Osbro, Mutano, and I looked at one another like men ordered by a trusted mentor to leap from the edge of a tall precipice into an abyss of mist.
Mutano and I signaled our readiness. Osbro hung back a little, then took a breath and said, “I am willing.”
“Very well,” Astolfo said. “Now each of us must take up separate tasks and responsibilities, but all efforts must knit together at the appointed times. Here is what I envision.…”
He was meticulous, even tedious, in his explanations, but we were grateful for every detail he outlined. He had convinced us of the magnitude of the peril and of the urgency of our separate duties.
* * *
My first duty, which I had to attend to by myself, was to seek out allies and cement relationship with them. It was to my old friend Torronio that I turned. We had kept in contact with each other as best we could. He was still hiding in exile, and this meeting had been difficult to arrange.
“It has been a long time since we took the plants from the Dark Vale. I had thought you would communicate before now,” Torronio said. He tossed the twig with which he had been toying into the small fire we sat beside. The flame responded with a lick of black smoke. The fire was not for heat; this night was warm, its breezes welcome. We only desired illumination out here at forest edge, away from the trail. Our horses champed the long grass, their brown eyes orange with firelight. An owl sent its challenging halloo across the darkness.
“How so?” I asked.
“The rumors of unrest are abroad. Even an exile like me hears mutterings. And you were seen gathering gossip in Rattlebone Alley.”
“If you have spies in the town—”
“Not spies. Only observant acquaintances.”
“Observers, then. I recognized the Molvorian accent of the old sailor in the tavern in Rattlebone Alley. This conference with me means that you maintain hope of regaining your former station.”
“I am not averse to returning to society. I tire of contemplating the objects of nature. The poets may have all my share of the crags and ferny glades and limpid springs and triumphal rainbows.”
“Does your band of robbers share your distaste for the natural world? Are the Wreckers thinking of becoming potboys and horse traders and gutter-muckers?”
“The Wreckers are no more. You remember that the man you named Goldenrod fell victim to those soul-snatching plants. Since that time Sneakdirk, as you called him, took a fall from a precipice as he was gathering samphire. There remain only Squint and Crossgrain.”
“And Torronio.”
“And myself, yes. But three can hardly make up a band, especially as we have little contact nowadays.” He found another trifling twig and laid it on the fire.
“Could you gather them to you to join in a task that entails some danger and good hope of reward?”
“Coin?”
“In abundance—and also a pardon from the Council for all crimes and malfeasances of which the band has been accused.”
He showed surprise. The shifting light on his features gave him an apprehensive expression. His time of exile had worn his spirit ragged. “Do you have the promise of the Council that we are to be forgiven?”
“No. But Astolfo is confident that if our venture succeeds, you and your comrades shall have the freedom of the city, along with handsome emolument and the comforts of female comradeship.”
“You mentioned a danger.”
“In the secret transport and directed igniting of oils and other flammables. We shall face an enemy force unknown in quantity. But you and Squint and Crossgrain have faced perils before and have come off well. All necessary equipage shall be supplied, for there must be digging of fosses also.”
He passed his hand along his forehead as if to relieve the pressure of uncertainty. “When would this action begin?”
“In a few days.” I handed him the little pouch. “Here is coin for present expenses. If you accept it from me, that means you have accepted the offer.”
He paused a long moment, then took it in hand. “Now the night is less friendly than before,” he said. “I seem to feel enemy presence about us in the darkness. It is only my fancy, I expect.”
“It is a fancy worth heeding,” I said.
The owl had quieted. We listened to the silences gathering in the forest until I rose and we stamped out the puny flames. He mounted and rode slowly into the woods and I came back to the villa the long way round.
* * *
In the morning Mutano and I were giving cart and coffin a final, slow inspection. All was perfect, as far as we could tell. We spoke guardedly about our roles in the impending conflict. We needed to know in a general way what each was doing, Astolfo had said, but the particulars were best known only privately. If one of us was captured, he could give up only partial intelligence.
Now Mutano was complaining about the arrangement. “By whom are we to be captured? What could they learn from us? Nothing from me, for I have but the flimsiest speculation of what the whole of our strategy is.”
“You have been practicing to regain your cattish tongue of late,” I said. “Are cats to take part in our defense of the town?”
“The maestro assigned me to inquire among the beggars’ guild and the cats that gather to ’em about strangers that have come to town and in particular about newcomers to the harbor area. He has convinced me that the invasion is to take place a little at a time. That those who have dispersed themselves within Tardocco will join with others at the harbor near the mouth of the river, and that at a certain signal a ship anchored in the bay will dispatch trained and armed groups to meet with others and overwhelm us all. It will be all of a sudden, a lightning strike. Astolfo desired for me to estimate how large is the number among us already.”
“Have you made a guess?”
He brushed invisible dust off the coffin and replaced the wrapping. “They are fewer than we feared. No more than a hundred, perhaps. These are to be joined by another forty or fifty from shipboard.”
“So few?”
