A Shadow All of Light

  “Drink up,” I commanded. “Did he speak of the disciplines you must undergo to be well trained in our vocation?”

  “He promised that you two would take me in hand and lead me onward.”

  “Did he speak of the rewards you might gain?”

  “I did not ask and he did not say. He gave me two silver eagles for expenses I might run into.”

  “No,” I said. “He did not. You do not have any silver. You never had any.”

  “Indeed I do.” He reached into the cuff of the blouse Astolfo had lent him and brought forth a pair of coin-sized tin buttons. He glared at them. “These were silver when Astolfo gave them to me.”

  Mutano boxed his ear—too gently, I thought—and said, “We call him Maestro Astolfo and from this moment so shall you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say the words.”

  “Maestro Astolfo.”

  “What answer did you return to his question about the accents and vocabularies of your associates?” I asked.

  “I told him that many of the accents here in Tardocco are strange to me. I have lived all my life on a farm in the country and don’t hardly know one kind of speech from another. But there is a man they call Digitus with an odd way of talking through his nose. To me he sounds like a foreigner.”

  “Say some words that he used.”

  He frowned and closed his eyes. Over by the rose trellis a seated lutenist was singing a soft and melancholy ballad which he seemed to address to a handsome woman with magpie hair, velvet black with a silky white streak along the part. At a well-lit table to our right three youths were casting dice and giggling. The warm night wind swayed the leaves of a tall fig in the center of the garden. Finally Osbro said, “Foo-gus?”

  Mutano look at me.

  “Perhaps fougasse,” I told him. “It’s a kind of bread they eat on the western coasts.”

  “Drink again, Arsebro,” Mutano said. “Ale is a great restorer of memory.”

  Though he appeared to doubt the truth of that statement, Osbro complied.

  “What question did he ask that most surprised you?” I said.

  He shook his head wonderingly. “He asked if I had any maritime experience, particularly in the matter of piloting ships or riverboats.”

  “And when you told him you had none?”

  “He said that was regrettable but not crucial. He asked if I could swim and I said yes.”

  “Where did you learn to swim?”

  “In the stream we call Dove Creek a little way out from the farm.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “That woman they call La Pluma. She taught me some other things too.” His smile was a little tipsy and happily reminiscent.

  “How did you come to know her?”

  “She used to visit our father after Mother died. I want my silver eagles back.”

  “What are you speaking of?”

  “You took my coins and put buttons in their place.”

  “I did?”

  “You or him.”

  That statement earned a pinch that would leave a purple patch on his thigh. “I do not relish being called a thief,” Mutano said.

  “You are unwise in your drinking custom,” I said. “Too much ale confuses the memory. I would expect that your silver, if it ever existed, will be just where you placed it in your blouse.”

  He dug the coins out and laid them in his left palm. He blinked at them as if he had never seen them before.

  “Drink up,” Mutano ordered. “You are falling behind. Falco and I are into our tenth round.”

  He shook his head. “That cannot be true.”

  “Down the gullet,” Mutano said. He pushed a new bumper to Osbro. “Drink up. Be merry. I feel a song rising to my throat.”

  “I regret this piece of news,” I said.

  “So do I,” said Osbro with a hiccough.

  I pulled his nose. “You must never disrespect your superiors,” I said. “That results in sore punishments, especially if you disparage their musical abilities.”

  Mutano launched:

  “When I was King o’ the Cats and you were the farrier’s pet,

  Things were as they ought to be and may be yet Again.”

  “Lubly,” Osbro mumbled. “Byoofl.”

  “It is good that you say so,” I said. “It argues a modicum of taste. Now it is your turn.”

  “To sing?” He looked at me with an expression of terror. “I have no voice for song.”

  “You are too modest by far,” Mutano said.

  “Stand and give throat,” I said.

