A Shadow All of Light (12 page)

“How do you mean?”

“What sort of person will cast so delicate a shadow?”

I pondered. “Some saintly lass, maybe. An ascetic student or a devoted temple maiden.”

Astolfo nodded, but his expression was dubious. “Or a prophetess—except that those figures rarely attain to gracefulness and when they do, their grace is in a strongly individual, eccentric mode. The movements of this shadow have a high degree of finesse unavailable to the temperament of the hermit.”

“You speak as if you have formed conclusions as to the identity of this female.”

“A thin conjecture, no more. Let us try to lure the artist who drew the shadow to our dinner table for tomorrow eve.”

“Petrinius? He will not come. He is said to disdain all company but his own.”

“And even with that he is none too pleased. Yet I think he might make an exception for our invitation. At any rate, we shall send it round.”

*   *   *

The silent, broad-shouldered Mutano ushered Petrinius into the large library where Astolfo and I stood by the great fireplace awaiting his arrival. It was too warm an evening for fire so Astolfo had ordered the hearth-space cleared and had installed small agate flame-sprite statuettes within. From various rooms and corners of the mansion he had brought all his best works of art—paintings, drawings, tapestry screens, ceramic fooleries, ornately bound books—and distributed them around the room. He evidently thought it worth trying to impress our distinguished artist guest.

He even began, after the usual greetings, to make a witty speech of welcome, but Petrinius cut him short. “I came to wolf down your meat and swill your wine and to hear what sort of business you have with me, Astolfo. Let us not waste the hour with rhetorizing.”

He was unperturbed and held Petrinius in one of the mildest of his mild gazes, unruffled by the artist's calculated gaucherie, a commodity he seemed to possess in abundant store. Petrinius was a short, almost dwarfish man whose gestures fluttered swiftly and jerkily. I could imagine him as a marionette whose strings were manipulated by a palsied puppeteer. He abounded with nervous energy; it crackled from him as from amber rubbed with lynx fur. His fingers twitched, his feet stuttered on the worn carpet. When he spoke his words flew like darts, and when he was silent his face betrayed his every thought and impulse in a succession of grimaces. One of the common sobriquets bestowed upon him was “Candleflame,” and he did indeed flicker with a fiery spirit, every motion animated.

“I am pleased that you have come to taste my wine,” Astolfo said. He poured from a dragon-spout flagon a draught of aromatic inky wine for each of us.

Petrinius tossed his portion down his gullet and at once held forth the glass to be filled again.

“I feel no urgency to broach my question,” Astolfo said as he poured the proffered glass to the brim, “for I believe you already know what I wish to ask.”

Again, Petrinius drained the draught with one noisy swallow and put forward the silver-enchased goblet. “This will be in the matter of the drawing commissioned by Ser Plermio Rutilius. Am I correct?”

“You are correct,” Astolfo said. He smiled gently as again he filled the glass.

“I do not think we can content each other. I have no real knowledge of the shadow to impart and the little I do know must come at a cost to you. I believe you already divine what I shall demand.”

“A certain shadow,” Astolfo said, “or, more accurately, a portion of it.”

“Yes.”

“It must be that you are still designing your great mural. What is the title you have given this long-planned masterwork?”

“At present it is called ‘The Dead Who March to Shame the State.' Tomorrow it may take a different name. What do you offer me for the bit I can tell?”

“Of the shadow of Malaspino a cutting two fingers' length in breadth. More, if your replies answer to my desire.”

“What, then?”

“Do you think Ser Rutilius says true that he knows nothing of the provenance of that shadow you so brilliantly sketched?”

“
Brilliantly?
Do not spend your breath upon flattery. I am aware of my capacities. It is in the interest of Rutilius to tell the truth. Why should he deceive you, his hireling, in the matter?”

Even the mean term,
hireling,
did not discompose Astolfo. “The way of shadow-dealing is as crooked as the shaft of the Great Wain. Did you form any surmises about where it came from?”

“Let us bypass catechism,” Petrinius said brusquely. “These things I know from observing the object itself: It passed through few hands before it came to Rutilius; it is fresh and without wear or soilure; it maintains its essential character. I would think the thief entrusted it to a middleman with Rutilius in mind as the sole buyer.”

