FSF, October 2007 Read online

  Mutano smiled more widely and from the cuff of his ocher leather sleeve plucked forth another opal, even blacker than the others, which had been cut at one end into a sharpish point.

  Astolfo clapped his hands lightly, then rubbed them together. “So our surmise was correct. The piercing form had been chosen, though there is but superstition in the choice and no science."

  I began. “I do not—"

  "You no longer need to appear so ridiculous,” Astolfo said and reached out casually and ripped away my robe of ribbons, crushed it into a ball, and flung it on the flagstone floor. “You will learn more thoroughly without reliving your embarrassment. Let us sip a mug of ale to help wash down the dusty matter of explanation.” He dropped lightly to the floor, rummaged three mugs from a cupboard, and poured them foaming from a stout stone jar. He, and then Mutano and I, raised our mugs in salute and tasted the brew. Such an ale would cheer even the glummest hour.

  "Do you remember when Chrobius showed us the diamond and the things he said of the countess?"

  "He lauded her generosity,” I answered, “but lamented the late infirmity of her mind."

  "Good. And do you remember how he termed this infirmity?"

  "He said that she began to lack sufficient and proper will-call."

  "Yes. Will-call. In your wide and profoundly thorough perusal of the writings of sages and mages, have you ever encountered this odd word?"

  Something nibbled at the rearward of my memory like a mouse in the corner of a meal bin. “Is there not a school or maybe a cabal of philosophers who have formulated certain notions about the nature of authority, about who should be allowed to rule, and how succession of princes, counts, and other nobility should be arranged and that—that....” The fusty worm-eaten manuscript treatise began to crumble in my mind-sight.

  "Perhaps ‘twill aid your recollection to note that this gabble of thinkers is sometimes denominated by their deriders as the Prickalists or Pricktolites."

  "The Masculinists,” I said. “Yes, they who believe that it is graven by the stars upon the tablets of fate that only men are to bear sway over other men and over women. That, they believe, is the true and proper order of things. Any female who occupies a throne or any seat of power is reenacting some ancient and illicit act of usurpation that has brought the world into its present state of degraded confusion."

  "Now you have got it,” Astolfo said. “Those who follow this course of thought will not allow that it is legitimate for a woman to rule or to have power over any others, excepting her children, her animals, and her female servants."

  "So, if Chrobius subscribes to this way of thinking—"

  "He may desire to overthrow any woman in a seat of state. Yet what sort of woman, what exemplar of the female mind, will he distrust, fear, and perhaps envy the most?"

  "The woman who is three in one,” I said, “the triply endowed, triply powerful woman who is child, beauty, and crone in one.” The thought of it fired my enthusiasm so that I drained off my mug and held it out to be replenished.

  He pretended to demur. “We are not to the end of this knotty length of string. You had better keep your wits clear to think the pattern through."

  "You are in fee to me for another ale and many another after that,” I said, “because of the ugly drubbing you laid upon me at the palace."

  He grinned and Mutano poured me full again.

  "But I cannot cipher how Mutano's stealing of that small black-opal arrow can hinder the schemes of Chrobius."

  "He did not steal; he traded for it,” Astolfo said. “You have studied the lore of precious stones. You have read how jewels, and diamonds in particular, partake or share, after being long in their possession, the spirits of their owners."

  "Yes. I recalled to you the instance of Erminia, whose jewel crumbled when she died, but you dismissed the tale."

  "'Tis worn thin from too much wear, but true enough. I have no quarrel with its kernel. Now you must have read also that the nature of one stone can be transformed by keeping it in proximity with another and that the black opal is an especially debasing companion."

  "In Maxilius’ De gemmae et spiriti mundi, there is a lengthy—"

  "Yes, and in Bertralius, Ronio, Militides, and many another. Chrobius had paired the countess's diamond with a pernicious opal while the casket stood nighttimes in her bedchamber. By little and little, it drew one part of her tripartite spirit into the diamond, the opal serving as conduit. In due season, the other sides of her nature would also follow and the diamond itself would cloud to dull gray and finally to black. She herself would be left a husk, without memory, without spark; she would lapse lifeless in her mind, her body deteriorating like a drift of snow melting in the first heats of springtime."

