forget a prisoner down here, and Dustfinger’s heart contracted as he imagined how Resa must be feeling in this darkness. She had been a prisoner before, for so many years, and after that her freedom had lasted barely a year.
He heard voices, and followed them along another corridor until they grew louder. A small, bald-headed man came towards him. He passed so close that Dustfinger held his breath – but the man didn’t notice him, just muttered something about stupid women and disappeared round the corner. Dustfinger pressed his back against the damp wall and listened. Someone was weeping – a woman, and someone else was speaking soothingly to her. There was only one cell at the end of the corridor: a dark, barred cavern with a torch burning beside it. How was he to get past those damned bars? He went close to them. There sat Resa, stroking another woman’s hair to comfort her, while Twofingers sat beside them playing a sad tune on a little flute. No one could have done it half as well with all ten fingers as he did with seven. Dustfinger didn’t know the others: neither the women with Resa nor the other men. There was no sign of the Barn Owl. Where had they taken him? Had he perhaps been imprisoned with Silvertongue?
He looked around, listened. Somewhere a man laughed, probably one of the warders. Dustfinger held a finger in the burning torch, whispered fire-words until a flame leaped from his fingertip like a sparrow picking up crumbs. When he had first shown Farid how to write his name on a wall in fire, the boy’s black eyes had almost popped out of his head. Yet it was perfectly easy. Dustfinger put his hand between the bars and passed his finger over the rough stone. Resa, he wrote, and saw Twofingers lower his flute and stare at the burning letters. Resa turned. Heavens, how sad she looked! He should have come sooner. A good thing her daughter couldn’t see her like this.
She rose, took a step towards her name, and hesitated. Still with his finger, Dustfinger drew a fiery line like an arrow pointing his way. She came close to the bars and stared at the empty air, incredulous and baffled.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘You won’t see my face today, but it’s still as scarred as ever.’
‘Dustfinger?’ She reached into the air, and his invisible fingers took her hand. She was actually speaking! The Black Prince had told him she could speak again, but he hadn’t believed him.
‘What a beautiful voice!’ he whispered. ‘I always imagined it would be something like that. When did you get it back?’
‘When Mortola shot Mo.’
Twofingers was still staring at her. The woman Resa had been comforting turned to them too. Just so long as they didn’t say anything …
‘How are you?’ she whispered. ‘How is Meggie?’
‘Well. Better off than you, for sure. She and the writer got together to change this story for the better.’
Resa was clinging to the bars with one hand, and to his own hand with the other. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Probably with her father.’ He saw the horror in her face. ‘Yes, I know, he’s up in the tower, but that’s what she wanted. It’s all part of the plan Fenoglio has thought up.’
‘How is he? How’s Mo?’
Jealousy still gave him a pang. The heart was a stupid thing. ‘Said to be better, and thanks to Meggie he’s not going to be hanged for the time being, so don’t look so sad. Your daughter and Fenoglio have thought of a very clever way to save him. Him, and you, and all the others …’ Steps approached. Dustfinger let go of Resa’s hand and moved back, but the footsteps went past and away again.
‘Are you still there?’ Her eyes searched the darkness.
‘Yes.’ He took hold of her fingers once more. ‘We only ever seem to meet in dungeons now! How long does it take your husband to bind a book?’
‘Bind a book?’
He heard footsteps again, but this time the sound died away more quickly.
‘Yes. It’s a crazy story, but since Fenoglio has written it and your daughter has read it, no doubt it will come true.’
She put her other hand through the bars until her fingers met his face. ‘You really are invisible! How do you do it?’ She sounded as curious as a little girl. She was curious about everything she didn’t know. He had always liked that in her.
‘Only an old fairy trick!’ Her fingers stroked his scarred cheek. Why can’t you help her, Dustfinger? he thought. She’ll go mad down here! Suppose he struck one of the warders down? But there was still that endless staircase to climb, and after it the castle, the wide courtyard, the bare hilltop – nowhere to hide her, no tree to conceal her. Only stones and soldiers.
‘What about your wife?’ Her voice was beautiful. ‘Did you find her?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘About what?’
‘The time you were away.’
‘Nothing.’
‘I’ve told Mo everything.’
Yes, no doubt she had. ‘Well, Silvertongue knows what you’re talking about, but I don’t think Roxane would have believed me, do you?’
‘No, probably not.’ For a moment she bent her head as if she were remembering – remembering the time he couldn’t tell Roxane about. ‘The Black Prince told me you have a daughter too,’ she whispered. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?’
