Mutano nudged me with his toe. He carved in air the hourglass shape of a voluptuous female. He rolled his eyes and licked his lips and panted heavily, miming Uncontrollable Lust. Never before had I disliked him so earnestly.
The continual rites of physical punishments and spiritual rigors had at last become too cumbrous to be borne. I resolved to request—to demand, if need be—a commission that I could fulfill under my own volition and by my own, personally conceived means.
IV
The Creeper Shadows
Haughty, hard-eyed, horse-faced: I formed no favorable impression of this tall woman in her long gray smock the slender young footman had summoned forth. I was not tuneful in temper anyway and when she inquired my name and station, I handed her Astolfo’s letter of introduction without other response. She swept away, leaving me alone in the foyer.
She had reckoned me a servant like herself, but I took pride to stand as confidential aide to Astolfo, especially upon this occasion when a possible venture had been entrusted to my hands. I had dressed with particular care in forest-green doublet, tawny trunks, and shining black calf-length boots still spotless of mud, even though I had walked from Astolfo’s mid-town villa across Tardocco to this manse of the Esquire Sativius on the outskirts. Red gloves with silver piping I had donned and my wine-red cap sported a brash white plume. It should be obvious that I was no menial, yet that equinous woman had taken but cursory notice of my finery. I was overdressed, but in that time I still suffered from the embarrassment of the ridiculous motley I was forced to wear at the palace of the three-personed Countess Trinia. I had resolved henceforth to present a more fashionable appearance.
She did not hasten to return, and so I took leisurely stock of my surroundings. The house was a rambling two-story edifice of weathered gray brick. A bay window checkered with glass and alabaster panes fronted the protruding second story that overhung the portico with its sturdy oaken columns. The foyer floor was of unpolished flagstone and the door that led to the farther rooms was of lightly varnished chestnut. In short, here was just the sort of domicile one would expect to enter when visiting the wealthy merchant rope-dealer Matteo Sativius.
I drew four deep breaths, anxious because this was the first commission of any true import that Astolfo had entrusted solely to my care. Five swift and crowded seasons I had spent in his employ: five seasons of grueling training under the large and horny hand of Mutano, five years of scanning closely printed books and manuals, of undertaking grubby, piddling tasks and assignments, of enduring unending if cheerful contumely and admonition. This harsh period had steeled my disposition, I fancied. It was a course of life much like preparing for a priesthood, except that at the end of it, I hoped to amass wealth in golden hillocks instead of an airy bower in a painted paradise. I had learned a great deal, though not as much as I would need to know. But I had finally acquitted myself satisfactorily in the business with Countess Trinia, and I had shown some spirit in dealing with the puppet shadow that threatened the existence of the puppet master Drolio, and I had exhibited, according to the maestro, some power of reasoning in the matter of the Mardrake toys that cast such gigantic umbrae over the children to whom they had been given.
Astolfo had told me little of this present affair in hand. “’Tis some difficulty concerning the umbrae of offspring,” he said. “I am otherwise occupied just now and so I leave all to you. There may be a plumpish fee. This Sativius is reputed generous.”
“Will Mutano accompany me?” I asked, thinking that if there were danger involved I should be glad of the presence of my overlarge drillmaster.
“Mutano has in train a serious personal business,” Astolfo said. “He may require your assistance as it progresses. He is already enlisting the aid of Creeper.”
“Of Creeper?” I was not easily surprised these days by what I learned from Astolfo, but now I was astonished. Creeper is the largest, oldest, and blackest of all the sixteen cats that haunt the grounds and outbuildings of the manse. Mutano had never evinced fondness for Creeper or for any other of the feline troop.
The shadow master shrugged his rounded shoulders, spread his nimble hands in a dismissive gesture, and said, “They are spheres unto themselves, the man and the cat. I know only that Mutano is engaged with the animal for endless hours, and I know the nature of the task he has set himself and that he holds it to be of the greatest importance.”
