Brazenhead in Milan/Chapter 9

of Milan"—thus ran his Third Murderer's report—"one wretch I seized by the ankles, as if he had been a three-legged stool, and whirling him over my head a few times, with him attacked those other two. As a flail I brought him thwacking down; as wheat from the chaff on the floor fled brain from husk. The time was not long before they lay before me like the must of trodden grapes; while as for him I wielded, he was as whip-thongs in my hand—strips of hide wherewith to trounce a truant, but no weapon for a man. Anon came my varlets to sweep up with a besom, and now your well of Santa Chiara is so sweet you could stable there your store pig."

Viscounti, burning and shivering by turns in his fever, hugged his furs about him and spread out his thin hands to the sun. He may have listened, but he did not heed; he may have been gratified, but he did not seem to be. Captain Brazenhead's invention, for lack of nourishment, wilted and faltered out. His eloquence, for that turn, was not ready at call—or it may be that his patron had heard it all before. When the best is said, the variations you can play upon the death of a man are very few, at least in Europe. They say that the Chinese have contrived better, or perhaps they have greater vitality to work upon. However that may be, Captain Brazenhead stopped—and there followed a painful pause.

Presently Viscounti croaked out his doom. "You have done very ill on your own showing. To dispose of three men by knocking their heads together—what is this but insensate butchery? Get you to the knacker's, hire yourself in the shambles, but serve me no more. Yet stay," he added, seeing that Brazenhead was preparing to obey him with suspicious alacrity, "I may have use for you yet. You are confined to quarters until my next orders, and you are disarmed."

Then and there the halberdiers deprived him of his weapons; he was led to the door and turned loose into the corridors of the Castle, a disgraced man. I must observe upon this that it is not given to the most generous to foresee the full scope of their magnanimity; or it may well be that our Brazenhead's circle of acquaintance was too wide or his instincts too warm to make him a tolerable murderer. For if every murderer were to fight with the man he proposed to slay, the work would never be done; and if you are to add to a zest for combat a tenderness towards the nephews of ladies with whom you may have conversed, or are inclined to spare them who may have bested you as well as those whom you have bested, you narrow the field of your operations too severely. It is likely you will murder none. Add the difficulty of explaining how you have slain persons who are alive at the moment of explanation, and you put a tax upon your invention which may easily make you bankrupt.

It was vexatious in every way—humiliating to his finer feelings and embarrassing to his political schemes. He had his garrison in Sant' Eustorgio to provide for; he had fixed the day for the shock of Pavia; and here he was, deprived of arms and confined to the precincts of the Court, while his friends starved in a disused hermitage and Pavia remained inviolate. This was trouble enough, but the hurt to his pride, his professional pride, was worse. To Camus and Gelsomino, his colleagues, was allotted the notable adventure of putting three hundred Anabaptists to the sword. Not only so, but on the day fixed the Duke himself would attend the shambles in state. Milan would hold high festival; and so it did. Fortified by proof armour and a ring with prussic acid in the jewel of it, Duke Galeazzo set out. His Duchess, his daughter, his great officers, suitably accompanied, took horse in the great court, and rode down to the piazza. Captain Brazenhead saw them go from where he sat in an obscure corner of the buttery, and bit his nails to the quick. Occasionally he sipped a mug of small beer, very occasionally he tried to carry his misfortune with grace by humming an air. But he never got beyond the first bar. He had been thus pitifully engaged for more than a week, and was very glum.

A thin stream of persons of both sexes was maintained throughout the day, to and from the buttery. Mendicant friars came to fill their sleeves with broken victuals, widows and orphans, half-pay soldiers, murderers out of work, and other unfortunates, received their daily sustenance from the overflowings of the kitchens. But for them the Castle had been like a house of the dead, for the whole Castle world was gone to see the slaying of the Anabaptists. Captain Brazenhead watched them now darkly from his corner, chewing a bitter cud and reading a soured judgment upon every comer.

Upon a rosy-gilled Franciscan he mused: "Aye, thou scratching dog, filch the substance of the poor and score the crime against thy god of Assisi. Him thou professest to serve; in his wounded side thou hopest to hide, as thou sayest. And yet, I tell thee, that little beggar-man had not been cold two-and-fifty weeks before thou and thy likes were like fed stallions. Get thee hence, thou cheek of brawn, and vex not the sight of the honest." And with some such scathing words he was ready for every religious who came to get much for little.