Twofingers and the woman with the tear-stained face were still staring at them. With luck they believed by now that they had imagined the fiery letters. There was only a faint trace of soot left on the wall, and it was not unusual, after all, for people to begin talking to the empty air in dungeons.
‘I had two daughters.’ Dustfinger jumped as someone screamed somewhere. ‘The elder is around Meggie’s age, but she’s angry with me. She wants to know where I was for those ten years. Perhaps you know a pretty story I can tell her?’
‘What about the other one?’
‘She’s dead.’
Resa just pressed his hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yes. So am I.’ He turned. One of the warders was standing at the end of the corridor. He called something to another warder, and then walked on, looking sullen.
‘Three weeks, maybe four!’ Resa whispered. ‘That’s how long Mo would need, depending on the thickness of the book.’
‘Good, then that’s not so bad.’ He put his hand through the bars and stroked her hair. ‘A couple of weeks are nothing to all those years in Capricorn’s house, Resa! Remember that every time you feel like beating your head against these bars. Promise me.’
She nodded. ‘Tell Meggie I’m well!’ she whispered. ‘And tell Mo too, please. You’ll be talking to him as well, won’t you?’
‘Yes, of course!’ lied Dustfinger. What harm did it do to promise her that? For what else could he do to help her? The other woman began sobbing again. Her weeping echoed back from the mouldering walls, louder and louder.
‘Damn it all, shut your gob there!’
Dustfinger pressed close to the wall as the warder approached. He was a fat fellow, a hulk of a man, and Dustfinger held his breath as he stopped right beside him. For a terrible moment Twofingers was staring straight at him as if he could see him, but then his eyes moved on, searching the darkness, perhaps for more fiery letters on the wall.
‘Don’t cry!’ Resa tried to calm the woman as the warder struck the bars with his stick. Dustfinger could hardly find a corner to retreat into. The weeping woman buried her face in Resa’s skirt, and the warder turned with a grunt and trudged away again. Dustfinger waited until the sound of his footsteps had died away before returning to the bars. Resa was kneeling beside the woman, whose face was still buried in her dress, and talking to her softly.
‘Resa!’ he whispered. ‘I must go. Did they bring an old man down here tonight? A physician, he calls himself the Barn Owl.’
She came back to the bars. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘but the warders were talking about a physician they’ve arrested. He has to treat all the sick people in the castle before they shut him up with us.’
‘That’ll be him. Give him my greetings.’ It w
as hard for him to leave her alone in the dark like this. He would have liked to free her from her cage, just as he set fairies free in market places, but Resa wouldn’t be able to fly away.
At the foot of the stairs, two warders were joking about the hangman whose work Firefox was only too keen to take over. Dustfinger slipped past them, quick as a lizard, but all the same one of them turned his way with a confused expression. Perhaps the smell of fire that Dustfinger wore like a second coat had risen to his nostrils.
61
In the Tower of the Castle of Night
You never came out the way you came in.
Francis Spufford,
The Child that Books Built
Mo was asleep when they brought Meggie to him. It was only the fever that made him sleep, numbing the thoughts that kept him awake hour after hour, day after day, while he listened to his own heartbeat in the draughty cell where they had put him, high in one of the silver towers. The moon was still shining through the barred windows when the approaching footsteps roused him.
‘Wake up, Bluejay!’ The light of a torch fell into the cell, and Firefox pushed a slender figure through the door.
Resa? What kind of dream was this? A good one, for a change?
But it was not his wife they had brought. It was his daughter.
With difficulty, Mo sat up. He tasted Meggie’s tears on his face as she hugged him so hard that he drew in his breath sharply with pain.
Meggie. They had caught her too.
‘Mo? Say something!’ She took his hand and looked at his face with concern. ‘How are you?’ she whispered.
‘Well, fancy that!’ mocked Firefox. ‘The Bluejay really does have a daughter. I expect she’s about to tell you she’s here of her own free will, as she tried to make the Adderhead believe. She’s done a deal with him, and it’s supposed to save your neck. You should have heard the fairy-tales she told. You could always sell her and her angel’s tongue to the strolling players.’
Mo didn’t even ask what he was talking about. He drew Meggie close as soon as the guard had bolted the door behind Firefox, kissed her hair, her forehead, took her face between his hands. He had been so sure that he’d seen that face for the last time in the stable in the forest. ‘Meggie, for God’s sake,’ he said, leaning his back against the cold wall, since he could still hardly stand. He was so glad to see her there. So glad and so dismayed too. ‘How did they catch you?’
