I called to him. “I thought you drowned.”
“Falco,” he said, “so long as you live, never speak to me again of water.”
I shouted as loudly as I could. “Guards and watchmen! Stand your stations! Our foemen are hiding in the warehouses, like rats in their holes. When they gain courage to attack, the archers must loose a first volley and then stand aside to let the lancers through.”
No archers or lancers were present among the puzzled multitude that crowded the wharves. My words were intended for the ears of the traitors listening inside their gloomy shelters. If they disregarded my empty threats and tumbled out to make a battle of it, the outcome might not be to my liking. In numbers we were now superior, but the townsmen were untrained and not given to organized bloodshed. They might well flee at the first assault and the traitors within the press would not spare to puncture them as they retreated.
I concluded my speech. “Now let them come to us, my friends, and meet their miserable fates. Let them hail their confederates in the town for the last time, for those too shall die.”
* * *
After these foolhardy words a silence fell upon that part of the crowd nearest me. I almost hoped the pirate force would spring out upon us with thirsty weapons and soul-shriveling shouts and blood-crazed eyes. I was weary to the marrow of my bones, but I was also tired of the continual threat. Season after season the town whispered, muttered, and grumbled of Morbruzzo and his legions who would descend upon us like boiling brimstone poured from the polestar. It would be soon and fiery, said the old codgers. They hunger for my maidenhead, said the silly girls. They will take my gold and spoil my wife and daughters, said the plump and roseate men of business. They cannot harm my indomitable soul, claimed the shoals of philosophers, who could barely heap together enough vis to supply one soul among them all.
So we stood ready, Mutano, Cocorico, Sbufo, and I, for our fates to meet us face-forward.
* * *
The crowd had fallen silent. For a long, uneasy moment, nothing stirred. Then the pair of doors of the largest building that stood before us swung slowly inward. Out of the cavernous darkness of that shelter and into the graying predawn light stepped Astolfo. He was dressed in his usual outfit, except that he wore the red tunic of the Civil Guardsmen and over that garment a steel breastplate. This piece of armor I judged ceremonial rather than battle-ready; it was engraved with the leopard’s-head figure of his customary belt buckle. He carried no sword.
He held, though, a length of shiny chain with thick, heavy links. To this weighty iron was attached a slender figure of medium stature. This personage wore a Bennio mask, along with the ordinary doublet and short cape that many courtiers and bravos habitually donned. Astolfo jerked the chain, but his captive did not stumble, moving forward with a fluent gracefulness.
Astolfo dropped the chain onto the planking and came to stand beside his prisoner. “Fellow citizens—here is your dreaded Morbruzzo!” He swept off the mask with an exaggerated, theatrical gesture.
I blinked my eyes four times. I did not comprehend.
“Morbruzzo?” cried the woman. “Long time past, I rid me of that witless, un-human devil.”
Now I recognized her. The passing years had been gentle upon the physic of Fleuraye. Her figure had changed little since that long-ago hour she had bested me in swordplay. All too often have I recalled that shameful episode: the miserly Pecunio cowering from the duel, Astolfo flinging a shadow about Fleuraye to obscure her vision as I lay helpless upon the floor, awaiting the thrust of her blade through my heart. I recalled too the promise she made upon departure, that she looked forward to another encounter with the maestro, at a time when she would reap a rich retribution.
Her figure had grown more muscular than lissome, but it retained its swift gracefulness. Her carriage was as haughty as before and her gaze as challenging. But her former piquancy had soured; it had acquired a superciliousness. Her expression and her bearing suggested that she had found her life a banal passage through violent years. There was a vacancy about her that I have observed in soldiers who’d survived brutal campaigns. Part of her center had been taken away.
And now Astolfo had outgamed her once more and destroyed all the prospects of the petty pirate empire that she had envisioned. This dream must have been her best, last hope. Now only a bitter rage would animate her spirit.
