A Shadow All of Light (49 page)

I edged toward the cart, needing to take a place close by it before we reached the Tumulus. As I made my way across, I saw one of the Jesters who was following a swaggering bravo produce from his busker's shoe a dainty scissors and neatly clip away the purse that hung by a thong from the youth's embroidered linen belt. I pretended to lurch into the thief, excusing myself clumsily. “Mi spiace, signor. Scusi.” “Per n'ente,” he replied, revealing with his dialect that he was no native. I could not place the origin of his accent. Now I looked to find other Jesters close by who would be associated with him, but I could spot none with certainty. He may have been no more than an ordinary thief, come to the Feast for the rich pickings.

As I brushed by the young man who was the victim, I turned and pointed at the Jester and made a scissors-sign with my fingers. The hero felt for his purse, then grasped the Jester by the wrist and demanded the return of his silver. As this altercation continued, two other Jesters came forward to take the thief's part, shouting angry words in that same dialect. The conflict broke off when the thief dropped the purse to the cobblestones and dodged into the crowd and his confederates disappeared.

I could not decide. Were these four men among the force of infiltrators? Their outland accents would seem to furnish evidence. Yet why would an invading band risk making its presence known with petty thievery? Also, this incident took place so far from our cart that the false Jesters could offer it no threat.

We are still battling cobwebs, I thought.

*   *   *

Now the Tumulus came into sight. Here was the grassy pyramid, about one story in height with two smooth, well-grassed, small terraces built into its sides. Upon one of the terraces was mounted an earthen platform where the Ministrant stood with two black-robed aides beside him. He was robed in a violet-blue silk the color of the darkening sky above us. A hood covered his head and below it hung a Jester-mask different from all the others present. It was Bennio's form, but the face was of shiny white, a polished lacquer, while the mouth and eyebrows and daggerlike goatee were not red but of the darkest black. Around the eyes were large black circles and the mouth too was black, not shaped in the fleering grin but downturned in a deeply mournful expression. The Ministrant moved his head slowly from side to side and the mask made it seem that he was searching through the crowd to sight specific individuals.

This was not the traditional aspect and its effect upon the press of people was powerful, though not immediate. Some few minutes were required, but little by little the rhymes and singing quieted, the horns and harps silenced, and the babble halted.

Mutano stopped Defender and tied the reins to his seat-board and then he and Osbro stepped back into the bed of the cart. They moved with grave deliberateness and their black livery emphasized the slowness of their motions. The two aides who had stood beside the Ministrant now left their posts and descended the molded sod steps to level ground. They marched slowly, slowly, to the cart. Mutano and Osbro delivered the coffin into their hands.

When they received the box they turned it crosswise so that its head rested on the shoulder of one and its farther end on the other's shoulder. Then they marched back to the Tumulus and began the ascent, taking each step with utmost care. But even with this cautious slowness, the right-hand aide made a misstep and the coffin slipped off his shoulder. There was an intake of breath from every person in the crowd. The sound was like the hiss of a great sea wave as it rushed against a cliff side.

The aide reached around and caught the box. If it had fallen, it would have tumbled all the way to level ground. The two of them paused to readjust, then climbed again to reach the platform where the Ministrant stood looking out of his Tragedy Mask.

Cut into the hillside behind him was a grass-covered door and he pulled it slowly open to reveal the darkness of a crypt the size of a shepherd's hut. He stood to one side and intoned in a voice that echoed hollowly from the interior of the mask words that I could not understand. Maybe they were sounds that were not words.

The silence of the crowd was broken by a single despairing female voice: “No!” She understood that the ritual was being disordered. The worst kind of fortune must ensue for all the citizenry. Such things she would have heard from her grandmother and mother. No variance was allowable.

A dread moan ran through all the ranks of celebrants, wordless but with a music such as a dying windstorm makes.

His wordless roar sounded again from the Ministrant's sad mask.