  "And Chrobius would then seize her state."

  "No, he hath no lineage of blood. The people would not countenance the usurpation. But her third husband, the count with whom he is joined, would return from exile, pretend to care for the countess in her infirmity, and bring all power to himself."

  "This diamond found in the sea chest, this legacy of her second husband, has not proved the happy largess she thought it."

  "It was no legacy. Chrobius or some accomplice secreted it there to be found."

  "But why does Mutano hold not one but five black opals?"

  "We did not know the design of the one Chrobius paired with the diamond and were forced to resort to surmise, choosing the most favored designs in which that gem is usually cut. Fortune was with us."

  "But now Chrobius will see his opal absent, will think upon my stupid burglary attempt and its childish comedy, and know that you—"

  "He will not find the opal missing, for Mutano substituted a harmless bit of obsidian in that same shape to lie in the casket by the diamond. It hath no occult powers and in time the countess's spirit shall escape its diamond imprisonment and she shall be three again and whole."

  "Yet he shall observe her transformation, her renewal, and know—"

  "He will know that we know his scheme and that if he move against her we can reveal all upon him."

  "Why not do so at once?"

  "Best to watch and wait. Has he confederates in the palace? Has he formed secret alliances with other princes, other provinces or forces? He shall be aware of our gaze and if he does attempt any hidden plan, we shall detect it forthwith."

  "So we do nothing for the present."

  "We watch and wait. You may improve the time by further study of gems, and Mutano will begin your preparation for exercises in the wearing of shadows, how to don them without causing damage, how to choose the best for the task at hand, how to fit them to your form, how to move in them so that you seem a play of light and dark and not a clown clopping through a murky fog."

  "This is a more entertaining exercise than any you have set me to undertake so far,” I said. “There may be enjoyment in it."

  "As may be,” said Astolfo, “yet this too is a discipline requiring rigor. And has Mutano ever disappointed you in the policy of rigor?"

  I looked at Mutano's broad smile and did not altogether like the cast of it. “No,” I said, “he has not."

  * * * *

  We had arranged for the unmasking of Chrobius to take place in three stages in our next and final visitation at the court. The first stage was for me to be brought before the countess in chains and shackles, bearing the marks of ungentle treatment; I was to make confession of my fictitious dastardly crimes and she was to conceive and pronounce sentence.

  This bit of prelude was to afford us opportunity to observe the countess, to see whether or not we could discover changes in her demeanor, in the movements of her mind, the health of her physic. We were to observe Chrobius also for any hint that he had discovered Astolfo's replacement of his conduit opal with an innocuous shard of obsidian—or for any change about the minister that might betoken danger to the countess or to us.

  Our audience with her this time proceeded in the beginning similarly to the
first time. We were received, as then, before her imposing, elaborately carved chair in the large salon. Now Mutano was present as guard over me and he found it his part in the acting to cuff me about the jaw from time to time and to give my ankles an occasional contemptuous kick. This part he played with unfeigned relish.

  I stood before the countess, Mutano on my right side, Astolfo on the other, and Chrobius off to the left behind us; I mumbled out the rigmarole Astolfo had rehearsed me in: how I had planned to steal the great diamond, keep it secret till I could use it to buy my way into the good graces of the bloody pirate Morbruzzo, then join with him in a campaign of pillage, rapine, and destruction. But now, by means of the shadow master's minute regimen of iron disciplines, I had become a miserable and sniveling penitent and content to live or die in any fashion at the countess's desire.

  She spoke to Astolfo. “What think you, sir? Is his penitence genuine or only a further sham with which he hopes to escape the severest sentence?"

  He inclined his head, an ambiguous expression on his face. “I believe he is sincere at this moment, in this hour today. But who can read what thought will come tomorrow to such a viper's-knot of a mind?"

  "You have him securely in hand?"

  "Oh yes, milady. My man Mutano looks to him closely."

