stared at Dustfinger as if he had fallen straight from heaven.
‘Yesterday! He said so yesterday!’ she exclaimed. ‘You wait and see, Bella, he’s back, that’s what he said. Who else would have set the mill ablaze? Who else talks to fire? He didn’t get a wink of sleep all night. He was worried, but you’re all right, aren’t you? What’s the matter with your leg?’
Dustfinger put a finger to his mouth, but Meggie saw that he was smiling. ‘It could be better,’ he said quietly. ‘And you talk as fast as ever, Bella, but could you take us to the Barn Owl now?’
‘Yes, yes, of course!’ Bella sounded slightly injured. ‘I suppose you have that horrible marten in there?’ she enquired, with a distrustful look at Dustfinger’s rucksack. ‘Don’t you go letting him out.’
‘Of course not,’ Dustfinger assured her, casting a glance at Farid which obviously warned him to say nothing about the second marten asleep in his own rucksack.
Without another word, the old woman beckoned to them to follow her down a dark, unadorned colonnade. She took small, hasty footsteps, as if she were a squirrel wearing a long dress of coarsely woven fabric. ‘A good thing you came round the back way,’ she said in a lowered voice as she led them past a series of closed doors. ‘I’m afraid the Adderhead has ears even here now, but luckily he doesn’t pay his informers well enough for them to work in the wing where we treat infectious cases. I hope you gave those two enough of the leaves?’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Dustfinger nodded, but Meggie saw that he looked around uneasily, and inconspicuously put another of the leaves that he had given them in his own mouth. Not until they passed the fragile figures sunning themselves in the courtyard around which the colonnade ran did Meggie realize just where Dustfinger had brought them. It was an infirmary. Farid put his hand to his mouth in horror when they met an old man who looked as pale as if Death had come for him long ago, and he replied to the man’s toothless smile with only a frightened nod.
‘Don’t look as if you were about to fall down dead!’ Dustfinger whispered to him, although he didn’t look particularly comfortable here either. ‘Your fingers will be well tended here, and moreover we’ll be relatively safe, which is more than can be said for many places on this side of the forest.’
‘Yes, if there’s one thing the Adderhead fears,’ added Bella in knowing tones, ‘it’s death and the diseases that lead to it. All the same, you shouldn’t let either the patients or the nurses here see more of you than they must. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s never to trust anyone. Except the Barn Owl, of course.’
‘And what about me, Bella?’ asked Dustfinger.
‘You least of all!’ was her only reply. She stopped at a plain wooden door. ‘It’s a pity your face is so unmistakable,’ she told Dustfinger, low-voiced, ‘or you could have put on a show for our patients. Nothing does the sick more good than a little pleasure.’ Then she knocked on the door and, with a nod, stepped aside.
The room on the other side of the door was dark, for the only window was half hidden behind stacks of books. It was the kind of room Mo would have loved. He liked books to look as if someone had only just put them down. Quite unlike Elinor, he saw nothing wrong in leaving them lying there open, waiting for the next reader. The Barn Owl seemed to feel the same. He could hardly be spotted among all those piled books – a small man with short-sighted eyes and broad hands. He looked to Meggie like a mole, except that his hair was grey.
‘Didn’t I say so?’ He knocked two books off their stacks as he hurried towards Dustfinger. ‘“He’s back,” I said, but they wouldn’t believe it. Obviously the White Women are letting more and more of the dead come back to life these days!’
The two men embraced. Then the Barn Owl took a step back and looked Dustfinger thoroughly up and down. The physician was an old man, older than Fenoglio, but his eyes were as young as Farid’s. ‘You look all right,’ he commented, pleased. ‘Except for your leg. What’s the matter with it? Did you get that injury at the mill? One of my women healers was taken up to the castle yesterday to tend two men bitten by fire. She brought back a strange story about an ambush, and a horned marten that spits fire …’
Up to the castle? Instinctively, Meggie moved towards the physician. ‘Did she see the prisoners too?’ she interrupted him. ‘They would just have been taken there – strolling players, men and women. My mother and father are with them.’
The Barn Owl looked at her sympathetically. ‘Are you the girl that the Black Prince’s men told me about? Your father—’
‘– is the man they take for the Bluejay,’ Dustfinger finished the sentence. ‘Do you know how he and the other prisoners are?’
Before the Barn Owl could answer, a girl put her head round the door. She stared at the strangers in alarm. Her eyes lingered on Meggie so long that finally the Barn Owl cleared his throat.
