The Shadow Master (16 page)

“This is the River Styx,” the hooded man said. “There should be a boatman here to ferry us across.” He shone his light up and down the channel. “Never mind,” he said. “We will cross ourselves.” Lorenzo was starting to understand that many of the hooded man's statements were jests to himself that no one else was meant to understand. He watched him take one step back, tense and spring across the channel, landing lightly on his feet on the other side.

“Now your turn,” the hooded man said, shining the moonlight at the channel for Lorenzo to see the knee-deep or worse porridge of piss and turds and occasional swimming rat that he'd land in if he slipped. Lorenzo took a step back, as the hooded man had, and jumped, though not quite as far. He landed awkwardly and one foot skidded in something wet and slippery that he did not want to identify, and just before he fell back into the channel, the hooded man grabbed him. Lorenzo felt how strong his arms were, as he easily pulled him back to his feet. “That's no way to impress a girl,” the hooded man said, and turned and led their way onwards again.

It took some time to be far enough away from the stench that it did not fill his nose anymore, though he suspected the smell was lingering cruelly in their clothes and hair, following them as they went down the winding stone tunnels. There were just as many rats here, and every now and then the hooded man would kick one that was too slow in getting out of their way. “Did I mention to watch the rats?” he asked Lorenzo.

“Yes, you did,” he replied.

“That will make sense to you one day.”

“Why don't you tell me what it means now?” Lorenzo asked.

“Because there are some things you need to find out for yourself. Like your destiny.”

“I thought you said you were going to show me my destiny.”

“I am. But it's up to you to figure out how to act upon it.”

“You talk in riddles.”

“Would you rather riddles or metaphors?”

Lorenzo hardly had to think about that one. “Riddles,” he said.

“Good man. Now we need to be very quiet as we proceed.”

“Why? What's ahead of us?” Lorenzo asked.

“Great danger,” the hooded man said. “And that's not a metaphor nor a riddle. It's a reality.”

 

 

 

XXVIII

“Your grace,” said the Lorraine steward. “I am sorry to interrupt you, but your daughter's handmaiden has some troubling news for you.”

The Duke, Duchess and Leonardo, who were seated together in one of the upper rooms of the Lorraine household, pouring over sketches on the table, all looked up. The handmaiden tried to raise her eyes, but as soon as they met the Duchess's she dropped them back to the floor again. “Yes?” the Duke asked again.

The handmaiden stammered a few words towards her shoes and the Duchess said, “Speak up girl!” She nearly burst into tears at that, and wondered if her punishment would be any less severe if she were crying. “It's… it's… Lucia,” she stammered.

“Yes?” said the Duke again.

“She's… she's… she's… gone missing.”

“What do you mean gone missing?” the Duchess demanded, and the handmaiden started spilling words to match the tears now falling on the floor about her in soft splashes. She told them that when Lucia had not come downstairs for luncheon she went back up to her chamber to tell her of the parents' displeasure, but she was not there. She had told herself that Lucia was surely somewhere around the house, and was in no trouble. Then when she could not find her she told herself that she was hiding somewhere, but was still in no trouble. As the day dragged on, though, and still Lucia could not be found, she had told herself that Lucia had probably slipped out of the house with one of the other servants to go shopping or something, and while she was going to be in trouble for it, she was certainly in no great danger. Then as she asked each of the servants if they had seen her, she came to believe that Lucia probably was in some danger.

She glanced across to the steward who declined to add his part in the story. She had reported to him each time she had failed to find Lucia. At first he had said, unconcerned, “Then you must look a little harder for her. It is a big house, but not so big that you won't find her.”

When she next reported back that she could still not find her the steward had shown a little concern and asked if she had talked to all other household staff yet, and then sent her off to do so. And when she returned to tell him that still Lucia could not be found, the steward finally started looking concerned and said to the handmaiden, “You will have to tell the Duke,” he said.

“Me?” she asked. “I thought you might choose to inform him.”

The steward gave her a “do-I-look-like-I'm-mad?” look and said. “Come. I will take you to him.” The handmaid nodded obediently and told herself, as long as he's not with his wife it will not be too bad. But of course he was with his wife. And that strange old man Leonardo who they said was a magician.

“M… m… missing,” the handmaid stammered once more, still keeping her eyes to the ground, afraid to meet the Duchess' glare. But the Duchess was ignoring the girl and firing rapid questions at the steward. “Has the house been searched? When was she last seen? Has she gone outside for any reason?” The steward told them what the handmaiden had told him and the Duchess dismissed her. “Go and do something useful, like cut your wrists,” she said to her. The girl scurried off, sobbing. She should have told them about the young man. But they had dismissed her before she could tell them. She fled to Lucia's bedroom and sat there on a chair rocking, as much in fear for her own safety as Lucia's.

The Duchess circled the table in fury. “It is the Medicis!” she spat. “They have abducted her. They think to gain the upper hand. We should rally our troops and march on their house this evening. We should burn them out.”

“They have gone too far,” said the Duke, matching his wife's anger.

“I think we should examine the facts before us before making any rash decision,” said Leonardo. “Surely if the Medicis have kidnapped her somehow, they have done so to provoke such an action from you.”

“We'll give them more goose stuffing than they bargained for,” the Duchess said. “And they'll be the type of geese that bite the hands that feed them!”

“Yes, I'm sure,” said Leonardo, “But why play into their trap? For it is surely a trap.”

The Duke considered that a moment, and then said, “Leonardo may be right. This could be a trap. They might be trying to provoke us to send our soldiers against them as they have some stratagem to defeat them.”

His wife banged her fist on the table. “My father would never have hesitated,” she shouted. “He'd have marched at once and have been over their walls before midnight. Roasting them in their beds. He'd cook their geese to warm his feet.”

