"No," he demurred gently. "Perhaps, after all, the fault was mine. I was too abrupt for your dainty nature, Leo." He turned his eyes, but not his head, toward the unhappy Lisa where she sat in mute and woeful confusion. "Forgive this ungallant fellow my child. Perhaps another time—"
"There shall be no other time," I said flatly. "I refuse, once and for all."
"Then go," Guaracco bade me, and he simulated a bored yawn. "You have disappointed me, and shamed Lisa. Return to your labors among the arts, and when your heart is cooler we shall talk again. Go."
I went, and my nature was more fiery hot than the waxing sun overhead.
Guaracco had spoken this much truth. I had brought shame to Lisa. Apparently she had been ready to accept me as a mate, and whether this was a Guaracco's hypnotic suggestion or not made little difference in the way my reaction must have affected her. She had come to meet me, hoping to hear my praises and pledges, to stand with me before a priest.
Undoubtedly she understood my refusal to be her lover, but could I not have been more kindly toward her? Could I not have said, parenthetically, that it was in reality Guaracco I refused, and that on some happier occasion—like many a man leaving a stormy scene, I was aware of folly a score of things I should have said and done.
I was also aware that I loved Lisa. No getting away from that, even when I tried to say that it was all Guaracco's adroit suggestion, that he may have hypnotized me as well as Lisa, from the first day he had introduced us to each other.
Conjectures about it were only the more disturbing. Finally, I gave up the struggle against my new realization. I loved Lisa, and probably I had lost her. There was nothing I could do about it, I told myself as I drew near to the bottega, turned my footsteps to enter at the door.
A final glow of rage swelled all through me. I yearned wildly for an opportunity to catch Guaracco off guard, to strike and throttle him. A mood, rare in me, made my heart and body thirst for violent action.
As Fate would have it, violent action was about to be provided for my needs.
A horseman came cantering along the street. His horse, a handsome gray, spurned a loose stone from its place among the cobbles. Another moment, and the beast had stumbled and fallen, throwing its rider headlong.
A crowd of strolling pedestrians within view of the mishap all hurried close, myself among them. My hand went out to lift the sprawling man, but with a grunt and an oath he had scrambled to his feet and was tugging at the bridle of his horse. It would not rise.
"The beast is hurt," I suggested.
"Not this devil-begotten nag," growled the rider. He dragged on the bridle again, then kicked the animal's gray ribs with his sharp-toed boot.
Harshness to animals has never pleased me and, as I have said, my anger was ready to rise at anything. I shouted an immediate and strong protest. The man turned upon me. He was tall and sturdy, with a forked black beard and two square front teeth showing under a short upper lip. He wore a long sword under his cloak of brown silk, and had the look of a touch customer.
"Do not meddle between me and my horseflesh," he snapped, and once more heaved at the bridle.
The injured horse struggled up at last, driving the little crowd back on all sides, and the master laughed shortly.
"Did I not say he was unhurt? Belly of Bacchus, it was his careless foot that threw us—curse it and him!"
He clutched the bit of the poor beast, and struck it across the face with his riding whip.
"Stop that!" I shouted, and caught his arm. He tried to pull loose, but I was as strong as he. A moment later he had released the horse, which a passerby seized by the reins, and cut at me with the whip. My left hand lashed out, as quick as impulse. It smote solidly on those two front teeth, and the man-at-arms staggered back with a roar.
I would have struck again, perhaps stretching him on the cobbles, had not Andrea Verrocchio himself, running from his door, thrown his arms around me. Meanwhile, the black-bearded man had whipped out his sword and, swearing in a blood-curdling manner, was struggling to throw off two voluble peacemakers and get at me.
"Have you gone mad, boy?" Verrocchio panted in my ear. "That is Gido, the first swordsman of the Lorenzo's palace guard!"
CHAPTER VI Swords Beside the River
When I say that I did not flinch at Verrocchio's warning, I do not call myself brave—only possessed by a white heat of anger. For a moment I made as if to rush fairly upon the point of Gido's sword; but a saving ounce of wit returned to me.
My eye caught a gleam at the hip of one of the growing throng of watchers. I made a long leaping stride at the fellow, and before I knew I was there I had clutched and plucked away his long, straight blade.
"Thank you, friend," I said to him hastily. "I will return this steel when I have settled accounts with Ser Gido the ruffler."
Gido was roaring like a profane bull. He cursed my by every holy Christian name, and some that smacked of the classic Greek and Roman. But by now I had recovered my own self-possession, enough to make me recognize my danger and face it. I thrust away Verrocchio's pleading hands, and interrupted Gido in the middle of a sulphurous rodomontade.
"You talk too loudly for a fighting man," I told him. "Come, I am no wretched horse or weaponless burgher. Let him go, you good people. He needs blood-letting to ease his hot temper."
"There shall be blood-letting enough and to spare!" the palace guardsman promised me balefully.
Verrocchio pleaded that there be no brawl outside his house, but Gido loudly claimed that there must be a back courtyard where we could have quiet for our work. And, with the crowd clamoring and pushing after us, to that back courtyard we went, through a little gate at the side of the bottega.
There was a level space flagged with stones, at the grassy brink of the Arno. All the spectators jammed close to the walls of the house and its paling at the sides, while my adversary and myself stood free near the water.
Gido gave me a quick, businesslike scrutiny that had something in it of relish—the sort of gaze that a carver might bestow upon a roast. With a quick flirt of his left arm, he wound his brown cloak around his elbow, to serve as buckler.
"I will teach you to defy your betters, Master Paint-smearer!" he promised.
"Teach on!" I urged him. "I may be a good enough pupil to outshine my teacher."
All this time I was telling myself to be calm, ruthless, and wide-awake, and that I must not fear the raw point. I had done some fencing in prep school and at my university, and it was another thing that I remembered fairly well, with my hand if not my head. I felt that I had a certain advantage, too, in being left-handed.
We moved toward each other by common consent gingerly taking the stylized paper-doll pose of fencers. As my left hand advanced my sword, Gido saw that he would have trouble shielding himself with that wadded cloak.
"Fortune favors the right," he muttered, and his square front teeth gleamed with pleasure at his own pun.
For answer I made a quick, simple attack. It was no more than a feeling thrust, and he swept it aside with an easy shifting of his straight blade. At once I made a recovery, ready to parry his riposte.
The riposte did not come. Instead, this crack swordsman of the Medici tried to beat down my weapon and so clear the way for a stab at my breast. I yielded a little before his pressure, disengaged, parried in turn, and dropped back. Another of his slashing assaults I only half-broke with my edge, and felt the delicate sting of his edge upon my left forearm.
"First blood!" yelled one of the watchers, and a little cheer went up for my enemy. The Florentines were enjoying the sport.
But I was not injured, so far as my activity was concerned. As Gido rushed to follow his advantage, I was able to parry cleanly. Immediately, while he was yet extended in his forward lunge and well within reach, I sped my riposte. It caught him unprepared, and he barely flung up his cloak-swaddled left arm in time. Through half a dozen thicknesses of brown cloth my edge bit its way, and Gido swore as his blood sprang out to dye the fabric a deep red.