Brazenhead in Milan

Front matter

BRAZENHEAD IN MILAN.

By MAURICE HEWLETT.

Chapter I

CHAPTER I.

HOW CAPTAIN BRAZENHEAD PROVED HIMSELF TO BE TWICE AS OLD AS HE LOOKED.

THAT many times repeated asseveration of Captain Salomon Brazenhead's, that he had formed one of the suite of Duke Lionel, when that prince went out to Lombardy to marry Visconti's daughter, and that, in consequence, the poet Chaucer—"little Smugface," as he was pleased to call him—was his fellow-traveller and bosom friend, bore at the first blush the stamp of truth. It was always supported by vigorous reminiscence; the older he grew, the more positive he was of it. Like the Apostle, confronted by tales of the sort, we might partly believe it. It would make him out to have been one hundred and five years old at the time of his death, or necessitate his having been born into this world with thirty-seven years already to his score. Here is a problem for the historian which we may prudently leave him.

I think it was his manner of telling the tale which gave confidence to those who had watched his rapt gaze into the embers of the hearth, who had observed his easy length of leg and hands clasped behind his head, and the pleasant gloss which recollection might well have laid upon his sombre and seldom-smiling lips. "It all comes back to me," he would say, "by my head, and so it does! Little Smugface! Little scrivening Geoffrey, and his age-long tales of Troy town! Blithely he strung stave to stave—and we, a gay company of drones, clustered about the honey of his tongue; and my lord's grace pounding before us on his black courser! He would rehearse of Dido, the lily queen, of the piled faggots, of the flame. Ha! and she in the midst, as white as an egg! It welled out of him like treacle from a broken crock; and my lord's grace, with ears set back, lost not a syllabub of it. Long days, brave days—ah, how they rise and beckon me!" It really sounds very plausible.

All this as it may be, what is beyond cavil is that I find him at Pavia in the year 1402, a fine figure of a man, scarred, crimson, shining in the face, his hair cropped in the Burgundian mode, moustachios to the ears, holding this kind of discourse to a lank and cavernous warrior, three times his own apparent age, who had proposed, I gather, before a tavern full of drinkers, to eat him raw. He stood astraddle, one arm crooked, one hand on his hip. He looked at his rival's boots; but his words must have winged directly to his heart. "Who eats me chokes, for I am like that succulent that conceals, d'ye see, his spines in youthful bloom. You think you have to do with a stripling: not you, pranking boy, not you. I am a seamed and notch-fingered soldier, who belched Greek fire while you were in your swaddling-clout. I was old in iniquity ere they weaned you. Or do you vie with me in perils, by cock, do you so? Five times left for dead; trampled six times out by the rearguard of the host I had lead to victory; crucified, stoned, extenuated, cut into strips; in prisons frequent, in deaths not divided—what make you of it? And you to tell me that your green guts can pouch old Leathertripes, for so they dub me who dare? Fob, you are a bladder, I see!"

He bit his thumb, and did that with his fingers to his nose whose import is sinister. I believe no man can bear it and live on. The irons came swinging out, the room cleared; all the frequenters of the tavern sat on the tables, while the tapsters strewed sawdust on the floor. They had need. There was a ding-dong passage of arms of one hundred and thirty seconds, which was ample time for Captain Brazenhead to run his foe through the weazand, wipe his blade in his armpit, finish his drink, and say: "There lies long Italy." All this in one hundred and thirty seconds. Five minutes more remained to the fallen brave, and were not too much for what he had to do—namely, cough blood, say the Ave Maria, and bequeath a pair of horns to the tapster, Gregory.

Captain Brazenhead's reputation was established in Pavia, his age what he pleased. Admirers crowded about him, to pledge and be pledged in cups. He was asked his name, and said that it was Testadirame: his trade, and pointed to his extended foe. It was replied to him by a brother of St. Francis who squinted that then Greek and Greek had met and engaged, seeing that the dead man in life had been Lisciasangue—Lisciasangue the exorbitant, assassin to the Duke of Milan, one of a Mystery of Three.

At this critical moment in his career Captain Brazenhead paused in the act to drink, and looking down over the edge of his flagon, thoughtfully stirred the dead with his toe.

