A Shadow All of Light (57 page)

“My thoughts can be but surmises,” Astolfo said. He spoke slowly, as if thinking upon the matter afresh. “The lore names the Mardrake immortal, but I think it can be only nearly immortal, surviving in a sort of dream-state in the black waters. Long ago I read a passage in an anonymous treatise that I now begin to give some credence to. The long-dead scrivener wrote that the Mardrake is a shadow that inhabited an immeasurably ancient primal age before shadows gave up corporeality. In the beginning, said he, shadows inhabited the two states, the substantial and the insubstantial. They still retain some characteristics of their earliest form of organism, or we could not so physically handle them as we do, sundering, positioning, and sculpting. But in the major part of his being, the Mardrake is still a living creature, lying within the depths of the bay in a trancelike sleep.”

“Mutano suggests that it attacked our large puppet-monster out of annoyance, the way a sunfish will attack lures of owl feather or wisps of horse tail,” I said.

“Perhaps. Yet have you not in the grip of a vivid dream struck out with your arm against a wall or pillow or the headboard of a bed? It may be that the false Mardrake disturbed the sleep of the real one and it responded unthinkingly.”

“And you suppose that this being may be only half corporeal? If it does possess a greater bodily nature than what it showed during the battle, its dimensions must be immense.”

The maestro bit his lower lip, considering. “It may be that we saw only the smallest part of him. The legends draw him of a size incomprehensible. As for his nature being half substance and half nonsubstance—well, many a graybeard has described the nature of humankind in the same terms.”

“And many a poet has seen mankind as no less a monster than the Mardrake,” I said.

Mutano said, “If he be half of substance and half of spirit, then his corpus will die. What then of his nonsubstantial half?”

“No one ventures to say, though the poet describes his dream-enwrapped existence as a troubled one, down in the oceanic darkness. You will recall:

“There hath he lain for ages and will lie,

Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.”

The creature must be aware that in some future a final cosmic hour shall end its existence.”

Telluria spoke up softly. We all looked at her in surprise. “Mutano called the sea-beast ‘he.' Could it not be female? Maybe it saw the puppet and thought it a child, maybe her own grandchild.”

Astolfo took a long moment to respond. “None can say. It has been most often suggested that the Mardrake is a single, unique individual without siblings. It has been thought the only one of its kind.”

“Was it not born?” Telluria said.

“No one knows. It has been written that—”

She disengaged our babe from her breast and wiped his mouth. Then she nodded in agreement with herself. “Whatever the creature is, it was born of a mother,” she said. She smiled at Gabriel as his eyelids drooped and closed.

*   *   *

We feasted, we drank, but we were not the roisterers we were of old. Perhaps the presence of infant Stolfino gave cause to quiet our high spirits. Certainly the presence of Dorminia and the recollection of Veuglio weighed upon us. When Mutano rose to sing his favored ballad of love, “When I Was King o' the Cats and You Were the Farrier's Pet,” Maronda plucked him by his blue-and-gold gored sleeve and he sat.

Astolfo spoke to her. “You do not allow Mutano to caterwaul at us and for that we are grateful. All the more so, since the opportunity is open for you to sing. We all know of your pleasant skill with a song.”

She frowned and declined, but then after lengthy amounts of pleading from the rest of us, she rose to render a doleful ballad of a foolish young blade who falls into evil ways and meets a bad end, leaving his mother and sister to grieve. By the time she had finished, tears stood undropped in her eyes. I had heard talk that her brother Quinias had once more strayed from the path of virtue and was at odds with the authorities. There was a whisper he might have befriended the pirate invaders, but I put no faith in it. He was a fellow with no murder in him, only petty betrayal.

We divined the private burden of Maronda's lay and were glad when it was finished.

Astolfo allowed a space of silence to ensue before he began.

“I will speak of the passing of Veuglio. I had not seen him for two seasons and had received only vague tidings. He had reestablished relations with the beggars' guild. He also was a frequent visitor to the leper colony in the foothills, making the journey afoot with Dorminia at his side—he now called her Dorminia and never again Sibylla. She followed him as his ardent disciple and helpmeet. She had left the comforts of her wealthy family to cleave to my old friend and look to his well-being.

“When they came to my door I recognized that Veuglio was in his last days and that he counted upon me to see to his end. We laid him in the bedroom in the west wing and administered to him as best we could. Dorminia never abandoned his bedside.

“I saw him take his wordless, final breath and then lose it to the aether. His form was still, his features were peaceful. The setting sun cast his shadow beside him on the bed linen. When Veuglio died, his shadow changed its nature. It had been lying dark, like any other umbra. And then it became like no other.

“At that moment his shadow rose up from the bed. Within the red sunlight I could no longer make it out. I could not say if it were in the room.

