"No, no, Giuliano, spare him!" called out Lorenzo, but too late to balk his bother's murderous stab at my throat.
I managed to parry with the short length of wood remaining to me, causing his point to shoot upward and over my left shoulder. At once I stepped forward, well within his lunge. Before he could retreat or recover, my free right hand caught the cross-guard of his weapon, and wrenched. His own right arm, bruised twice in the previous engagements, had lost some of its strength, and in a trice I tore the sword away from him.
At once I dropped my severed stick, fell back and whipped the captured hilt into my left hand.
"By your leave, my lord," I panted, "I will continue the matter with this more suitable equipment."
But then Lorenzo, Poliziano, and Guaracco had sprung forward and between us. The sorcerer caught me in his arms and wrestled me farther back, his red beard rasping my ear as he hissed out a warning to take care. Lorenzo the Magnificent was lecturing Giuliano in the manner of big brothers in every land and generation. And Giuliano recovered his lost temper.
"Hark you, Ser Leo, I did amiss," he called out to me, laughing. "I had no lust to hurt you at the beginning. I meant only fun. And then—" He broke off, still grinning, and rubbed his injured arm. "I forgot myself. It is not many who can teach me either swordplay or manners but, by Saint Michael of the Sword! You have done both."
It was handsomely said, and I gladly gave him back his weapon, assuring him that I bore no ill-will. At that, he embraced me in the impulsive Latin manner, swearing that he would stand my friend forever. The company subsided to chairs again, happy that no harm had befallen either of us.
"We wander from the path of our earlier discourse," reminded Abbot Mariotto tactfully. "Ser Leo was speaking of a flying machine. Where is it, my son?"
"It is not yet constructed, Holy Father," I replied.
As with so many other things, the principle of flying a heavier-than-air machine was caught only vaguely in the back of my head. I could visualize roughly the form, a thin body with a rudder for tail and outspread wings. And something to stir the air.
"Belike you would strap wings to your arms," suggested Giuliano.
"Impossible," spoke up Poliziano. "Are not men's arms too weak for flight? Would there not need great muscles, at least as strong as those of the legs?"
I had an inspiration, and an answer. "The muscles of our legs are many times stronger than needful to support the weight of our bodies," I told him.
Lorenzo, eager as always for new philosophic diversion, challenged me to prove it. I asked him to get me a long, tough plank, and servants were sent scurrying after it. While I waited, I chose a strong, straight chair, and sat upon it. A cushion I took and laid upon my knees. When the plank arrived, I balanced it upon this cushion.
"Now, come, all of you," I invited, "and rest yourselves upon this plank."
Lorenzo did so at once, and then his brother. The others followed laughingly, not excepting the abbot and Madonna Simonetta—ten in all, supported upon my knees. Only Guaracco stood aloof.
"Your long shank support many hundredweight, my stout Cousin," he said, "but what does this prove?"
"It proves his argument, and the fallacy of mine," handsomely replied Poliziano for him, as he rose from his seat at one end of the plank. "His legs have tenfold strength, and his arms may be strong in proportion, enough to flap his wings and waft upward his entire weight."
"Then let me see it done," pronounced Lorenzo, with a grand finality that made my heart sink. "I am ambitious, Ser Leo, to watch you 'mount up with wings as eagles.' And I do not forget the other arrangement, by which you will make solid shot to explode."
This last labor, which I had been glad to slight in conversation, now seemed actually the easier.
But Simonetta and the other ladies professed themselves weary of cold science, be it ever so important in a masculine world, and demanded music. Poliziano, whose voice was as sweet as his appearance was ungainly, immediately snatched up a silver lute and picked out a lively tune. The song he rendered was saucy and merry, and not a little shocking; but the holy abbot led the loud applause.
"More! More!" cried Simonetta.
Poliziano, bowing low to her, sang to a more measured and dignified tune, an offering that had all the earmarks of impromptu versification, inasmuch as it mentioned the beauty of Simonetta, the magnificence of Lorenzo, the churchly dignity of Abbot Mariotto and, finally, the enigmatic quality of my own discourse.
"And will not Ser Leo sing?" asked one of the ladies when Poliziano had made an end. "His conversation and talents are so varied—war, science, debate, flying like a bird—"
"Let us hear your voice, young sir," Lorenzo commanded me.
Thus urged, I took Poliziano's lute, altering the pitch and harmony of its four strings until I could strum upon it in a hit-or-miss fashion, evoking chords to accompany myself. The song which I managed to improvise and sing to Poliziano's tune was on the subject of stars, so edifying to my new friends and so distasteful to Guaracco. Since Lorenzo and the others commended it highly, it may not be amiss to set it down here.
CHAPTER X The Bombs and the Wings
Silent as we departed from the gathering together, Guaracco soon spoke.
"I know very little, after all, of how you live," he said, "but perhaps I can arrange how and when you die. That song was meant to reproach me."
"Just as you like," I rejoined, for my fear of him had quite departed. Too, I was arraying my spirit against further impositions of his will. "Your masterful ways become burdensome, Guaracco. I defy you."
And I paused, near the palace gates, my fists clenched.
"No violence," he warned me. "I carry a sword, as well as that short gun you saw yesterday. And my dwarfs are never far away. You, on the other hand, have not yet assumed our Florentine fashion of carrying arms." His beard stirred in the gloom, and I knew that he smiled. "But I shall not kill you, Leo, unless you force me. All these defiances stand me in good stead."
"In good stead?" I repeated, for after my temporary semi-hypnotized slavishness, nothing had been further from my wish to aid Guaracco.
"Aye, that. In scorning magic and upholding science, you taught me a lesson, and few can boast of teaching me anything of worth. It is time for me to forget my sorcery pretenses, at least where it concerns my relationship to Lorenzo. Science shall be my way with him hereafter—but not too much science. You and I shall work wonders for him, the two of us."
"Am I to help you?" I sneered.
He shook his head, laughing. "It is I who shall help you. For instance, that matter of exploding shot. I saw, as did not Lorenzo, that you were perplexed. But it happens that I may help you to fashion such a thing. Again, is it not true that you wish to return some day to your own century?"
Useless to deny that, and I said so.
"And have you not forgotten many details of your time-reflecting machine?"
Equally useless to deny that.
"For instance," went on Guaracco, as we resumed our walk together, "you have forgotten certain ways to use this strange new power which you named to me as electricity. It gives light, but how?"