The Ninth Man: A Story

Front matter

By Mary Heaton Vorse

"ONE-NINTH OF YOU ARE TO DIE!" WAS ECHOED TO US LIKE A TOLLING BELL

ILLUSTRATIONS

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I

IT might have been said of us that our city was the iron pot, we in it the broth, and the edict of Egidio Mazzaleone the stick with which to stir the broth. It was a fine, big stick with a point at the end of it, as we found out, though at first sight it had a harmless look beside the naked sword which was what we had expected. As the stick stirred and the broth boiled and bubbled over the blue fire of his insolence, many a strange thing was cast to the top—things good and things bad—that none had guessed were simmering and cooking at the bottom of the broth, flavoring the whole of it.

I shall go on to tell you of the wry faces that the town of San Moglio made as it cooked slowly over the insolence of Egidio Mazzaleone. I have found out that it is always so in this world. You may call any handful, if you will, a city, for among them you will have in little the picture of the state: they love and die, bear children, buy and sell, and strive for power, and the days will go by one like the other and you may think that you know each of your fellows as a book; then singe them with the fire of a great event and, behold, your town will turn on you an unaccustomed and terrifying face.

Myself, I cannot even now distinguish the events as they came, they happened so quickly, one on top of the other, like a dog tumbling down-stairs. Whether it was his head or his tail that went first you would be at a loss to tell. We were in sore straits in the city, I know that. There was wildcat fighting; there was a surrender to a greater might of mind and body than we could show—this I know, too. Then there was peace; we wondered that we were not burned and pillaged like the cities that had fallen before us. Before he entered the gate we had made a shrewd fight of it; but he had more of everything than we—any outsider would have foretold the end. He had more men; and though it may not be becoming of a soldier to say it, a clerk like myself may perhaps be per to tell the truth: he had the greater genius for fighting—not more bravery, mind you, but as much; I grant you that. And, more, he had a brain in that misshapen head of his.

After our defeat came the edict. What it meant I did not know, except that it was respite from death; and I had not drawn long breaths enough that I myself was safe, as well as the persons of those I loved, when my young mistress came to me.

"They say that I and all of the house are to appear in the public square and walk in person past Egidio Mazzaleone."

She frowned at me as though I had done this thing.

"Lady," I made haste to reply, "I know not."

She pressed her lips together as if she would have spoken angrily to me, but she did not, and went to the window.

"See," she said, looking at the crowd in the street that wandered aimlessly up and down, on their faces the frozen look of those who still stare death in the face. It seemed to me that they had the desolation of driven sheep who smell the slaughter and know the meaning of the smoking, sick, red smell of it.

Among them all there were those who walked insolently as though to dare Death, but there were none who remained unconscious of his shadow. As my lady bade me look, I saw one who walked outside the circle of this walking fear like a happy child in a field of lilies. This young man belonged, it seemed by his habit, to some religious order. To us, at the window above this restless moving people, driven hither and thither in their cold suspense, he seemed like a dweller from some other world who walked outside the circle of our concern. He had a rough-hewn and clownish face, and his eyes had the gentle and brutish gaze of the lads who tend goats on the mountain, but the high serenity that had made him solitary in a crowd shone from them.

"Bring him to me," said my lady, "for I will learn the truth from him."

I gained him with difficulty through the shifting throngs, and without surprise he followed me—so unquestioningly that I thought him little better than a poor witless fellow, until I saw him greet my lady, and the look he poured on her was as kind as water on a parched flower.

"What is the news?" my lady asked. "Are we to walk before Mazzaleone like sheep? Is it true?"

"So it is commanded by Mazzaleone," said he, and his voice sounded like a deep bell. And I saw that this thing of so great importance to us, and so great a hurt to our pride, was less than nothing to this strange man.

"Who are you?" my lady asked him.

"The least of all things: the youngest of the Brothers Minor," he answered.

We had heard of these lay preachers from Assisi, for their fame had spread greatly in those days.

"Do you preach in San Moglio?"

"I am not worthy. I cannot speak. But as I go to and fro I talk to children about my Master," said he, humbly. "I wait with hope and dread when my hour to speak shall come and the coal of speech shall be laid on my lips."

My lady considered his words and asked him questions concerning Brother Francis, and as he answered her we were so delivered from our shame and apprehension that it was only as he went away that my lady asked again, "When shall this conquered and unhappy town walk past its conqueror?"

