Cat Tales (20 page)

Mutano was in another room, directing the movement of the large cat. He had found some way to position the animal so that its palpable shadow here in the library had covered my face and hindered my breath.

Mutano was fond of vexing me with jests of corporeal nature and after so many of them I had grown impatient. I called down curses on his square-jawed, shaggy head.

That is, I attempted to mutter these imprecations, but found that no sounds came from me. I tried again and then again, but all I could manage to utter was a raspy whisper that lacked any trace of my normal timbre. A brass ewer of water stood on a near table and I poured a beaker full and drank it down in three swallows, but there was no aid in it. My voice had departed my voice-box.

Everyone is familiar with the superstition that cats can steal away the breath of sleeping children and cause them to perish by suffocation. That is an old wives' tale, foolish in every respect. Yet now the shadow of a cat had reived away my voice. So I supposed the case to be, at any rate, and went in angry search of Mutano.

I
HAD NOT FAR to look. The kitchen was occupied by Mutano and Astolfo, and Creeper. Astolfo had taken his place, seated on the butcher block, while Mutano stood by a long counter beneath the west window. Creeper was crouched on the window ledge; and I observed when, at a sign from Mutano, the big cat leapt down from the ledge and covered a boule of wheaten bread on the counter with his body. I knew that in whatever other room his shadow was, it too was leaping down upon an object and embracing it closely.

Mutano gave a wide and happy and infuriating grin when he saw me watching, and my impulse was to return his japery with an arse-kick, but Astolfo held up his hand to restrain me.

“This is no inane trickery, Falco,” he said. “It is instead a demonstration of part of a plan Mutano has formed to get his voice back from one who has made himself his mortal enemy.”

I tried to speak but only buzzed like a cicada.

“Sit you by the oven,” Astolfo directed. “Quaff a glass of ale. The tale is soon told and you must hear it before you accompany Mutano upon his mission of restoration.”

I did as told. The light, nutty ale soothed my throat and calmed a little my disposition.

“It is the old story of rivalry for a woman's favors,” Astolfo said. “This was the lady Stellina, a bright, beautiful woman of petite figure and immense charm. Have you not noticed how these broad-beamed bravos, thick-necked and huge-handed, are so often attracted by small females doll-like and delicate of feature?”

I watched Mutano stroke Creeper and saw in my mind's eye how the cat's shadow, wherever it was, would be writhing with delight. Astolfo's description of his manservant was a just one: broad-beamed, thick-necked, huge-handed. He might have added knuckle-scarred; excessively muscular; and, as a drillmaster, too joyfully severe.

“Stellina, the daughter of the Count Rolando of the Lovoso Marches, had harbored a taste for the large and horny-palmed lads since she was a child. Now that she had come into her eighteenth year, she was able to inform her taste with a wide experience and, after trying the pleasures of a strong dozen specimens of manhood, settled upon Mutano as one of her favorites.

“The other was a tall, lean, hawk-featured young felon named Castilio from one of the western isles. He was a stranger to the garrison town of Rupz where Count Orlando maintained a private militia. Quicktempered and sharp-tongued, he was ready to battle man or beast as facile whimsy dictated. Such recklessness appealed to Stellina's mineral heart. She had not heard about his abducting of maidens of too-tender years and despoiling them with brutal handling. Or if she had heard, she cared naught.

“Yet she also liked Mutano who, though less quick-witted than Castilio and less blade-eager, showed an easy good humor of sardonic cast. He feared nothing. In particular, he showed no fear of Castilio and only deigned to acknowledge his rival's existence when Stellina bestowed on the lean fellow some mischievous epithet of high praise. In those days, Mutano was known for the quality of his voice — resonant, mellifluous, and compelling. He might have made his way in life as a minstrel had not the martial exertions claimed his allegiance.

“I will abbreviate this long romance of the foolish young. The rivalry developed to such a fevered heat that Castilio, in a fit of jealous imbecility, challenged Mutano to a wrestling match. Almost any other kind of combat might have favored the challenger, for Mutano has an especial liking for stuffing the elbows of his opponents into their ears and twisting their spines into sheep's-head knots. The contest concluded in the space of time it takes to sing one of Zandrio's ballads.”

