off his throne. That’s worth fighting for, don’t you think? Even worth dying for.’ He was a fine sight standing there with the drawn sword in his hand. And yes, wasn’t he right? Perhaps war really was the only way to put the Adderhead in his place.
‘You must help me, Inkweaver! That’s what they call you, don’t they? I like the name!’ Cosimo gracefully sheathed the sword again. Tullio, who was still sitting on the steps at his feet, shuddered as the sharp blade scraped the leather scabbard. ‘You will write a speech for me, calling my people to arms. You will explain our cause to them, you’ll plant enthusiasm for that cause and hatred for our enemy in every heart. And we’ll use the strolling players too – you’re a friend of theirs. Write them fiery songs, poet! Songs that will make men want to fight. You forge the words, I’ll have the swords forged. Many, many swords.’
He stood there like an avenging angel, lacking nothing but the wings, and for the first, the very first time in his life Fenoglio felt something like affection for one of his inky creations. I’ll give him wings, he thought. I will indeed. With my words.
‘Your Highness!’ When he bowed his head this time it wasn’t difficult, and for a wonderful moment he felt almost as if he had written himself the son he never had. Don’t go turning sentimental in your old age, he told himself, but this warning made no difference to the unaccustomed softening of his heart.
I ought to ride with him, he thought. Yes, indeed. I’ll go to war against the Adderhead with him, old as I may be. Fenoglio, a hero in the world of his own creation, a poet and a warrior too. It was a role he’d like. As if he had written himself the perfect part to play.
Cosimo smiled again. Fenoglio would have bet everything he had that there was no more delightful smile in this or any other world. Tullio seemed to have succumbed to Cosimo’s charm too, despite the fear the Adderhead had put into his heart. Enchanted, he stared up at the master who had come back to him, his little hands in his lap as if they were still holding the bird with the bloody breast.
‘I hear your words already!’ said Cosimo, returning to the throne. ‘My wife loves written words, you know, words that stick to parchment and paper like dead flies, and it seems my father felt the same – but I want to hear words, not read them! Remember that, when you’re looking for the right words: you must ask yourself what they sound like! Glowing with passion, dark with sorrow, sweet with love, that’s what I want. Write words quivering with all our righteous anger at the Adderhead’s evil deeds, and soon that anger will be in every heart. You will write my accusation, my fiery accusation, and we’ll have it read out in every market place and spread abroad by the strolling players: Beware, Adderhead! Let it be heard all the way to his own side of the forest. Your wicked days are numbered! And soon every peasant will want to fight under my banner, every man young or old, your words will bring them flocking here to the castle! I’ve heard that when the Adderhead doesn’t like what books say he’ll sometimes have them burned in the fireplaces of his castle, but how will he burn words that everyone is singing and speaking?’
He could always burn the man who speaks them, thought Fenoglio. Or the man who wrote them. It was an uncomfortable thought that cooled the ardour of his heart slightly, but Cosimo seemed to have picked it up.
‘I shall, of course, take you under my personal protection immediately,’ he said. ‘In future you will live here at the castle, in apartments suitable for a court poet.’
‘At the castle?’ Fenoglio cleared his throat, so awkward did this offer make him feel. ‘That … that’s very generous of you. Yes, indeed.’ New times were coming, new and wonderful times. A great new age …
‘You will be a good Prince, Your Grace!’ he said, his voice much moved. ‘A good and great Prince. And my songs about you will still be sung in centuries to come, when the Adderhead is long forgotten. I promise you that.’
Footsteps sounded behind him. Fenoglio turned, annoyed by the interruption at such an emotional moment. Violante came hurrying through the hall, holding her son’s hand, with her maid behind her.
‘Cosimo!’ she cried. ‘Listen to him. Your son wants to say he’s sorry.’
Fenoglio didn’t think that Jacopo looked at all sorry. Violante was having to drag him along behind her, and his face was dark as thunder. He didn’t seem particularly pleased by his father’s return. His mother, on the other hand, was radiant as Fenoglio had never seen her before, and the mark on her face was not much darker than a shadow cast by the sun.
The birthmark on Her Ugliness’s face faded. Oh, thank you, Meggie, he thought. What a pity you’re not here …
‘I won’t say sorry!’ announced Jacopo, as his mother propelled him none too gently up the steps to the throne. ‘He’s the one who ought to say sorry to my grandfather!’
Unobtrusively, Fenoglio took a step back. Time for him to go.
‘Do you remember me?’ he heard Cosimo ask. ‘Was I a stern father?’
Jacopo merely shrugged.
‘Oh yes, you were very stern!’ Her Ugliness replied on the child’s behalf. ‘You took away his hounds when he acted like this. And his horse.’
