Rosenquartz was still grumbling as Fenoglio closed the door behind them. The wooden staircase that Meggie had hardly been able to climb last night, exhausted as she was, led down to a yard surrounded by houses, with pigsties, woodsheds and vegetable plots competing for what little space was left. A narrow little stream wound its way through the yard, two children were shooing a pig away from the vegetable beds, and a woman with a baby in her arms was feeding a flock of skinny hens.
‘A wonderful morning, isn’t it, Minerva?’ Fenoglio called to her, as Meggie hesitantly followed him down the last steep steps.
Minerva came to the foot of the stairs. A girl of perhaps six was clinging to her skirt, and stared suspiciously at Meggie. She stopped, feeling unsure of herself. Perhaps they can see it, she thought, perhaps they can see I don’t belong here …
‘Watch out!’ the little girl called, but before Meggie realized what she meant, something was pulling her hair. The little girl threw a clod of earth, and a fairy fluttered away empty-handed, scolding crossly.
‘Good heavens, where are you from?’ asked Minerva, helping Meggie down from the steps. ‘Aren’t there any fairies there? They’re crazy for human hair, particularly when it’s as pretty as yours. If you don’t pin it up you’ll soon be bald. And anyway, you’re too old to wear it loose, not unless you want to be taken for one of the strolling players.’
Minerva was small and stocky, not much taller than Meggie. ‘My word, how thin you are!’ she said. ‘That dress is almost slipping off your shoulders. I’ll take it in for you this evening. Has she had any breakfast?’ she asked, and shook her head at the sight of Fenoglio’s baffled expression. ‘Dear Lord, surely you didn’t forget to give the girl something to eat?’
Fenoglio helplessly raised his hands. ‘I’m an old man, Minerva!’ he cried. ‘I do forget things! What’s the matter with everyone this morning? I was in such a good mood, but you all keep going on like this. Rosenquartz has already been infuriating me.’
By way of answer Minerva dumped the baby in his arms and led Meggie off with her.
‘And whose baby is this?’ enquired Fenoglio, following her. ‘Aren’t there enough children running about the place already?’
‘It’s my eldest daughter’s,’ was all Minerva replied, ‘and you’ve seen it a couple of times before. Are you getting so forgetful that I’ll have to introduce my own children to you?’
Minerva’s younger children were called Despina and Ivo; Ivo was the boy who had been carrying Fenoglio’s torch last night. He smiled at Meggie as she and his mother came into the kitchen. Minerva made Meggie eat a plate of polenta and two slices of bread spread with a paste that smelled of olives. The milk she gave her was so rich that Meggie’s tongue felt coated with cream after the first sip. As she ate, Minerva pinned her hair up for her. Meggie scarcely recognized herself when Minerva pushed a bowl of water over to her so that she could see her reflection.
‘Where did you get those boots?’ asked Ivo. His sister was still inspecting Meggie like some strange animal that had lost its way and wandered into their kitchen. Where indeed? Meggie hastily tried to pull the dress down to hide her boots, but it was too short.
‘Meggie comes from far away,’ explained Fenoglio, who had noticed her confusion. ‘Very far away. A place where there are people with three legs, and others whose noses grow on their chins.’
The children stared first at him and then at Meggie.
‘Oh, stop it! What nonsense you do talk!’ Minerva lightly cuffed the back of his head. ‘They believe every word you say. One of these days they’ll be setting off to look for all the crazy places you tell them about, and I’ll be left childless.’
Meggie almost choked on the rich milk. She had quite forgotten her homesickness, but Minerva’s words brought it back – and her guilty conscience too. She had been away from home five days now, if she’d been keeping count correctly.
‘You and your stories!’ Minerva handed Fenoglio a mug of milk. ‘As if it wasn’t enough for you to keep telling them those robber tales. Do you know what Ivo said to me yesterday? When I’m grown up I’m going to join the robbers too! He wants to be like the Bluejay! What do you think you’re doing, pray? Tell them about Cosimo for all I care, tell them about the giants, or the Black Prince and his bear, but not another word about that Bluejay, understand?’
‘Yes, yes, not another word,’ muttered Fenoglio. ‘But don’t blame me if the boy picks up one of the songs about him from somewhere. Everyone’s singing them.’
Meggie had no idea what they were talking about, but in her mind she was already up at the castle anyway. Resa had told her that the birds’ nests clustered together on its walls so thickly that sometimes the twittering drowned out the minstrels’ songs. And fairies nested there too, she said, fairies who were pale grey like the stone of the castle walls because they often nibbled human food, instead of living on flowers and fruits like their sisters in the wild. And there were said to be trees in the Inner Courtyard of the castle that grew nowhere else except in the very heart of the Wayless Wood, trees with leaves that murmured in the wind like a chorus of human voices, and foretold the future on moonless nights – but in a language that no one could understand.
