A Shadow All of Light (45 page)

Astolfo seemed to expect that Tardocco would be set upon by pirates—by Morbruzzo, renowned for savagery in pillage, or by others almost equally feared. A greater fear was that some of the brigand bands had leagued together for a concerted attack. It was hardly unheard of that port cities fell prey to pirate fleets. Reggio, a fat island city to our southeast, had fallen to pirates four times in a dozen years. At last, as if its spirit were exhausted, the whole town crumbled in ruins in a series of earthquakes.

An irony attending our fear of pirates was that Tardocco itself, according to some historical accounts, had been founded as a safe haven by pirates, a place for their ships to load off plunder and to repair damages sustained in battle. Astolfo threw doubt on the legend, saying that our comfortable commercial town liked to give itself rakish airs, “like a chaste maiden cherishing a hidden tattoo of an arrow-pierced heart.” I preferred the legendary origin to the staid conjectures written by scribblers pedantic from birth. I liked also the myth of the Mardrake that inhabited the bay; that legend implied a long and eventful history largely unknown in our more humdrum time.

Trudging along the loading piers at waterside, I recognized a familiar door, the side entrance to the great, gloomy warehouse that sheltered the offices of the merchant Pecunio, the old man whose commission had occasioned my introduction to the business of shadow-trading and its accompanying perils. This stretch of buildings looked more disused than any other I had passed. No lights showed between the board sidings of the structures and the planks of the piers were slick with algae. Pecunio's front was the exception; the main entrance had been opened recently, though the trackings were unclear, especially in this fading, violet light. But the white stone sill of the side door bore boot marks, though no light shone out from any crevice.

I slipped to the door and laid my ear against it and heard nothing. But the silence was not somnolent; it was like the silence of a man holding his breath. I waited, holding my own breath, and in a while I thought I heard sounds muffled by the thick pine door—steps as of several persons pacing about, a rumbling as of a handcart being trundled over the floor. I stood in this posture for a long time but could learn nothing else.

*   *   *

My circuit now brought me to Rattlebone Alley, a narrow passage that led to Chandlers' Lane and thence to the broad avenue northward to the parks and the upper crescent of the city. An ill-favored tavern on my right-hand side emitted a soft dribble of voices and I stepped within to a low-ceilinged room with four bare tables and a long plank counter supporting five large casks. Upon tall chairs along the counter perched three querulous old men, being served with seeming reluctance by a sallow woman. She had seen better days but evidently took no pleasure in recalling them.

I stepped to the splintery board counter and asked for ale.

“Rum,” she said. “Rum only.” Her voice was of a timbre to alarm ravens.

“Rum then.”

“Show your copper. Copper first, then rum.”

I laid a silver coin on the wood. “Rum for all.”

If she was glad of the sale, she did not exhibit unbridled joy. Nevertheless, she brought forth fresh wooden cups and poured four.

I tasted mine and pushed it back to her. “Silver deserves better. For the barmaid too.”

She managed a glimmer of a smile, pushed her slate-gray hair back, brushed the front of her smock with a hasty hand, and began again, producing a large brown jug from a shelf below the counter.

“Better,” I said, after a small sip. “I thank you.” I raised my cup and the old fellows returned my salute.

“Your health,” one said, the only one to return my gaze. His accent marked him from the Molvorian hills.

“Worked up a little thirst,” I said, “walking down from the Nuovoponte. I was to meet a friend, but he never arrived.” I went on chatting in this vein, making inane observations and telling flaccid jokes. In a while the quartet warmed to my sallies and a meandering, pointless conversation began.

“The city is eager for the Feast to begin,” I said. “Never have I counted so many Jesters. There's a Bennio here, there, and everywhere—except in this part of town. Not a single Jester have I seen along the wharves.”

They considered in silence until the affable one said, “You have come too early.”

“How is that?” I signaled for another round.

“Late in the night, you might see a dozen or more just outside the door.”