‘What is it, Carla?’ he asked.
The girl bit her pale lips nervously. ‘I’m to ask if we have any eyebright left,’ she said timidly.
‘Of course. Go to Bella and she’ll give you some, but now leave us alone.’
The girl disappeared with a hasty nod, but she left the door open. Sighing, the Barn Owl closed it and then bolted it too. ‘Where were we? Oh yes, the prisoners. The physician responsible for the dungeons is looking after them. He’s useless at his job, but who else could stand it up there? Instead of healing the sick he has to preside over whippings and lashings. Luckily they’re not letting him near your father, and the Adderhead’s own physician isn’t going to soil his fingers on a prisoner, so my best woman healer goes up to the castle every day to tend him.’
‘How is my father?’ Meggie tried not to sound like a little girl holding back her tears with difficulty, but she didn’t entirely succeed.
‘He’s badly wounded, but I think you know that?’
Meggie nodded. And the tears came again, flowing and flowing as if to wash it all out of her heart: her grief, her longing, her fear. Farid put his arm round her shoulders, but that just reminded her of Mo even more – of all the years he had protected her and held her close. And now that he was in trouble, she wasn’t with him.
‘He’s lost a great deal of blood, and he’s still weak, but he’s doing well – much better, anyway, than we let the Adderhead know.’ You could tell from the Barn Owl’s voice that he often had to talk to people who were anxious about those they loved. ‘My healer has advised him not to let anyone notice, to give us more time. But at the moment there really is nothing for you to worry about.’
Meggie’s heart soared. It will be all right, something inside her said – for the first time since Dustfinger had given her Resa’s note. Everything will be all right! Feeling embarrassed, she wiped the tears off her face.
‘The weapon that wounded your father – my healer says it must be a terrible thing,’ the Barn Owl continued. ‘I hope the Adderhead’s armourers are not working on some diabolical invention in secret!’
‘No, that weapon was from a very different place.’ And nothing good comes from that place, said Dustfinger’s face, but Meggie didn’t want to think of what a gun could do to this world just now. Her thoughts were with Mo.
‘My father,’ she told the Barn Owl, ‘would like this room very much. He loves books, and yours are really beautiful. Although he’d probably tell you that some of them needed rebinding, and that one won’t live much longer if you don’t soon do something about the beetles eating it.’
The Barn Owl picked up the book she had pointed out and caressed the pages just as Mo always did. ‘The Bluejay loves books?’ he asked. ‘Unusual for a robber.’
‘He’s not a robber,’ said Meggie. ‘He’s a doctor like you, only he heals books instead of people.’
‘Really? Then is it true that the Adderhead had captured the wrong man? In that case, I suppose when they say your father killed Capricorn, that isn’t true either?’
‘Oh yes, that’s true.’ Dustfinger looked out of th
e window as if he saw the scene of Capricorn’s festivities outside. ‘And all he needed to do it was his voice. You ought to get him or his daughter to read to you some time. Afterwards, I assure you, you’ll see your books in a very different light. You might well close and padlock them.’
‘Really?’ The Barn Owl looked at Meggie with great interest, as if he would like to hear more about Capricorn’s death, but there was another knock. This time a man’s voice came through the bolted door. ‘Will you come, master? We’ve prepared everything, but it will be better if you make the incision.’
Meggie saw Farid turn pale. ‘Just coming!’ said the Barn Owl. ‘You go ahead. I hope I can welcome your father to this room some day,’ he said to Meggie as he went to the door. ‘For you’re right: my books could certainly do with a doctor. Does the Black Prince have any plans for the prisoners?’ He looked enquiringly at Dustfinger.
‘No. No, I don’t think so. Have you heard anything about the other captives? Meggie’s mother is among them.’ It gave Meggie a pang that Dustfinger, and not she, had been the one to ask about Resa.
‘No, I don’t know anything about the others,’ replied the Barn Owl. ‘But now you must excuse me. I am sure Bella’s already told you that you had better keep to this part of the building. The Adderhead is spending more and more of his silver on informers. No place in Argenta is safe from them, not even this one.’
‘I know.’ Dustfinger picked up one of the books lying on the Barn Owl’s table. It was a herbal. Meggie could imagine how Elinor would have looked at it – full of longing to own it – and Mo would have run a finger over the painted pages as if he could feel the brush that had conjured up the fine lines of the pictures on paper. But what was Dustfinger thinking of? The herbs in Roxane’s fields? ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t have come here but for what happened at the mill,’ he said. ‘No one would want to bring danger to this place, but we’ll be gone again this very day.’