From below rose the voice of an old man: “No!” He began to sing the ritual rhyme the ceremony demanded: “Crambo and crooked Bennio goes—”

The Ministrant's chant grew louder. It was like the crackling of lightning strokes along a mountain crest. The elderly man fell silent. All were silent, even the children and dogs.

The aides brought the coffin to the Ministrant. He made passes above it, fluttering his hands in a silly, meaningless fashion. Then he stepped aside.

The aides carried the coffin into the earth-crypt and the Ministrant slowly closed the sod door, sealing them inside. He turned about to face us in the crowd below and removed his Tragic Mask to reveal a face painted in the likeness of the original Bennio. This image served momentarily to reassure the people, but I discerned features familiar to me beneath the clown makeup.

Here stood Maestro Astolfo before the multitude. He had assumed the role of the Ministrant. He who always shunned the plaza, the market square, the harbor-side or any other public place now exposed himself to the gaze of all. Few would recognize him, I thought, because most of his traffic with clients was through Mutano and me and the direct encounters were conducted in an easy and modest manner in private. He was ever a mild and affable man in his dealings and took pains not to make himself notable.

Still, there were bound to be some present here who would recognize him.

He raised his arms to shoulder height and the copious sleeves of his twilight robe unfurled like the wings of a great sea-ray, fluttering silently. His voice, though hardly stentorian, would be audible in every corner as he began to chant:

“You witness now, my friends, the night

When all is wrong within the rite.

When celebration of the Feast

In th' ancient fashion must be ceased,

For now there hangs upon our town

A doom that shortly shall come down.”

As this strain was concluding Mutano had already unhitched Defender from the cart and brought him forward to the foot of the Tumulus. Osbro accompanied him and I made my way to the pair, trying to draw no attention to myself.

Astolfo concluded:

“Look to yourselves, your families;

Lock your doors and guard your keys;

Find your sword and keep it nigh,

Lest the enemy happen by;

Trust no man, no woman, or beast,

In this dark hour of the Jester's Feast.”

Now the three of us ascended the Tumulus, stepping slowly up the sod-plots, and watching for any threatening advance toward us by a band of false Bennios. Closely as I looked, I could find no aggressive actions. The crowd was in a state of dazed confusion; some of the servants and others looked on openmouthed as Astolfo sang his mocking song of warning. Those individuals of higher station murmured to one another; they were trying to comprehend whether Astolfo's performance was a serious warning or only another jesting prank that might suit the occasion in some newfangled manner.

We had feared, when planning our strategy for this hour, that some spectators would be so enraged by the disorder, the perversion, of the ceremony that they might attack our pseudo-Ministrant. So now we formed into his bodyguard and stepped to the second foothold below, placing our hands on our hilts but not withdrawing our blades.

“Heed the warning that I give:

Defend yourselves to keep alive;

Find your homes, depart this throng;

The hour grows late, the time is wrong.

The Jester sits not in the moon—

Look you above: It sails alone!”

He raised his hand and pointed and everyone look to see the truth of this words. The Feast had failed. The moon stood directly overhead, but no features of a mocking face were to be seen. It was a moon like any other in crescent phase—reddish, familiar, and leprous-appearing in its patchiness. The ancient Bennio had scorned his Feast and turned his hunched back on Tardocco and on all the world.

Astolfo again opened the door to the crypt. The light was nigh leached from the sky now, but the crowd was able to see that the Ministrant's two aides appeared before them in ordinary dress, no longer robed. They came out, bearing the gaudy coffin. They held it between them and slowly and officiously removed the lid to disclose—nothing.

The coffin was empty.

No Dirty Bennino, no Jester effigy, and, though the onlookers could not see what was missing, there was no shadow of a Ministrant.

Two black cats ambled out of the crypt and sat down on either side of Astolfo and looked down upon the crowd with disdainful gaze. It was as if they usually inhabited this hole in the hillside and were mildly annoyed at being disturbed by a sullen mass of human beings.