“He wishes me to aid him?”
“So he has signaled.”
That was another imponderable conceit, that my master in the art of the sword and of the shadow-sundering blades, of purse-snipping, lock-tickling, and so forth, might desire, even perhaps require, my assistance. He had always fixed me in sardonic regard.
The train of my suppositions broke sharply when the gangly gray-smocked woman returned. She handed me unopened Astolfo’s introductory letter and with the crooking of a finger bade me follow her through a large salon muffled with carpet and darkened with wall hangings, up the stair, and around a gallery into the room of the bay window. She ushered me into the presence of the Esquire Sativius and his spouse, Funisia, and retreated toward the doorway, making me feel rather as if I had been deposited before the older couple as a lump of merchandise to be considered for purchase.
It did not suit me that the light from the bay window flooded their figures from behind, making their faces dark, so I began to sidle little by little, making a leg here and a bow there, in a half circle until the light was more in my favor.
Making much show, Sativius broke Astolfo’s seal, unfolded the heavy page, and took his own good while perusing what would have been only a short message. When he had done, he gazed upon me with a frown that almost knit his bushy white eyebrows together. I judged him to be of sound middle age, with his salt-and-pepper beard jutting over his wimpled collar and his smooth hands emerging from starchy, frilled cuffs. He wore a ceremonial short sword.
“I had expected your master to come to my summons,” he said. His voice was soft but held reserves of authority.
“Maestro Astolfo tenders his regrets,” I replied. “A mortally urgent business closely touching upon his person prevents his presence. I am his confidential secretary Falco, as I think his letter informs you. I am authorized to act on his behalf in every particular.”
He turned to look at his wife Funisia. She was somdel younger than her man, with a face that retained much of its youth, a comely countenance. In figure she was not tall, but there was a grace about her that suggested height. Her dress was modest, with a full skirt, dark blue silk bodice open only at the clavicles, her dark hair worn in a braid coiled around the crown. Her only jewel was a small diamond set in a wedding ring. Demurely she met her husband’s gaze with a smile and a brief nod.
“You will make report to Maestro Astolfo complete with all detail?”
“Assuredly.”
“In brief, then, the case is this: Funisia and I are the parents of twins, the one a boy and older by less than an hour, t’other a girl. Except for the difference of the sexes, they are identical. They are devoted each to the other and are reluctant to part company for any reason, even for those of necessity of nature. They never argue or quarrel; even their sharpest disagreements are sweetly couched. We have doted upon them perhaps too closely, they being the offspring of our middle years. Yet, tightly as we kept watch, we failed to note a fault in their two physiques and were astonished to find it out. It came to our notice only this sennight past.”
“Is it not a defect a medico might reflect upon?” I asked.
“Only one of our children possesses a shadow,” Sativius said. “The other is quite bare of any umbra whatsoever.”
I stood silent for a moment, trying to fix the conceit in my mind. “One shadow only between them?”
“Yes.”
“To which of them belongeth the shadow, lad or lass?”
“We cannot say. When they are close together it seems to attach to both of them at once. When they are separate, it wi
ll go to one or other as it seems to choose.”
“And you first took stock of this debility only these seven days ago?”
“’Twas but five days,” he said. “Funisia first took note when she was reading to them from a book of fables.”
“They were standing before me as I sat in a chair by the table there,” she said, indicating with a nod the table behind me that was placed before the bay window. “They remained stock still, as always they do, to attend the tale of the jolly cobbler and the shoeless witch. The candles stood on the table by my right hand and when I looked up from the page, I saw what I saw.”
“May the children come forth?” I asked, and after they dispatched Mistress High Horse to fetch them, I requested that candles be set along the table. There was good light from the window, but more would be useful.
The candles were arranged and lit and Graysmock led in the children. They came forward to stand before me with Sativius on one side and their mother on the other. I gazed upon them curiously, for they made a striking pair.