However, the Barn Owl wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Nonsense, you must stay until your leg and the boy’s fingers are better,’ he said. ‘You know how glad I am you came. And I’m glad you have the boy with you too. Did you know,’ he asked, turning to Farid, ‘he’s never had a pupil before? I was always telling him that a master must pass on his art, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I pass mine on to many, and that’s why I must leave you now. I have to show a pupil how to cut a foot off without killing the man it’s attached to.’
Farid stared at him, horrified. ‘Cut it off?’ he whispered. ‘How do you mean, cut it off?’ But the Barn Owl had already closed the door behind him.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said Dustfinger, feeling his injured thigh. ‘The Barn Owl is a first-class sawbones. But I think we’ll be allowed to keep our own fingers and feet.’
After Bella had treated Farid’s blisters and Dustfinger’s leg, she took them to a remote room, close to the door through which they had entered the building. Meggie liked the prospect of sleeping under a roof again, but Farid was not at all comfortable with the idea. Looking unhappy, he squatted on the lavender-strewn floor, chewing one of the bitter leaves with determination. ‘Can’t we sleep on the beach tonight? I should think the sand would be nice and soft,’ he asked Dustfinger, who was stretching out on one of the straw mattresses. ‘Or in the forest?’
‘If you like,’ replied Dustfinger. ‘But let me sleep now. And stop looking as if I’d brought you among cannibals, or I won’t show you what I promised tomorrow night.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Farid spat the leaf out into his hand. ‘Why not tonight?’
‘Because it’s too windy now,’ said Dustfinger, turning his back on him, ‘and because my damned leg hurts … do you need any more reasons?’
Remorsefully, Farid shook his head, put the leaf back in his mouth and stared at the door as if Death in person might walk in any moment. But Meggie just sat there in the bare room, repeating to herself, over and over, what the Barn Owl had said about Mo: he’s doing well – much better, anyway, than we let the Adderhead know … at the moment there really is nothing for you to worry about.
When twilight fell, Dustfinger limped outside. He leaned against a column and looked up at the hill where the Castle of Night stood. Never moving, he gazed at the silver towers – and Meggie asked herself, for what was surely the hundredth time, if he was helping her only for her mother’s sake. Perhaps Dustfinger himself didn’t know.
54
In the Dungeon of the Castle of Night
They say:
Speak for us (to whom?)
Some say: Avenge us (on whom?)
Some say: take our place.
Some say: Witness
Others say (and these are women)
Be happy for us.
Margaret Atwood,
‘Down’, Eating Fire
Mina was crying again. Resa took the other woman in her arms as if she were still a child, hummed a tune and rocked her as she sometimes rocked Meggie, although by now her daughter was almost as tall as Resa herself.
A girl came twice a day, a thin, nervous little thing, younger than Meggie, to bring them bread and water. Sometimes there was porridge too, cold and sticky, but it filled the stomach – and reminded Resa of the days when Mortola had locked her up for something she had or hadn’t done. The porridge had tasted just like this. When she asked the girl about the Bluejay, the child just ducked her head in fright and left Resa in fear – the fear that Mo was dead by now, that they had hanged him, up there in the huge courtyard, and the last thing he had seen in this world was not her face, but the silver vipers’ heads with their tongues licking down from the walls. Sometimes she saw it all so clearly in her mind’s eye that she put her hands over her eyes, but the pictures were still there. And the darkness around her made her think it could all have been a dream: that moment at Capricorn’s festivities when she had suddenly seen Mo standing beside Meggie, the year in Elinor’s house, all that happiness – just a dream.
At least she was not alone. Even if the glances of the others were often hostile, their voices brought her out of her dark thoughts for a brief while. Now and then someone told a story, to keep them from hearing the weeping from the other cells, the scurrying of rats, the screams, the stammering voices that had long since ceased to make sense. Usually it was the women who told stories. Stories of love and death, betrayal and friendship, but they all ended happily, lights in the darkness, like the candles in Resa’s pocket with wicks that had now become damp. Resa told fairy-tales that Mo had read aloud to her long, long ago, when Meggie’s fingers were still soft and tiny, and the written word held no terrors for any of them yet. As for the strolling players, they told tales of the world around them: of Cosimo the Fair and his battle with the fire-raisers, of the Black Prince and how he found his bear, and his friend the fire-dancer, the man who made sparks rain down and fiery flowers blossom in the darkest night. Benedicta sang a song about him in a soft voice, a beautiful song, and in the end even Twofingers joined in, until the warder banged his stick against the bars and told them to keep quiet.