"His sword is a good one," said he, "and I take it, as right is. What he may have in poke I bestow in alms upon the poor drinkers of Pavia. But as to his trade, or mystery, I must hear more of that." One glance at the religious commentator shrivelled him. "Speak!" he commanded him. "Speak, thou flea-pasture, or I split thee!"

Ah, but they spoke. They all spoke at once. They all clambered the tables again and leaned over each other to speak. Straining out their arms, see-sawing in air, they spoke with hands and eyes and voices. Captain Brazenhead, a sword to the good, listened and learned. To the ready reckoner he was, the accounts were soon cast up. If there were in Milan twenty-nine churches, thirty convents of religion, and seven-and-thirty jails, all full; if there were no penalty in the code but that of death; and if it were true that the Duke, feeling the cares of his lands, the needs of his subjects, and his own advancing years, had relaxed his personal activities, and now did his justice by deputy—then it was most certain that the Mystery of Three could not afford to lose the services of Lisciasangue: no, nor Duke Galeazzo neither. His Grace's condition was indeed deplorable, robbed of one-third of his assassins. "I see the aged monarch," mused Captain Brazenhead, overheard by a sympathetic throng, "maimed, as you might say, of his right hand. I see his prisons full to brim-point, his lieutenants at work night and day to keep abreast of the flood. But alas for the Duke of Milan! they have lost a friend, maybe; he has lost a member. Gentlemen!" he cried this aloud with a surprising gallantry. "Gentlemen, you must pity him, since you have hearts; but I must help him or be untrue to this good arm. Now, then, the next man that offers to drink with me shall not have nay."

Reasoning of this sort enkindled his wits. He could not restore the Duke his Lisciasangue; the dead was most dead; but so far as might be he would repair his fault. If, so doing, he opened a career for himself, shall he be blamed for the added glow which the thought lent to his blood? Not by any generous man. "There lies long Italy," he had said, and the words flashed up again and revealed him a nation at his feet. To Milan, to Milan—and "there lies long Italy in the cup of my hand," says he.

Chapter II

CHAPTER II.

HOW CAPTAIN BRAZENHEAD USED THE KING'S WRIT.

Blithe was the morn and blithe the adventurer when, rising in his stirrups, Captain Brazenhead, like Chanticlere the Valiant, saluted the sun. Red in the mist, it lit the road to Milan; red in the mist that city showed, admirably strong, remarkable to any soldier's eye. He saw double walls, towers innumerable, many gates of port and antiport, the bulk of a square castle, belfries of churches, and outside the ditch, in a broad meadow, a tented camp, with silk pavilions for the captains, and men-at-arms in black and white liveries executing manœuvres at the double. "This Milan," said Captain Brazenhead, "lacks only water to flood the marshes to be as impregnable as Jericho of old—more so, indeed, since Jericho, I do remember, was taken by a man of God. He, it appears, by taking a walk round about it in the cool of the day, could level those proud walls, as with a breath you have down your house of cards. But those are tactics of despair. I would only use them when all else had failed me."

A young woman in a striped petticoat and kerchiefed head, who rode sideways upon an ass and nursed a baby, was upon the road before him, and gave a tender note to the warlike scene. The avenue of budding trees framed her in like a picture, dappled her with light and shade. "Venus rideth to assuage Mars his fury," said he, "and a pretty turn to the head she hath." He quickened his pace, overtook and accosted her.

"Damsel, by your leave," he said, "we undertake this adventure in company. Why, cheerly then, and cry Tickle my chin." She looked at him askance out of her dove's eyes, but his gaiety was not to be denied.

But "Sir," said she, "I know not how that may fall out." He stooped towards her.

"I know a couple will never fall out while the sun shineth on Milan," he admonished her.

"I too, sir," she replied, "for I am a married woman."

"It is very evident," said the Captain, with genial warmth. "In that fine little girl2"

She bit her lip. "It is a boy, sir. I had supposed you better instructed. But you and I must not be seen together at the gate."

Captain Brazenhead turned his gaze most earnestly upon her. "Listen now," he said. "There's Fate in this our meeting. One star leans to another in conjunction. We do what we do under the swaying of the spheres. So sure as your name is2"

"Oh!" she cried, all in a flame, "who told you that my name was Liperata?"