She was clever, cleverer than Fenoglio had expected. He went quietly towards the door. It was a good thing he’d soon be living at the castle. He must keep an eye on Violante, or she’d soon be filling the blank of Cosimo’s memory to her own liking – as if stuffing a newly prepared turkey. When the servants opened the great door he saw Cosimo abstractedly smiling at his wife. He’s grateful to her, thought Fenoglio, grateful to her for filling his emptiness with her words, but he doesn’t love her.
And of course that’s another thing you never thought of, Fenoglio, he told himself reproachfully as he walked through the Inner Courtyard. Why didn’t you write a word about Cosimo loving his wife? Didn’t you tell Meggie the story, long ago, about the flower maiden who gave her heart to the wrong man? What are stories for if we don’t learn from them? Well, at least Violante loved Cosimo. You only had to look at her to see it. That was something, after all …
On the other hand … Violante’s maid, the girl with the beautiful hair, Brianna, who Meggie said was Dustfinger’s daughter – hadn’t she seemed equally enraptured when she looked at Cosimo? And Cosimo himself – hadn’t he looked at the maid more often than at his wife? Oh, never mind, thought Fenoglio. There’ll soon be more important matters at stake than love. Far more important matters …
39
Another Messenger
The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink.
Chinese proverb,
Die Weisse und die Schwarze Kunst
The Adderhead and his men-at-arms had disappeared when Fenoglio came out of the gate of the Inner Castle. Good, thought Fenoglio. He’ll be fuming with rage on his long ride home! The thought of it made him smile. A number of men were waiting in the Outer Courtyard. It was easy to guess their trade from their blackened hands, even though no doubt they had scrubbed them thoroughly for their Prince. The entire population of Smiths’ Alley in Ombra seemed to have come up to the castle. You forge the words, I’ll have the swords forged, many, many swords. Had Cosimo’s preparations for his war begun already? If so, it’s time I set to work on my words, Fenoglio told himself.
As he turned into Cobblers’ Alley he thought for a moment that he heard steps behind him, but when he turned there was only a one-legged beggar hobbling laboriously past him. At every other step the beggar’s crutch slipped in the filth lying among the houses – pig dung, vegetable refuse, stinking puddles of whatever fluids people tipped out of their windows. Well, there’ll soon be cripples enough, thought Fenoglio as he walked on towards Minerva’s house. You could call war a cripple factory … What kind of idea was that? Were doubts of Cosimo’s plans stirring in his elated mind? Oh, let it alone …
By all the letters of the alphabet, I’m certainly not going to miss this climb once I’m living in the castle, he thought as he toiled up the stairway to his room. I must just remember to as
k Cosimo not, on any account, to give me quarters in one of the towers. The climb up to Balbulus’s workshop was bad enough! Oh, so these few steps are too steep for you, but you trust yourself to go to war in your old age, do you? said a quiet, mocking voice inside him. It always spoke up at the most inappropriate moments, but Fenoglio had plenty of practice in ignoring it.
Rosenquartz wasn’t there. Presumably he had climbed out of the window again to visit the glass man working for the scribe who lived over the road in Bakers’ Alley. The fairies all seemed to have flown away too. It was quiet in Fenoglio’s room, unusually quiet. He sat down on his bed, sighing. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help thinking of his grandchildren, and the way they used to fill his house with noise and laughter. So what? he thought, feeling angry with himself. Minerva’s children make just the same kind of noise, and think how often you’ve sent them packing down to the yard because it was too much for you!
Footsteps came up the stairs. Well, speak of the devil …! He didn’t feel like telling stories, not at the moment. He had to pack his things, and then break the news gently to Minerva that she must look around for a new lodger.
‘Go away!’ he called to whoever was at the door. ‘Go and tease the pigs or chickens in the yard! The Inkweaver doesn’t have time just now. He’s moving to the castle.’
The door swung open all the same, but not to reveal two children’s faces. A man stood there – a man with a blotched face and slightly protuberant eyes. Fenoglio had never seen him before, yet he seemed strangely familiar. His leather trousers were patched and dirty, but the colour of his cloak made Fenoglio’s heart beat faster. It was the Adderhead’s silvery grey.
‘What’s the idea?’ he asked brusquely, getting to his feet, but the stranger was already through the doorway. He stood there with his legs spread, his grin as ugly as his face itself, but it was the sight of his companion that made Fenoglio’s old knees feel weak. Basta was smiling at him like a long-lost friend. He too wore the silver of the Adderhead.
‘Bad luck again! Talk about terrible luck!’ said Basta, looking round the room. ‘The girl’s not here. And there we go stalking you all the way from the castle, quiet as cats, thinking we’ll catch two birds with one stone, and now it’s just one ugly old raven in our trap. Never mind, at least one is something. Can’t expect too much of Lady Fortune, can we? After all, she sent you to the castle at just the right time. I recognized your ugly tortoise face at once, but you didn’t even see me, did you?’
