Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1940 Read Online Free Page B

for these vaguenesses,"
Guaracco said, almost comfortingly. "A drop backward through time, four
hundred years and more, must of necessity shock one's sensibility. The most delicate
tissues are, naturally, in the brain."
    "I hope to recover my faculties later," I
apologized. "Just now, I progress in generalities only."
    "Even so, you are better grounded in these things
than any man of this present age," he encouraged me. "Your talk of
that astounding power, electricity, amazes me. Perhaps things can be harnessed
with it. Steam, too. I think I can see in my mind's eye how it can be put to
work, like wind in a sail or water flowing over a mill-wheel." His eyes brightened
suddenly. "Wait, Ser Leo, I have an inspiration."
    "Inspiration?" I echoed.
I watched while he opened a small casket on the bench and fetched out a little
purselike bag of dark velvet. From this he tumbled a great rosy pearl the size
of a hazelnut and glowing as with its own light. Upon his palm he caught it, and
thrust it under my nose.
    " Look ! " he commanded,
and I looked.
    To be sure, it must be a valuable jewel, to be as full of
rose-and-silver radiance as a sunset sky. It captivated my soul with the sudden
impact of its beauty.
    "Look," repeated Guaracco, and I gazed, as
though my eyes were bound in their focus. The pearl grew bigger, brighter.
    "Look," he said, yet again, as from a distance
and, though I suspected at last his motive, I could not take my eyes away.
    The light faded, consciousness dropped slackly from me
like a garment. I knew a black silence, as of deep sleep, then a return to
blurred awareness. I shook myself and yawned.
    A chuckle sounded near by, and I opened my drowsy eyes to
find Guaracco's foxy face close to mine.
    "YOU are awake now?" he asked, with a false
gentleness.
    "How long did I sleep?" I asked, but he did not
reply.
    He polished the pearl upon his sleeve, and slid it
carefully into its velvet bag.
    "I think that some, if not all, of the forgotten
things are buried in your mind," he observed. "With you I tried a
certain way that fools call black magic."
    Hypnotism, that was it. Guaracco had
hypnotized me. Had he, in reality, found in my sub-conscious mind those
technical matters that I seemed to have almost forgotten?
    "Every minute of your company," he was
continuing, "convinces me that I did well to spare your life and enlist you
in my service. Now, draw for me again."
    I obeyed, and he watched. Once again he praised me, and
swore that I should be placed as a student with Andrea Verrocchio. It had grown
late by now, and he escorted me to my bed chamber, bidding me goodnight in most
cordial terms.
    But, when the door closed behind him, I heard the key turn
in the heavy bronze lock.

CHAPTER
IV
     
    Apprenticeship
     
    ON the following day fell the torrents of rain that had
been prayed for in such occult fashion, and the trip
to Florence was postponed.
    To my chagrin, my memories of various details that had
been so clear during my Twentieth Century existence were even cloudier, so much
more so that I spent the morning making notes of what little I remembered.
    These notes Guaracco appropriated, with as cordial a
speech of thanks as though I had done them expressly for him. I might have
pretested, but near at hand loitered the uglier of his two dwarfs, and there
might have been even a greater danger at the window behind me, or hidden among
the tapestry folds at my elbow.
    So I gave over writing, and went to talk to Lisa, the
sober but lovely young girl to whom he had introduced me the night before. I
found her still shyly friendly, possessed of unfailing good manners and charm.
She had needlework to do, and I sat talking and listening, fascinated by the
play of her deft white fingers. While we were together I, at least, felt less
the sense of being a prisoner and an underling.
    But the rain had ceased by sunset, and early the next
morning Guaracco knocked at my door to call out that we would go to Florence immediately after