The Ninth Man/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
IT might have been said of us that our city was the iron pot, we in it the broth, and the edict of Egidio Mazzaleone the stick with which to stir the broth. It was a fine, big stick with a point at the end of it, as we found out, though at first sight it had a harmless look beside the naked sword which was what we had expected. As the stick stirred and the broth boiled and bubbled over the blue fire of his insolence, many a strange thing was cast to the top—things good and things bad—that none had guessed were simmering and cooking at the bottom of the broth, flavoring the whole of it.
I shall go on to tell you of the wry faces that the town of San Moglio made as it cooked slowly over the insolence of Egidio Mazzaleone. I have found out that it is always so in this world. You may call any handful, if you will, a city, for among them you will have in little the picture of the state: they love and die, bear children, buy and sell, and strive for power, and the days will go by one like the other and you may think that you know each of your fellows as a book; then singe them with the fire of a great event and, behold, your town will turn on you an unaccustomed and terrifying face.
Myself, I cannot even now distinguish the events as they came, they happened so quickly, one on top of the other, like a dog tumbling down-stairs. Whether it was his head or his tail that went first you would be at a loss to tell. We were in sore straits in the city, I know that. There was wildcat fighting; there was a surrender to a greater might of mind and body than we could show—this I know, too. Then there was peace; we wondered that we were not burned and pillaged like the cities that had fallen before us. Before he entered the gate we had made a shrewd fight of it; but he had more of everything than we—any outsider would have foretold the end. He had more men; and though it may not be becoming of a soldier to say it, a clerk like myself may perhaps be permitted to tell the truth: he had the greater genius for fighting—not more bravery, mind you, but as much; I grant you that. And, more, he had a brain in that misshapen head of his.
After our defeat came the edict. What it meant I did not know, except that it was respite from death; and I had not drawn long breaths enough that I myself was safe, as well as the persons of those I loved, when my young mistress came to me.
"They say that I and all of the house are to appear in the public square and walk in person past Egidio Mazzaleone."
She frowned at me as though I had done this thing.
"Lady," I made haste to reply, "I know not."
She pressed her lips together as if she would have spoken angrily to me, but she did not, and went to the window.
"See," she said, looking at the crowd in the street that wandered aimlessly up and down, on their faces the frozen look of those who still stare death in the face. It seemed to me that they had the desolation of driven sheep who smell the slaughter-pen and know the meaning of the smoking, sick, red smell of it.
Among them all there were those who walked insolently as though to dare Death, but there were none who remained unconscious of his shadow. As my lady bade me look, I saw one who walked outside the circle of this walking fear like a happy child in a field of lilies. This young man belonged, it seemed by his habit, to some religious order. To us, at the window above this restless moving people, driven hither and thither in their cold suspense, he seemed like a dweller from some other world who walked outside the circle of our concern. He had a rough-hewn and clownish face, and his eyes had the gentle and brutish gaze of the lads who tend goats on the mountain, but the high serenity that had made him solitary in a crowd shone from them.
"Bring him to me," said my lady, "for I will learn the truth from him."
I gained him with difficulty through the shifting throngs, and without surprise he followed me—so unquestioningly that I thought him little better than a poor witless fellow, until I saw him greet my lady, and the look he poured on her was as kind as water on a parched flower.
"What is the news?" my lady asked. "Are we to walk before Mazzaleone like sheep? Is it true?"
"So it is commanded by Mazzaleone," said he, and his voice sounded like a deep bell. And I saw that this thing of so great importance to us, and so great a hurt to our pride, was less than nothing to this strange man.
"Who are you?" my lady asked him.
"The least of all things: the youngest of the Brothers Minor," he answered.
We had heard of these lay preachers from Assisi, for their fame had spread greatly in those days.
"Do you preach in San Moglio?"
"I am not worthy. I cannot speak. But as I go to and fro I talk to children about my Master," said he, humbly. "I wait with hope and dread when my hour to speak shall come and the coal of speech shall be laid on my lips."
My lady considered his words and asked him questions concerning Brother Francis, and as he answered her we were so delivered from our shame and apprehension that it was only as he went away that my lady asked again, "When shall this conquered and unhappy town walk past its conqueror?"
"In three days," he answered. And as he went, my lord Count Bartolommeo Conti came clanking in, and the Brother Minor greeted him as he had my lady, to which my lord made no answer at all. And when the Brother Minor was gone:
"What did here this lout?" asks he,
"That is Brother Agnello—he was here at my request," my lady made answer in her softest tone of most level insolence, and she turned and watched the Brother Minor as he wandered aimless and unafraid through the shifting panic.