By and by there came in a pretty young woman in a striped petticoat, leading by the hand a short-smocked child. She approached the buttery-hatch modestly, and not perceiving Captain Brazenhead in his corner, stumbled against him, and would have fallen had she not sat down upon his knee. The moment she perceived her error she begged his pardon.

Confusion once more became her; she was tinged like a flower. Captain Brazenhead, for all his dejection, knew her at once.

"Ah, gentle Liperata," said he, "you may well be ashamed of the seat you chose. A time there was when these war-wasted knees would have become you better. No doubt you remember how we journeyed together the way of Milan—and with what hopes, odd's face! and what promise! But then Fortune smiled upon me, though you did not."

"Sir," said the young woman, "at that time I should never have sat upon your knee, for then I was a wife. Now, alas!"

"How now?" cried the Captain. "Has thy husband forsaken so lovely a partner? Bring me face to face with him, and I will embrace him."

The lady began to cry; she snatched up her child and clasped it to her bosom.

"Behold an orphan! Behold the widow of a murdered man!" she wailed.

Captain Brazenhead was awake and vibrating with fire.

"Who is the murdered man? Confront me with his killer, and thou shalt have two murdered men," he cried. "I have a sword not yet rusty, and by this hand"

He had forgotten that he was weaponless, and was to have good reason anon to remember it.

"Sir," said Liperata, "I will tell you my tale if you will be pleased to hear it. I was but yesterday the wife of a gentleman of position and talent, who had a Court appointment which brought him honour, respect, and a handsome emolument. His name was Camus"

"Camus!" the Captain whispered hoarsely, "Camus! My colleague! Oh, Fate, thou avenger of wrong! Proceed, fair widow, I conjure thee."

"My husband," said Liperata, "had been entrusted with a responsible task which he must fulfil this very day" "Aye," said the Captain, "and so he must. Three hundred Anabaptists await him. But now—what may not come of this?"

"He felt the burden laid upon him as one which called for all his powers of head, heart, and sinew," she continued, "and devoted the whole of yesterday to the exercise of these parts of his. He spent the forenoon in the reading of theology; Saint Thomas Aquinas equipped him here. His heart was in my care. I think I may say, without affectation, that I lavished upon it all the arts which a good and dutiful wife has at her command. At least, he praised me, and assured me that I had not worked in vain."

"I warrant that you did not, lady," said Captain Brazenhead warmly, and she thanked him with gentleness.

"In the evening of that unhappy yesterday my husband set out for the exercise of his muscular system. With our child upon one arm, and my hand upon the other, he took a walk about the streets of the city, conversing cheerfully with his acquaintance, visiting the shrines of certain saints who had always been propitious. All went well until we passed through the deserted cemetery of Sant' Eustorgio. But in that unhallowed spot"

The Captain's eyes seemed starting from his head.

"Which of them did it?" he said, and his voice was like the sea-sound in a shell. "Not Tranche-coupe? Not Squarcialupo? Not a long-armed man?"

"A dusky youth, lithe as a snake," said she, "sprang upon him from behind a grave, and crying: 'Here's for thee, Braggart of England!' stabbed him in the neck. He could not have chosen a more fatal spot. It was the heel of my dear Achilles—my noble, diligent Achilles, of whom I am the poor Briscis of his arms. For my husband, whose profession exposed him to constant danger, wore chain mail upon his person, which unhappily ended at the shoulders. Need I say more? He sank, bathed in his own bright blood, and as I wrung my hands and cried upon my Camus by name, the villain slipped among the tombs and disappeared into the city. I am bereft of his love, and he, by failing of his tryst to-day, has died dishonoured. If my tears have earned your pity, sir, I am glad, for indeed I need the pity of the humane. Now, with no prospect before me but a life of beggary and want, I am come here for alms, that I may school myself at once for the bitter end of my days."

She covered her face with her hands, but Captain Brazenhead was moved to the very centre of his being.

"But not so, by Cock's wounds, not so," he said, and laid a well-chopped finger along his nose. "What if I can amend your griefs, my bird of the bough? What of bearded men, old in warfare? What of the ties of gratitude? Bands of steel? No more" And here he clasped the melting fair to his breast, while all the hangers about the buttery marvelled and many wept. "Come you with me, lady, come you out along with me. 'Twas to-morrow for Pavia, pity is, but now it must be later. Now I am Persia and thou art my Andromedary. Now we summon the legionaries for chivalry, and off we go, my chuck!"

With no more words, but with husbanded breath and an arm crooked for her hand, he led her away to the cemetery of Sant' Eustoroio.