“Let us leave now,” I urged. I was tired, hungry, thirsty, and befouled. I much desired the refuge of the villa.
“We must await Sbufo,” Astolfo said, “but now I see he is with us already.”
A small, plump man was pulling himself out of the well, stepping from a ladder or some other support onto the firm sand. With a rueful countenance he examined the ruin that Osbro had made of his large toy. The complicated contrivance must have cost him many an hour of intricate labor. Then he turned to greet us with a brief bow and a happy grin.
“Your Mardrake performed well,” Astolfo said. “It will be the most memorable part of the tableau wherein heroic Perseus rescues Andromeda from its gruesome clutches.”
“It will perform more ably there than here,” Sbufo said, “for Cocorico conforms better than I to the apparatus. He has the Jester’s gift of gesture that I have not.”
“You have done excellently,” Mutano said. “I believe that Falco too was taken in, along with his straw-wit brother.”
“I was deceived,” I said, and Sbufo bowed and grinned and bowed once more.
“I was not,” said Osbro. “Whatever kind of thing it was, I knew it would fall to my attack.”
“And so it did,” I said. “You braved your dread foe and now the puppet is no more. Perhaps you shall fare as well if ever you battle Dirty Bennino.” Another rhyme rose unbidden and I gave it voice:
“Lo, the conquering hero’s come
With a pimple on his bum
And with gore upon his blade
Stained with lopping a cabbage head.”
“No more!” cried Mutano. “The lanes and avenues are filled with clumsy Jesters cackling out infantile rhymes. We need not add our clamor to the rabble’s.”
“I shall desist,” I said.
Sbufo brought a donkey cart from outside the western wall of the courtyard, piled his broken engine into it, and we returned to Tardocco in contented silence. Osbro contributed to the silence but not, methought, to the contentment.
* * *
I made a thorough but hasty toilet and joined the company out in the garden. The servants had hung lanterns and set other lights about a large table covered with yellow oilcloth. The viands were the afore-promised cold hen, together with sallets, peppered beans, and wines red and white. Upon this stalwart repast I made quick inroads and listened as Astolfo unfolded his plans to Osbro.
“You need not name Pontoso, Arachnido, and Cherrynose as your confederates,” he said, “for of them we know already. And understanding that we know so much, you may well comprehend that we shall find out further intelligence without your aid. But we are under the constraint of an approaching hour by which time our commission must be resolved. Thus, it is to our advantage that you tell us all you know. We shall make it to your advantage also.”
Osbro denuded a thighbone and pitched it into the dark grass. His eyes gleamed bloodshot in the flickering light and a gauze of sweat stood on his forehead.
He was afraid. But Astolfo had offered him no violence. I was willing to bestow a healthy kick or two upon him in the interest of fraternal regard, but those blows he would not fear.
“You are apprehensive,” Astolfo continued, “that those whom you betray to us will come against you in quest of your life when your treachery is known to them.”
“They will do so,” Osbro said.
“But now you will be under our protection,” Astolfo said. “They will not come against us. We shall be well prepared, and we have the civil authorities on our side.”
“They care nothing for your authorities, and you are but three men. You have others to call to your aid, yet in the end you can count yourselves but a small company. And they will not be frightened by any play-toy this bellows-mender can invent.”
Sbufo grinned and raised his glass in salute. He must have felt he had bested Osbro, for all my brother’s bluster.
“You speak,” Astolfo said, “as if you knew a great deal about these persons you have leagued with. You speak as if they had taken you into their innermost circle.”
“They have told me little. I have made some findings in my own interest.”
“You have spied upon them. Do you trust your findings so wholly?”
“Spying is not hard to do,” Osbro said. I recalled that he had uttered that thought before. He was always slow to learn.
“Perhaps not,” Astolfo said. He was careful to keep amusement out of his voice. He, who had all the resources of umbrae, had found some of our commissions difficult. One of his familiar proverbs ran thus: When the watching is not troublesome, the watcher is being watched. Osbro seemed not to comprehend that his hireling confederates had abandoned him, that though treated like a guest he was our captive, and that his only way forward now was to join with us and divulge all that he knew. He had been visibly startled when Astolfo named certain of his associates. Pontoso, Arachnido, and Cherrynose were overseers between them of a half dozen storehouses and lading docks. This trio was best known about the wharves for their bullying manners and not for their honesty.
I too was somdel surprised that the maestro had this knowledge. There had not been sufficient time for him and Mutano to unearth those names through inquiry.
“A spy must possess certitude of memory,” Mutano said. “What is the state of yours?”
“There are things I know I won’t ever forget,” Osbro said. He gave me a long, sharp look.
“Well, you have heard my proposal,” Astolfo said. “Think upon it tonight and give me your answer in the morning. You are to repose here as our guest and your needs will be supplied. Let us now turn to subjects of lighter import. Tell us, Sbufo, of the most entertaining of the Feast spectacles that are to be shown. You have been working with the stagers and dancers and musicians and artists, have you not?”
Sbufo took a thoughtful sip of wine and began a long and humorous account of the trials and triumphs of the various performances. His husky voice rose barely above a whisper, but it drew from us loud laughter.