  At these words, Mutano fetched me such a sharp slap that blood dripped from my nose. This, I thought, was overacting the part. I longed to take his place in our drama; I could devise any number of painful cranks and pinches that would send him reeling, if we but exchanged roles.

  "Then I leave final judgment to you, Astolfo,” said she. “If he is reformable, well; if not, mayhap the world should be unencumbered of him."

  "Milady."

  "Now as to the diamond,” she said, “in what condition will you say it stands?"

  "It has been polluted by some means or other,” Astolfo replied. “You were correct to observe that its shine had somewhat muddied and its brightness occluded. Yet it is such a grand diamond, such a valiant one, that I believe it must possess inherent strong virtue to regenerate itself, to purge the darkness from it."

  "That would be a beatific event."

  "My advice is, Bright to bright and never night. That is, milady, ‘twould be best not to shut it away in casket or box or vault, surrounded by black gloom and tomblike silence. Better to bring it to its own likeness and let it breathe there and find itself again. Your own physic may strengthen along with it, milady, for it is well attested in the accounts of history and the writings of sages that the health of the possessors stands in close relation to the condition of the stones they possess. I could furnish many a treatise and pluck from memory countless examples."

  He paused and cleared his throat. “Perhaps, if you have time and patience, you might hear the little known story of the lady Erminia and her opal. It so closely was attached to her thoughts and moods that it changed hue and some have said, even its shape, as her own thoughts journeyed and her moods shifted...."

  And then Astolfo went on to tell at length, with intriguing detail and in high-colored language, that story of Erminia he would brook no syllable of from my lips. I found this most irritating and might even have preferred another of Mutano's blows to Astolfo's elaborate tale of Erminia. I rattled my chain and Mutano, as if to oblige my unspoken thought, delivered a solid kick to my leg.

  Astolfo was concluding: “So, as you see, the connections between possessor and possession are intimate and enduring. For the sake of the stone and for the sake of your own well being, I would pray you to place the diamond upon a sheet of the snowiest linen on a table in an open room, with two lamps set about it day and night to shed on it the warmest and most lucent light. I am certain that you will then see it return to its former brilliance."

  "It may be as you propose,” the countess said, “but I mislike exposing my diamond in such a public area, so prominent to the eyes of all, with everyone passing by and about. Why, ‘tis to welcome thievery with a handwrit invitation delivered upon a salver."

  Her doubtful remark brought us to the third part of Astolfo's scheme.

  "It will be broadly approachable, milady. So it must be constantly guarded and its care must be given over to the responsibility of one who is completely, nay, slavishly devoted to your best welfare. It must be guarded by a person whom no taint of suspicion can ever join to, one who has served you faithfully for many a long season, someone you have learned to trust without stint or reservation."

  "You intend my minister Chrobius,” she said.

  "But milady—” Chrobius stepped forward and made as if to remonstrate.

  "Our Chrobius hath many a weighty matter already in his charge,” the countess said. “There are affairs of state which pluck at his attention like hungry children at their mother's apron. Matters of finance bedevil him, rumors of armed revolt, whispers of intrigue and conflict: Every day his hours are so overfull with such considerations that they spill out of their allotted times like oat grain pouring from a torn sack."

  "If't vex not your forbearance, milady, let me plead,” Astolfo said, “for I believe there is no charge in all your affairs so urgent as this one. It touches directly upon your health and therefore upon the safety of your lands and dependents. I would urge you to create a special, particular office in this regard. Let your Chrobius become Master of the Jewel. If any stratagem advance against the diamond, he shall find it out, though it be hid like an adder coiled in a cave in the cliffs of Clamorgra."

  Chrobius came forward with unexpected quickness for an elderly man. “Milady Countess, I feel I must turn away from this sudden and injudicious honor. There are affairs of—"

  The countess giggled merrily and clapped her hands like an excited child. She drummed her heels on the rung of her chair. “Master of the Jewel!” she cried. “Oh, that is a dear, a precious title. I do love the ring of it."