“Dorminia stood up. She bent over Veuglio and kissed his forehead. She turned and took up Veuglio's staff where it leaned in the corner. Then she gave me a long and mournful gaze. And then, with pouch and staff, she departed. I did not know if ever I would lay eyes upon her again.”

He paused and put a knuckle to his right eye. If he wept then, I did not see the tear.

“But here she is with us tonight, in answer to my most earnest request. I am grateful, as I think you will be also.… Let us raise a glass. She does not indulge in wine, so we must taste for her tonight.”

We followed his welcome direction.

He continued. “Her presence allows me to exhibit to you the realization of an idea—nay, a dream and a hope—I have held to for long and long. I have spoken of it to Falco and to Mutano also, though I think they paid little attention, thinking it a foolish fancy.

“But let us try to discover if our best hopes are always false.”

At his signal two servants came to the table. They bore between them a screen such as those who entertain crowds at fairs with shadow-puppets employ. These are made of a close-woven linen that has the capacity to register the smallest details: the jagged cap of a Jester-puppet, the delicate curls of a Columbina-puppet. The servants placed this screen behind the chair in which Dorminia was seated.

Then they went around the walls, extinguishing the torches and candles installed there.

All the room was dark except for the illumination upon our table. Astolfo gathered the table candles into a phalanx in front of Dorminia. She rose and pulled aside her chair.

Now she stood sidewise to the light so that her umbra would be cast upon the screen.

It was a long and silent time before her form appeared, and when it came to sight it was difficult to make out. The umbrae we normally observe are alterations of ambient light caused by material objects or phenomena. Whatever presence casts a shadow composed of light is not of a material substance. A shadow whose shape is formed all of light is not easily perceived.

I have thought that it must be the shade of the
vis,
the outline of the life force of someone the pains and sorrows of the world have scraped clean of every mark a human fault could lay upon it. Only moon-bright purity can cast a shadow made of light.

Yet it was not the shadow of Veuglio—or not entirely. It was intermixed with other shapes besides, for Dorminia's form was an inseparable and almost undistinguishable part of it, and so was Sibylla's; it was a shadow that chose to accompany Dorminia because in our world she had become the thing nearest its own nature.

I looked around at our party. We had all risen to our feet without realizing that we had done so. Mutano, Maronda, Osbro, and Telluria gazed wonder-struck. Gabriel opened his eyes and beheld and smiled and fell asleep again still smiling.

“We are ever in your debt, Dorminia, for consenting to make the journey here,” said Astolfo.

The screen was removed. She gave each of us a grave, smiling bow and walked from the room, her bright shadow now unseeable.

Astolfo explained. “She returns now to the leper colony in the foothills.”

He drank the last of his brandy and upended his glass on the table. We did likewise.

And went quietly to our chambers and their restorative beds.

*   *   *

I rose at an unwontedly late hour in a room without other occupants. Telluria and Stolfino would already be breaking their fast in the dining hall with fruit and barley groats. I gathered myself and allayed my hot thirst with the water jar and rubbed six handfuls of the basin water into my face and hair and then berated Falco yet once more in repentant tones: “Thou'rt too far along in years for such night-work, fellow. Thou'rt no longer the reckless bravo of the alleyways.”

I hurried to find our company. I did not want to omit making my manners to Osbro and voicing once again my gratitude to Astolfo and I had my singular matter to put to Mutano.

The opportunity was lost. The steward informed me that Osbro and Astolfo had gone to the mid-city to search out the artist Petrinius and inspect his mural. He had at last finished his great work, now called
Humanity Most Inhumane,
and was hiding away from the raging wrath of some of the personages portrayed therein. Telluria and the babe were finished at table and now stood in the sunlight of the courtyard, watching as servants packed our belongings into the conveyance that had brought Mutano and Maronda hither.

Mutano stood there too, observing with care how the task proceeded. Maronda had stepped aside to speak to Telluria and to coo over the babe. My old colleague gave me a quizzical, amused glance as I approached.

“I have a thing to ask of thee,” I said.

He smiled knowingly and nodded.

“It may be that you already foretell the import of my question.”

He grinned.

“But I am in earnest and I must have your promise that you will tell the truth, wholly and without deception.”

He nodded acquiescence.

“Are you, at last, the King o' the Cats?”

He closed his eyes, as if to consider, then opened them to gaze seriously into my own. He spoke calmly and volubly for a longer space of time than I had supposed he might. But whether he answered affirmatively or negatively, my narrow acquaintance with the feline language has still not allowed me to know.

 

About the Author

Fred Chappell
is an author, poet, and a former professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was the poet laureate of North Carolina from 1997 to 2002. His literary awards include the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, the Bollingen Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize. You can sign up for email updates
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