Thief of Shadows

"You know who I am?"

"Sir, I do," I said. "You are Master Astolfo. Everyone knows."

"You know then something of my station?"

I had to think quickly. An ill-chosen word might be an insult. An insult could well be fatal. "You are the Maestro Astolfo of the shadow trade, the most highly respected dealer and most knowledgeable appraiser of shadows in the city of Tardocco, in the province of Tlemia."

"You have me at a disadvantage," he said, "for I know nothing of you."

I could not see what advantage I might have, backed against the wall of a dim corridor of his great manse, with the point of his sword at my throat and a hulking, silent hireling at his side. Astolfo seemed no murderous sort; he was a stocky, almost pudgy, man with an air of deliberate nonchalance and a relaxed gaze that betrayed no particular animosity. Yet his blade had come to my guzzle with swift efficiency when the bulky one had led me to him from his garden.

"My name is Falco," I said. "I am of an honorable family in the southern provinces."

"You are most likely from Caderia or thereabouts, as I judge your accent. That is a country of small, muddy farms. It is not long since you left off trudging a furrow behind the nether end of a mule. Hay wisps protrude from your ears."

I made no reply to these calmly spoken truths. I was not surprised. Astolfo's reputation was that no one knew more of the world than he and that few were wiser in the usage of that knowledge. These were reasons sufficient to make his acquaintance, I thought.

"Furthermore, Falco is a name you have bestowed upon yourself. 'Clodpoll' or some other clownish appellation is your true name. You are a bumpkin trying on the airs of a town bravo and you have stolen over my garden wall in the dark of night, intending to do me grievous harm and to take property that is mine."

"Not so, sir," I said. "I came a-purpose to meet you and to talk with you."

"Why could you not come by the light o' the sun and knock at the gate and make yourself known in honorable fashion? This midnight sneakery must harvest ill."

"I tried the honorable practice," I replied, "and your man here turned me away like a louse-ridden beggar without a word. I believed I would gain more careful attention entering by stealth. I believed you would apprehend me and be curious."

He lowered the point, but did not scabbard his blade. "So you formed a plan and it has worked as you hoped. You must feel proud of your cunning."

"Do I look proud to you?"

He surveyed me with a glance almost desultory. "Well, let us see. Pied hose you wear and a greasy leather doublet that I judge a hand-me-down, and black harness-leather shoes with the out-of-fashion square toes. You very wisely chose to enter here unarmed, but the two steel rings at your belt show that you habitually wear a broadsword or a long sword which is now doubtless in the hands of a tavern keeper who holds it to secure a gaming or wenching or toping debt. In fine, you are a hot-blood lazybones who has run away from a dull farm and a phlegmatic, thick-handed father. You are one of scores who seek each year the streets of Tardocco to hinder the foot traffic of the honest citizenry and to play mischief when the moon is risen. This is you, Master Rustic Lumpfart, and a hundred like you."

This pretty speech succeeded in its purpose of angering me and it was well that I had not carried my sword hither. If I had drawn upon him, Astolfo would have skewered me like a piglet on a spit. "If all you say is true, then I must acquire more urbane ways," I said. "And that is why I have sought you out."

"You think me to be a mincing dancing master, some type of finger-kissing courtier?" He cocked his head to his left side. "No. You believe me to be a great thief, a felon who steals the shadows of the gentry to make himself wealthy thereby. You believe I have acquired all the arts and skills of shadow-taking and you hope I will impart them to you so that you may go abroad and plunder and pilfer and ruin my trade and pile up riches for yourself. You would pay me to make you my prentice, though all you possess in the way of fortune is but one eagle, four coppers, and a pair of dice."

I was so startled that I patted the waist of my doublet to confirm the absence of the pouch I saw in his hand. His name as a pickpurse was legend, but how had he done the trick? I had kept my eyes upon him the whole time. I felt now more strongly than ever that I should acquire his tutelage. "I will admit that I formed some such fancy. You find me naive, I expect."

"I find you backward," he said, "and probably incurably so. Here is your purse."

He tossed the pouch toward me, but when I reached, it was not there. It had returned to his hand.

"That is a childish trick."

"Its purpose was only to demonstrate how very backward you are, and it has succeeded. Now how shall you argue your case?"

Racking my brains for a stratagem, I concluded that only the truth would deliver me; there was no point in trying to deceive or cozen or blind-bag this man. I would tell him all, not omitting how I had rapped my older brother Osbro on the noggin with a spade and robbed his pockets and stole a candelabrum from a priest-house and arrived at Tardocco hidden in a manure cart headed to the municipal gardens. Perhaps by amusing this Maestro Astolfo I could bring him round. Whatever was shaming to me would be risible to him.

So I told him the whole of it, even the part where a scullery maid named Hana thwacked me in the cullions with a skillet for placing my hand where she had given no warrant while at the same time I was attempting to steal a wheaten loaf from the windowsill. And he, Master Astolfo, nodded gravely, as if he had forethought everything I said and found it banal.

But then when he gave me a straight look in the eyes, piercing and unblinking, the question he asked surprised me. He gestured at his manservant and said, "What color are Mutano's shoes?" And added: "Do not look."

I responded immediately. "A purplish black with gilt buckles."

"Clean or soiled?"

"A little mud on the edges of the soles."

"From what source?"

"I know not. How should I know such a thing?"

"By observing. Do you not think it important to know?"

"How, then?"

"If you had noticed that your own footwear bore a trace of that same mud, what might you think?"

"That we had been sometime in the same place and I might have seen him there but did not recognize him here."

"And also?"

"That he saw me and remembers me."

He looked me over again, bottom to top and back, and nodded. He hummed a snatch of music. "Tell me what you think: Is he to be pitched on a dung heap or can some use be made of an...