“Nay. The hour is not yet.”
* * *
“These duels consume a tiresome portion of the clock,” Astolfo said to me when I returned.
The three of us had lately formed the habit of occupying the small library. In time past we had gathered most often in the great kitchen, but the scullery staff and Iratus complained that we were too often present when he had tasks in hand. For his part, Astolfo would rarely gainsay his favorite cook; that artisan was necessary, he claimed, for the conduct of financial affairs, supplying as he did a sumptuous table when clients were invited.
“I had not expected that Mutano would return till near twilight,” I said. I leaned forward in a strap-bottomed chair and watched the two shadows of Creeper gambol together in the far corner of the room. He, the caster of the umbrae, was nowhere to be seen. Lately, Creeper had been known to sleep for days on end, rousing only to tend to the demands of gut and bowel. It was explained to me that the drawing off of two lively shadows from his form depleted his store of vis vitae; long sleeping aided return of it.
“These two, Mutano and Castilio, are acting without seconds,” Astolfo said, “and there is no need for elaborate protocol—and yet they will be long at the business, though the combat itself shall prolong for only swift-flying minutes.”
“I marvel at his choice of weapons,” I said, “for Mutano knoweth well that the saber is not the steel to which he is best accustomed.”
“Perhaps his challenge is to himself, as well as to Castilio.”
“He hazards his life. Is it not too risky a venture to gain so small a point of honor?”
“The rules and limits Mutano establishes for himself are unknown to me. It may be that if we apprehended the rules, his comportment would display a logic.”
“’Tis well beyond my fathoming.”
“I see there in the corner the two shades of Creeper,” Astolfo said. “I conclude, then, that you have brought off your part of the affair successfully.”
“I cannot affirm yea or nay,” I replied. “I followed my instructions to the letter. Whether I managed to regain with our little trap Mutano’s voice, I cannot say. If so I did, then it is here.” I reached behind my chair and produced the trumpetlike contraption.
Astolfo then required me to give a full account of all that took place but broke off my narrative when I told of entering the room. “Pray do not leap to the middle,” he said. “Did you take heed that Castilio had already departed?”
I hastened to assure him that I had kept watch until he had mounted for his appointment and had kept at my post for some little time afterward.
“You observed him to come out and take the reins?”
“I did.”
“How did his demeanor appear to you—in comparison, I mean, with the way you found him two days ago in the tavern room?”
I closed my eyes to bring the picture clear to mind. “He seemed restless of spirit. In the tavern he looked all a piece of easy insolence, but coming out to meet Mutano, he looked somdel apprehensive. Certes, he was irritable, for he was harsh to his groom.”
“It appeareth, then, that Creeper’s shadows performed well their offices,” Astolfo said. “They were set there to obstruct his breathing in the night, thus to prevent sound sleep. You have experienced this obstruction of inhalation by the cat’s shadow, have you not?”
“I have.”
“Out he came then, ill tempered and nervy, not so well fit to go at sabering.… And when he had mounted?”
“Off he cantered, after a sharp spurring of the stallion’s flanks.” I went on to tell, at a calm pace, everything else that I had heard and seen and done, expressing my surprise at the sound of Mutano’s voice as the cat spoke its sentence to me. I tried to describe the peculiar sweetness of timbre and melodiousness of cadence.
“Have you ever stood in a wintry grove of trees with a cold wind scraping and rattling the bare limbs together so that they creaked and squealed?” Astolfo asked.
“Yes.”
“That is how I recall the sound of Mutano’s voice. None of this consort of musical tones that you speak of, but an eldritch grating almost to stand one’s neck hairs on end.”
“I will avouch for what I heard. You told me before that he was a sometime minstrel.”
“His speaking voice was quite unmusical. It may be that this is a peculiarly musical cat and that his native talents wrought a happy change upon Mutano’s vocal qualities in his ordinary speaking. We may hope this to be the case, for the other explanation is less sanguine.”
“How so?”
“A man who performs so audacious a theft as that of another man’s voice will not be content to perform the deed a single time only. It may be that this o’er-sugared voice you heard belongeth to another than Mutano and that his is placed in another receptacle. Would you think that the voice you heard from the cat might have been purloined from a woman?”
I thought upon it. “I should not say so. For all its harmoniousness, it lacked a certain softness we associate with the fair.”
“We shall not know what is certain for some small space of time,” Astolfo said. “Perhaps you will tell now what progress you have made in the affair of the Sativius family.”
“I shall describe a contrivance I have imagined, a complicated arrangement of mirrors and sheets of glass. I cannot effect the portage of these elements alone and will ask Mutano’s aid.”
“He is in your debt.”
“So I have expected. I shall desire him to help to move and position these glasses.” I rose and walked to a long library table and returned with a large square of paper. “Here I have drawn out my plans, if you should care to see them over.”