“The one who took the shadow was no thief by vocation or the middleman would have gained the name of the caster from him as a means of protecting himself.”

“Of course, of course.” Petrinius waved an impatient hand. “It implies too that the price the middleman obtained was of secondary importance to the taker. He wanted chiefly to be rid of the thing.”

“Yet not from fear, for the shadow is that of a young woman who could offer little harm.”

“Unless she had a lover, brother, or some other protector who would pursue the taker.”

Astolfo nodded. “And yet—”

“And yet sufficient time has passed and no one has appeared. And I have some conceit that the lass might be an outcast or orphan.”

“A slave girl, mayhap?”

“She is no clumsy bumpkin like your man here,” Petrinius said, with a quick contemptuous gesture in my direction. “She has a grace not entirely inherent. She has been cultivated after some fashion.”

“As I thought also.”

“You have thought already all the things I have said to you. Did you call me here merely to annoy me? Lead me to the table. I will eat my fill and depart.” He held out his goblet again.

Astolfo complied, saying, “We shall dine on trout and sorrel, lamb and flageolets shortly. The cook must set his own time to bring us to table. I promise you will not regret his tediousness in the matter.”

“Even the most savory of meals is but fuel for the body's brazier,” Petrinius said. Then he looked directly into my face and I saw for the first time that his eyes were of different colors, the left an opaque, steely gray, the right a brilliant ice blue. “Has this briar-muncher learned the difference between mutton stew and oat straw? He would seem to be ill fitted for your machinations, Astolfo.”

“Oh, Falco does well enough. He only requires a bit of polish.”

“As does mule flop, but polish never improves its nature.”

“At what weight would you estimate the shadow's caster?”

“No more than eight stone. She will be right-handed, though in walking she will favor her left side. The bones of her arms and especially of her feet will be prominent, her instep a high arch. She is capable of swift movement and also of holding a set pose for a long while. The carriage of her shoulders is almost military in its steadiness and serves to emphasize a long, graceful neck. Her hands are puzzling to me; sometimes I think them too small for her body, sometimes too large.”

“How was the shadow stolen from her? Forcefully, with a sudden violence? Or slowly and carefully, when she was unaware?”

“Not by violence. And yet not gradually either. The edges are not abrupt, yet neither are they vague in boundary.”

“I will give over three finger-breadths of the shadow of Malaspino. And now we have done with this subject and you may speak at length of the plan of your mural.”

“It is to be dark, gloomy dark, in its center. Only the shadow of an evil man taken from him as he stood upon the gallows will supply the necessary blackness. You were on the scaffold with Malaspino, were you not? I have heard the rumors.”

“Since all excepting myself now are dead, I can affirm them. I bribed one of the hangman's prentices to keep at home. I wore his robe and the filthy hood he lent. It was his duty to bind the feet of Malaspino just before the trap was sprung, and when I knelt to the bonds, I slipped the shadow away at his boot soles. I had never at that time seen so black a shadow. The doomful poet Edgardo has been using minute parts of it as an admixture to his inkwell for some time now, and his lines grow ever more ominous and sardonic.”

“You allude to his poem ‘Chance,' of course. ‘Bow down before the daemon of the world—This monstrous god, half idiot and half ape.'”

“And to other poems he judges too bitter for auditors of our generation.”

“Methinks he too much prides himself,” Petrinius said. “His horrors are but apparitions. The ones I portray may be found in council chambers, in courts of law, in the streets of this greasy city. My horrors are the more frightening by far.”

“A point well made. And since your appetite is so keen, let us go in to dinner,” said Astolfo. “My nose tells me the dishes are ready. We must speak more of your great mural.”

He was not loath to do so. Between bold goblets of wine and weighty forkfuls of lamb loin, Petrinius spun out at length his scheme for his beloved project. The name of it kept changing as he warmed to the subject. Sometimes he called it “The Triumphal March of Justice Upon the Contemptible Species”; another time it was “The Furies Well Deserved, or Look Upon Us for What We Are.” It was to be his revenge upon history as he knew it, upon life, regarded more as a crime than an affliction. “There shall appear upon my wall figures who will recognize their shames and wail in anger.”