I sipped at the ale and tried my voice once more. It was beginning to return a little, I thought.

“Castilio was as vengeful as he was foul-tempered and he vowed to take from Mutano one of his proudest possessions, his beautiful voice. So he invited our friend to a drinking session at a villainous inn whose proprietor was his crony. This occasion was supposed to mark a truce between them, and I believe Mutano expected his rival to renounce upon this hour all claim to Stellina, the golden object of their double desires.

“Mutano mounted the steps to a small room, as had been arranged. The room stood in dim light when he arrived, but when he fed more wick to the lamp on the table, he wished that it had been submerged in blackness. There, bound to a chair across the room, was the naked body of Stellina. Her throat had been torn out. Her features were contorted in agony; and her body bore dread, gaping wounds.”

“Horrible!” My voice sounded, a croaking whisper.

“Yes. You can imagine the great shriek that Mutano uttered. All his strength was behind the force of his voice and in that moment it was taken from him, captured. Castilio was in the room with a trio of cruel rogues, and he had with him a device that enabled him to steal the sound of Mutano's melodious voice. He took it from him and holds it captive still. Now Mutano determines to repossess his voice. What other designs he has upon the fate of Castilio, I do not know.”

“But —”

“Oh yes,” Astolfo said. He smiled and shook his head. “That was no corpse of Stellina bound in a chair but only a waxwork effigy of the woman, disfigured and maimed. The only purpose of this waxen mammet was to extract a great shriek of grief and outrage from Mutano so that it might be captured.”

“How can one make captive a voice?” I asked, pleased that my own was at last returning. I drank the ale cup dry and poured a smidgin more.

“With an ingenious series of wooden boxes, nested inside one another, with sufficient space between their neighbor walls that the echo of a voice rebounds within, again and again, until in the final, smallest box it is reduced to the essence of itself. You understand that I must speak in metaphors. Truly to describe this complicated device would require a long string of geometrical demonstrations, as well as some discourse upon the theorem of sound as being transferred from one place to another by a succession of æthereal waves. For our present purposes, it is enough to know that Castilio holds Mutano's power of speech in thrall and that our col league has laid a scheme to gain it back.”

“But how may a voice be preserved over a period of time? It consists of breath and must soon fade back into its airy elemental state. No wonder-box, ingenious as it may be, is capable of preserving it.”

“Correct,” Astolfo said. “You studies are bringing you to sound ways of thinking. The voice must be given over to another entity with some power of speech. It must lodge within an animal that possesses a voice-box of its own. A magpie might be useful in this regard or a pet monkey. Mutano believes that Castilio has preserved his voice in the throat of a lazy, red-orange cat he hath named Sunbolt.”

“Why does he think so?”

“I know not how he came to this conclusion. He is privy to some intelligence I wot not of. It may have to do with a set of verses Castilio dispatched to Stellina, comparing some portion of her anatomy to one of the nobler virtues of his cat.”

I drank off the mug and wiped my lips with the heel of my palm. My voice had returned to its normal state and I was regaining my composure. 'Tis an unsettling business, to be struck dumb in an instant, to be incapable of speech for no fathomable reason.

“I have a glimmering,” I announced. “This method of capturing a voice recalls to me the conundrum of the twin children. Is there a treatise on the subject from the olden time or is this a new-minted conceit?”

“An amalgam of both is likeliest,” Astolfo said. “You might look into Lariotti's little monograph on the geometrical diminishments of the musical tone
re.
That is all I can recall that might be of the slightest help.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I will inform Mutano that I stand ready at any time to aid him in his effort to reclaim his voice.”

“You need not trouble,” Astolfo said. “He counts you his accomplice already.”

A result of my varied readings and of hearing of Mutano's quest had been to clarify my purblind musings in regard to the shadow of the twin children. Now it seemed probable to me that they were not lacking a shadow that ought to be present, but that the shadow already was present and was only concealed. Maestro Astolfo must have suspected this to be the case when he inquired whether any part of the visible shadow was darker or more pronounced than the other portions of it. I had observed that the central part was of a darker tint and that it exhibited the same general outline, in smaller state, as the outline of the whole.

