A Shadow All of Light (55 page)

“It was an accident of nature,” she said. “You possess no such power of command.”

He ignored her denial. “The Civil Guard will of course commandeer your ship. Not enough of the crew is left aboard to be able to sail such a galleon. She must remain in the harbor, for the time being.”

“The
Vengeful Maiden
is yours, for all the good she may do you.”

“Your reinforcement, the two-master we spied on the horizon hanging half a league off—she did not come to your aid but went about into the open sea.”

“The
Sly Handmaid
is well out of your reach. Perhaps she shall return with her friends at another hour when you will still be busy puffing yourself up like a smithy's bellows.”

“We shall be pleased to encounter her,” Astolfo said. “Our Tardocco is a hospitable port. And well defended.”

Her voice did not tremble or waver: “We shall see.”

“The sun is just rising,” he continued, “and our cats are restless. Much remains to do, though we are all tired, cold, wet, and thirsty. Mutano must take a few seasoned colleagues in a pilot boat out to your
Vengeful Maiden
and secure the vessel. Osbro and Torronio are to march back to their sandy fire-pits and make certain that all coals are quenched. Falco is to take charge of our prisoners, who, for the near future, shall be chained together in these two adjoining warehouses. I shall escort you to our small, stoutly barred gaol close by the Hall of Justice. There you may meditate upon your misdeeds till time of trial.”

“Your cowardly city begs for pillage,” she said.

“And after we have finished our chores?” I asked Astolfo. I was tired of talk—of everything.

“Then all this present company of defenders shall meet upon this selfsame spot at twilight this evening,” he said. “We shall go into the town and open every bottle and cask where they stand. If any tavern keeper try to halt our progress, he shall share a gaol room with the pirate queen Fleuraye. The prospect of such a shelter will instill in him a proper gratitude.”

We looked at one another, all of us weary, bloody, sooty, begrimed, and aching, and agreed that Maestro Astolfo's agenda of celebratory duties was sound and sensible and must be followed to the smallest detail. I was determined to bear my part, even if I had to be held standing by three strong men.

*   *   *

These, then, were the occurrences of that long, dark night.

 

XIII

A Shadow All of Light

In these dull latter days the Feast of the Jester meets with nearly indifferent regard. Clowns still perform in the plazas and amid the park greens. They tumble, juggle, and sing out raw rhymes, but their reception is marked more by fond reminiscence than by fresh enthusiasm. The legend of the original Bennio has dimmed; his satiric functions have been taken up by court poets and by the antics of ordinary tumblers. His visage still can be seen in the waning moon, but children must be carefully instructed on how to make it out. Many of his ancient chants are no longer found acceptable in polite circles.

But in our own small circle the Feast is celebrated in jovial fashion. On the fourth cycle of the festival's return, Astolfo and I were making the annual journey to Tardocco on a matched pair of tar-black horses, both of them as gaily leathered and richly furnished as any highly prized and nobly sponsored courtesan. Telluria and Gabriel rode beside us in a two-wheeled carriage decorated lavishly and, methought, not entirely artfully. Telluria's taste had not quite caught up with her new position.

She is my spouse, this blue-eyed, blonde, curly-tressed woman, and the daughter of a county farmer. She was brought by Astolfo to his household as a maid-of-all-work. One morning when I came to his great farmhouse centered in the acreage to make report and receive direction from the maestro, I found her washing milk jugs at the large kitchen basin and humming a gay ballade. I threw a casual embrace about her waist.

She turned on me swiftly. “Thou'rt called Falco?”

“I am so.”

She eyed me up and down and crosswise. “Well, thou'rt a jack well formed. Many a lass would quickly rattle the straw with thee. But I did not come to this world to drop bastards on the face o't. If you'd have the good o' me, you must consult first my father and then my three brothers and then the magistrate in his house at the crossroads.”

I considered these words an unpromising beginning, but after a certain hungry period of restless longing, I did consult with her father and her brothers and found them to be affable and sensible men with lump-muscled forearms and knotty cudgels. The silver-haired magistrate too was a complaisant sort, helpful in every respect my future kinsmen made mention of.