No, Fenoglio hadn’t seen him. Should he have looked closely at every man standing behind the Adderhead? Yes – if you’d had your wits about you, Fenoglio, he told himself, that’s exactly what you’d have done! How could you forget that Basta’s back? Wasn’t what happened to Mortimer warning enough?
‘Well, what a surprise! Basta! How did you escape the Shadow?’ he said out loud, moving unobtrusively backwards until he could feel the bed behind him. Ever since a man in the house next door had his throat cut in his sleep, he had slept with a knife under his pillow, although he wasn’t sure if it was still there.
‘Sorry, but he must have overlooked me, shut up in that cage as I was,’ purred Basta in his catlike voice. ‘Capricorn wasn’t so lucky, but Mortola is still around, and she’s told our old friend the Adderhead about the three birds we’re after. Dangerous sorcerers who kill with words.’ Basta slowly came towards Fenoglio. ‘Who do you think those birds are?’
The other man kicked the door shut with his boot.
‘Mortola?’ Fenoglio tried to make his voice mocking and supercilious, but it sounded more like the croak of a dying raven. ‘Wasn’t it Mortola who had you put in the cage to be fed to the Shadow?’
Basta just shrugged his shoulders and flung back his silver-grey cloak. Of course, he had his knife. A brand new one, it seemed, finer than any he’d ever had in the other world, and undoubtedly just as sharp.
‘Yes, not very nice of her,’ he said as his fingers caressed the handle of the knife. ‘But she’s really sorry. Come on, then, do you know what birds we’re after? Let me help you a little. We’ve already wrung the neck of one of them – the one that sang loudest.’
Fenoglio let himself drop on to the bed, without – or so he hoped – any expression on his face. ‘I assume you mean Mortimer,’ he said, slowly pushing his hand under the pillow.
‘Quite right!’ Basta smiled. ‘You should have been there when Mortola shot him – just the way she used to shoot the crows who stole the seed from her fields.’ The memory made his smile even nastier. How well Fenoglio knew what was going on in his black heart! After all, he had made Basta up, just as he had made up Cosimo and his angelic smile. Basta had always liked describing his own and other people’s abominable deeds in detail. His companion didn’t seem to be so talkative. He was looking round Fenoglio’s room with a bored expression. A good thing the glass man wasn’t there; it was so easy to smash him.
‘But we’re not going to shoot you.’ Basta came a little closer to Fenoglio, his face as intent as that of a stalking cat. ‘We’ll probably hang you until your tongue is sticking out of your poor old mouth.’
‘How very imaginative!’ said Fenoglio, moving his fingers further and further under the pillow. ‘But you know what will happen then. You’ll die too.’
Basta’s smile disappeared as suddenly as a mouse scurrying into its hole. ‘Oh yes!’ he hissed unpleasantly, as his hand instinctively went to the amulet at his throat. ‘I almost forgot. You believe you made me up, right? And what about him?’ He pointed to the other man. ‘That’s Slasher. Did you make him up too? He sometimes worked for Capricorn, after all. Many of the old fire-raisers wear the Adder’s silver now, although some of us think it was more fun under Capricorn. All those fine folk in the Castle of Night …!’ He spat scornfully at Fenoglio’s feet. ‘It’s no coincidence that the Adderhead has a snake on his coat of arms. He wants you to crawl on your belly to him, that’s what our noble lord and master likes. But never mind, he pays well! Hey, Slasher!’ he addressed his still-silent companion. ‘What do you think, does the old fellow look as if he made you up?’
Slasher’s ugly face twisted. ‘If so, he made a bad job of it, eh?’
‘You’re right there.’ Basta laughed. ‘I’d say he deserves a taste of our knives just for the face he gave you, right?’
Slasher. Yes, indeed, he’d invented Slasher too. Fenoglio felt sick to his stomach when he remembered why he’d given the man that name.
‘Out with it, old man!’ Basta leaned so close that Fenoglio smelled his peppermint-scented breath. ‘Where’s the girl? Tell us and we may let you live a little longer. We’ll send the child after her father first. I’m sure she’s longing to see him. They were so fond of each other, those two. Come on, where is she? Spit it out!’ He slowly drew the knife from his belt. Its blade was long and slightly curved. Fenoglio swallowed as if to force down his fear. He pushed his hand yet further under the pillow, but all his fingertips met was a piece of bread, probably hidden there by Rosenquartz. Just as well, he thought. What good would a knife have done? Basta would have run me through before I even got a proper hold on it, not to mention Slasher. He felt the sweat running into his eyes.