“If Lucia is inside their house such an attack might lead to her being harmed,” Leonardo said calmly. “Either by the Medici forces or inadvertently by your own.”

The Duke nodded his head. Then he said, “You will need to build us some more machines. Something that will let us invade the Medici house without putting our daughter at risk.”

“A flying goose rather than an eagle?” Leonardo suggested quietly.

“What about the mole or the turtle machines?” the Duke asked. “How far advanced are they? The mole could have men dig into their courtyard and we'd fill the household with our men before they knew what had happened.”

Leonardo stroked his long white beard a little. “I have not yet been able to duplicate the machine the way the ancients had built them. They were able to build tunnels all under the city, as you know, but the experimental model I built was not so successful. The tunnel the fellow was digging collapsed behind him, burying him. They are too dangerous to use.”

The Duke waved his hand in the air. “These are simply fine details for you to perfect. I will send you twenty more men to trial the thing with. You can afford to lose half of them.”

Leonardo raised his eyebrows in surprise. That had sounded more like a sentiment the Duchess would have voiced than the Duke.

“I will need four days,” Leonardo said.

“You have two,” said the Duchess.

“Three,” said Leonardo, as if he was bidding on something more material than men's lives.

“Agreed,” said the Duke and slapped a palm on the table. “We must have them as soon as possible. I expect the Medicis will be wanting us to sweat a little before playing their next hand anyway, so we have a little time to prepare.”

“We will pluck their geese without them even realising it,” the Duchess said.

“And I'm sure that would be a goose of a different colour,” said Leonardo, arching an eyebrow, not hiding his displeasure at this request being made of him.

“Your grace?” said the handmaiden, meekly; she had returned to the door with the steward.

“What is it now?” snapped the Duchess.

“There's something else,” the handmaiden said softly. “There was a young man.”

 

 

 

XXIX

The Nameless One examined himself in the mirror for some time, pondering the growing dark lines under his eyes and the increasing droop to his mouth. He stared long and hard until he could see his youth hidden beneath it. He had shed his leather clothes and mask and was dressed once more in his silk and jewelled finery.

This evening he wore a white silk shirt with a black and silver jacket and dark pantaloons. He came into the dining chamber where his wife waited for him at the table, and complimented her fine blue dress with embroidered white flowers on it. It was one of her favourites, and she always wore it when in a good mood. He smiled to see it. “You're late for dinner, my love,” she chided gently.

“Yes, I'm sorry,” he said. “An urgent task that needed my attention.”

“Nothing difficult, I hope?” she said.

“Nothing too difficult,” he replied.

“Do we have a guest in the lower chamber?” she asked.

He worked his jaw a moment and then said, “You need not worry yourself about my business affairs.” She gave him a stare, as if to disagree, and then nodded her head.

“What news of the city today?” she asked him, lapsing into their regular evening small chat.

“All is calm in the city,” he said.

“Was there not some conflict?” she asked.

“It is all well now,” he said. He had told her of the conflict between the Medicis and the Lorraines the day before, and she had quizzed him about it, but he knew she would not remember it clearly today.

“Come and sit by me,” she said. He smiled and carried his chair across to her. “Yes, my dear.”

“I wish we could go for a walk after our meal,” she said. He placed a hand on hers. They would not be walking this evening. The wasting disease was a terrible thing. It left a person looking healthy and whole, but ate them away from the inside. It slowly took away strength from a person's limbs and also the strength of a person's mind.

He had visited the apothecaries many times for potions, some of which seemed to help and some of which did not, but they said that it was only possible to slow the wasting disease – never to cure it. The ancients had a cure for it, he had been told. But the knowledge of that was lost to them, like so much else of the ancients' wisdom.

But he continued to urge them to try new cures. For as the disease ate away at her, he found it ate away at him too. It was making him increasingly unfeeling. Making him more careless in taking risks. Making him less skilled at the secret trade that he was so valued for.

“Will you be going out again this evening?” she asked him.

“Just for a short time,” he said. “I will not be late.”

“Always business,” she chided him.

“These are difficult times,” he told her. “One must maintain one's interests.”

“Of course,” she said.

They supped for a while on fowl and vegetables, and then he said, “I have a present for you, my dear.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a little brass object of wheels and gears.

“What is it?” she asked.

He worked his jaw again and said, “Watch closely.” He took out a small brass key and wound the device. Then he set it down on the table. The wheels turned and the gears clicked and the object rose and changed, rising into the shape of a bird; then it bobbed its head and opened its beak and chirped.

He watched his wife's eyes open is amazement and she put a hand to her mouth in delight. “It is wondrous,” she said. “It is like magic.”

“Yes,” he said. “It is. But it is only the work of skilled craftsmen.”

The bird continued chirping until the spring inside it had wound down and then it disassembled back into a formless collection of wheels and gears. “Magicians I think,” she said and lifted up the object to examine it closely. Then she said, “Wind it up again and let me hear it sing once more.”

He gave her the key and said, “It is your gift. You may wind it and have it sing for you as many times as you like.”

He watched her take the key and carefully insert it into the slot in the bird and he wondered if, when he gave it to her anew tomorrow, he might hide from her how he wound it and see if she might somehow remember it from all the days she had wound it already.

 

 

XXX

“Very quiet now,” the hooded man said to Lorenzo. “We are not alone anymore.” Lorenzo and the hooded stranger had descended deeper and deeper into the tunnels under the city, winding their way along the maze of dark passages that had been built by the ancients. “Tread slowly and silently,” he told Lorenzo. Then he did something to the light he carried and its beam softened so that it barely illuminated a few paces in front of them. “Put a hand on my shoulder,” he then whispered to Lorenzo.