Our child of six months she calls Gabriel after a generous bachelor uncle. I call him Stolfino to honor Master Astolfo. This name I keep private to myself. Telluria knows the maestro only as my former employer in a trade she distrusts and comprehends but dimly. She did suggest that we might confer the pet name of Falchino, but I do not want our babe to follow my troubled path through the wildwood of this world. Better for him to study the sages, to learn the science behind whatever art or trade he may pursue. Better for him to acquire politic manners and cheerful aplomb than to go lumbering about ale-muddled with sword in hand through the Tardocco midnights. Better to be Astolfo the honorary uncle than Falco the foolish father.

*   *   *

We dwelt in Caderia now, the place where I was born and lived until I left to pursue my fortune in the port city. We were traveling now from Caderia upon a warm, late summer morn abundant with butterflies. The road was empty except for Telluria, Gabriel, the cheerful red-haired lad who drove the carriage, Astolfo on his mount, and myself. The fields of barley and oats lay ripening on all sides. Now and again a low rock wall rose and then left off at knee-height, as if the farmer had lost interest in construction. The sky was blue and sweet. The world smelled of sunlight.

Astolfo had purchased the Caderian land upon which Osbro and I were reared, and another small estate adjoining. His prediction that he might forswear the shadow trade had come to pass. “I intend to seek for a certain ideal entity I have long conjectured of. I seek the purest and most spiritual of objects that ever existed, the physical thing that is itself wholly, or almost wholly, a spirit. I would welcome your company in this venture, but I do understand that a wife and child may discommode your participation. A corner of the farmland shall be at your usage, but if you would prefer to stay with your brother Osbro at the town villa, I shall content myself.”

“How did you come by the farmland?” I'd asked. “Lord Merioni has the reputation of being one who never relinquishes his acres.”

“He has left our sphere of existence. His heir is a lady named Lisensia,” he replied. “This is what she said to me: ‘I am a frivolous woman. A farm depresses me—all mud and horse droppings. The dumb beasts of the field bore me and the insects that fasten to them vex me. I care only for finery and for foppish young men useless to society—if they be comely of face and figure. Should you buy from me my father's land, I shall waste the whole recompense, down to the last copper.' She being so free-spirited, I received the land at a good price.”

“Did not the town council lend, or award, you the coin to do so? They owe to you the preservation of Tardocco.”

“They too have been generous,” he said, “but mostly in other respects. I wanted to make sure our title was free here and so employed my own resource.”

“I should like to meet this openhanded Lisensia.”

“Thou'rt too old to be of her interest,” he said, “and perhaps of a temper too settled. She will prefer the peach-cheeked young bravo who cannot cypher without the aid of his fingers.”

“Your tutelage has ruined me,” I returned. “You have misspent my youth upon vain studies of tepid sages.”

“It was my pleasure to do so. Now, what say you? Will you partner with me in this quest for the purely spiritual physical thing that I have spoken of to you aforetimes?”

“I cannot fathom what we are to be in quest of,” I said. “To my ear, it smacketh too much of philosophy; I have had my fill of weevily old treatises smelling of spiders. I am well acquainted with your library and do not care to revisit it.”

“The library is no more. I have distributed the whole of it to the schools and hermitages.”

“Are these heavy tomes well received among 'em?”

“The scholars love nothing so much as the mystifying phrases of Hermes Trismegistus, the o'erstretched syllogisms of Teteles, and the dull observations of Lullius. They scramble to these texts like ants to the carcass of a rotting rat and find great sweetness therein.”

“I wish them each and all a hearty feast. I found those pages none so toothsome.”

“Yet are you not now wiser than you were before you undertook such lavish perusal?”

“I have become wise enough to avoid all philosophy.”

“For a Falco, that
is
wise,” he said.