“They are trained and bloodthirsty. If we were not forewarned, this town would be easy prey.”
“Yet Astolfo did not forewarn the Civil Guard or the private guard forces of the nobles and the wealthy.”
“He is uncertain how many are trustworthy. Maybe these groups have already been seeded with turncoats.”
“I do not understand this strategy,” I said. “We are a puny number. There must be schemes in place you and I are ignorant of.”
“Well, look for the Tarnished Maiden to play some part in the fray,” Mutano said. “I tell what I was enjoined to keep secret.”
“The Tarnished Maiden? That derelict has lain in the harbor for years, awaiting its destruction by the owner. If Ser Arbolo had not died and his sons were not still at quarrel, it would be in pieces at the bottom of the waters. It is not fit for action—for anything.”
“So I would have thought also.… What is that sound?”
I listened and finally heard shouting and wild music a long way off. “Revelry. Some Feasters are impatient.”
“’Tis yet but a few days. They will tire themselves and sleep through.”
“Unlikely,” I said. “The antics and entertainments will begin in earnest now. I am looking forward to the gardeners’ guild presentation of Perseus and the Mardrake.”
“You may be somdel disappointed,” Mutano said, “for Cocorico is not to perform the Mardrake role.”
“Why not?”
“The maestro has made him and Sbufo associate with me in our defensive maneuvers.”
“What can a dancer and a puppeteer do in the way of mounting a defense?”
“I cannot say, but maybe Astolfo will reveal his mind to you. Do you not confer with him in private today?
“In about an hour from now.”
“And I confer with you and Osbro afterward. The maestro is very secret in this business.”
* * *
I was to speak with Astolfo in the small
library, but when I arrived the door was closed. This was unusual, for it was heretofore left open always as an invitation for Mutano and me to come study the lore of umbrae. Here stood shelves with every knotty, grime-laden text on the subject that had emerged since the invention of writing. Or so the weariness of my eyesight had often suggested.
I knocked and heard him invite me in and entered.
He was not visible. A long rank of lit candles sat on the table to my right and the curtains were drawn to let in light on that side. I closed the door, supposing that privacy was in order, and stopped some eight paces into the room.
There I halted, suddenly overcome with a sensation like nothing I had felt before. A dizziness powerful enough to cause me to totter struck upon me and I experienced a paralyzing bewilderment. It was something like rushing up a flight of stairs to come to the top and find that the steps ended and there was nothing there, nowhere to plant one’s feet, so that one had to hold back by the balance of the toes alone. It was almost to plunge into the blue depths of empty sky. My breath flew out of my chest, and I gasped to bring it back. The room pitched and yawed like a vessel in choppy tides.
Such were the physical sensations. But there was another feeling too, a dreadful loss of some sort, as when one learns of the sudden death of a dear friend or relative, of an event so unforeseen it seems incapable of taking place in the world you know. Yet it does take place. It has already taken place. Some part of yourself has been subtracted, some aspect of your person has been canceled. At this moment and always afterward, you are a different being from what you had been and what you might have been.
Astolfo spoke from behind me. He had hidden behind the door as it opened. “Your shadow is safe,” he said. “It has found its place in the mirror.”
One of our large blue mirrors stood at his left-hand side. The servants must have brought it down from the hall on the third floor. I looked into it but in this light could discern nothing. “If I do not sit, I will fall,” I said.
He grasped my elbow and led me to the chair at the end of the table. “Compose yourself.” He took up the decanter there and poured a glass of ruby wine. “To restore you.”
I sipped and sipped again. The taste was different from any wine of my experience. I sniffed at it.
“No,” he said. “It is a vintage familiar to you. But as your spirit has altered, your senses too have already altered and many things you will now begin to know in a new ways.”
I took another sip, tasting. “I feel as if I just now forgot something important to remember.”
“You will find that you have not. Yet you will always feel that you have.”
I coughed. “Why did you steal my shadow?”
“You must not go into this impending combat wearing your primary shadow. Its loss in that way could mean death, or worse. Now your umbra is in the protection of the house. You must choose from our stock the one you will wear in the struggle.”
“It will not be the same. I have lost something of great value. I do not know why I say so.”
“It is a loss, but it brings advantages. You will find your nature more changeable, more quickly adaptive to fresh circumstance. You will gain facility with other languages; you will have a surer sympathy with other people and with animals. Witness Mutano, how cleverly he learned the feline dialect and how he communes with cats—with dogs too, if he so desired to learn. He could not do these things if he were still chained to his primary.”
“Then I shall be less myself than before.”
“Less a Falco in some indefinable measure, yes. But not less a man.”
“Mutano told me that he had given up his shadow because you advised him to do so. For a thief of shadows, or a dealer, to retain his primary left him vulnerable, you told him. He did not speak of these advantages you name.”
Astolfo smiled. “He does not know of them—or at least he has not thought about them. He surrendered his shade, and his mind is at peace with the exchange. Your shadow was severed, and so you have a sense of violation. The results shall be similar in the end.”