* * *
I left them there in a while and made my way to my room, undressed, and lay down in bedraggled disposition. My ribs and thighs ached from the blows and kicks I had gained as my brother’s captive and my eyes yearned for sleep. I lay on my right side, facing a small table at bed-head. This position brought my face level with Astolfo’s belt buckle. I had put it there and forgotten to return it to him. As I reached over to snuff the candle one of the eyes of the leopard’s head seemed to follow my movement.
This motion was illusory, a consequence of wavering candlelight, but the eyes of the buckle caught my attention. The belt was familiar to me—and to many others, as we had told Osbro—but I had never had occasion to examine it closely. Now as I did so, the greenish eyes of the countenance seemed to be misaligned, one set a little lower than the other. I picked it up and on impulse pressed with my thumb on this eye and with a click the buckle opened.
Inside lay a diamond as large as the nail of my great toe. It was not perfect; it shone yellowish and with a pronounced flaw in the center. Seeing it, I recalled our commission with Countess Triana and how her shadow had been sealed into a precious stone by one who schemed against her. This stone in Astolfo’s belt also contained a shadow. I felt certain of my conclusion, though I could see little, turning it this way and that in the unsteady light.
Whose shadow had he enclosed here?
Its value to him was great, for he kept it close at all times, except for this present nonce. He had sent it to me as a sign of his identity and a token of reassurance. So Mutano had said.
But neither of these reasons would be adequate, since Mutano’s presence guaranteed the maestro’s association and Astolfo would not take pains to reassure me, knowing that I could guard my own safety.
The most valuable umbra he could possess would be his own. As a shadow dealer, he needed to make certain of the security of his own shadow. If it fell into the hands of another, that person would have power ov
er him. If it were known that he had lost it, he would be without credit in his profession.
Of course, he cast a shadow as I did and as all others did who walked in light, but the ones he cast from day to day would not be the primaries. They would be secondaries and tertiaries that he put on each daybreak like clothing to go abroad in. The primary was too precious for daily wear.
With my own hand I had carved the admonition into the oaken headboard of the bed I now lay in: Bumpkin lad, Protect thy shade.
Astolfo protected his shade by setting it in stone and hiding it away in the prominent buckle. A thief who managed to purloin from him the shadow he cast would acquire only a secondary object, one that would provide little means to harm the maestro.
An ingenious defense, I thought, but had to wonder why he would entrust it to Mutano and me to handle with less than perfect care in the company of Osbro and the others. He was leaving much to the risks of seizure or mischief. What if Guido decided he liked the look of the toy or Osbro tossed it into the harbor waters in a fit of pique? These possibilities must not have concerned him.
It came to me that he did not fret about the loss of his umbra because he knew where it was located at all times. We all communicate with our shadows, though we do so generally without specific awareness. We simply know that our shadow is before or behind, aslant to the left or right of us. We have the same knowledge if it is detached from our body, though we must train ourselves in this particular awareness, sharpening our instinctive sympathy with philosophical exercises.
And that was how Astolfo could name the names—Pontoso, Arachnido, Cherrynose. I had carried his umbra from one storehouse to another. The overseers and managers of these sites were commonly known. The places to which Osbro had bundled me identified at least three of the number of those who were leagued against the city. Their friends and associates could be traced also, figures with whom my brother had made no acquaintance, personages kept dark from him.
Weariness was overcoming me like a sheepskin robe pulled up about my ears, but before I gave over to sleep I made a solemn resolution. The portable shadow offered an invaluable means of espial. Reduced in size by the agencies of lenses and mirrors and subducted into a convenient container, it could be made secure and locatable at all times. True, I possessed no diamond in which to place it, but something …
* * *
… something no dream divulged to me.
I awakened with my conception sharp in mind, but the image of a shadow-container had not come.
I rose and washed my hands and beard and repaired to the kitchen. I had risen late. No one was about but a sulky potboy scrubbing at a big copper kettle, rubbing and rinsing and looking at the reflection of his face. Without speaking, I set out bread and cheese and ale and made a healthy breakfast of them.
Then, as the morning brightened and promised a fair day, I gathered materials and set up the same arrangement we had made for our apprehensive client. I laid a sheet of coarse cloth against the plaster of the western garden wall and positioned my body before it. I had my silver demilune ready, using my left hand, since I would have to face northward to be able to sever my shadow.
The easiest of all ways to appropriate a shadow is by surrender, when a subject willingly gives over his or her shade to the blade. The reasons to do so are numerous. For females it is often a matter of fashion; some of them dislike having no choice and are willing to take off the primary in exchange for the variety of secondaries to be worn on different occasions. Balls and festive dinners and attendance at rhapsode performances and so forth require shades with some gaiety and lightness of style; more sober occasions—funerals and annual memorials—call for a stylish severity, with darkness enough to mark the event but not so much as to obscure physical attractiveness. Men of affairs choose shadows of firm outline and well-defined tint, believing these qualities to suggest honest forthrightness. And so forth.
I was surrendering my shadow; there needed no sleights of art to take it. My purpose was to imitate the maestro’s warrant of security and range of intelligence-finding that the shadow embedded in the diamond gave him. To own a transferable shadow must be something like having an animal, a tracking hound, say, that I could communicate with. All sorts of other uses began to tease my imagination.