Astolfo took the crowded page with an air of lazy amusement, looked at it, and began turning it sidewise and topsy-turvy. “You make up your designs with great enthusiasm,” he commented. Soon, though, he commenced to study my scribbles and hatchings with care, humming a tuneless ditty. He spent a goodish deal of time examining the sheet before rolling it into a cylinder and laying it across his lap. “These conceits you have laid out here—do they originate in your brain or found you them in some treatise tucked away in our shelves?”
“They are mine.”
He nodded. “The pride of your tone assures me. I ask the question because of the coincident nature of your imaginings.”
“In what way?”
He held up the page. “The designs you have made are similar in many respects to the methods that Mutano and I employed to animate the shades of Creeper.”
“I have no knowledge of how that was done and, as you can see, I have no ambitions to create shadows of independent force and motion. I would not care to animate the children’s umbrae, only to separate them one from another.”
“It is your notion then that the twins do each possess a shadow and that one is contained inside the other?”
“Yes.”
“And you propose with this arrangement of glasses to separate the two shadows so that they will then attach to their proper casters?”
“That is my plan.” I waited with some wariness for his sentence upon my constructions. I could hardly expect him to applaud them, but if he disallowed Mutano to work in my behalf, I would have to begin over once more, and he had warned me that time was rapidly shortening before a sad fate befell the young ones.
“It seems sound so far as it reaches,” he said. “I might suggest a few improving touches, if they will not injure your pride or damage your project as you see it.”
“I welcome any advice of Maestro Astolfo.” I made a teasing half bow from my seated position.
“My advice must wait,” he said, “for Mutano has returned, I believe.”
In strode he. His complexion was flushed, his eyes glary, but he wore one of his monstrous, wide-mouthed grins.
A line of spattered blood dotted his tunic from the collar down to the last button. It was not his own.
“Welcome,” said Astolfo.
In reply, Mutano tossed upon the small table between us a blood-soaked codpiece I recognized as belonging to Castilio.
* * *
Astolfo and I were not to hear the sound of Mutano’s voice—if indeed he had acquired a voice—for some little time, because he took himself aside to spend long hours in company with the capturing instrument, inhaling or imbibing his own voice from the mechanism. We surmised that vocal experimentation engaged him, that he was exercising his throat in private, and that he would reveal the result when he thought most proper.
It was with surprising good grace in the meantime that Mutano submitted to my desires in service of the Sativius family, helping me to transport my apparatus across the city, into the household, and up the stair to the room with the bay window’s light. Horseface Graysmock watched us arrange the pieces with undisguised disfavor. I rather hoped she would bestow some disdaining remark upon Mutano. He had no patience with females of her strain and would send her sprawling with the back of his hand did she once overstep.
The schema was disposed as thus:
I) The long table before the window was removed and the children brought forward toward the light;
II) the pair stood close together to cast a shadow behind;
III) directly posterior to them a large sheet of transparent glass was mounted, so that the shadow of the children fell on it complete;
IV) this glass was framed all around with a molding of purest copper;
V) the glass itself had been dusted over with a light coating of a silver salt that allowed the shadows to pass through
VI) to a mirror behind the silvery glass:
VII) which mirror was made of a peculiar glass tinted dark blue that had the power of absorbing images deeply, pulling them far into itself.
Sativius and Funisia gazed with apprehension upon this trifold arrangement. The father was very particular in inquiring whether Maestro Astolfo was aware of what I had projected and if he had approved. I assured him that Astolfo knew all and had contributed wise advice of optical nature. Funisia welcomed any venture that might benefit her brood.
As I instructed the twins that they must stand very still for quite a little while, they only stared mutely into my face, as if trying to read not only my intentions but any trace of doubt my mind might harbor. I murmured softly as I stood them in compliance with my design. When I was satisfied that the images of the shadows passed through the dusted glass into the mirror, I made a finger sign to Mutano where he stood at the side of the glass. He produced a piece of amber about the size of his palm, took from his belt pouch a small patch of lynx fur, and rubbed it over the amber. When he had rubbed for a short time, he touched the electrum to the copper molding of the mirror. This action he performed continuously as I observed. I stood to one side, facing away from the light, watching the shadow of the pair as it fell upon the dusted glass and seeing the image of the children as it entered the blue mirror.
This process required the better part of an hour and I tried not to allow my apprehensions to ruffle my demeanor. If the children grew restless and moved about, the silvered shadow would be blurred, the darker core more difficult to distinguish from the outer penumbra. If Mutano grew impatient, flung the lump of amber at my head, and stalked from the house, all would be ruined. If my scheme proved ineffective, if the spark from the rubbed amber did not transfer itself through the salt across the pane in sufficient force to animate the more passive shadow that was absorbed as the core of the other, I would again be a figure of ridicule to Astolfo and Mutano and must endure their humors and rude satires for a long time to come. And when again would Astolfo entrust me a commission to work upon by myself?
At last there occurred a change in the shadow in the glass. The dark core grew lighter in tint and extended its shape until it was almost identical in size with its envelope. In the blue mirror the images of the twins grew more distinct, their outlines more sharply defined. When the inner and outer shadows verged close to identity in size and density, I sharply bade the children to stand apart, to go quickly to the places I had marked on the carpet with two linen handkerchiefs.