I turned to the other two. “Have you seen so many Jesters?”

They shrugged. They did not care to pursue the subject.

I asked the woman. “You see 'em?”

“I do not like the Jesters,” she said. “They order rum, they drink it down, they run away, singing some poor rhyme or other about Bennio's privilege during his Feast.”

I recited:

“Come pour Bennio his mite of drink

That gives him fuel with which to think;

Then fill his empty cup again

To stay the raging of his brain.”

“That's the one,” she said, “or one very like. They all sound the same to me, and they all result in my loss.”

I laid down another small silver. “Custom rules all,” I said. “I'll stand for the Jester's score this once. Does he—do they—often come in here?”

“Too often,” she said, picking up the coin.

“They come ashore at night in cockleboats,” my conversationalist said.

“From what ships?”

“Those we never see. There are only three at anchor now, not counting the
Tarnished Maiden.
”

“The
Maiden
?” said the sullen one “That is no vessel at anchor. That is a hulk that Ser Arbolo has let lie to rot. Time the hull was stove in and the hulk sent to the bottom, say I.”

“But men go out to it or past it,” said the other. “Some got up as Jesters.”

“How do these new Jesters perform as clowns?” I asked.

“Like serpents trying to play lutes.”

I saw that the remarks of this informant unsettled his companions; they shifted apprehensively in their seats.

“The plazas are filled with unfunny Jesters and stumble-foot acrobats. Few are suited to the roles. It is well they follow other trades to earn their bread,” I said.

The third man broke his silence. “I followed the sail for nigh forty years. Many a first mate racked my hide who should have been tending sheep on the mountain. What calling do you follow?”

“My father wanted me to be a thief,” I said. “My mother desired me to become a celibate priest. And so I ended by doing naught, wasting my days with ale and female.”

“That is the best way to live,” said the ancient tar. “How do you furnish it?”

“The unwary are my benefactors. Listen! I seem to hear one besotted prospect calling from Daia Plaza for me to come deliver him of his o'erweighty purse. I must bid you good night.” I swallowed my last and left.

*   *   *

I entered Chandlers' Lane in a bemused state of mind, thinking on my encounters in Rattlebone Alley. If the intelligence I had gathered was even partially accurate, Astolfo's fears were justified. Under the confusion of the Feast a strategy was going forward that involved the Society of Jesters, the ritual of the coffin burial, and the safety of the city.

It was dark now, but the windows and doorways of the workshops were open and brightly lit. In time past, all the candle-makers had set up in this street, and though new ventures had lately found quarters here, there were still a score or so of candlers, some of them of a third or fourth generation in the trade.

Now, though, these artisans were turning their hands to another kind of facture. This was the season of masks, and Tardoccan masks were objects widely sought after. These were not the flimsy wooden masks layered with white plaster so common elsewhere. These were constructed with a linen foundation to which pitch was applied. Then the interiors were waxed with one ply of wax and the outside with as many waxen layers as desired, dyed and sculpted to the buyers' directions. After the hardening, the candlers applied thin glazes to which our firm contributed shadow-tints. In broad daylight our tints were invisible to most eyes, but in the flickering candles of the Feast, they yielded expressions that charmed or alarmed.

If logic applied, the tradition of the mask must seem ridiculous. The purpose of the mask is first of all to conceal the wearer's identity; the second purpose is to signal that the wearer is engaged in the festivities, eager to share in the pranks and counterfeits and amatory antics and satiric frolics to which the season gives license. During these days nobles turned into draymen, young maidens donned the faces of slattern hags, women changed into men and men into women, and men-women changed into women-men. No stigma attached, not only because of the customary practices of the Feast but also because the masks sufficiently hid identities. Why then would one commission a mask whereon the features were tinted with his or her own shadow, teasing strangers and acquaintances with hints about who one was?