"In three days," he answered. And as he went, my lord Count Bartolommeo Conti came clanking in, and the Brother Minor greeted him as he had my lady, to which my lord made no answer at all. And when the Brother Minor was gone:

"What did here this lout?" asks he,

"That is Brother Agnello—he was here at my request," my lady made answer in her softest tone of most level insolence, and she turned and watched the Brother Minor as he wandered aimless and unafraid through the shifting panic.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

FOR three days he let us stew; under the mask of clemency, and of giving us time to learn the edict for which disobedience was the pain of death, Mazzaleone let suspense have its way with us. His heralds cried the edict out through the town; through each little street went the command that on the third day, that being a Friday, all of us, noble and simple, men and women, young and old, should walk before the loggia. And for this no explanation was given; the bare command stripped down to its bone, and nothing more, was the edict of Egidio Mazzaleone—and it seemed to us that it was as menacing and as lean as himself. Behind it we felt that terror was lurking. Some said he would butcher us one by one; others said that our leaders and great men only would be slaughtered before our eyes; and again there were those with higher imaginations who hinted at torture and burnings. That it meant no good to us none of us doubted.

Meantime not a house was thrown down nor occupied by the soldiers of Mazzaleone; all was left as it was found. The men-at-arms were as stern and yet as even as Mazzaleone himself. But there they were, the iron witnesses of our defeat, we who three times had been taken and three times had shaken off the yoke of Pisa—free men—and had more than once entered, victorious, through the gates of other cities, not counting the fortresses, the castelli, and intrenched strongholds—fiefs of the empire that we had made our own, one after another, forcing their nobles to become citizens of our own commune.

Now, while Mazzaleone's men patrolled us, we went about our business. The pot-houses were overrun and there was much quiet talking among the nobles. And, although we came and went unmolested, the people were not allowed to congregate in the streets or the piazza. He kept moving those who would stop to prattle, did Egidio Mazzaleone; and while we moved about we pondered upon the meaning of his edict until the hide of each one of us felt an uncomfortable itching, as though it already felt the prick of the sharpened sword.

The third day we had ceased to prattle so much; each man stayed more at home. The women wept and the men sat with their heads in their hands. A cold sort of fear plucked at the entrails of us, for it is one thing to go to your death smoking hot, your sword in your hand, and by chance have another man's sword thrust into you before you can at him, and another to march forth in the cold morning to have your throat slit.

In the morning of The Day we started forth early. I and a few of the other young scribes of the city had been sent for by Mazzaleone, and stood in the loggia to count the townsmen and tell their names—for what purpose I did not then know. It was a strange procession that came before our eyes—as odd a procession as ever any town witnessed, for there were our chief men and our nobles with their heads up; there were their ladies, and there were the poor of the town. Here a man who had missed a right hand for theft, and there an old woman hobbling on crutches, and children were there.

As I looked I saw that, spread like a mourning veil over the crowd, were those dressed in black, and I saw that it was our nobles who had been moved to do this, Mazzaleone sat in the loggia, his captains about him, and he saw it and smiled.

"This spectacle," I heard him say, "is more diverting and instructive than I thought."

And the captain behind him, to whom he spoke, answered:

"Small honor it seems to have taken such a town."

Indeed, as one looked down upon it it seemed that there were more old hags and women and children and pottering old men than aught else. Very different, indeed, from the time when all such were within-doors and our burghers and stout men-at-arms were out with their clanking swords by their sides.

So San Moglio walked along three abreast through a solid line of Mazzaleone's men. In the beginning, as they came close, I was told to count upon the ninth, and as the ninth came, small black ballots were given them, which they were told to keep. All came docilely. Pride made them come so in the case of our black-robed nobles; cold fear, some of our burghers.

IT WAS A STRANGE PROCESSION THAT CAME BEFORE OUR EYES

Only old Count Gervaise Deverti came protesting. It was he whom it had taken the commune three years to smoke out of his perch in Santa Croce, and during that time he sold his right in his castello for four thousand florins and later signed papers which were in my master's possession and which I saw with my own eyes, promising that he would not in any wise help his faithful vassals who fought for him three long years while he had sold and resold them. When no sign was left of Santa Croce, and his vassals came to live in the commonwealth, always he gave himself great airs at the resistance which he, solitary, had made against the town. With the bombast of his race he refused to go forth in the morning, whereupon the men of his own household trussed him up like an old turkey and brought him up squealing and gobbling.

