I was stunned at the zest with which he repeated the cliché.
"Why, Your Magnificence!" I said, wonderingly, "it is but a saying, a handful of old words."
"Yet the thought is new, a new thing under the sun. Say on, Leo the Witty. If you are an assassin set to kill me, your tongue is as tempered as your sword."
He called the phrase new and, of course, it was. The Fifteenth Century had never heard it before. Every cliche must have been devastating in its time.
I groped in my mind for another, and the works of William Shakespeare, a good century in the future, came to my rescue.
"Since I am graciously permitted to plead my case once more," I said, "let me but remind Your Magnificence that the quality of mercy is not strained; it drops as the gentle rain from heaven upon the earth beneath—"
"Excellent!" applauded Lorenzo. "Clerk, have you written it all?" He smiled upon me the more widely and winningly. "You go free, young sir. Swordsmen I can buy at a ducat a dozen, but men of good wit and ready tongue are scarce in these decayed times. Tomorrow, then, you shall have a further audience with me."
I bowed myself away, scarce crediting my good fortune. But, as I walked down the palace steps and through the gate, Guaracco fell into step beside me. Under his half-draped black cloak I caught the outline of that pistol he had invented.
"I have nothing to say to you," I growled. "I have washed my hands of you. And you washed your hands of me yonder, when my life hung by a thread."
"I never pledged myself to you," he reminded, "nor did I demand a pledge of you—only obedience. Instead of death, you win favor from the Medici. When you go back tomorrow, you go under new orders from me."
And thus I was deeper than ever in his strong, wicked clutch.
CHAPTER VIII The Court of Lorenzo
Perhaps it is odd, and yet not so odd, that I remember no more of that particular walk, of my warm disgust at Guaracco's confident leer, of his insistence on my aid to him. It is my fixed belief that, during our conversation, he found and took the opportunity to throw upon me his hypnotic spell. He could do that almost as well as the best Twentieth Century psychologists.
Walking together thus on the way to Verrocchio's bottega, I entranced and somnambulistic, he alert and studied, there must have been strong talking by Guaracco and reception listening by me. He must have planted in my dream-bound mind that I was his friend and debtor, that I must share Lorenzo's favor with him, Guaracco.
What I do remember is the next afternoon, and an equerry from the palace presenting himself before an impressed Verrocchio, with a message summoning me to his master. I went, clad in my simple best—the decent doublet and hose which Guaracco had given me on my first evening at his house, my red mantle, and a flat velvet cap with a long drooping feather. With a little shock of pleased astonishment, I saw that the equerry had brought me a horse—the same fine gray over which I had fallen out with the late lamented Gido.
"The beast is a present from the Magnificent," I was informed as I mounted.
To the palace we rode and there, while my horse was cared for by the equerry, I was conducted through a great courtyard to a rich garden among high hedges of yew, trimmed to a blocky evenness, with nichelike hollows for stone seats or white statues of Grecian style. There were roses, both on bushes and climbing briars, flowering shrubs in clumps and ordered rows, a perfectly round little pool with water lilies—all luxurious and lovely, though perhaps a bit too formally ordered. In the center of this, under a striped awning, lounged Lorenzo and his friends on cushioned seats of gilded wood and leather.
To the four other guests I was introduced as Ser Leo. His Magnificence still shied at pronouncing my barbarous surname. And I bowed to each as his name was spoken. First there was Lorenzo's younger brother and codespot, Giuliano, the same cavalier who had ridden with Lorenzo upon me at the moment of Gido's death. He was one of the handsomest men I have ever seen, even as Lorenzo was one of the ugliest.
Almost as highly honored was an elderly churchman with a fine, merry face and plain but rich vestments—Mariotto Arlotta, the aristocratic abbot of the woodland monastery of Camaldoli. His repute, I found, was that his repartee was the sharpest and readiest in all the state of Tuscany, and indeed he jested in a lively, though ecclesiastical, fashion.
Close beside him stood a plump, courteous young man in his middle twenties, Sandro Botticelli the rising court painter.[6] Him I found friendly, though moody.
The last man of the group, and the youngest, was an adolescent poet, Agnolo Poliziano. Uglier even than Lorenzo, he was wry-necked, crooked-mouthed, beak-nosed, and bandy-legged.[7]
Yet, for all this sorry person and ungrown youth, he was eloquent and thoroughly educated. From him I was to learn, in after days, much of what a man must know to shine as cultured in Fifteenth Century Florence.
"A young sparkle-wit, friends," Lorenzo told the others in presenting me. "He was thrown in my way, I nothing doubt, with the thought that he might assassinate me. Yet am I drawn to him by the lustrant wisdom of his speech. 'As well hang for a sheep as for a lamb,' he defied me yesterday."
He paused, while the saying went around the delighted group, from mouth to merry mouth.
"If he is dangerous, yet shall I keep him, as I keep the lions at the Piazza del Signoria. Guard me, all of you, from any weapon save his tongue." Once more he turned to me. "What of that sorcerer cousin of yours, Guaracco?"
To my own surprise I found myself pleading earnestly and eloquently for Guaracco. It was as if I had been rehearsed in the task, and indeed I probably was, by Guaracco himself. Hypnotists, I say again, can do such things. In the end Lorenzo smiled, and seemed far less ugly.
"By the mass, I wish my own kinsmen spoke so well on my behalf," he said to the others. "Ser Leo, your eloquence saved you yesterday, and today it recommends Guaracco. He is dull, I have thought, but he knows something of science. I am minded to send for him, for all he is a wizard."
"Sorcery cannot prevail against pure hearts," contributed the Abbot Mariotto, at which all laughed heartily.
The equerry who had conducted me was dispatched to search for and bring Guaracco. Meanwhile I was served with wine by a bold-eyed maid servant in tight blue silk, and entreated to join the conversation. It was turning just then on the subject of a new alliance of the Italian powers against possible Turkish invasion.
"The threat of the infidel comes at an opportune time," Lorenzo pointed out. "Taunted and menaced, we Christians forget our differences and draw together for our common safety. The Sultan dares not attack us, we dare not quarrel among ourselves, and peace reigns."[8]
"Your Magnificence does not like war, then?" I ventured.
He shook his ugly crag of a head. "Not a whit. It is expensive."
"And vulgar," added Botticelli.
"Aye, and dangerous," chimed in the poet Poliziano.
"And in defiance of heaven's will," sighed the abbot, as though to crown the matter.
"And yet," Lorenzo resumed, "I bethink me that it is well for a state to prepare for war, that others may fear, and be content to keep peace. I have it in mind, Ser Leo, that you spoke yesterday of war engines."
"I did," was my reply, but even as I spoke I was aware how poorly my scrambled memory might serve me. "For instance, I might design a gun that shoots many times."
"Ha, some of Guaracco's witchcraft!" exclaimed Lorenzo at once.
"Not in the least," I made haste to say. "Nothing but honest science and mechanics, may it please Your Magnificence."
In my mind the form and principle of machine-gunnery became only half clear. I wished that I had mentioned something else.
6
Botticelli's most famous paintings are those of Giuliano's sweetheart, Simonetta Vespucci. He was a favorite of Florentine society, and a loyal friend of the Medicis.
7
Poliziano, in later life, was a tutor to the children of Lorenzo, and remained in the Medici household until the death of his patron.
8
Lorenzo was later able to bring about this alliance, both for peace among the Italian powers and safety from the Moslem raiders.