‘Hey, Basta, I know you like the sound of your own voice, but let’s get going and take him with us.’ Slasher spoke in croaking tones, like the toads in the hills by night. Of course, that was how Fenoglio had described him. Slasher, the man with the voice of a toad. ‘We can question him later. We have to follow the others now,’ he urged Basta. ‘Who knows what this dead prince will do next? Suppose he doesn’t let us out of his accursed gate? Suppose he sends his soldiers after us? The others must be miles ahead by now!’
With a regretful sigh, Basta put the knife back in his belt. ‘Yes, very well, you’re right,’ he said in surly tones. ‘I need to take my time with this sort of thing. Questioning people is an art, a real art.’ He roughly seized Fenoglio’s arm, pulled him to his feet and pushed him towards th
e door. ‘Just like old times, eh?’ he snarled in his ear. ‘I took you out of your own house once before, remember? Put on as good an act as you did then and you’ll go on breathing a little longer. And if we pass that woman feeding pigs in the yard, tell her we’re taking you to see an old girlfriend of yours, understand?’
Fenoglio just nodded. Minerva wouldn’t believe a word of it, but perhaps she might fetch help.
Basta’s hand was already on the door handle when footsteps came upstairs again. The old wood creaked and groaned. The children. For heaven’s sake! But it was not a child’s voice that spoke outside the door.
‘Inkweaver?’
Basta cast an anxious glance at Slasher, but Fenoglio had recognized the voice: it was Cloud-Dancer, the former tightrope-walker, who had brought him messages from the Black Prince many times before. He’d be no help, not with his stiff leg! But what news brought him here? Had the Black Prince heard anything of Meggie?
Basta waved Slasher over to the left of the door, and stationed himself to the right. Then he gave Fenoglio a sign, and drew the knife from his belt again.
Fenoglio opened the door. It was so low that he always had to duck his head coming in. There stood Cloud-Dancer, rubbing his knee. ‘Bloody stairs!’ he swore. ‘Steep and falling apart. I’m just glad you’re in and I don’t have to climb them again. Here.’ He looked around as if the old house had ears, and reached into the leather bag that had carried so many letters from place to place. ‘The girl who’s staying with you sends you this.’ He held out a piece of paper folded several times. It looked like a page from Meggie’s notebook. Meggie hated to tear pages out of a book, and she’d have been reluctant to take one out of this notebook in particular; her father had bound it for her. So the message must be very important – and Basta would take it from him at once.
‘Well, here you are, then!’ Cloud-Dancer impatiently held the folded paper in front of his nose. ‘Any idea how fast I hurried to bring you this?’
Reluctantly, Fenoglio put his hand out. He knew just one thing: Basta must not see Meggie’s message. Never. His fingers closed around the paper so tightly that none of it was visible.
‘And listen!’ Cloud-Dancer went on quietly. ‘The Adderhead has attacked the Secret Camp. Dustfinger—’
Fenoglio shook his head, almost imperceptibly. ‘Fine. Thank you very much, but the fact is I have visitors just now,’ he said, desperately trying to convey what he couldn’t say in words with his eyes. He rolled them to right and left, as if they could act as fingers pointing to where Basta and Slasher were waiting behind the door.
Cloud-Dancer took a step back.
‘Run!’ cried Fenoglio, and leaped out of the doorway. Cloud-Dancer almost fell downstairs as Fenoglio made his way past him, but then he stumbled on. Fenoglio was sliding, rather than running, down the stairs. He didn’t turn until he had reached the bottom. He heard Basta cursing behind him, and Slasher’s croaking voice. He heard the children in the yard screaming with fright, and from somewhere came Minerva’s voice, but by then he was running past the sheds, and the lines where her freshly washed laundry hung. A pig ran between his legs, making him stumble and fall in the mud, and when he got up he saw that Cloud-Dancer hadn’t been as fast as he was. How could he be, with his stiff leg? Basta had taken him by the collar, while Slasher pushed Minerva aside as she tried to bar his way with a rake. Fenoglio ducked down, first behind an empty barrel, then behind the pigs’ trough, and crawled over to one of the sheds on all fours.
Despina.
She was staring at him in astonishment. He laid his finger on his lips, crawled on, forced his way past a couple of planks and squeezed into the place where Minerva’s children had their hideout. He only just fitted in – the place wasn’t meant for old men who were beginning to put on weight around the hips. The two children came here when they didn’t want to go to bed, or weren’t keen to work. They hadn’t shown their hiding place to anyone but Fenoglio, as proof of friendship – and in return for a good ghost story.
He heard Cloud-Dancer scream, he heard Basta roaring something and Minerva weeping. He almost crawled back to them, but fear paralyzed him. And what could he do against Basta’s knife and the sword that hung from Slasher’s belt? He leaned against the wooden wall of the shed, heard the pigs grunting and rooting about in the ground. Meggie’s message swam before his eyes; the sheet of paper was dirty with the mud he’d crawled