‘Would you like anything else to eat?’
Meggie started, and came down to earth again.
‘Inky infernos!’ Fenoglio rose and handed the baby back to Minerva. ‘Do you want to fatten her up until she fits into that dress? We must be off, or we’ll miss half of it. The Prince has asked me to bring him the new song before midday, and you know he doesn’t like people to be late.’
‘No, I don’t know any such thing,’ replied Minerva grumpily, as Fenoglio propelled Meggie towards the door. ‘Because I don’t go in and out of the castle the way you do. What does our fine prince want from you this time – another lament?’
‘Yes, I’ve had enough of them too, but he pays well. Would you rather I was penniless and you had to look for a new lodger?’
‘Very well, very well,’ grumbled Minerva, clearing the children’s empty bowls off the table. ‘I tell you what, though: this prince of ours will sigh and lament himself to death, and then the Adderhead will send his men-at-arms. They’ll settle here like flies on fresh horse dung, on the excuse of just wanting to protect their master’s poor fatherless grandson.’
Fenoglio turned so abruptly that he almost sent Meggie flying. ‘No, Minerva. No!’ he said firmly. ‘That won’t happen. Not as long as I live – which I hope will be a very long time yet!’
‘Oh yes?’ Minerva removed her son’s fingers from the tub of butter. ‘And how are you going to prevent it? With your robber songs? Do you think some fool with a feathered mask, playing the hero because he’s listened to your songs too often, can keep the men-at-arms away from our city? Heroes end up on the gallows, Fenoglio,’ she continued, lowering her voice, and Meggie could hear the fear behind her mockery. ‘It may be different in your songs, but in real life princes hang them, and the finest of words don’t change that.’
The two children looked uneasily at their mother, and Minerva stroked their hair as if that would wipe away her own words. But Fenoglio merely shrugged. ‘Oh, come on, you see everything in such dismal hues!’ he said. ‘You underestimate the power of words, believe me! They are strong, stronger than you think. Ask Meggie!’
But before Minerva could do just that, he was pushing Meggie out of the house. ‘Ivo, Despina, do you want to come?’ he called to the children. ‘I’ll bring them home safe and sound. I always do!’ he added, as Minerva’s anxious face appeared in the doorway. ‘The best entertainers far and wide will be at the castle today. They’ll have come from very far away. Your two can’t miss this chance!’
As soon as they stepped out of the alley, they were caught up in the crowd streaming along. People came thronging up from all sides: shabbily dressed peasants, beggars, women with children, and men whose wealth showed not only in the magnificence of their embroidered sleeve
s, but most of all in the servants who roughly forced a path through the crowd for them. Riders drove their horses through the throng without a thought for those they pushed against the walls; litters were jammed in the crush of bodies, however angrily the litter-bearers cursed and shouted.
‘Devil take it, this is worse than a market day!’ Fenoglio shouted to Meggie above the heads around them. Ivo darted through the crowd, quick as a herring in the sea, but Despina looked so alarmed that Fenoglio finally put her up on his shoulders before she was squashed between baskets and people’s bellies. Meggie felt her own heart beat faster, what with all the confusion, the pushing and shoving, the thousands of smells and the voices filling the air.
‘Look around you, Meggie! Isn’t it wonderful?’ cried Fenoglio proudly.
It was indeed. It was just as Meggie had imagined it on all those evenings when Resa had told her about the Inkworld. Her senses were quite dazed. Eyes, ears … they could scarcely take in a tenth of all that was going on around her. Music came from somewhere: trumpets, jingles, drums … and then the street widened, spewing her and all the others out in front of the castle walls. They towered among the other buildings, tall and massive, as if they had been built by men larger than those now flocking to the gateway. Armed guards stood in front of the gate, with their helmets reflecting the pale morning light. Their cloaks were dark green, like the tunics they wore over their coats of mail. Both bore the emblem of the Laughing Prince. Resa had described it to Meggie: a lion on a green background, surrounded by white roses – but it had changed. The lion wept silver tears now, and the roses twined around a broken heart.
The guards let most of the crowd pass, only occasionally barring someone’s way with the shaft of a spear or a mailed fist. No one seemed troubled by that – they went on pressing in – and Meggie too finally found herself in the shadow of those metre-thick walls. Of course she had been in castles before, with Mo, but it felt quite different to be going in past guards armed with spears instead of a kiosk selling picture postcards. The walls seemed so much more threatening and forbidding. Look, they seemed to say, see how small you all are, how powerless and fragile.
Fenoglio appeared to feel none of this; he was beaming like a child at Christmas. He ignored both the portcullis above their heads and the slits through which hot pitch could be tipped out on the heads of uninvited guests. Meggie, on the contrary, instinctively looked up as they passed, and wondered why the traces of pitch on the weathered stone looked so fresh. But finally the open sky was above her again, clear and blue, as if it had been swept clean for the princely birthday – and Meggie was in the Outer Courtyard of Ombra Castle.