*   *   *

For the most part our arrangement has worked comfortably. I live with Telluria and Gabriel in a log-walled cottage set at the edge of an oat field. A tributary of Dove Creek called Reedy Run bubbles close by our humble door; a well in the yard supplies fine water; a wide-spreading hawthorn sports in its season clusters of reddening berries to which birds of every hue flock in tuneful parliaments.

This life is a gift not entirely free, for I am still subject to the maestro's orders and to his mild suggestions also. My compliance pays for my rent and for much of my keep. The duties are not onerous; Astolfo is no longer in trade. He is sought out, however, to consult with artists and architects, dressmakers and stage-players, perfumists, writers of commercial agreements, drapers, and others. He advises those who inquire upon the craft of shadows and cares not whether they pay in coin or in empty promises. This almost desultory activity entails errands and other small tasks that I cheerfully take up. I ride almost every other day to his large house in the center of the estate, Casa Indolenza, and receive a listing of these minor duties.

The city elders were less generous to Osbro and me than to Astolfo, but we do not complain. We possess as much wealth as we can gracefully bear. Our friend and ally, the erstwhile bandit Torronio, gained pardon for himself and for his Wrecker associates, and his family has taken him back into its fold. Those citizens who answered the call to arms that Astolfo sang out in his role as Ministrant during the Feast of the Jester have been recognized and officially commended. Those who did not respond have been questioned and some unsettling discoveries have been revealed.

“Now the citizens shall be less self-satisfied and more vigilant,” Astolfo said. “For a while, at least.”

So we rode toward the city in contentment. Now and again Telluria would sing childish verses to Gabriel, who occupied her lap. The driver of the carriage, a tall fellow with hair the color of polished brass, would occasionally join in:

“In the land where leopards leap,

A lonely shepherd tends the sheep,

When the night begins to fall,

The leopards eat 'em one and all.”

It is an old nonsense lullaby. I had heard it often as a child, and it has always proven to give the little ones exciting dreams. In response, I sang out a verse that drifted into my recollection:

“O when the winter snows do fall,

Covering hillocks, mantling all,

And desp'rate hunger attacks the leopard,

He may in turn eat up the shepherd.”

Torronio had begged off attendance at the manse for this occasion, pleading family affairs. He was engaged in trying to find place among the various enterprises of his tradesmen-kinfolk for Crossgrain, Squint, and the others who had fought with him against the pirates at the fire-pits. Old grudges die hard in families, and the older the family line the more fiercely are the grudges held. Torronio's diplomatic skill had borne little fruit, but he is an optimist. Sooner or later they must come round, he said. He now had friends among the town elders, who could impose special taxes upon certain ungrateful individuals who might be pointed out to them by that valiant defender of the city, Torronio. He denied any suggestion that this form of diplomatic persuasion was extortionate.

*   *   *

Mutano would be present at the feast. “You cannot prevent me,” his jesting letter said. “Nor can tempest, plague, nor the armies of the East. For we have our hearts and cannot be overcome.” The best I could cypher out of the incomprehensible word were by the letters m, w, x, r, u, and perhaps n. It was a term borrowed from the feline tongue that I took to signify something like “fortitude” or “nerviness.”

Often nowadays Mutano leant toward feline usages. This was no great wonder, for with his share of our reward he had purchased the cattery of Nasilia and had transported all her animals to his new property, the great château that had once belonged to Tyl Rendig. Astolfo, on his behalf, had petitioned the Council and the elders and the respectable nobility who were connected in any way with the vile baron to grant for a nominal sum a perpetual lease on that forbidding edifice.

Now the turrets and battlements, the corridors and long halls were populated by cats of every shape, color, breed, and temperament. They were not slaughtered for their musk, although the Château Felis, as it was now called, did still supply the perfumists. But Mutano had collaborated with the Green Knights and Verdant Ladies to produce a rose attar that had the strength and something of the olfactory qualities of cat-musk. The Lady Aichele had been successful in crossing one of the few remaining shadow-eater plants with an exotic musk rose and this base for scent had become a favorite. She and Astolfo had other experiments in progress together, but I was not privy to their goals.