The soldier smiled. "Why, you, my dear. But I am in Fortune's way. I have a net, and have enmeshed thee, fair partridge. Contend no more, fold thy beating wings. We go through the gate together; afterwards we must see our way. Thou art my passport, Liperata, and I defend thy reputation with my last breath." She had no answer ready, so they ambled on together. Her confusion became her. It was to remain with him a balmy memory—like a remembered fragrance in sultry weather.

What amiable intentions he may have had in her regard, however, did not avail him to pass the entry of Milan. The posted sentinels, seeing a fine man in leather, with two swords, bestriding a horse three of whose legs, at least, were ready for war, ran nimbly in and called out the guard. Monna Liperata, free of the gates, dug heels into her donkey's ribs and jogged into the city, glancing back but once as she turned the street corner. Captain Brazenhead, however, confronted a double row of halberdiers.

He was vexed. "How now?" he cried. "Am I hosts of Midian? Cæsar with his legions? Am I Tamerlane at the door? or what the devil?"

They told him that no man could pass the gates of the city without lawful warrant. That was inexorable. "What is, is," said Captain Brazenhead, "and what must be, shall be. Et in sæcula sæculorum, Amen. You wish for my warrant, masters? He drew from his breast a strip of parchment, folded, sealed, and bound with a green cord. "Take," he said, "and read it who can."

Now, they could not; but they examined the seal, which was a broad one, with the arms of England and France upon it.

"Read you, rather," they said; so Captain Brazenhead recited the exordium, being no more able to read Latin (nor, indeed, any written tongue) than his auditors.

"Henricus dei gratia Rex Angliæ et Franciæ et dominus Hiberniæ dilecto et fideli suo T. de Compton Vicecomiti Middlesexiæ, salutem. He read no more, because he knew no more, but crushing up the parchment in his fist, looked sublimely down upon the gaping soldiery, and his words extended to the curious merchants who stood at the doors of their little shops watching the game.

"You see very well how it is, men of Lombardy," he proclaimed. "The King of England and France and Lord of Ireland sends this affectionate greeting to his cousin Milan. What, ye sour-chops, ye will not understand? Hearken then yet again." As they wondered among, themselves, he reopened the scroll and smacked it with his fist. "Henricus dei gratia, hey? How's that for my King Harry? And Vicecomiti, hey? Is't not your Visconti written fair? And will you, hirelings," he added, with a searching change of tone, "will you thrust up your dirty hands between the kissing lips of kings?"

They said that they would not, and saw in the smile that stole over the hero's face a strong resemblance to the gleaming of the morning sun upon the scarred brow of an Alp. "Then lead on, peeping Tom," were the bold words. "My business here is to greet King from King."

A strong escort conducted him through the narrow ways of the city and presented him to the Captain of the Castle. His writ was taken over, turned about, and (since nothing could be made of it) carried away to more learned officers. Captain Brazenhead meanwhile sat, quite at his ease, in the gatehouse quarters, affably conversing with all and sundry. His cause may have been good; his nerve was better.

After a period of suspense, which may have lasted an hour, or may have lasted three, two clerics entered the gatehouse and saluted him with great respect.

Captain Brazenhead stood up. "How now, my reverends?"

One of them said: "Your Excellency's credentials have been examined by our master, the Great Chamberlain, to whose mind certain little difficulties have presented themselves, which can only be dispersed by your Excellency's self."

"Like enough," said Captain Brazenhead, and closed one of his eyes. "But I'll warrant you that I disperse 'em."

But the spokesman, an elderly brother of St. Dominic's order of religion, was now examining the writ. "It is clear," said he, "that the King your master directs this letter to a kinsman of our Duke, though in what degree of consanguinity the Lord T. de Compton Visconti may be to his Grace we are unable to determine."

Captain Brazenhead ejaculated "Cousin," but the Dominican did not seem to heed him.

"We see further," he pursued, poring over the parchment, "that this Lord Visconti is to have the body of one Salomone, to answer to his lord the King why with force and arms he brake the close of one Jak a-Style, and took therefrom certain of the goods of the said Jak—to wit, five hens and one cock of the value of one shilling. So far we agree, my brother, I think?" He looked at his colleague, who nodded gravely; and then both of them looked at his Excellency.