  He lurched to his feet and grasped the table edge with flattened, white fingers. With a timbre like falling rock, he began:

  “Hog drovers, hog drovers, hog drovers are we,

  A-tuppin’ the women wherever they be—”

  “Quiet that braying!” “Stop his mouth!” “Silence!” The sentiments of our neighbor tipplers were clear to us. The lutenist made a derisive brangle upon his strings.

  “Barbarous!” said Mutano. “Sit down and bring no more shame upon us. Thou’rt not fit company for onagers.”

  Osbro hung his head. “Tol’ you so.” He sat; it was an unsteady movement.

  “Why did the maestro ask if you were a boat pilot?” I said. “He knows the greater part of your history and knows you to be no seafarer.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Drink up,” said Mutano. “Maybe an answer will come to you.”

  He tried but could get down only a petite sip.

  “Be more manly,” Mutano said, and slapped him on the back.

  An expression of bewilderment crossed Osbro’s face. “He asked if I could see well in the dark.”

  “See in the dark? What did he mean?”

  “Don’t know. Tol’ him I could if I had a light and he smiled.”

  I raised my hand to cuff him but desisted, unsure what result might follow. “A silly thing to say.”

  “He smiled at it.”

  “The maestro is a generous man,” Mutano said. “A less good-hearted person would have set the dogs on you. Lame jests are the lice of social intercourse.”

  “No dogs, not him. He would set shadows on me.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “To suck my soul and leave me a husk. Ever’body knows. That’s how he came wealthy. Sucked the souls from people and stole their gold. Ever’body in Caderia talks about it.”

  “Ignorant mud-choppers,” Mutano said. “What do they know of the ways of the learned?”

  In a subdued, unhappy voice Osbro said, “I wish I could read. ’Deed I do.” He set his hands flat on the table, laid his head on them, and closed his eyes.

  “You do not have our permission to sleep,” Mutano said.

  For reply Osbro began to snore.

  “We have lost a cup-companion,” I said to Mutano. “What do you make of him?”

  “I think him honest enough, yet I cannot fathom why Maestro Astolfo shows interest. He has no skills useful to us.”

  “What was this matter of ship piloting? Is the maestro taking us to sea?”

  “We must assume that he gathered intelligence from Osbro we cannot recognize.”

  “Yes.”

  We were silent for a space, then Mutano proposed a topping-off of our drinks. We would arrange for the tavern to lay out a sleeping space for Osbro in the cellar. He could make his way home in the morning. We would return to the manse now and be prepared. We had tasks to accomplish.

  * * *

  Astolfo had never mentioned the name of our Jester-client to us, so Mutano and I had taken to referring to him first as il signor Misterioso, and then as Sterio. But the specifications he had delivered as to the ritual coffin were not mysterious. They were meticulous and set out in old-fashioned language, suggesting how deeply rooted in tradition was the Tumulus rite. The shape required was hexagonal, the upper sides slanting to modest angles at the shoulder-points; the length was two and one-ha
lf cubits, the breadth three hand-widths at the shoulders, tapering to two and one-half at termination. The wood was cedar, prepared to take the bright red, yellow, and blue lacquers of the harlequin costume.

  I proposed giving over this preparation to our groom, who was a clever hand at carpentry, but Mutano said that he and I had better do the construction ourselves. “It is all false shamming,” he said, “but if something goes wrong with the ritual, we must bear our part of the responsibility. We should not appoint the groom. He has no notion of what might be at stake.”

  His caution won me over and we set to sawing, planing, sanding, joining, and mixing colors. There were finicky instructions about how the design of the diamond-shapes should overlap the edges of the box and we took close pains with that detail and the tedious others.

  When finished, the small coffin presented a gay appearance, yet there was an air of melancholy dignity about it too; it seemed a fitting resting-container for an effigy, a stick-puppet, and a shadow. The sight of it inspired Mutano to recall:

  “The world will still go round and round

  When Bennio slides into the ground.”

