; "for he was not called Glossy Tom for nothing. Well, then" Hesitation marked for the first time his incisive lineaments and dissipated the lightning of his eyes. The Egyptian considered his case settled. "Since I prove to be of the number of your friends, dear sir," he ventured—but too hastily. The Captain recoiled.

"A friend, thou!" He towered over the man. "I fancied the horse, 'tis true, and thou wast beforehand with me. Pooh! I had but to stretch out mine hand. And now I remember that thou art a horrible knave. Didst thou not address Our Lady in an unknown tongue full of blasphemy? Horse or no horse, I tell thee that thou diest."

Trembling, looking all ways for help, muttering with his pale lips, the wretched Egyptian faltered. "It was the tongue I know best, noble Captain. I am a very pious Christian, better than some who have their Latin. I spoke in the Roman to her Ladyship—and she heard me. I prove that, sir, I prove that!" His eyes gleamed; you could see the whites of them. "The proof that she heard me," he said, "is that you are here, her lieutenant in this wicked place—yourself an Englishman"

"By the Mass," replied the Captain, "all this may be very true, and yet be woundily inconvenient." He held his chin, and this time the young man believed himself snatched out of the pit. He came forward obsequiously, bending at the knees. Captain Brazenhead roared at him to hold off.

"I forswear my nation!" he cried, "I become Lombard! I will embrace Jewry before I let thee go!"

But it was too late. the Egyptian now held him by the knee. "Captain," prayed he, "noble Captain, you will never break a man who got the better of you in a horse-deal."

"Who says that I will not?" And yet he was touched. If he could spare Squarcialupo of whom he had made a fool, how not this oily rogue who had made a fool of him? And it was not to be denied the fellow had fought for his skin. Captain Brazenhead had it not in him to take life in the cool of his bile. He was so made that he, who would cut a man's liver out of him in fair fighting, came afterwards to love his enemy if he had so much as scratched him. He knew this was a weakness. "Look you," he was wont to say to his opponent. "if you would save yourself from me, wound me where you can. I consider you carrion at this speaking, but he who draws my blood wears armour of proof for me. Now, then, have at you, soldier!"

Meditating his own nature and deploring it, muttering to himself: "Mayhap I do wrong—I do grudge this fellow his mercy—upon my soul I do grudge it him," Captain Brazenhead remained intensely in thought for many minutes, his head sunk upon his breast, his arms folded. At last, as if suddenly awaking out of sleep, he threw his chin up and stamped with his foot. "Into your sack, you black-livered hound! May Hell forgive me the wrong I do him this day, and count it not against me when mine cometh!" It was a sight to see how the Egyptian slipped in—like a terrier into kennel when the whip is whistling.

There, then, for good or evil, in their sanguine wrappings, lay the three ransomed men; there over them, like a meditative god, stood Captain Brazenhead, with a hand to grasp his chin, and one finger of it to rake in his moustachios. He set a foot upon the round of a sack; deeply, profoundly he thought upon mercy, justice, judgment, the weighing of souls and such-like themes; and here, if you will have it, is a summary of his reflection. "Now have I here ensacked four indifferent rascals bound straitly to my person by cords of steel. They worship me as the author of their being, as in a sense I am. No doubt they would follow me all over the world; a bodyguard the like of which the Duke of Milan might pay for night and day—and with him all long Italy." His eye flashed fire. "Long Italy! Long Italy! By their means I make good the soothsay that I heard in the tavern of Pavia when, with my foot upon Lisciasangue's remains, I vaunted, There lies long Italy. "It was true, by Cock, for all that, when I spake, I spake as in a glass, darkly. Aye, darkly, but it was true. For see me now! To each of my four scoundrels there will adhere—like ticks to a sheep's back—lesser scoundrels, to each one ten at least. That gives me four-and-forty desperate men; and with forty men you may take a gatehouse—and hold it, by Cock's body! Nay, you may get by shock a town, as my lord John Swynford got Coulanges in Brittany on a foggy night of Martinmas, and became Viscount thereof, and sweated meat out of the burgesses, and honey out of their wives, and levied toll upon all and sundry faring that way into France, and took to wife Melisette, daughter of Simon de Fotz, and got a son, who is Viscount of Coulanges to this day. Viscount of Coulanges—Viscount of Pavia! Put it so that I catch Pavia unawares and become its Viscount—what then? A royal beginning: we begin with Pavia.…

"Every male of Pavia, of proper age and fully membered, following my banner, we lay siege to Milan. The sooner the better; for that old dog-fox Sforza is warring in Umbria, and I could not cope with Sforza until I have all my Pavians matched and in full bearing—say, for twelve years at the least. Nay, Brazenhead, nay, Testadirame, my ancient, strike thy metal while 'tis hot.…

"Milan falls—Milan falls! And there's the thigh of Italy under my thigh!

"Now Rome, the city old, lies about the knee of Italy—is, as you may say, the knee-cap; and Venice is the hamstring. Let me work it out, let me work it out. You cut the hamstring, and the knee gives, and the leg drops. Venice gives me Rome; Naples is the toe. Cut the hamstring; the knee is nerveless; then gangrene assails the toe, and it fritters and falls off. But with Milan to add to Pavia, who is to keep me from Venice? Pooh! I lead a host. To-morrow, therefore, to the shock of Pavia!"

He swept the mist of glory from his eyes; he lifted his head and bellowed for his men—those dread apparitors who hover in Milan, who sit about the jails, like vultures patient on their trees about a battlefield, awaiting the summons to their obscene task.

One by one the crimson heaps were lifted out of the Well of Santa Chiara; lastly Captain Brazenhead himself set his foot into the grappling-hook and swung aloft. The tumbril-cart was loaded with its sodden load; the Executioner sat down upon the pile and ordered the disposal of his dead. In a disused hermitage in the burial-ground of Sant' Eustorgio, he chose to hide his three recruits, and to add to them Tranche-coupe, the stout Burgundian. Means were found to victual the garrison, which, sworn to secrecy and commended to the gods of War and Good Luck, their leader then left—going, as his duty was, to make his report to the Duke.