20
Visitors from the Wrong Side of the Forest
Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes – if necessary – brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must.
Clive Barker,
Abarat
First of all Meggie looked for the birds’ nests that Resa had described, and sure enough, there they were, clinging just below the battlements like blisters on the walls. Birds with yellow breasts shot out of the entrance holes. Like flakes of gold dancing in the sun, Resa had said, and she was right. The sky above Meggie seemed to be covered with swirling gold, all in honour of the princely birthday. More and more people surged through the gateway, although there was already a milling crowd in the courtyard. Stalls had been set up within the walls, in front of the stables and the huts where the blacksmiths, grooms and everyone else employed in the castle lived and worked. Today, as the Prince was inviting his subjects to celebrate with him the birthday of his grandson and royal heir, food and drink was free. ‘Very generous, I’m sure,’ Mo would probably have whispered. ‘Food and drink from their own fields, won by the labour of their own hands.’ Mo did not particularly like castles. But that was the way of Fenoglio’s world: the land on which the peasants toiled belonged to the Laughing Prince who was now the Prince of Sighs, so a large part of the harvest was his too, and he dressed in silk and velvet, while his peasants wore much-mended smocks that scratched the skin.
Despina had wound her thin arms around Fenoglio’s neck when they passed the guards at the gate, but at the sight of the first entertainers she quickly slipped off his back. One of them had stretched his rope between the battlements, and was walking high up there in the air, moving more lightly than a spider on its silver thread. His clothes were blue as the sky above him, for blue was the colour of the tightrope-walkers; Meggie’s mother had told her that too. If only Resa had been here! The Motley Folk were everywhere among the stalls: pipers and jugglers, knife-throwers, Strong Men, animal tamers, contortionists, actors, clowns. Right in front of the wall Meggie saw a fire-eater, yes, black and red was their costume, and for a moment she thought it was Dustfinger, but when the man turned he was a stranger with an unscarred face, and the smile with which he bowed to the people around him was not at all like Dustfinger’s.
But he must be here, if he’s really back, thought Meggie, as she looked around for him. Why did she feel so disappointed? As if she didn’t know. It was Farid she really missed. And if Dustfinger wasn’t here, she supposed it would be no use looking for Farid either.
‘Come along, Meggie!’ Despina pronounced her name as if it was going to take her tongue some time to get used to it. She pulled Meggie over to a stall selling sweet cakes dripping with honey. Even today those cakes had to be paid for. The trader selling them was keeping a close eye on his wares, but luckily Fenoglio had a few coins on him. Despina’s thin fingers were sticky when she put them into Meggie’s hand again. She looked round, wide-eyed, and kept stopping, but Fenoglio impatiently waved them on, past a wooden platform decked with flowers and evergreen branches, rising above the stalls. The black banners flying from the castle battlements and towers overhead hung here as well, to the right and left of three thrones on the platform. The backs of the seats were embroidered with the emblem of the weeping lion.
‘Why three thrones, I ask myself?’ Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he urged her and the children on. ‘The Prince of Sighs himself won’t be showing his face anyway. Come along, we’re late already.’ With a firm step, he turned his back on the busy scene in the Outer Courtyard and made his way to the Inner Ring of the castle walls. The gate towards which he was moving was not quite as tall as the one in the Outer Ring, but it too looked forbidding, and so did the guards who crossed their spears as Fenoglio approached them. ‘As if they didn’t know me!’ he whispered crossly to Meggie. ‘But we have to play the same game every time. Tell the Prince that Fenoglio the poet is here!’ he said, raising his voice, as the two children pressed close to him and stared at the spears as if looking for dried blood on their points.
‘Is the Prince expecting you?’ The guard who spoke seemed to be still very young, judging by what could be seen of his face under his helmet.
‘Of course he is!’ snapped Fenoglio. ‘And if he has to wait any longer I’ll blame it on you, Anselmo. What’s more, if you want me to write you a few fine-sounding words, as you did last month –’ here the guard cast a nervous glance at his fellow sentry, but the latter pretended not to have heard and looked up at the tightrope-walker – ‘then,’ Fenoglio concluded, lowering his voice, ‘I shall keep you waiting in your own turn. I’m an old man, and God knows I have better things to do than kick my heels here in front of your spear.’
All that could be seen of Anselmo’s face turned as red as the sour wine that Fenoglio had drunk beside the strolling players’ fire. However, he did not move his spear aside. ‘The fact is, Inkweaver, we have visitors,’ he said in an undertone.
‘Visitors? What are you talking about?’
But Anselmo wasn’t looking at Fenoglio any more.