Astolfo had offered his thoughts. “The most of our clients do not intend to hide themselves within or behind shadows. Their purposes are cosmetic, to emphasize and augment certain physical attractions or facets of personality. The tall woman who fancies she bears some aura of mystery will have a light shadow applied to her face and upper torso. It serves the usage of a veil without the awkwardness and obviousness of draped cloth. She thus underlines her attributes.”

“But misapplication is ruinous,” I replied. “The loose-lived bravo who wishes his fellows to think him dangerous and more foolhardy than he truly is will shroud himself in an umbra so ominously black he looks like he has fallen into a well.”

“Thus, like the woman, he gives himself away by hiding himself.”

“But the one instance is by design and the other, stupid one is not.”

“And so,” Astolfo concluded, “one of the first principles of our craft is illustrated.
The shadow reveals by concealing.
”

That principle of the trade might well apply to most of the practices of Feast time, I thought. This carnival gives opportunity for individuals to open apertures upon some other self which in part they naturally already are. He who has but one self has no self at all, saith ancient Q. Curtius, and I may add that his adage is doubly true of females. Is there any woman anywhere who is not in some large or small part of her nature a cat or a willow tree? And breathes there a man who is not also a dog?

*   *   *

As I made my way back toward the center of town, I saw that the number of revelers had increased, though there was not an oppression of bodies, as there would be later on. Torches lit the way and various strains of music filled the cooling air. I quickened my pace, for I wished to visit again the site of the entertainment of the Green Knights and Verdant Ladies, the narrative of the monstrous Mardrake and the heroic Perseus. The last time I came here I was rudely reintroduced to my long-disregarded brother, an unpleasant encounter.

I was surprised when I arrived at the garden guild's entertainment area to find only a few onlookers watching, without keen interest. The scene in play was the most exciting one, with the Mardrake advancing to menace Andromeda. Here was a different and more frightening monster than before, more voluminous, darker in aspect, with motions of tentacles and pseudo-limbs strongly convincing. The movements were languorous as the appendages rolled outward, the tentacles waving slowly at their tips; it was such a kind of movement as one would envision to take place underwater. Out came the Mardrake from the waves—which were suggested by the undulating shadows of vines and broad-leaved saplings—and it unscrolled itself toward the rock where the princess was chained.

But no princess stood there. The players were only rehearsing the scene, trying to get the apparatus to operate satisfactorily. The unfurling-refurling of the beast was superior to that of my earlier experience and I surmised that Cocorico had arrived and was manipulating Sbufo's bladders and levers, playing out his part.

There was another difference also. The shadows the monster cast were not stable in outline. As one round tenebrous mass rolled forward, its edges were torn away, leaving fluttery rags that seemed to writhe in agony. In the main body of this shadow holes appeared, small at first but slowly enlarging until the mass of it presented the appearance of a great, coarse mesh. These debilitations slowed the progress of the Mardrake toward its goal; it did not halt, but every forward motion it made seemed to pain it harshly. Then the interior mass was eaten all away and the scene stopped before its conclusion.

“A thousand, thousand curses on these plants!” a voice cried out. “Can we not learn to regulate their appetites?”

This would be Cocorico, vexed nearly to his patient limit by our shadow-eater plants. We had warned the wise ballet mistress Anastasia that these plants were perhaps not sentient, or at least not completely sentient, beings. They could not be trained as dogs and monkeys and novice dancers might be trained. We had warned her too of the dangers of them and I had described at length what would happen if one of them fastened upon the shade of one of the actors or stagehands. I told her, “Only imagine what would happen if they got free into the audience. You can almost hear the shrieks of men and women and children whose shadows are being devoured.”

She had listened in solemn silence but was determined to acquire the effect that the hungry ravaging produced for the performance. In that regard she was canny. I could see that those writhings and fervid surges would add wild mood to the scene.

Yet it was a perilous decision. Mutano and I had set up a small square tent of black velvet behind the stage in which the plants were kept dark and watered when not active onstage. We had carefully explained how to transport them from spot to spot and had warned one and all of the danger.