‘I saw him once,’ whispered Benedicta when the warder had gone away again. ‘Many years ago, when I was a little girl. It was wonderful. The fire was so bright that even my eyes could see it. They say he’s dead.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Resa quietly. ‘Who do you think made the tree across the road burn?’ They looked at her so incredulously! But she was too tired to tell them any more. She was too tired to explain anything. Let me go to my husband, that was all she wanted to say. Let me go to my child. Don’t tell me any more stories, tell me how they are. Please.
Someone did at last give her news of Meggie and Mo, but Resa would rather have heard it from any other mouth.
The others were asleep when Mortola came. She had two soldiers with her. Resa was awake, because she was seeing those pictures again, pictures of Mo being brought into the courtyard, having the rope put around his neck … he’s dead, and she has come to tell me! That was her first thoug
ht when the Magpie stood before her with a triumphant smile.
‘Well, well, here’s our faithless maid!’ said Mortola as Resa got to her feet, with difficulty. ‘You seem to be as much of a witch as your daughter. How have you kept him alive? Perhaps I took aim a little too hastily. Never mind. A few more weeks and he’ll be strong enough for his execution!’
Alive.
Resa turned her head away so that Mortola wouldn’t see the smile that stole over her lips, but the Magpie was not looking at her face. She was enjoying the sight of her torn dress and bleeding, bare feet.
‘The Bluejay!’ Mortola lowered her voice. ‘Of course, I haven’t told the Adderhead that he’s going to execute the wrong man – why should I? It’s all working out just as I wanted. And I shall get my hands on your daughter too.’
Meggie. The sense of happiness that had briefly warmed Resa’s heart disappeared as suddenly as it had come. Beside her, Mina sat up, woken by Mortola’s hoarse voice.
‘Oh yes, I have powerful friends in this world,’ continued the Magpie, with a self-satisfied smile. ‘The Adderhead has caught me your husband, why wouldn’t he catch me your witch of a daughter too? Do you know how I’ve convinced him that she’s a witch? By showing him a photograph of her. Yes, Resa, I let Basta take the photos of your little darling with him, all those pretty silver-framed photographs standing around the bookworm woman’s house. Of course the Adderhead thinks they’re magic pictures, mirror images captured on paper. His soldiers are afraid to touch them, but they’re showing them around all over the place. A pity we can’t duplicate them as we could in your world! But fortunately your daughter has joined forces with Dustfinger, and there’s no need for any magic picture of him. Every peasant has heard of him – him and his scars.’
‘He’ll protect her!’ said Resa. She had to say something.
‘Oh yes? The way he protected you?’
Resa dug her fingers into the fabric of her dirty dress. There was no one, in either this or the other world, that she hated as much as the Magpie. Not even Basta. It was Mortola who had taught her how to hate. ‘Everything is different here,’ she managed to say. ‘Fire obeys him here, and he’s not alone as he was in the other world. He has friends.’
‘Friends! Ah, I suppose you mean the other mountebanks: the Black Prince, as he calls himself, and the rest of that rabble!’ Contemptuously, the Magpie scanned the other prisoners.
They had almost all woken up. ‘Look at them, Resa!’ said Mortola spitefully. ‘How are they going to help you out of here? With a few brightly coloured balls, or a couple of sentimental songs? One of them gave you away, did you know that? And as for Dustfinger, what could he do? Unleash fire to save you? It would burn you too, and he certainly won’t risk that, besotted with you as he always was.’ She leaned forward with a smile. ‘Did you ever tell your husband what good friends you two were?’
Resa did not reply. She knew Mortola’s games. She knew them very well.
‘What do you think? Shall I tell him?’ Mortola whispered, ready to pounce, like a cat waiting by a mousehole.
‘Do that,’ Resa whispered back. ‘Tell him. You can’t tell him anything he doesn’t know already. I’ve given him back the years you stole from us, word for word, day after day. And Mo knows, too, that your own son made you live in his cellar, and let everyone think you were only his housekeeper.’
Mortola tried to hit her in the face, as she had so often done before, as she had done to all her maids – right in the middle of the face – but Resa caught her hand before it landed.