He and a young Count Guido Mazzafini were all that made a disturbance that day. And for Guido it was a greater tragedy. He was a boy of sixteen, and his two brothers and his father had been killed in the fray, and when they led him forth he made resistance and blubbered with rage, and fought with the guards that held him. At the noise of him, Mazzaleone lifted his hand and said in his low voice that had the sound of a flicker of flame in it always:

"Stop the noise for me."

So they cut his throat, and the blood spouted up like that of a stuck pig. And they threw his body aside in the gutter. At that, though the house of Mazzafini was not beloved in the city, a murmur went through the crowd, the growl of a checked tiger, and at the same moment the short swords of Mazzaleone's men leaped forth from the scabbards and I could see them shining like the white hills above San Moglio when the sunlight strikes them.

At the glancing forth of the light of steel the murmur of our people died like distant thunder. All was tranquil again and the march went on as before, three by three, and each ninth man got his sinister ballot of black ebony. Then the heralds in the loggia gave tongue:

"Thus saith the most clement of conquerors, Mazzaleone! 'San Moglio shall go free for thirty days' time while he takes his much-needed rest among those who so warmly received him. Thirty days passed, he will depart and take no other toll of blood than this: Each ninth man shall designate secretly whom he wishes put to death in the public place. Thus shall San Moglio judge San Moglio.' "

There was silence. The simple and noble of the town stood as though death had struck them all. The heralds cried again—and again cried into the silence of our amazement. Then again, and still we moved not, we spoke not, but a sigh swept us like wind in the olives. And there was no sound but the heralds accompanied by men-at-arms making their way out to the four quarters of San Moglio.

Then suddenly a gray-haired hag, who to see better had climbed the wrought-iron fountain near the loggia, raised her lean arms above her head and laughed and laughed and still laughed. Revenge was in her laugh, and relief, and she waved her clenched fists in air and laughed her hideous relief and her hideous revenge, and then a very pandemonium of joy broke from that silent crowd.

Strangers embraced. The spell of fear was broken, so they shouted and howled together, except certain of our greatest, who slunk away ashamed, while in their hearts they echoed the words I heard Mazzaleone speak gently to one of his captains:

"The love of life, Hugolino, is a foul thing."

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

AS I would have gone, my duties being over and my lists given to the captain, I heard the voice of Mazzaleone as though he spoke low in my ear, yet he was many paces behind me, say, "Stay, boy," and I wheeled as though the voice of him had been a power that turned me on my heels; and I hope I looked at him squarely enough while he told me I was to go forth into the city and bring him back news of what I saw.

"Be eyes for me," said he.

He sighed deeply, as though a great weakness were upon him, and I with a fear in my heart turned and left him, to do as he bade me—fear, because I now saw the game of cat-and-mouse which he was playing with us. I had heard of other conquerors possessing a town; but he possessed us, it seemed to me, as no conqueror had possessed any. Though I had but a shadow of the subtlety of his imagination, I hated him that he should sit there and watch us through the narrow, bright slits of his eyes, and rest his long, tired length with the spectacle of us.

Yet as I went from him, love struggled with hate in my heart, and both of them were subject to admiration. And when later his page boy, Carlo, killed himself because of more than a passing displeasure of Mazzaleone, I did not wonder, for the least sight of him stirred thus powerfully the hearts of those who came near him in one way or another, as he had stirred the town of San Moglio. Even as he possessed the town so he possessed me. I became a part of him—his eyes. That is why certain scenes are burned into me as by fire.

There are times yet when I see in my sleep the narrow uphill streets of San Moglio, red and black with the flames and smoke of torches, the town rushing through, a hungry flood in pursuit of hot and smoking life after its cold fear of death. I was young. I thought of and had loved San Moglio as I might love a fair and warlike and austere woman, and I had found that the soul of San Moglio was like the lean hag who lusted for life and for revenge even from the grave.

Bands of men and boys—and women, too—went through the streets, terrible and revolting in their rejoicings. The business of living and dying and of buying and selling for a moment sank to unimportance.

