A Farce To Be Reckoned With

Chapter 6

Babriel kept a close watch for Azzie's return. The angel had found quarters close to Aretino's house — a small place, for he didn't need much. He also acquired a servant, an old woman 'with sunken mouth and bright black eyes round as buttons. She cooked for him, the gruel of the righteous, which Babriel preferred above all other victuals. She washed his paintbrushes when he came home from his experiments in perspective, and in all ways looked out for him.

Babriel might have missed Azzie's return to Venice, for the demon flashed down in the night like a thunderbolt and made straight for Aretino's house. But Agatha, as the old woman was called, had been keeping watch, and her whole family had been enlisted into the task. Her father, Menelaus, was the first to see the quickening of light in the 'western sky, and he went to tell Agatha. Lighting a candle, she went through the dark passages to where Babriel stayed, knocked on the door, and entered.

"The one you seek is here in Venice, master," she said.

"At last!" Babriel said. He wound a cloak around himself, as dark a one as he could find, and he went forth.

Deciding to use the quality of subterfuge that he had heard so much about, Babriel climbed Aretino's trellis and came to rest on a small balcony outside a second-story window. Inside he could see Azzie and Aretino, but he could not make out their voices. Irritably he said, "Time for a miracle here," and with those words, a glowworm detached itself from its game of tag with its fellows and came over to him.

"How do you do, sir? What can I do for you?"

"I want to know what is being said inside."

"Trust me, I'm the lad to find it out."

The glowworm moved away, and after a while found a chink in the window frame. He buzzed in just in time to hear Azzie say, "I don't know what you have in mind, Aretino, but we'll try it. And we'll do it now!" And with that there was a flash of light and Azzie and Aretino disappeared.

The glowworm returned and told this to Babriel, who decided he had been messing with complicated matters, because he didn't understand at all what had happened.

Inside the house, just before the glowworm's arrival, Azzie had been saying, "I just dropped by to tell you I've found the candlesticks."

"You have? Where are they?"

"According to Cornelius Agrippa, they're stored in a castle in Limbo. I'll pop over there and make sure they're still available, and then set them up as prizes."

"Prizes?"

"Really, Pietro, get with it. You thought up the candlesticks. Or remembered the story, whichever it was.

There are seven of them, so we will have seven pilgrims. All they have to do is get the candlesticks, and their dearest wishes will come true. How do you like that?"

"And not because you did anything to deserve it, either," Azzie said. "Just because you possessed the magical object. That's how things ought to work. Sometimes that's how they do work. At least, that's what our play is going to say. I'm going to tell my volunteers that all they need to do is find the candlesticks and their problems are over. Basically."

Aretino raised his eyebrows, but nodded and also murmured, "Basically, yes. But how will they get the candlesticks?"

"I'll give the pilgrims each a spell, and the spell will lead them to the candlesticks."

"Sounds all right to me," Aretino said. "So we're going to Limbo. Is it very far?"

"Quite far, by any objective standard," Azzie said. "But the way we do it, it'll take very little time at all. As a playwright you should find this interesting, Pietro. No living man, to my knowledge, has been to Limbo

— except Dante. You're sure you want to make the trip?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Aretino said.

"Then we're off." Azzie made a sign, and the two of them vanished.

Aretino's first view of Limbo was disappointing. The place was all done up in shades of gray. In the foreground were rectangular blocks that might have been trees, on one of which Azzie stood. Or perhaps they stood for trees. It was hard to tell what stood for what in this place.

Behind them, triangular blobs, lighter in color and smaller, seemed to indicate mountains. Between the trees and the mountains were areas of crosshatching that might have been anything at all. There was no stir of wind. What little water there was lay in stagnant pools.

Presently a small dark blob on the horizon attracted Aretino's view. They moved in that direction. Bats squealed around them and little rodents hurried by.