"By my faith, gentlemen," said Captain Brazenhead, after a pause for breath, "you know more about all this than I do. But I will tell you the plain truth. I was in my castle of Baynard's in Middlesex on a day, my hounds at my feet, arms laid aside; taking my ease, picking my teeth with a dagger—when the lieutenant of this same Visconti came pressing in. He must by all means see me, saith he; cannot be denied. He serves me with this—what do I say? he tenders me this scrip, saying, 'Testadirame, look to it.' A nod or a wink! What care I? Enough for you that I understand him. I take horse and arms incontinent, and off—as it were from Visconti of Middlesex to the head of his house here in Milan; but in reality, doubt it not, from King to King. Of your cocks and hens, or cocks and bulls, of Jak a-Style's poultry-yard, I know nothing. But I take it that a king can put as many things into his letters as he pleases. Gossip of the day! Or, it may well be, sand in the eyes of your Worships, who (let me tell you) are not to know everything. No, no. But I would have you know this much at least, my reverend brothers, that I have no sort of business with your Honours, and much with him you serve. My business with him is both heavy and light; it is bitter-sweet, but for his ear alone. Yours with me is to take me to his ear. Advise among yourselves now what you will do next. For my part, I sit here well enough, though I should have said, mind you, that it was the dinner-hour. In my own country it is long past it, but of your customs here in Milan, in this great house of a generous prince, I cannot speak—at present."

"All this," said the Dominican, "shall be faithfully reported to the Duke our master." So said, he vanished with his pied brother.

Chapter III

CHAPTER III.

HOW CAPTAIN BRAZENHEAD HAILED THE DUKE OF MILAN.

It must have been in the late afternoon when Captain Brazenhead (who, in the meantime, had dined) received the desired summons from the mouth of a handsome page. Following this resplendent youth, whose scarlet thighs, whose trim green jerkin and cloud of yellow hair lost nothing by earnest scrutiny, he had to admit that he had not understood rulers of states to be so hard to come by. But the Tyrant of Milan, he believed, could be no ordinary monarch. He counted the corridors with doors at both ends of each; in every door a grille, through which he was very conscious of inspection before the bolts were drawn. He commented upon this. "Your Duke Galeass is as coy as a winkle in his shell"; to which the iridescent young man had no more reply than a lively look at the walls about him, and a finger to his lip. Handed on then to a gentleman-at-arms, he was admitted to an anteroom, where he was divested of his two swords, the hanger at his belt, and of another which was found in his trunks. He was then blindfolded and led about and about until, the bandage removed, he found himself standing before the narrow door of a vaulted passage, confronted by two halberdiers in black and a priest with a crucifix.

Captain Brazenhead wished these gentlemen a good day, and made a fine attempt to whistle the air of "In the meadow so green," but the remark was received in silence and the gallantry quenched by the priest, who, holding up his crucifix, administered an oath to the visitor of so dreadful a character that my pen, very properly, refuses to set it down. In effect, it bound him down in fearful penalties, both temporal and eternal, if he ventured anything against the Duke's person—"As if," he said, looking blandly round, "as if I should hurt the little man! I, Brazenhead, to whom the fleas in the bed are playmates!" Adding, however, that hard words would never break his bones, he cheerfully took it, and kissed the crucifix. Then the priest knocked three times at the door. It opened just wide enough to admit a man edgeways; Captain Brazenhead stood up in a dark and long apartment, lit at the further end by swinging lamps. There in that wavering light sat the Duke of Milan in his elbow-chair and furred gown, with his hands stretched out over a charcoal fire, and showed a quick-eyed, white, and beardless face, lively with fear, turned back to watch the visitor. It was to be seen that he was a hunchback, to be guessed that he wore chain-mail. He had three guards by the wall, two by the door. With one hand he now grasped his chair; with the other plucking at his throat, he recoiled and waited. It was very quiet in the room—so much so that you could hear the Duke's breath, fetched short and quickly. Like a rush of south-west wind making havoc in a cloister, the superb figure of Captain Brazenhead—with his six feet two inches, his cloak thrown back, his buoyant moustachios and eagle nose—seemed to fill the presence-chamber. Inspired to utterance, strung taut as he was by the occasion, he broke upon the silence of that churchyard vault with the crash and shatter of a trumpet.