"We are to live," San Moglio shouted, "therefore, let us live." And they lived at their hardest. The savage rejoicing of the piazza would not spend itself, and finally it was the sight of three fat women teetering and shrieking, crying and dancing, as though they were girls, around a May-pole, that sickened me. I went out up to the little piazza of Ogni Santi, and there sat by the fountain a man whose head was bowed on his hands, and as I came nearer I saw that it was the Brother Minor, Agnello, and I saw that he wept. And as he wept he cried aloud, "The Lord take from me this cup."

Two loutish boys were throwing mud at him, but he heeded them not; and they, still tormenting him, cried, "Why do you weep?"

Said he, his hands in his eyes, "Because I have but thirty days to live innocent, and then, by taking an innocent life I give my innocence." And he wept again, and the boys laughed together, and one cried:

"Kill yourself, then!" Then they ran off after their sheep, crying, "Kill yourself!"

At this he dropped his hands from his eyes, and, kneeling upright, he raised his face up to heaven and gave thanks to God that from the mouths of children he had been taught how to avoid the sin of taking the life of another.

So I stayed there for a time and went back into the town as though refreshed with water. Though he had not seen me nor spoken to me, I was glad to have come near him in his simplicity, for San Moglio was keeping step to some mighty and inaudible music, as a city will when it becomes a mob. The very children ceased their play and ran through its streets, small shrieking furies, more terrible than the wantoning girls, their grace and their youth, and that they knew not why they ran, marking the depth of us.

It seemed to me that in all this great city, but for my lady, I saw not one familiar face. Can the whole heart and soul of a town be like a changeling, or had San Molio worn a mask? I wondered. Or under the torture of Mazzaleone's suspense had the town gone mad? Everywhere I saw change, even as great as in my cousin Gemma, a meek and pious girl. A long-eyed girl she was, downcast, too timid to look at one straight, given to shy, sidelong glances, a slim, honey-colored girl. I liked to tease her, to see the soft pink mount in her bashful cheeks. Now as I passed by her house I saw her at the window, herself, but changed—soft yet, like a hazy sky in summer, but beckoning, inviting, and glancing now at Guido and now at young Leoncavello, playing them more skilfully with her white and desirable innocence than any courtezan, while my aunt watched the game.

As I told these things to Mazzaleone I felt as ashamed as one who sees his mother indecorous in some public place. "Give them life," said he; "they snap at it and gulp it down like a hungry dog; and since they wish amusement they shall have what they wish. Everything they wish they shall have—I could envy them their gusto," he added.

And so he set about giving a festa of great magnificence, and asked all the nobles within the town of San Moglio; and he judged them rightly, for even the nobles, in their zest for life, had no mind to show spite to Mazzaleone.

For the common people there was dancing in the street, and wine and music for all who wished. And so it was that the whole town fell to its great, lustful rejoicing, that they were to live.

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV

AND I will wager that in all its life San Moglio had never seen gathered in the palace of the Podestà such a company; for there faction met faction as friends; old hate smiled at old hate; sworn enemies met for the first time without the drawing of swords.

Nor could Mazzaleone's, own eyes distinguish where a feud lay; one would have supposed that each felt a dear joy in thus seeing close at hand his own enemy. I saw Beatrice degli Oddi talking with her brothers, though all San Moglio knew that they had sworn to tear her in pieces when that happy hour came that they might lay their hands upon her. And she talked with them as though they had never been parted; as though they had not sworn her death so bitterly that she had not left the palace of Ugo da Sala since he took her there from her father's house, Da Sala's men killing her kinsman as he lifted her over the threshold.

I stood near Count Bartolommeo, and heard him say to my lady, "There is the making of a rare fight below," for in the courtyard, where the vassals of the rival houses met face to face, there was no smooth talking, and a menacing growl arose from it through the corridors and up the hallways, I had seen the retainers of Malatesta da Mogliano glommering at those of Casamatto, and the men of Cola degli Oddi itch for the throats of those of Da Sala. The halberdiers of Mazzaleone formed an iron bar, behind which the men could only show their teeth at one another. As my lord spoke his dearest enemy, Carlo Graziani passed, and he and my lord saluted each other, Graziani with the gravity of his disgruntlement. In times of peace a month was barren when there were no broken skulls given and taken between our house and that of Graziani, nor had these men met in many years, save when the common cause of San Moglio called them together. I could see a flame of interest in my lord's face, for it seemed to pique his bold humor.

