For another thing, professional soldiers were barred, as apt to forget themselves. Giuliano de Medici, handsome and dashing, wore a knot of ribbon tied upon his mail-clad arm by the beautiful Simonetta, and overthrew two opponents. Otherwise, the jousting struck me as rather tame.
Lorenzo took special pride in showing his art treasures to Sforza who, as Poliziano later told me, cried out that mere gold and silver could not approximate such riches of the soul. And when the Milanese departed they were too greatly impressed to hide their admiration—which was what Lorenzo had hoped.
It had been Guaracco's earnest ambition to make a friend of Galleazo Sforza, but after a carefully contrived interview on the final day of the visit, he sought me out at Verrocchio's bottega, shaking his head.
"Sforza is too absolute a tyrant among his Milanese," he complained.
"Is money not something?" I suggested teasingly, for in those days we were on terms of something resembling good fellowship.
He shook his foxy red head. "Money is little, to me. I want power. I want wills to be bowed to mine, cities to rise or fall at my lifted hand, great men to go on missions here and there with my words and wishes upon their lips. I want the oceans to shake with the passage of my ships, the continents to vibrate under the marching feet of my armies. I want to rule!"
"Money rules," I reminded. "Look at Lorenzo. The founder of his house was a druggist, a simple maker of pills. Yet, by the accumulation and the wise use of gold—"
"Gold!" snorted Guaracco. "It buys food, clothes, wine, music—but of what value is it, save to attract thieves? It was powerful with the Medici only through generations of careful planning, and I cannot wait so long. Cold steel is the better metal, if held by a brave man and ruled by a wise one."
I began to appreciate something of the ambition that stirred this charlatan—genius.
"I followed sorcery from boyhood," Guaracco went on, "because, at first, I believed in it. As you yourself once put it, a true sorcerer could travel winds, chain lightnings, know and rule the Universe. Even when I found that supposed enchantments were but a fraud, I remained a student and practitioner of the false art—and I have won some rewards.
"You saw my coven of deluded witch-worshippers; they serve me in many ways, because of fear or awe or fascination that they would never dare if I offered them only gold. Too, a great many nobles and merchants respect and fear me because I seem to foretell events, can cast horoscopes, and apparently summon devils. And one or two are well within my power. I gave a certain man poison, for instance, to serve a certain other man. That certain other man owes me both gratitude for the vengeance, and fear lest I betray him."
"But now you follow true science," I said. "You told me so."
"Science—and sorcery of a kind. "
I shook my head. "There is no such thing as sorcery."
"Is there not? Come with me.
Once again I accompanied him to his house nearby. The front room was changed, in that there was a massive square table with a thick velvet covering extending to the floor on all sides. In its center stood a great bowl of silver-coated glass.
Guaracco drew the heavy curtains, so that it was quite dark in the room, and lighted a candle. Then, at the clap of his hands, the two dwarfs entered with a great ewer of water between them. From this Guaracco filled the bowl to the brim.
"Look into it, Leo," he bade me, as the dwarfs departed.
I did so. "What then?" I challenged him. "Here is a simple basin of water."
"You are sure of that?" he persisted. "Thrust in your hands and convince yourself."
Again I obeyed him. It was water, sure enough, and beneath it the surface of the bowl was smooth and normal.
"I see no wonder," I said to Guaracco.
"What did you expect to find in that bowl? The face of Lisa?" And he laughed. "Favor me, kinsman, by blowing out the candle."
I blew it out. The room fell all dark at once. No, not all, for a faint filtered glow came up from the bowl of water.
"A chemical trick," I pronounced immediately. "You have put phosphorous in there."
"Did you not see the water poured from pitchers?" he asked. "But I make no argument. Look into the bowl again."
As he spoke, he put in his own hand and stirred the liquid into ripples. I saw nothing but a disturbed surface, like a tiny ocean in a gale, with light beneath. Then the ripples grew less, slowed, finally departed. I gazed deep into the radiant water.
From its bottom a face looked up at me.
Lisa!
I think I spoke her name aloud, and put forth a hand to touch her forehead. But my finger only dipped into water, and Guaracco laughed his familiar mocking peal.
"You were deceived, for all your assurance," he taunted me. Quickly he moved to uncurtain the windows, letting in the light. "See, it was simple. I arranged it an hour ago to mystify one of the Milanese. A hole in the table, a glass bottom in the bowl— and, under the velvet, a couch whereon Lisa lay with a light beside her—"
He lifted a corner of the cloth, and Lisa slowly emerged.
"It was as if you looked upon her through a window," Guaracco summed up. He saw that I gazed reproachfully at the girl, and laughed once again.
"Now nay, Leo, she did not deceive you of herself. I put her to sleep, as you know I can do—with this."
He held it up in his fingers—the glowing pearl that more than once before had drawn forth my wits. Staring at it unguardedly, I felt myself ensnared before I could set up my defense. He caught my elbow with his other hand, easing me into a chair as mists closed about me.
When I awoke, Guaracco sat at the velvet-covered table, scribbling hastily upon a tablet of white paper.
"You will rejoice," he said, seeing my eyes open. "I took opportunity to open again that closed memory of yours."
"What this time?"
"Details of the machine you forgot. The time reflector."
At once I lost my resentment of his sly assertion of power over my senses.
"Full details?" I cried.
"Enough, I think, to build the machine itself."
And then I saw Lisa's eyes, turned mournfully upon me, as though already she bade me good-bye.
CHAPTER XII The New Reflector
Even if I could, I do not think I would get down exact details of a machine which is so apt to cause trouble as the one which Guaracco had retrieved in theory from the waste places of my mind. The fact is, he kept the plans to himself, and questioned me only now and then, sometimes hypnotizing me for the questions, sometimes not. And there were bits of science which even he could not digest.
"These exact measurements of the steel frame parts, how can we achieve them?" he would ask. "You tell me, in your sleep, of micrometers, yet how can we design a micrometer? How, even knowing its principle, can we make it without proper tools? How was the first micrometer made?"
Automatic lathes, alloy charts, and welding torches were equally unobtainable. Guaracco did the next best thing. He sought out a master swordsmith and in some adroit way—I think his witch-cult helped him—bound the fellow to his service by terror and awe. This craftsman, with all his tools and materials, he transported to the country estate, and there set him to work painstakingly shaping the metal skeleton of the reflector mechanism.
Electrical engineering Guaracco learned from the ground up. Here, once again, I must needs be hypnotized and my subconscious mind probed. My partner began with sticks of sealing wax and glass rods, rubbing them with fur or silk, and studying the effects of the static charges. From that he progressed to what I was able to remember as a Leyden jar, contrived by his own cunning hands after several unsuccessful trials. Finally came simple batteries, but here he kept back from me the knowledge he had mined from my own inhibited memory. He refused to tell the acids and metals involved.