They were pale of complexion, almost nacreous, like the pearly oyster shell. Slim in figure with blond hair verging on silvery, they were clad in black knee breeches and black jackets and stockinged in shining white silk. Large silver buckles were set upon their black, square-toed shoes. The boy’s hair was longer than the girl’s, and only this single distinction marked them apart, for otherwise they were as identical in appearance as any two raindrops. They looked up at me fearlessly, their bright gray eyes seeming as large as doorknobs in their delicate faces. They were wraithlike. I discerned with my first glance that they would be taciturn younglings. Expectant silence hung about them like that preceding the onset of a nocturnal snowfall.
I smiled and said my name and they did not reply.
Their silence was perhaps of no great concern, for I was employed to look about their shadows, or the lack thereof; yet I tried to take stock of all that I could, for I knew that Maestro Astolfo would query me closely.
They stood before me, a hand-span apart, and behind them lay a single shadow of ordinary appearance, except that it was darker in tone than I might have expected. Considering that this darkening might be an effect of the darkish carpet on which they stood, I requested their parents to part them, widening the space between by another hand-span. The shadow did not alter its shape, though it should have begun to split apart where it joined the feet of the children. Farther and farther apart we posed them until an arm’s length separated the pair and still the shadow did not split, though it became difficult to discern where its nether attachment was located. At last, Sativius and Funisia placed their children a long lance-length apart and the shadow, without a motion visible to my observation, no longer attached to the girl but only to the boy. Behind her, light held all the floor-place where shade should lie.
“You seem to have lost one of your valuables, little mistress,” I said. I gave her the most gently ingratiating smile I could muster. “What is your name?”
She gazed at me with those great luminous eyes and remained as silent as a melting snowflake.
“She is called Rudensia,” her mother said. “Her brother is Rudens.”
I bowed to the children. “I am honored to make the acquaintance of so unusual a brace of youth,” I said, though the phrases sounded clumsy. In fact, all my efforts at playful diplomacy sounded lame and gauche and I discarded the notion of trying to become friendly with the strange children.
We repeated the experiment three times again, with the result that Rudensia lost her shadow once to her brother while he twice lost his to her. I was unable to see how the transference occurred, yet the motion of it—if there had been a motion—was neither swift nor gradual. At one time it was simply there, stretched out behind the lad, and next time it fell behind the girl.
“What is to be done?” Funisia asked softly. Her eyes were fearful.
“I must study upon the phenomenon,” I said, “but I have every confidence that all shall be resolved in happy manner.”
“I do wish Maestro Astolfo had seen fit to answer my call,” Sativius said. “You may tell him I am vexed.”
“I shall make full report to him concerning every aspect,” I replied. “It may be that he can postpone some part of his business and make a visitation.”
These words did not mollify the rope merchant, but I had not expected that they would effect any change in his temper. Still, I could not allow such awkwardness to put me out of countenance; this, the first task to be delegated to my own counsel, I held too important to be disfigured by trifles.
I took my leave, promising to return soon with the best and most fully detailed prognosis I could mount. Both parents received my pledge with dull grace. Making my manners, I edged toward the door. Graysmock opened it and escorted me down the stair, through the foyer, and out into the cool midday, where a threat of rain was steadily increasing. I hastened my stride, hoping to arrive beneath Astolfo’s roof before the clouds let go.
* * *
Astolfo was absent from the kitchen, the first place I looked for him, and he was not in the large library. He was not in the smaller one either; but in this cozier room, with its book-strewn table and leathern armchairs and friendly small hearth, I chanced upon Mutano.
He gave me a noncommittal salute and returned to his disport with Creeper, pursuing a game that any babbling child might play with a cat, teasingly jigging a scrap of paper tied to a thread and whisking it away when the animal pounced. It was but an idle pastime. Where was the grave business with Creeper of which Astolfo had spoken? I settled into an armchair to await the shadow master’s arrival. Rain had begun to lash the ivied walls of the villa and nothing else seemed so pleasurable as to sit at ease for a spell, finding pictures in the flames and hearkening to the fray of the elements.