Then all at once his face darkened, and my gaze followed his and fell on my lady talking with Mazzaleone. They conversed together as old friends. At this sight the heads of the company bent toward them like grain in the wind, for my lady was not of San Moglio. A peace offering of Barga to us, the living symbol of Barga's good faith, she had come here a young bride, a lovely white thing, silent and proud, and as Count Bartolommeo had warmed her in the fire of his love she had warmed toward San Moglio.

None of our household knew what had changed her from fire to ice toward him. But changed she was, and the city knew it; and since then it seemed that her heart was ever tugging and straining up toward the Bargese heights. And who knew what her friendship with Mazzaleone might portend for San Moglio?

She walked slowly around the assembly, flashing her laughter here and there, at her ease with Mazzaleone. Before Count Bartolommeo she paused, and I of many heard her say:

"I knew him when I was but a little maid . . . in my father's house—he was there with a broken wrist. I called him 'the lean man Egidio,' and knew no other name." And Bartolommeo joined them in their walk, he also at his ease and smiling.

And then there happened a strange thing. It was as if this sight had been some unseen torch and had set to flaming the smoldering hates and feuds, the smothered hatreds of years; and now, without a word being spoken, without the outward suavity of the scene being changed, this fire crackled round through the assembly as fire might catch a light festooning of drapery. With hatred came revenge. The thought of the black ballot and its use stalked exultant through us. Enforced peace was upon us, and with enforced peace a handy, silent weapon had Mazzaleone given to San Moglio.

Down in the courtyard the men of San Moglio became more restless, and the men of Mazzaleone more alert, and as I went through to bid our torch-bearers be ready, I saw one of the men of Casamatto fling forth his arm, and in his hand was a black ballot.

"This," cried he, "for Count Malatesta and his house!"

Chapter 5

CHAPTER V

AS he spoke there came up from the town the roar of a brawling mob. Some were killed that night. . . . All night the sound came to me. The men of Mazzaleone herded home the fighting factions as day broke. By the next day the fire of revenge I had seen start in a ballroom had spread itself through the smallest quarters of the town. Each man saw how he might be revenged upon his enemy. There were few in Moglio who might not profit by the death of some one.

Changed was the temper of the town. They had been wallowing in life. Now from one day to another they were wallowing in the thought of death. Eye met eye questioningly, for each man hugged to his bosom the thought of old scores long due. In this temper they continued their rejoicing, and that pallid specter, assassination, rejoiced with them; and with assassination and revenge smirked along the love of gain, asking:

"If you must kill your man, why not kill him whose death will be most to your advantage?"

And in this day and the days which followed I had heard enough of such rumors to sicken me, until revenge for injuries to wipe off old hate seemed to me a clean passion. Then whisperings in corners began, while the braggadocio fellows openly showed their black ballots and talked of what they would do with them.

The people became quiet, but there was a tenseness to the whole town, like the drawing of a bow across strings taut to the breaking-point. As the fury of a crowd is worse than the fury of one man, so much more was San Moglio terrible, the whole of it aquiver with its desirous revenge, men and women locking within themselves some secret hate, until the sum of their hates made a whole so dark and sinister that it seemed to me my fair city had become a hell, and I cried out to Mazzaleone:

"What have you done to us?"

"I only set the men's feet keeping step to the time of Death," said he; "the tramping of many feet to one rhythm, or the beating of many hearts to one love or one hate, is more terrible or more beautiful than any other thing, Matteo."

Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI

PONDERING upon the changed face of the town and upon its altered and so sinister temper, I walked slowly through the great hall. What I saw there was nothing, and yet it struck a chill as of death through me.

My lady sat by the window with the sun shining square upon her loveliness and upon the gold of her hair; but she was sunk in so deep thought that she was unconscious of all around, as unconscious as one who sleeps. As though she knew not what she did, she played with a black ebony ballot as though it had been a jewel. Her eyes did not leave it, but watched it, as it passed from one hand to the other, as it fell from her hand to the palm outstretched to receive it.

Across the room sat my master, Count Bartolommeo Conti, and fastened upon her a look of inconceivable malignity. He also watched the ballot, and he knew and I knew that my lady was not conscious of him nor of me nor of space, nor of aught in all the world but that she held death in her hand, and she was well pleased that she held death in her hand.

I had come into the hall with sedate and slow step, thinking to find no one there. And slowly I traversed its long length, but while I was in that room scarcely did my breath come to me.