Her minion murderers, two hundred or so, were being led from the warehouses by about four score armed citizens, Civil Guardians, fathers, and young men of substance. Astolfo’s warnings in his role as Ministrant had not gone unheeded. Volunteers must have gathered to put themselves under his command. His martial armor showed that he had foreseen this moment and that he relished adopting this persona of the glittering hero. He would frolic in the role like an otter sporting in the ripples of a stream.
It was another of his serious, or partly serious, games. Mutano, Osbro, and I had not known that our faction had gathered supporters among the populace; Astolfo kept the fact to himself. Maybe he feared we would let slip intelligence we should not, but it was more likely that he enjoyed surprising his allies as well as his opponents.
I reflected again that the maestro was many times the plaything of his own humor, that he could no more resist the opportunity to confound expectations than the cat can resist pursuit of a mouse.
And of felines here and now the number was redoubtable. Following our plans, Mutano had petitioned Sunbolt to our aid. That authoritative cat had gathered a company of Maulers, Worriers, and scar-flanked amateur battlers from the under-story of Tardocco. Information about newcomers to the area had been passed from these cats to the members of the beggars’ guild and thence to Astolfo. He still maintained connection with that guild from the days of old, when he and his mentor Veuglio walked among them to gather an understanding of their ways of life.
These veteran cats would doubtless expect to be recognized for their efforts in foiling the invasion. Perhaps they anticipated an award of a great yellow wheel of communal cheese or an avenue-long trough of fresh cow’s milk. They were evidently expectant of some event, for they lined the rooftops of storerooms and warehouses and looked down upon the scene of Fleuraye’s surrender with unwavering attention. In the light of the emergent dawn their eyes glowed greenish-orange, like eyes of topaz set in stone statuettes.
“You tell us you rid yourself of Morbruzzo,” Astolfo said, “and that is so. You were his consort and you betrayed him, just as you betrayed Bellarmo, your first pirate consort, during the time of Pecunio. You drained the old miser’s fortune into your own coffers and used the gold to bribe Morbruzzo’s hirelings to turn upon him when the hour of your revenge came round.”
“My revenge? I do not comprehend you.”
“You had a sister named Solana. Morbruzzo abducted her, and what was done to the unhappy girl needs no recounting. But when you heard of it, you devoted all your remaining life to her memory and her avengement.”
“How might I bring this about?”
“You had Pecunio’s fortune in hand. You were willing to demean and degrade yourself in any way that would sway Morbruzzo’s men to your cause. Pirate crews are not famous for loyalty.”
“You must explain to me how I accomplished this grand scheme. I seem to have forgotten the devious, bloody steps I took.”
“All that will be revealed to all at your trial before the magistrates. Tardocco would not have been averse to your destruction of Morbruzzo. But after his murder you decided to carry out the plans he had laid to subjugate this city and use it as your base for a pirate empire. These are the crimes the magistrates and the citizens will hold against you.”
“A trial, is’t? My blood is up for a jig on the gallows-tree. And if you will mount a trial, then you and the world shall hear my story. Why should I not bind this smug, fat Tardocco to my subjection? It is a port easy to take by force. It would be in my grasp even now, if not for that great, black waterspout that intruded upon the battle. Fortune fa
vored you.”
“If I say that our city holds its harbor Mardrake in reserve as a weapon of war, you cannot refute me. If I say it appeared at my bidding and I can bid it do so again, the word shall pass to any other pirate fleet that regards our town as helpless prey.”
“It was an accident of nature,” she said. “You possess no such power of command.”
He ignored her denial. “The Civil Guard will of course commandeer your ship. Not enough of the crew is left aboard to be able to sail such a galleon. She must remain in the harbor, for the time being.”
“The Vengeful Maiden is yours, for all the good she may do you.”
“Your reinforcement, the two-master we spied on the horizon hanging half a league off—she did not come to your aid but went about into the open sea.”