  He essayed the accompanying cackle of laughter but could not find the right intonation.

  I capped the antique chant:

  “When the Jester stands again uprose,

  The world its revealing shadow throws.”

  We set the coffin on a platform in an upstairs storeroom for the first coatings of lacquers to dry and went about outfitting our cart for the transport to the Tumulus.

  Astolfo was to drive the cart, with Defender serving as dray horse. “This once and ne’er again,” said Mutano. We did not wish to be outdone by any other household or individual in the matter of equipage, so we applied colors red and yellow and white to the sideboards. The wheel spokes were black with gold-and-white arrow designs. This labor consumed the better part of a day, but we were gratified by the look of the conveyance when we were finished.

  “A satisfactory cart,” Mutano said, “but at the last, the whole affair is only a falsity.”

  * * *

  Osbro returned from his beery initiation and was steady enough that Mutano continued to train him in our necessary arts and disciplines. I was to take no part, Astolfo ordained, because the temptation for me to enjoy too energetically the wrestling bouts and wooden-sword encounters would be always present. Nor would have my brother received instruction from me with the warmest enthusiasm.

  Other tasks busied my hours. We had counted on a number of days of brisk umbral trade, as the folk prepared costumes, exhibits, tableaux, and dances for the Feast. Those requests had slackened lately; the preparations in the households had come pretty far along and latter orders would be mostly for the sake of finesse.

  But the maestro had assigned me a laborious study. We needed—he emphasized necessity—our maps of the city brought up to date. Our library was well stocked with charts of the thoroughfares and parks and commercial establishments, but the harbor area had sustained a goodly amount of construction in latter years. Trade was increasing; new sources of supply had opened in the eastern islands; new markets arose along the western coastline. New shippers were opening warehouses; workers from our northern provinces flocked to the harbor, along with laborers from other points of the weather vane. Dwellings sprang up within and around this area, as did auxiliary and ancillary enterprises. Wealthy Tardocco was becoming wealthier.

  Still the town lacked defenses. We hosted no standing military, only a Civil Guard to keep domestic peace and a separate dozen or so private armed groups allied with the Guard and chartered by the Council. These groups could count five or six members at most. All these forces were adequate to quell street brawls and conflicts between drunken sailors, to dampen thievery and abduction and the myriad other rogueries that infest a port city, but they offered scant protection from large, well-armed outside forces of the kind Astolfo suspected might now threaten us.

  A sage civic leader of ancient time had pronounced in oracular fashion that Tardocco should protect itself with “wooden walls.” He succumbed to age before he could unfold his meaning and debate flared as to whether or not he had intended that the city should be walled all about. That idea made little sense for a town open to the sea on one side. The opposing faction declared that Arisius must have believed that the town should build ships and mount a navy. This latter was the logical alternative, but it entailed great expenditure as well as an array of skills then unavailable.

  In the end, nothing was done, and we lay vulnerable.

  So I pored over the dusty-musty maps in the old leather portfolios, making notes on sites I knew had changed and listing other spots I must visit now in order to rectify the existing charts and redescribe the present sites.

  These tasks must be done quickly.

  The maestro himself had several projects under way, some of them unrevealed to Mutano and me. But we were aware that he was undertaking one part of Osbro’s training himself. He was teaching him the workings of the villa—how it was provisioned, how the operations were maintained: the servants, animals, mechanisms, tools, gardens, various shelters, and so forth. We wondered at that; he had hardly spoken to us of these subjects at all. Osbro was avid to learn of these matters and was well suited, since he had observed such management for a long time from beneath, as a supplier of farm goods to noble houses.

  * * *

  When I could no longer bear sitting at a table turning over crackling parchment charts, I rose and rode into town. I stalled the small, gray mare called Patience at a livery stable near Daia Plaza and made my way about on foot. The lanes and public squares were less crowded than they had been last time I was here, as if the citizens were holding down their highest spirits until the Feast proper.