"Hail, Ironsides!" he proclaimed, and the halberdiers backed to the walls. He said no less and added no more—nor need he.

Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV.

HOW CAPTAIN BRAZENHEAD EXEMPLIFIED HIS MAXIMS.

Now, it was plain that the apostrophe pleased. The Duke relaxed his hold upon the chair, left his throat alone, and, shivering, returned his hands to the fire. Looking into that, he asked in a dry voice—

"Who are you that call me by my name?"

"Testadirame," was the answer, which he meditated, poring into the fire.

"Your business, Testadirame?"

He seemed already to be tired of all this, but he had an answer which quickened him.

"Death," said Captain Brazenhead, "is my business."

Many and many a maxim of rhetoric as this hero exemplified in his career through the courts and camps of Europe, it may be said with confidence that he never brought more apposite illustration to that one which teaches: "If you would be listened to at length, be heard first in brief. Strike," says this profound guide to persuasion, "strike hard and sharply." So struck Brazenhead here, and saw the Tyrant pale and flicker like a blown candle-flame at the dreadful word. His contorted face, his eyes as he turned them upon the speaker, were those of a trapped hare. He mouthed rather than voiced his cry: "Ha, treason!" and his guards shot forward between his person and the other's. But Captain Brazenhead folded his arms and, nodding his head with certain emphasis, was oracular again. One could not be more oracular.

"Who touches me dies the death I profess. Listen."

And Duke Galeazzo listened and his guards gaped.

"I ask no more of Providence than a foot inside the door"—a favourite saying of his. Having got that beyond question, he never faltered in the flood of his discourse, which, like a river fed by a thousand rills, sucking substance as it runs from mountain and morass, rolled free and irresistible towards it goal. If the matter of his was extraordinary—as it was—its manner made it reasonable and indeed inevitable. You might as well have headed up the Danube as Captain Brazenhead when once he was under way. The tongues of men and of angels seemed in pawn to him who, without pause or stay, spoke headlong, with a fierce and white-hot fluidity indescribable by me, for the space of an hour and a quarter. His subject ranged from metaphysics to manslaughter; he borrowed freely and impartially, now from the Seraphic Doctor, now from Hermes, the Thrice-Mage. These, the sages and captains of antiquity, Plato and Holophernes, Quintus Fabius and Michael Scot, Roger Bacon, the Witch of Endor, and other ladies and gentlemen, as it were, dissolved in oil, came swirling down the tide. Not the sciences only, but the Virtues, Justice, Fortitude, and Mercy, with exemplars of each, engaged his tongue. He did not forget the clemency of Scipio, the Spartan boy, Mutius Scsevola, Susanna before the Elders. He became particular, dwelt intimately upon the infirmities of kings. He knew how many lovers had Semiramis, what ravages the fire made in the breast of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, what proved a stumbling-block to Cæsar, how Charlemagne doted, the luxuries of all the Persian kings—he rehearsed them all, brought them all to a fermenting head, and, if I may say so, slicing off that head, laid it on the point of his tongue at the feet of Milan. His whirling oratory, his flights of frenzied research into the history of men and movements of which he knew little or nothing, his élan his endurance, and his mendacity were but one concentrated tribute to the little changeling by the fire.

To say that this monarch was dazed is to state a mere fact, to infer that he was flattered is to argue a high probability. That he was relieved when Captain Brazenhead stopped at last with a vigorous clearing of the throat and a "That's the truth, by Cock, take it as you will!"—of that there is no shadow of doubt. He was so greatly relieved that he had at first no word to say; and when he did speak, it was not to inquire concerning the message of Visconti of Middlesex or King Henry's greetings, but to ask in a voice which was the pale reflection of his mood: "What wouldst thou of me, soldier?"

Captain Brazenhead, who had thought that he had made himself plain, was for once embarrassed. "Why, sir," said he, "there was a fellow in your service called Lisciasangue—and a paltry rogue2"

The Tyrant started, echoed him: "There was? Aye," he said grimly, "and there is."

"There is not, my lord duke," said the Captain, "and that's a fact; for he is done and done with. He lies his length, so much dead meat, in a tavern of Pavia. Now you may have him by the pound."