“'Twill be a most passionate masterpiece.”

“Passion, yes, passion!” Petrinius sputtered fragments of lamb. “I shall put into it all my brimstone heart and all my skills of hand and eye.”

“Will not the images you thus produce work ill upon the actual subjects?” Astolfo asked. “For I have heard it told of Manoni his art was so powerful that when he drew in ill will a person's likeness, that one fell sick. Some, they say, came near death.”

“Pah.” Petrinius took a generous swallow of wine. “Those are legends merely. Old superstitions. And I am not certain that Manoni deserves all his musty repute. I can show you clumsy passages in his best work.”

“So then, it is not true that an artist's portrayal may alter the condition of his subject? I had always heard otherwise.”

“It is not true, though many of the brotherhood promote the falsity. But of shadows, however, it is a truth. It can come about that the portrait of a shadow can affect the appearance of that shade, for good or for ill.”

“I see. Is it the passion of the artist which effects this result?”

“That is one of the things, but now I perceive you work to worm secrets from me. Yet I am no longer thirsty or hungry and so will depart.”

“Mayn't we tempt you with one thing more? A sweet wine of the Sunshine Isles? A fresh melon?”

“Useless to squander fine manners on me, Astolfo. I bid you good night.”

*   *   *

After Petrinius had taken his brusque and tipsy leave, brandishing happily above his head a moleskin packet containing his patch from the shadow of Malaspino, Astolfo proposed that we go into the small library for a last glass to invite slumber. Mutano was already there and sat at his ease by the writing table. A decanter of sherry and three small glasses stood ready.

At first Astolfo and Mutano conferred in one of their finger dialects with which I was unfamiliar and I wondered what their discussion concerned. Astolfo poured and we sipped in a momentary, contemplative silence. Then he turned to me: “What did we discover this evening?”

“That this Petrinius is eager to have his ears boxed,” I said. “His artistry, however estimable on paper and canvas, does not extend to courtesy.”

“Yes, he too referred to you as a cowherd chaff-brain. You are recognized in every place.”

“Under your tutelage I shall become an urbane scholar, a polished wit and silken murmurer of vain compliment,” I said. “You shall yet be proud of your creation.”

My little sally must have caught him unawares, for he paused to consider. “There might be something in this widely held apprehension to your advantage. It is rarely a mistake to appear less able than you are. The more willing others are to think you a fool, the more you should strive to appear so.”

I nodded. His words strengthened my hope that our association might continue for a while. I now counted four years in his service and calculated—or hoped—that four more would establish me in an independent enterprise.

Astolfo went on: “What physical attributes did you observe that would contribute to his power as an artist?”

“I am surprised at his comportment. He is a creature of jerks and starts, wriggles and itchings. He contorts his body as continually and absurdly as his facial expressions change, yet his drawing is easy and gossamer; it seems to have been breathed upon the page.”

“We cannot suppose that the man who swills grape and engorges flesh at table is the same as he who stands before the easel. Once he engages the discipline of his craft, his demeanor and personality will change. The priest who expounds a pious and arcane theology in the morning is not the same as the identical priest you encounter that evening in the drunken brothel.”

“He coils and uncoils like an adder in embers.”

“To aid his way of seeing. Did you not take notice of his eyes?”

“They are of different colors.”

“The clear blue is quick and precise. The left eye, colored like the iron of a dagger-blade, was shattered blind in a street brawl. He has to move his head continually to see things in the round. The loss of sight in one eye has given him an advantage in depicting shadows.”

“He has, then, acquired a valuable infirmity.”

“He has made it valuable. His infirmities and eccentricities are avidly cultivated. His aloofness of manner and careless speech signal an independent spirit free of sycophancy, and this bravura elevates the fees he commands. Where another might eat toads to gain favor, Petrinius spits venom and is the more prized. His great mural when finished will stand as one of the most powerful of misanthropic statements. Many in this city shall be furious to recognize themselves therein. If he includes representations of their shadows, those will suffer sad decline. The scrap of shadow from the felon Malaspino has lent him more power. Some high-placed persons will be savagely drawn in his panoply of rascality.”