For the folk had indeed become sullen. Discontent showed plainly in their postures, and groups of them moved restlessly, shifting their feet. They looked to one another. Their Jester-masks turned left and right; the small children clung to their parents, sniffling; the elderly muttered oaths. The general mood was testy and could quickly become violent—as we had feared.

Astolfo descended hurriedly to the level of the roadway, we three flanking him, though still with blades undrawn. Mutano grasped Defender's reins and handed them to Astolfo as the maestro mounted. Then Osbro lifted the tongue of the cart from the ground and gave our colorful conveyance a backward push. The men and women behind scrambled to avoid its crush, jostling and cursing. One old woman fell to the ground and was pulled out of the path of the cart at the last moment by an alert chambermaid. A number of the brawnier men ran to slow its progress, grasping the sideboards. Others gathered and, straining from behind, brought it to a standstill.

It was a brief distraction, but it afforded all the time Astolfo needed to put his heels to Defender's flanks and canter away out of the crowd into a side path and then away into the darkness of the grove that surrounded the Tumulus.

In this failing light the confusion was such that Osbro, Mutano, and I were able to lose ourselves in the moiling crowd. Harsh cries of protest rose and scuffling broke out. Parents sought after their children. Some of the elderly wept, while others looked about hollow-eyed. Fury and black melancholy reigned among the skeptical, as well as among the faithful.

Mutano had claimed that the Feast was a spurious, vain, and contrived celebration, empty of any content but its own tradition. Perhaps he was correct from the logical point of view, but logic was not in force now. Unaccountable feelings held the people in sway. Emotion ruled, as it did during wrestling matches, horse races, and other heated competitions. The people of the crowd discarded their individual identities and the whole mass of them became a single entity with a confused and powerful
vis
and without the capacity for orderly thought.

Ill will would fetch the populace to fiery violence if they could locate a blamable victim. But the disarray was thorough. Most of them did not comprehend what had taken place; they only knew what had
not
taken place. The ceremony was ruined; the lunar Jester did not show his face; the peace of Tardocco was despoiled. The city stood in danger from some source it could not name.

*   *   *

It was long past midnight before we made our separate ways back to the manse. I walked with wary caution, fearful I might be recognized as one of the four men who had undermined the climax of the Feast. I need not have been so apprehensive, for the citizens I observed were preoccupied with their own thoughts and injured feelings. They gathered in muttering groups at lane intersections and around the doors of crowded taverns. No trumpets rent the silence and no flautists embroidered its dense fabric. The folk eyed one another with suspicion and spoke abruptly each to each and not at all to those unknown.

When I came into the house I heard the sound of earnest voices in the small library and found there Astolfo, Mutano, Osbro, and our Misterioso client seated at the table. Their late refreshment was again herbal tea and oatcakes.

Astolfo gestured me to sit and hearken to Mutano's complaints.

“I see what we have done,” Mutano said, “but my intellect does not stand so tall as to enable me to comprehend why we have done it.” There was a hint of whining in his tone, almost cattish.

Astolfo, mildly: “What have we done?”

“We have mocked and sucked dry of meaning an ancient tradition.”

“One that you did not believe has any meaning,” I said. I set the mug before me beside the clay urn and Osbro filled it with the steaming tea.

Mutano waved my remark aside. “I had thought it was our duty to preserve the ritual from interruption or abuse by those who would harm us. Now we have accomplished what we feared from them—the dispiriting of the populace and the confusion of their purposes.”

“And nothing else?” Astolfo asked.

“Now they are forewarned,” I said. “In your changes on the Jester's rhymes, you have proclaimed to one and all of the dangers that lie before us.”

“The enemy is also forewarned,” Mutano said. “The infiltrators could hear your strains as clearly as I.”

“And so?”

“You have forced their hand,” I said. “The Civil Guard has been alerted, the houses will bar their doors, the old and defenseless will fly to those who are armed and prepared. Our foe had not counted on preparedness. Now they must act swiftly. Maybe they will have to act before they are ready.”