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 allocution 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 rogue"
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 him" 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.