“The Sly Handmaid is well out of your reach. Perhaps she shall return with her friends at another hour when you will still be busy puffing yourself up like a smithy’s bellows.”
“We shall be pleased to encounter her,” Astolfo said. “Our Tardocco is a hospitable port. And well defended.”
Her voice did not tremble or waver: “We shall see.”
“The sun is just rising,” he continued, “and our cats are restless. Much remains to do, though we are all tired, cold, wet, and thirsty. Mutano must take a few seasoned colleagues in a pilot boat out to your Vengeful Maiden and secure the vessel. Osbro and Torronio are to march back to their sandy fire-pits and make certain that all coals are quenched. Falco is to take charge of our prisoners, who, for the near future, shall be chained together in these two adjoining warehouses. I shall escort you to our small, stoutly barred gaol close by the Hall of Justice. There you may meditate upon your misdeeds till time of trial.”
“Your cowardly city begs for pillage,” she said.
“And after we have finished our chores?” I asked Astolfo. I was tired of talk—of everything.
“Then all this present company of defenders shall meet upon this selfsame spot at twilight this evening,” he said. “We shall go into the town and open every bottle and cask where they stand. If any tavern keeper try to halt our progress, he shall share a gaol room with the pirate queen Fleuraye. The prospect of such a shelter will instill in him a proper gratitude.”
We looked at one another, all of us weary, bloody, sooty, begrimed, and aching, and agreed that Maestro Astolfo’s agenda of celebratory duties was sound and sensible and must be followed to the smallest detail. I was determined to bear my part, even if I had to be held standing by three strong men.
* * *
These, then, were the occurrences of that long, dark night.
XIII
A Shadow All of Light
In these dull latter days the Feast of the Jester meets with nearly indifferent regard. Clowns still perform in the plazas and amid the park greens. They tumble, juggle, and sing out raw rhymes, but their reception is marked more by fond reminiscence than by fresh enthusiasm. The legend of the original Bennio has dimmed; his satiric functions have been taken up by court poets and by the antics of ordinary tumblers. His visage still can be seen in the waning moon, but children must be carefully instructed on how to make it out. Many of his ancient chants are no longer found acceptable in polite circles.
But in our own small circle the Feast is celebrated in jovial fashion. On the fourth cycle of the festival’s return, Astolfo and I were making the annual journey to Tardocco on a matched pair of tar-black horses, both of them as gaily leathered and richly furnished as any highly prized and nobly sponsored courtesan. Telluria and Gabriel rode beside us in a two-wheeled carriage decorated lavishly and, methought, not entirely artfully. Telluria’s taste had not quite caught up with her new position.
She is my spouse, this blue-eyed, blonde, curly-tressed woman, and the daughter of a county farmer. She was brought by Astolfo to his household as a maid-of-all-work. One morning when I came to his great farmhouse centered in the acreage to make report and receive direction from the maestro, I found her washing milk jugs at the large kitchen basin and humming a gay ballade. I threw a casual embrace about her waist.
She turned on me swiftly. “Thou’rt called Falco?”
“I am so.”
She eyed me up and down and crosswise. “Well, thou’rt a jack well formed. Many a lass would quickly rattle the straw with thee. But I did not come to this world to drop bastards on the face o’t. If you’d have the good o’ me, you must consult first my father and then my three brothers and then the magistrate in his house at the crossroads.”
I considered these words an unpromising beginning, but after a certain hungry period of restless longing, I did consult with her father and her brothers and found them to be affable and sensible men with lump-muscled forearms and knotty cudgels. The silver-haired magistrate too was a complaisant sort, helpful in every respect my future kinsmen made mention of.