To cut my shadow away I would have to stoop and sever it on the left side of my boot sole. When I straightened up, the umbra, though then separate from me, would straighten also its shape on the cloth and stand as I stood. Mutano’s game with the shadows of cats had demonstrated how the movement of separated shadows still followed the movements of the absent casters.
The sky was blue, the sun bright. My shadow lay stark upon the cloth. My blade was keen. I bent to my task—and remained in that position for so long a time that my knees began to give way. My hand trembled and the blade-edge came not a-near the edge of my umbra. I desired to cut away my shadow and place it in one of the blue mirrors in the long hall of the third story of the manse. But my arm would not obey my will. I could not bring myself to perform the deed.
What sensation would I feel when my shadow was severed? How would I change in that moment and how would I be different thereafter? I was uncertain what I would gain and what I must lose.
In a few moments I stood erect. I could not do the deed, and could not say why. For the first time in my life I reproached myself for cowardice.
* * *
Now we were four. While I sat in my room disconsolate and troubled in spirit, Osbro spent the greater part of the day in private conference with Astolfo. Mutano was nowhere on the grounds and I expected that he visited the flaxen-haired female in Cobblers’ Lane, though lately he admitted that his commerce with her had not been going well. I could only surmise, but I suspected that his interest in her grew less ardent daily. In fact, there seemed a hint of distaste in his infrequent remarks about her. More and more these recent days he had reverted to his feline mannerisms. I began to think he longed to keep company with cats, as in time past.
In the mid-afternoon he returned to the villa and he and I spent a dry hour in desultory converse in the small library. He was not in a divulging frame of mind and I was pleased when at last Osbro appeared in the hallway outside the open door. We hailed him, adjusted his borrowed clothing to suit our taste, had mounts brought round, and rode away with him into town.
Our destination was a tavern newly favored by Mutano. It was called The Cat o’ Nine and offered strong country ale served in an adjoining rose-trellised beer garden. We sat at an oaken table wherein rhymes and initials were plentifully dug and ordered bumpers.
“In the ventures we undertake, we must have utter confidence in our colleagues,” Mutano intoned. “We must trust their loyalties, depend upon their abilities, and know their capacities. Therefore, while Falco and I sip this cup of ale in the manner of gentlefolk, we shall oblige you to drink it down in a single swallow.”
Osbro was nothing loath. He raised the pewter mug. “Salute, Mutano and Todo.” Down it went.
“Who is this Todo you address?” Mutano said.
“He intends myself,” I said. “Our father named me Todigliano after a miserly noble who was the brother of our landlord, Merioni. He hoped with this naming to get into the lord’s good graces. That did not happen, so I was called Todo for vain reason. After I fought with Osbro to gain my freedom from the farm, I made my way to Tardocco to join with Astolfo. On the journey hither I made myself Falco, a personage more likely to impress the maestro.”
“Fought, my brambly arse,” Osbro said. “You sneaked from behind like a coward and laid my head open with a spade.… Ough!”
This last interjection resulted from the kick I delivered his shin beneath the table. “You are under our strict discipline now,” I told him, “and you will learn never to contradict the statements of your superiors.”
“The world can never see the day when you are my superior,” he said. “Let’s stand and settle for good the question. I will drub your w
orthless carcass like a washerwoman beating clothes on a rock.”
Mutano, sitting beside, gave him a casual backhand slap. “Our Falco is too valuable a commodity to be drubbed by a new recruit. Keep your mouth shut except to guzzle.”
A new bumper had arrived and Osbro attacked it manfully.
“Osbro,” I explained to Mutano, “is the truncated Osbronius, another cousin or nephew or bastard son of the landlord, his name another useless obeisance on our father’s part.”
“Osbro and Todo,” said Mutano. “In my mind’s eye, I see you both standing beside a brace of mules and matching them fart for fart. Doth not such an amusement pass for a chivalric tournament there in Caderia?”
“It is more honorable than lurking behind people to steal their shadows.… Ough!”
At the same time, Mutano and I had kicked the monosyllable from him.
“You have been in company some four or five hours with Maestro Astolfo,” I said. “Does he impress you as one who sneaks and thieves, as one without substance and honor?”
He paused, wiping foam from his lips. In a more serious tone he said, “No. There is more to him than I thought. There are rumors he is a magician, a sort of trickster charlatan, who makes folks believe he has power over them through their shadows. That is what I heard back home.”
“And now?”
He mused. “He has powers, but they are not magical.”
“He scorns all talk of magic,” Mutano said.
“He spoke to me of skills I might gain,” Osbro said. “He was kind toward me.”
“Did you tell him what he wished to know?”
“I cannot say. Seemed to me I told him little, just chatting as I might at a beery table like this one. Yet he seemed to glean something from my words I did not wot of.”
“He asked about some who might have designs upon the wealth of the city?” Mutano asked.
“No. He asked if any of those with whom I bargained spoke with out-country accents or used strange words. He asked if any of them smelled peculiar to me. Just chat like that.”
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