The Duke started and turned. "You have him2" he began to say.

"Aye, my lord, aye!" he was told, "you may have him avoirdupois. I saw him so myself no later than yesternight. And here stand I, Testadirame, friend of Visconti of Middlesex, late of Burgundy, Scourge of the Alps, offering you myself in his room. 'Tis for that I am come, from Visconti of Middlesex to him of Milan—I, Testadirame, bosom's mate of Death."

Viscounti paused, staring, as if fascinated, at the bosom's mate of Death.

"Do you dare to pretend," he said, "that you can stand where Lisciasangue stood? Are you so bold?"

Captain Brazenhead replied: "But I am."

"But he slew his thousands, man," said Viscounti.

Captain Brazenhead replied: "But I slew him."

Now, the fact is that the Duke of Milan, caring nothing for Lisciasangue, cared greatly for death. His own was of painful and constant interest, but that of any other man was his passion. Therefore, when Captain Brazenhead, by that dazzling admission, spoke, for the first time that day, the truth, Viscounti's eyes began to glitter, and there came a sound of "Ah!" from him, as of breath drawn in slowly. He was watched with minute attention.

And there was to be discerned in his voice a note of decision. "Tell me," he said, "how you killed that man; prove to me that you did it, and I appoint you to his place."

Captain Brazenhead smiled. "These things are easy to me," he replied. "The proof is in the antechamber, where I have left his sword along with mine which did the business. As for the manner of his death, that is a small affair. Had he been a greater man, I had been more curious in dealing. I am a carver and gilder when the hire is good or the stuff worthy. But this knave! He angered me, and I drew upon him; he blundered, and I played. I was fanciful, d'ye see? I took slices off him here and there till he gleamed before me in stripes of red and white. He was like a dressed radish before I had done with him, or a mannikin cut out of a carrot, or a slipped beetroot. Aye, aye, and there he lies—at your money by the pound."

The Duke, gloating over the fire, felt the first warmth of that day in his fevered bones. "Bring me," he desired, "the man's sword, that I may look on it and believe."

They fetched it, and he ran his finger up the furrowed blade. "I gave two hundred sequins for it in Ferrara," he said musingly. "We call it Jezebel." He held it out. "Take, wield, Testadirame. Jezebel is yours."

This is the manner of Captain Brazenhead's appointment to be Third Murderer to the Duke of Milan.

The second episode in the career of Captain Brazenhead in Milan will appear in the January Number.

Chapter V

SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS.—That many times repeated asseveration of Captain Salomon Brazenhead's, that he had formed one of the suite of Duke Lionel, when that prince went out to Lombardy to marry Visconti's daughter, and that, in consequence, the poet Chaucer—"little Smugface," as he was pleased to call him—was his fellow-traveller and bosom friend, bore at the first blush the stamp of truth. It was always supported by vigorous reminiscence; the older he grew, the more positive he was of it. All this as it may be, what is beyond cavil is that we find him at Pavia in the year 1402, a fine figure of a man, scarred, crimson, shining in the face, his hair cropped in the Burgundian mode, moustachios to the ears, holding this kind of discourse to a lank and cavernous warrior, three times his own apparent age, who had proposed, we gather, before a tavern full of drinkers, to eat him raw. The irons came swinging out, there was a ding-dong passage of arms of one hundred and thirty seconds; and Captain Brazenhead had run his foe through and established his reputation in Pavia. Admirers crowded about him, to pledge and be pledged in cups, and he learned that the dead man in life had been Lisciasangue, assassin to the Duke of Milan, one of "a Mystery of Three Murderers." His Grace's condition was indeed deplorable, robbed of one-third of his assassins. "I see the aged monarch," mused Captain Brazenhead, overheard by a sympathetic throng, "maimed, as you might say, of his right hand. I see his prisons full to brim point, his lieutenants at work night and day to keep abreast of the flood." He could not restore the Duke his Lisciasangue, but so far as might be he would repair his fault and open a career for himself. "To Milan!" he said, "and there lies long Italy in the cup of my hand." By sheer impudence he obtained admission to the Duke's presence, confessed the killing of his assassin, and startled the craven Tyrant into appointing him to be Third Murderer in succession to Lisciasangue.