  "Yet it is a grave responsibility and much hangs upon the office,” Astolfo warned. “If anything were to happen to the Great Countess Trinia Diamond, as the gemologists now name it, then all the consequence would be on the head of the Master of the Jewel and Chrobius must stand to answer."

  "It is grave—but also frolicsome,” she said. “It is done. I now declare thee, my good and faithful minister Chrobius, Master of the Jewel. It shall henceforth be your sole duty to guard by night and day, in peace and in war, in foul weather and fair, the welfare of the Great Countess Trinia Diamond. You shall be well rewarded in your service."

  Chrobius did not betray himself by so much as the quiver of an eyebrow. “Yes, milady Countess.” He bowed and stepped backward into his place behind our trio.

  "You too shall be fitly rewarded, Master Astolfo. You have but to name your fee, be it not too burdensome to our treasury."

  He made one of his unhurried, elegant bows. “The service was too trifling, milady, and I am still embarrassed by the perfidy of my once-apprentice, this Falco here. I could expect no reward."

  "You can. You must."

  "If it please you, milady—no. But I shall return every fortnight or so to see if all is in order, that no other gem has been brought to a proximity with the diamond, that it is kept in a bright, bare place all its own, and that no shadow is stealing into its heart like some arrant villain crawling into a secret cave in Clamorgra."

  "Well then,” she said, “I fear not that I shall find some way to recompense your good effort. And now, as his last duty before he attendeth only to the jewel continually, Chrobius shall lead you the way out."

  "Milady.” Astolfo bowed once more and we departed, with the wretched, battered, peevish Falco shuffling along in chains and devising in his furious mind many little revenges upon his friend Mutano.

  Chrobius proceeded before us through the great salon, through the corridors where the shadows no longer whispered ominous threats, to the wide hall at the front doors of the palace. Here he stopped, turned and gave each of us a level, uninformative gaze, signaled to the footmen to open for us, then turn
ed and padded away to his task of nursemaiding to the end of his days that immense diamond.

  Outside, we climbed into the carriage provided by the countess and set off toward Astolfo's mansion. I sat in the corner of the vehicle, weary and resentful, yet pleased withal. Master and manservant sat across from me in high good humor.

  "A stout piece of work, methinks,” said Astolfo. “We need no gold in our pouch for this work. We stand to flourish in the countess's favor and gratitudinous good will. We have the treacherous Chrobius in our power. Is't not a happy day's labor, Falco? And none so onerous, either."

  "Easier,” I said, “much easier for you than for me.” I clashed together my shackles.

  Astolfo and Mutano grinned at each other. “Ah, lad,” said the shadow master, “when I consider how far you are from a proper attainment, how much you have yet to learn, there swims into my brain a vision of the wide and starry sky."

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  The Star to Every Wandering Barque by James Stoddard

  James Stoddard published “The Star Watch” in our Jan. 2002 issue and “The Battle of York” in our All-American July 2004 issue. He lives in Texas and recently welcomed a grandson into the family. This story is in part a tribute to two of Mr. Stoddard's former students, both of whom work for NASA as A/V technicians.

  The Age of Conscience arrived on a Thursday evening in June, as Greg Stoll sat in the twilight on his front porch in a suburb of Houston. His house overlooked a small lake, and after work he liked to rest in his porch swing and watch the trees cast their long shadows across the water. Sometimes his wife, Michelle, sat with him, but on this particular evening he was alone, the swing gently creaking.

  The shards of the day remained with him, the myriad noises of the broadcast booth at NASA, where Greg worked as a video and audio supervisor, handling everything from interviews to launches to public relations spots. He had been hired in time to witness the original shuttle launch firsthand, and had been there ever since. It was a good job, easy in some ways, fun in others, but the last decade had been difficult. Budget cuts, personnel changes, mission failures, faltering morale; sometimes it was hard to remain optimistic. Though his was a support position, he loved NASA. But the politics could be overwhelming; in his position, he saw too much of it. The organization could do so much more if only everyone could forget their personal agendas, stick to the task, and just get along.