The gate behind him opened, creaking, as if its own weight were too heavy for it. Meggie drew Despina aside; Fenoglio t
ook Ivo’s hand. Soldiers rode into the Outer Courtyard, armed horsemen, their cloaks silvery grey, like the greaves they wore on their legs, and the emblem on their breasts was not the Laughing Prince’s. It showed a viper’s slender body rearing up in search of prey, and Meggie recognized it at once. This was the Adderhead’s coat of arms.
Nothing moved in the Outer Courtyard now. All was silent as the grave. The entertainers, even the blue-clad tightrope-walker high above on his rope, were all forgotten. Resa had told Meggie exactly what the Adderhead’s emblem looked like; she had seen it often enough at close quarters. Envoys from the Castle of Night had been welcome guests in Capricorn’s fortress. Many of the farms set on fire by Capricorn’s men, so rumour said at the time, had been burned down on the Adderhead’s orders.
Meggie held Despina close as the men-at-arms rode by them. Their breastplates glinted in the sun. It looked as if not even a bolt from a crossbow could pierce that armour, let alone a poor man’s arrow. Two men rode at their head: one was a redhead, in armour like the soldiers following him but resplendent in a cloak of foxtails, while the other was wearing a green robe shot with silver that was fine enough for any prince. However, what everyone noticed about him first was not that robe but his nose; unlike ordinary noses of flesh and blood, it was made of silver.
‘Look at that couple! What a team!’ Fenoglio whispered to Meggie, as the two men rode side by side through the silent crowd. ‘Both of them my creations, and both once Capricorn’s men. Your mother may have told you about them. Firefox was Capricorn’s deputy, the Piper was his minstrel. But the silver nose wasn’t my idea. Nor the fact that they escaped Cosimo’s soldiers when he attacked Capricorn’s fortress, and now serve the Adderhead.’
It was still eerily silent in the courtyard. There was no sound but the clatter of hooves, the snorting horses, the clank of armour, weapons and spears – curiously loud, as if the sounds were caught between the high walls like birds.
The Adderhead himself was one of the last to ride in. There was no mistaking him. ‘He looks like a butcher,’ Resa had said. ‘A butcher in princely clothes, with his love of killing written all over his coarse face.’ The horse he rode was white, heavily built like its master, and was almost entirely hidden by a caparison patterned with the snake emblem. The Adderhead himself wore a black robe embroidered with silver flowers. His skin was tanned by the sun, his sparse hair was grey, his mouth curiously small – a lipless slit in his coarse, clean-shaven face. Everything about him seemed heavy and fleshy: his arms and legs, his thick neck, his broad nose. Unlike those richer subjects of the Laughing Prince who were now standing in the courtyard, he wore no jewellery, no heavy chains around his neck, no rings set with precious stones on his fat fingers. But gems sparkled in the corners of his nostrils, red as drops of blood, and on the middle finger of his left hand, over his glove, he wore the silver ring he used for sealing death warrants. His eyes, narrow under lids folded like a salamander’s, darted restlessly around the courtyard. They seemed to linger for a split second, like a lizard’s sticky tongue, on everything they saw: the strolling players, the tightrope-walker overhead, the rich merchants waiting beside the empty, flower-decked platform, submissively bowing their heads when his glance rested on them. Nothing seemed to escape those salamander eyes, nothing at all: no child pressing his face into his mother’s apron in alarm, no beautiful woman, no man glaring up at him with hostility. Yet he reined in his horse in front of only one person in the crowd.
‘Well, well, so here’s the king of the strolling players! Last time I saw you, your head was in the pillory in my castle courtyard. And when are you going to honour us with another visit?’ The Adderhead’s voice rang out through the silent courtyard. It sounded very deep, as if it came from the black interior of his stout body. Meggie instinctively moved closer to Fenoglio’s side. But the Black Prince bowed, so deeply that the bow turned to mockery. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘but I’m afraid my bear didn’t care for your hospitality. He says the pillory was rather tight for his neck.’
Meggie saw the Adderhead’s mouth twist into an unpleasant smile. ‘Well, I could keep a rope ready for your next visit – a rope that will fit perfectly, and a gallows of oak strong enough even for such a fat old bear as yours,’ he said.
The Black Prince turned to his bear and pretended to discuss it with him. ‘Sorry again,’ he said, as the bear threw its paws around his neck, grunting, ‘the bear says he likes the south, but your shadow lies too dark over it. He won’t come until the Bluejay pays you the honour of a visit too.’
A soft whisper ran through the crowd – and was silenced when the Adderhead turned in his saddle and let his lizard-like gaze move over those standing around him.
‘And furthermore,’ the Prince continued in a loud voice, ‘the bear would like to know why you don’t make the Piper trot along behind your horse on a silver chain, as such a good, tame minstrel should?’
The Piper wrenched his horse round, but before he could urge it