The two children possessed two shadows, only one was contained within the other. These shadows must have clung together, then fused inseparably, shortly after the birth of the twins. My task would be to cleave them, to set one apart from the other, causing two to stand where one had stood.

I began to reason upon the undertaking, pacing up and down the flagstones of the library, then going out into the chill, damp weather the storm had delivered and tramping about in the wet grasses of the courtyard. I desired that the cold air would sharpen my wits.

Some shadows are uncleavable from their parent objects. If a thief take the shadow of a man on the instant of his being illuminated by a stroke of lightning, that shadow will ever seek out the presence of iron and fasten into its grain irremovably. The fashioners of ceremonial shields often elaborate these shadowshapes into fanciful designs highly prized by their clients. Almost equally impossible is the task of cutting away the shadow of a carefree maiden standing in the shadow-dapple of a cherry tree. Yet it can be done by masters such as Astolfo.

As I thought upon the lightning-bred shade's attraction to iron, I recalled also the device of the nested boxes which had stolen away Mutano's voice. I remembered too the shadow-stain of the statue of Prester Vonnard and how it clung to the cobbles of a plaza. A scheme came to mind then, and I determined to trace it out on my own, telling Astolfo little until it came to conclusion. But since Mutano required my aid to further his design, I would entreat his aid on behalf of my own.

T
HE MORROW BROKE bright and water-sprent, sunlight gleaming from every grass blade and leaf tip. The dawn birds were hilarious and did not lessen the volubility of their choruses till mid morning. Mutano was in an easy temper too; he anticipated the regaining of his voice. My part in his plan was but small, yet it might endanger my person. I was to deliver to Castilio at his lodgings in the Haywain Inn an ugly insult and a jovial but urgent invitation to meet Mutano on the field of honor where they would settle all insuavity between them with the clash of sabers.

This much Mutano communicated to me in one of the rapid finger dialects that he and Astolfo habitually conversed in. I had gathered enough of it to comprehend instructions and simple explanations, -sometimes with the aid of ear-boxings to fructify my attention. The only real peril, so stated his thumb and third finger, was that Castilio might insert a dagger in my windpipe upon hearing the insult — a complicated phrase involving his mother, his uncle, a goat, an ape, and a pig — without staying for the challenge to duel Mutano.

I asked him about his odd choice of weapons, for of all the choices open to him — long knives, clubs, maces, broadswords, &c. — the saber was least advantageous; 'twas the blade he was less agile with. For answer he gave me one of his ear-wide, manytoothed grins.

In return, I requested his aid in a bit of simple carpentry to my design and also in transporting my devices to the house of Sativius. After momentary reflection, he agreed to fall in with me.

The hour in which Mutano insisted that I deliver his messages was deepest twilight. Uncommon gloomy 'twas, this tavern room of the Haywain with its scant half dozentallow candles disposed diversely. Besides the object of my attention and myself, the only other persons here were a raddle-haired serving maid and a baldpate dotard seated by the cold fireplace, opposing himself at a chessboard. Castilio sat on a bench, sipping at a tankard and playing idly with an ivory-handled dirk of modest but ominous proportion. I sat at a table with a glass of canary, waiting for him to grow tired of his game and sheathe the blade. Finally he thrust it back into his sleeve.

I advanced to stand before him; and he looked up into my eyes with a gaze that was challenging but also incurious, the gaze of a man determined to fear nothing that fate flung in his way. When I reeled off the insult entailing his complex ancestry and his dubious amatory practices, his expression did not change at first. Then he laughed, and when I heard that soft, insidious chuckle with its flat intonation, I understood why Mutano so loathed him and why all the world gave wide berth to his presence.

“You are but a parrot sent to prattle words not your own,” he said. He looked away from my face into the far corner of the room. “Which of my foes has dispatched you here? Torpius? Scudator? Mutano? Master Thistledown?”