“Why did you sever mine? I would have given it up willingly.”
He shook his head. “You would not. You thought to sever it yourself but could not bring yourself to do so.”
“How come you to know that?”
“It is written into the history of the shade. I have examined these umbrae for many years. They retain the marks of intention as well as of deed for those who can distinguish the signs. Have you not deduced the characters of men from their shades? This ability is but a refinement of that one.”
“Then you may know many other things about me I would not wish known.”
“I am almost certain that I do, but I know not which ones they may be. You have attempted to read my shadow time and again. What have you learned that I would keep concealed?”
“You do not wear your primary. You store it safe away in the jewel in the leopard’s-head buckle. If I read your present shadow closely, I only read the history, a small bit of it, of another person.”
“Your thought is largely true, but the umbra of another changes when it is attached to me—and the history of that person is changed also.”
I took a swallow of the wine, then drained the glass. I was becoming accustomed to the new taste of the familiar vintage. “You claim, then, that you can transform the past life of another simply by assuming his shadow?”
“Transform, no. But an alteration occurs. And it is not the past life in singular number. We all have innumerable past lives and wear them the way we wear innumerable shadows.”
“I must find time to study these matters.”
“I urge you to do so. Meanwhile, you must choose an umbra to keep you company in the combats near upon us. You know your tasks assigned and when they are to be fulfilled. Choose accordingly.”
I rose, placed my hand on the table to steady myself, and spoke softly. “Very well.”
As I was leaving, Astolfo began to extinguish the candles.
* * *
I mounted the stairs. Tall lancet windows on the other side of the hall let in a mellow late summer light. No shadow companioned me. I was strongly aware of the fact. Even though I am engaged in the complex trade of umbrae and think upon them unendingly, I am usually not much more attentive to my own than are most other people. I take it for granted, knowing, without knowing, its position nigh to me and the general look of it. It is like a part of the body, unobtrusive as long as nothing ails it.
Now I had none. I did not feel unclothed. One’s shadow often mingles with other shadows, as when one walks through woods or stands in the shade of a wall, and then it is unseeable; there is no feeling of nakedness then because the knowledge that it still exists and will make its presence known in the light is constant.
This sensation was more like a kind of loneliness that settles upon the spirit at a certain marked time. Some episodes of our lives close forever; the experiences we had felt during those times we shall never experience again. So it is when friends or siblings or pet animals die or when a lover bids one farewell forever or when we forget the sound of a piece of music but longingly recall our former fondness for it.
Having never before been without a shadow, I had never desired to have one. But now I did, and this sensation too was novel. It was not like hunger or the spur of lust. Perhaps many of us wish for a friend, a silent confidant who knows our desires and fears without our having to confess them, a respectful but impartial other whose otherness is not a separating quality. Perhaps that friend is and has always been our shadow, an amicus whose absence is the first palpable sign of its past presence.
The shadow is one’s other that is not another.
* * *
For my role in the invasion defense I needed, I thought, a dark shadow, black but not conspicuously so, with the ability to move furtively. Our battle was to be nocturnal. Yet it had to be able to withstand a sudden onslaught of light as a necessary part of our counteroffensive ta
ctic. I recalled such a one as being stored in the fourth mirror in the row and I went to it, to stand and peer.
To look into those dark blue mirrors where umbrae are stored is like looking into an empty concert chamber to see what echoes remain. It is as much a matter of projection as of perception. At first nothing is there. Then, as eyes accustom, hazy shapes appear—or almost appear. In time these shapes acquire characteristics, partly seen and partly remembered from the first encounters. One may say as much of acquaintances newly met after years have passed. “Is that truly you, Jacopo?” we say, descrying features half recognizable beneath the changes time has wrought upon them.
Minutes drew past as I stood, trying to sort out one half shape from the others. When I fastened at last upon the entity I wanted to call forth, I discovered my gaze could not steadily fix upon it. The shade I sought seemed to avoid my attentiveness, drifting behind other umbral figures. The chore was something like trying to hold in mind one certain passage of smoke from a campfire as it ascended into the nighttime.
Something was distracting me, and finally I comprehended. A shadow I did not desire to wear was making itself known to me, standing unmoving while the others wavered and slipped into the depths or sidled toward the edges of the glass.
I rested my eyes upon it and was at first not impressed. It was not as dark as the one I had sought, nor had it the other’s force of presence. It was a dark gray-blue hard to make out in the glass and its outlines were more sinuous than martial. I fancied it not the most proper for the warrior-personage I must become.
But as my examination continued, I began to see these characteristics in more useful terms: discretion, gracefulness, judiciousness, persistence, and alertness. These were qualities that Astolfo and even Mutano had remarked as lacking in me at times. It seemed that this shadow sensed those weaknesses and designed to repair them.
I turned the mirror sidewise to the light from the windows and stood straight and still before it. “Friend,” I said, and after slow moments the shade came from the glass, passed through my body, and took its place on the floor, joined to my right foot-sole. In its course it touched my vis like the quick dust-brushing of a moth wing.