Our child of six months she calls Gabriel after a generous bachelor uncle. I call him Stolfino to honor Master Astolfo. This name I keep private to myself. Telluria knows the maestro only as my former employer in a trade she distrusts and comprehends but dimly. She did suggest that we might confer the pet name of Falchino, but I do not want our babe to follow my troubled path through the wildwood of this world. Better for him to study the sages, to learn the science behind whatever art or trade he may pursue. Better for him to acquire politic manners and cheerful aplomb than to go lumbering about ale-muddled with sword in hand through the Tardocco midnights. Better to be Astolfo the honorary uncle than Falco the foolish father.
* * *
We dwelt in Caderia now, the place where I was born and lived until I left to pursue my fortune in the port city. We were traveling now from Caderia upon a warm, late summer morn abundant with butterflies. The road was empty except for Telluria, Gabriel, the cheerful red-haired lad who drove the carriage, Astolfo on his mount, and myself. The fields of barley and oats lay ripening on all sides. Now and again a low rock wall rose and then left off at knee-height, as if the farmer had lost interest in construction. The sky was blue and sweet. The world smelled of sunlight.
Astolfo had purchased the Caderian land upon which Osbro and I were reared, and another small estate adjoining. His prediction that he might forswear the shadow trade had come to pass. “I intend to seek for a certain ideal entity I have long conjectured of. I seek the purest and most spiritual of objects that ever existed, the physical thing that is itself wholly, or almost wholly, a spirit. I would welcome your company in this venture, but I do understand that a wife and child may discommode your participation. A corner of the farmland shall be at your usage, but if you would prefer to stay with your brother Osbro at the town villa, I shall content myself.”
“How did you come by the farmland?” I’d asked. “Lord Merioni has the reputation of being one who never relinquishes his acres.”
“He has left our sphere of existence. His heir is a lady named Lisensia,” he replied. “This is what she said to me: ‘I am a frivolous woman. A farm depresses me—all mud and horse droppings. The dumb beasts of the field bore me and the insects that fasten to them vex me. I care only for finery and for foppish young men useless to society—if they be comely of face and figure. Should you buy from me my father’s land, I shall waste the whole recompense, down to the last copper.’ She being so free-spirited, I received the land at a good price.”
“Did not the town council lend, or award, you the coin to do so? They owe to you the preservation of Tardocco.”
“They too have been generous,” he said, “but mostly in other respects. I wanted to make sure our title was free here and so employed my own resource.”
“I should like to meet this openhanded Lisensia.”
“Thou’rt too old to be of her interest,” he said, “and perhaps of a temper too settled. She will prefer the peach-cheeked young bravo who cannot cypher without the aid of his fingers.”
“Your tutelage has ruined me,” I returned. “You have misspent my youth upo
n vain studies of tepid sages.”
“It was my pleasure to do so. Now, what say you? Will you partner with me in this quest for the purely spiritual physical thing that I have spoken of to you aforetimes?”
“I cannot fathom what we are to be in quest of,” I said. “To my ear, it smacketh too much of philosophy; I have had my fill of weevily old treatises smelling of spiders. I am well acquainted with your library and do not care to revisit it.”
“The library is no more. I have distributed the whole of it to the schools and hermitages.”
“Are these heavy tomes well received among ’em?”
“The scholars love nothing so much as the mystifying phrases of Hermes Trismegistus, the o’erstretched syllogisms of Teteles, and the dull observations of Lullius. They scramble to these texts like ants to the carcass of a rotting rat and find great sweetness therein.”
“I wish them each and all a hearty feast. I found those pages none so toothsome.”
“Yet are you not now wiser than you were before you undertook such lavish perusal?”
“I have become wise enough to avoid all philosophy.”
“For a Falco, that is wise,” he said.
* * *
For the most part our arrangement has worked comfortably. I live with Telluria and Gabriel in a log-walled cottage set at the edge of an oat field. A tributary of Dove Creek called Reedy Run bubbles close by our humble door; a well in the yard supplies fine water; a wide-spreading hawthorn sports in its season clusters of reddening berries to which birds of every hue flock in tuneful parliaments.
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