When they did so, the shadow on the glass divided into two and at that moment, following my signal, Mutano smashed the glass with the pommel of his knife hilt. The shards dropped to the rug, clinking upon one another like counted coins, and across them and stretching beyond lay two shadows separate and individual. Mutano hurried to the blue mirror and turned its face to the wall. We could not draw from the children any more of their vis animae than was necessary for our task.
I was jubilant at the success of my experiment, but my joy immediately gave way to chagrin as the boy Rudens became even paler than before. His face drained of all color and he fell to the floor. I rushed to him, arriving at his side even before his mother, and put my ear to his face. His breath came but faintly and I asked for water to bathe his face and hands. He stirred a little at the touch of the water but did not open his eyes. Seeing this, Funisia gathered him up and bore him away.
Graysmock ran over to accuse me. “You have killed him! You have murdered the young master!”
“Silence your tongue,” I said. “No real harm has come to him. Go prepare a strong effusion of ginger root and give it to him when he wakens from sleep.”
She left in silent fury and Sativius knelt to Rudensia. She appeared to me much less affected by the splitting of the shadow than her brother had been, yet it was obvious that she had felt a change rush upon her. Her father peered into her eyes, then clasped her tightly to his chest. “Is it so?” he asked. “Have my children each a shadow now?”
“It is so,” I replied. “The effect of the division is less strong for Rudensia because what was taken from her was not correctly hers in the first place. For the boy, the sudden accession of his shadow overpowered him with a feeling that something long lost had been wholly returned. His was the lesser, darker umbra that Rudensia’s had absorbed in their earliest hours. We have been fortunate in our day of restoration. Had it occurred later, we might have lost one or both of the twins.” I went on to explain, as Astolfo had explained to me, that if once their souls entwined, they must face the doom of either madness as their spirits melted together into one or of physical death if ever they had to be separate one from the other.
He stood, still embracing the girl in his right arm. “I do not comprehend these matters,” he said. “I am but a blunt man of business and all this spiderweb machination with shadows perplexes me.”
“That is because you are unaccustomed. Think with what bewilderment a ploughboy looks upon a ship as it weighs anchor and steers from harbor. All will seem but arrant confusion to him, with sailors darting here and yon and the masters bawling orders and the sheets tying off and the cables laid by, but to your practiced eye all the commotion is of a pattern and every action is demanded by a necessity. It is the same with shadows. One must learn the ropes.”
“I believe the fee you set was two hundred eagles,” he said. “If my son revive in sound health, as you say that he shall, I will add another fifty.”
“That is unlooked for,” I said. “The fee is set and to be met, as the saying goes. Only do make certain that Horseface carries out her duties in good order and all shall be well.”
“Horse—?”
“Please pardon me. I meant no offense. The term rose unbidden to my lips.”
“As it sometimes has to my thoughts.” He smiled. “Yet she is fitting in her office, however imperfect in manner. Nevertheless, she shall see that you are offered wine and cake before you depart.”
“I thank your kind courtesy, but I must hasten to other duties. Maestro Astolfo always has several affairs in hand and I seem always to lag behind the order of his requests. If you will dispatch the eagles to him by messenger, along with a letter favoring or disfavoring my labors here, as you see fit, we shall be obliged.”
“That is soon done,” he said, “and again I tender my gratitude. I shall fully commend your execution
of the matter.”
With the usual bows and flourishing of my short cloak, I took leave.
* * *
There was to be a petite fete of celebration for the three of us, marking a success in my first unguided excursion into sciomantic venture. We hoped also to be celebrating the return of Mutano’s voice, but he had so far kept silent in our company. He had, in fact, kept apart from us for long stretches. We surmised that he was exercising his throat; the voice of a man of his make, confined for a long period in the voice-box of a cat, must have suffered diminution, if not deterioration. Astolfo suggested that he might be practicing an aria supple and trillful and difficult to execute to amaze us.
The cook had told the steward to lay out our supper on a corner of the long table in the dining room, but Astolfo would not have it. The rains had returned and he desired the closeness of the kitchen, with its oven heat and lamplight glancing from the surfaces of burnished copper and polished crystal. He was punctilious upon the victuals too: turbot and cold veal, varied herbage, a roast of venison, and then an apple tart with a great wedge of cheese from my native province. Topery would include cider and beer and a bottle of wine, aged and heady.
He and I sat at the table the steward had brought in and sipped at draughts of cider whilst we waited for Mutano to appear.
As I expected, Astolfo used the time to ask sharp questions about the Sativius children and my procedure in dividing the shadows. I described in detail every stage of preparation, every step of the process, and every piece of apparatus. During my peroration, he smiled at certain passages, closed his eyes, and appeared to meditate during others. When I concluded, he pressed his fingertips together and considered silently for a space. Then: “I will say it is to your credit that you appear to have discovered, by strength of your own wit, another of the traditional methods of taking shadows.”