  Even so, there was hurly-burly aplenty. Mutano had reported earlier that his perambulation had turned up a great number of Bennios, and that number must have increased. Jesters were everywhere—small and large, dexterous and clumsy, ebullient and taciturn, musical and decidedly unmusical. The air of subdued gloom I had noticed before still held, but it was a little abated because of the larger number of clowns.

  In the park greens impromptu tournaments took place and little boys and beardless youths clattered at one another with wooden swords and shields made of discarded tin salvers. Greased-pig chases were proving popular among similar groups. Spontaneous wrestling matches broke out and soon turned into earnest fights that loosened teeth and blackened eyes. Football games were in progress everywhere, so that one could hardly walk a hundred paces without having to toe a ball or two out of the way.

  My plan was to return to the Nuovoponte, take the slick stone steps down to riverside, and follow along the Daia to the harbor area, noting the new establishments springing up and the old that slumbered in desuetude, numbering the piers and landings, and studying the currents. The old establishments were of interest because they were infrequently overseen or inspected and so were available as hiding places for thieves and other malefactors. The closer I came to the harbor the more buildings I saw of this nature. Along the wharves the buildings in constant and profitable use stood side by side with edifices deserted and crumbling, dens for smugglers, rats, and fugitives.

  Astolfo seemed to expect that Tardocco would be set upon by pirates—by Morbruzzo, renowned for savagery in pillage, or by others almost equally feared. A greater fear was that some of the brigand bands had leagued together for a concerted attack. It was hardly unheard of that port cities fell prey to pirate fleets. Reggio, a fat island city to our southeast, had fallen to pirates four times in a dozen years. At last, as if its spirit were exhausted, the whole town crumbled in ruins in a series of earthquakes.

  An irony attending our fear of pirates was that Tardocco itself, according to some historical accounts, had been founded as a safe haven by pirates, a place for their ships to load off plunder and to repair damages sustained in battle. Astolfo threw doubt on the legend, saying that our comfortable co
mmercial town liked to give itself rakish airs, “like a chaste maiden cherishing a hidden tattoo of an arrow-pierced heart.” I preferred the legendary origin to the staid conjectures written by scribblers pedantic from birth. I liked also the myth of the Mardrake that inhabited the bay; that legend implied a long and eventful history largely unknown in our more humdrum time.

  Trudging along the loading piers at waterside, I recognized a familiar door, the side entrance to the great, gloomy warehouse that sheltered the offices of the merchant Pecunio, the old man whose commission had occasioned my introduction to the business of shadow-trading and its accompanying perils. This stretch of buildings looked more disused than any other I had passed. No lights showed between the board sidings of the structures and the planks of the piers were slick with algae. Pecunio’s front was the exception; the main entrance had been opened recently, though the trackings were unclear, especially in this fading, violet light. But the white stone sill of the side door bore boot marks, though no light shone out from any crevice.

  I slipped to the door and laid my ear against it and heard nothing. But the silence was not somnolent; it was like the silence of a man holding his breath. I waited, holding my own breath, and in a while I thought I heard sounds muffled by the thick pine door—steps as of several persons pacing about, a rumbling as of a handcart being trundled over the floor. I stood in this posture for a long time but could learn nothing else.

  * * *

  My circuit now brought me to Rattlebone Alley, a narrow passage that led to Chandlers’ Lane and thence to the broad avenue northward to the parks and the upper crescent of the city. An ill-favored tavern on my right-hand side emitted a soft dribble of voices and I stepped within to a low-ceilinged room with four bare tables and a long plank counter supporting five large casks. Upon tall chairs along the counter perched three querulous old men, being served with seeming reluctance by a sallow woman. She had seen better days but evidently took no pleasure in recalling them.

  I stepped to the splintery board counter and asked for ale.

  “Rum,” she said. “Rum only.” Her voice was of a timbre to alarm ravens.

  “Rum then.”