The fire comported itself in no ordinary fashion. It brightened and dimmed and sent a roiling, misty smoke out over the hearth, a vapor that retained a defined shape and had not the formlessness of familiar hearth-fire smoke. Against the gently leaping flames, the smoke-shape was difficult to define precisely, but the longer I observed, the more knowable it became. Then I realized that its writhings and saltations, its turnings and toilings, were like those of a cat at play. The mist-form creature was aping, as if it were an image in a mirror, the motions of Creeper as he cavorted, twisted, and feinted in merry chase of Mutano’s dancing scrap of paper.
I rose and drew closer, trying to discover of what substance this active shape consisted; it was so airy and light and agile that it must have been composed of the most aethereal of stuffs. Soon I knew it to be a shadow, the true shadow of Creeper, even though it was not attached to the green-eyed cat at any point of the body.
Here I beheld a marvel I had only heard rumored. When a shadow is taken from its subject, be that caster ever so active, ever so fluent with sinew and vis vitae, the shade, as a rule, loses all inner spirit and lies or stands or hangs inert. It retains its volumes and textures, its tints and tones, and something of its flavors and aromas. Astolfo is capable of detecting certain sounds belonging to a severed shadow, small noises like distant echoes from a lost valley. He is the master. But animation of the shade requires an amplitude of art I was certain Mutano did not possess. Astolfo must have had some hand in this accomplishment.
While I sat down again and pleasured in the music of rain-sweep against our walls, Astolfo came sprightly into the room, paused briefly to smile at the antics of Mutano and Creeper, and beckoned me to follow him into the kitchen, where he poured for both of us a generous drop of sweet, resinous wine into thick glass beakers.
Thus he commenced: “How went the discussion with the rope merchant? Have you learned to escape the wiles of the rope-maker’s daughter?”
I was mystified; the pale Rudensia was but a child. Then I understood that he used thieves’ language; the rope-maker’s daughter is an alehouse term for the hangman’s noose. “I learn some new thing every day,” I replied.
&
nbsp; “Tell me then of your dealings with Esquire Sativius.”
In slow and careful words, I gave him as minute an account of the encounter as I was able, trying to omit naught that might be worthy of notice. Seated on the butcher’s block with his head inclined toward me, he almost seemed to twitch his large ears as I spoke. When I concluded, he sat silent for long moments.
“How many years of age hang on these children?”
“Thirteen.”
His expression grew grave. “This matter may be of a darker character than we have suspicioned. Would you describe their shared shadow to me again? Come as close to the object as may be.”
When I repeated my impressions with some slight enlargement, he still seemed unsatisfied.
“You say this shadow that lay between them was darker of tint than you would otherwise observe in the circumstance?”
“So it appeared there.”
“Was it uniform of its darkness or was the center of it perhaps a little more dark than its flanks?”
“It lay upon a wine-colored carpet of thickish pile,” I said. “I could distinguish no gradation.”
“Close your eyes. Envision all again.”
I did so, but with no result. I shook my head.
“The mother and the father spoke, but the children spoke not?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose that they had spoken. Which voice would be louder, that of the boy or of the girl?”
I considered. “They would be equally soft,” I said, “with something of the timbre as of the pealing of little silver bells. But they did not speak.”
“How did you form your conjecture as to the sound of their voices?”
“I do not know. Yet the soft bell-peal comparison cometh vivid to mind.”
He nodded. “Now close your eyes and envision the shadow where it lay on the carpet. Only do not think about it.”
I closed my eyes, deepened my breathing, and relaxed the concentration of my mind. Then I recalled what I had seen but had not noticed. “The center of the shadow is indeed darker than the larger body of it. Yet that center bears the same outline as the greater shadow. It is like an inner shadow of the greater shadow.”
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