‘Never mind that. Everything will be all right, believe me!’ She put her hand on his shirt where there was still dried blood on it. ‘You looked so sick in the stable … I thought I’d never see you again.’
‘I thought the same when I found that letter on your pillow.’ He stroked the tears off her lashes as he had so often done before over the years. How tall she was, hardly a child any more, although he could still clearly see the child in her. ‘Oh, heavens, it’s so good to see you, Meggie. I know I shouldn’t say so. A good father would say: dear daughter, do you have to get yourself locked up every time I do?’
She had to laugh, but he saw the concern in her eyes. She passed her fingers over his face as if she were finding shadows that hadn’t been there before. Perhaps the White Women had left their fingerprints behind, even though they hadn’t taken him away with them.
‘Don’t look at me like that! I’m better, much better, and you know why.’ He brushed the hair back from her forehead; it was so like her mother’s. The thought of Resa hurt like a sharp thorn. ‘Those were powerful words. Did Fenoglio write them for you?’
Meggie nodded. ‘And he wrote more for me too,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Words that will save you. You and Resa and all the others.’
Words. His whole life seemed to be woven from words. His life, and his death too.
‘They took your mother and the others to the dungeons under the castle.’ He remembered Fenoglio’s description only too well: the dungeons under the Castle of Night where fear clung to the walls like mould, and no ray of sun ever warmed the black stones. What words were going to get Resa out of there? And him out of this silver tower?
‘Mo?’ Meggie put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you think you can work?’
‘Work? Why?’ He couldn’t help smiling, for the first time in a long, long while. ‘Do you think the Adderhead will forget he wants to hang me if I restore his books for him?’
But he didn’t once interrupt as she told him, in a low voice, Fenoglio’s idea for rescuing him. He sat on the straw mattress where he had lain these last few days and nights, counting the notches carved in the walls by other unfortunates, and listened to Meggie. And the more of the story she told, the crazier Fenoglio’s plan seemed, but when she had finished Mo shook his head, and smiled.
‘Not a bad idea!’ he said quietly. ‘No, the old fox is no fool, he knows his story.’ It’s just a pity that Mortola presumably knows the altered version now too, he added to himself. And that you were interrupted before you had read it to the end. As so often, Meggie seemed to see what he was thinking from his face. He saw it in her eyes. He stroked the bridge of her nose with his forefinger, as he always used to when she was little, so little that her hand could hardly close round his finger. Little Meggie, big Meggie, brave Meggie …
‘You’re so much braver than I am,’ he said. ‘Bargaining with the Adderhead. I’d really have liked to see that.’
She put her arms round his neck and stroked his tired face. ‘You will see it, Mo!’ she whispered. ‘Fenoglio’s words always come true, much more so in this world than in our own. They made you well again, didn’t they?’
He just nodded. If he had said anything, she would have known from his voice that he found it difficult to believe, as she did, in a happy ending. Even when Meggie was younger she had always known at once if he was troubled in some way, but then it had been easy to take her mind off it with a joke, a pun, a story. It wasn’t so simple now. No one could see into Mo’s heart as easily as Meggie, except her mother. Resa had the same way of looking at him.
‘I expect you’ve heard why they dragged me here, haven’t you?’ he asked. ‘I’m supposed to be a famous robber. Remember when we used to play Robin Hood?’
Meggie nodded. ‘You always wanted to be Robin.’
‘And you wanted to be the Sheriff of Nottingham. The baddies are stronger, Mo, you kept telling me. Clever child. Do you know what they call me? You’ll like it.’
‘The Bluejay.’ Meggie almost whispered the name.
‘Yes, exactly. What do you think? I don’t suppose there’s much hope the real Bluejay will come wanting his name back before my execution, do you?’
How gravely she was looking at him. As if she knew something he didn’t.
‘There isn’t any other Bluejay, Mo,’ she said quietly. ‘You are him.’ Without another word she took his arm, turned his sleeve up and let her finger trace the scar that Basta’s dogs had left. ‘That wound was just healing when we were in Fenoglio’s house. He gave you an ointment to help the scar tissue form better, remember?’
He didn’t understand. Not a word. ‘So?’
‘You are the Bluejay!’ She repeated it. ‘No one else. Fenoglio wrote the songs about him. He made him up because he thought his world needed a robber – and he used you as his model! He was a noble robber in my imagination, that’s what he wrote to me.’
It was some time before Mo’s mind could take in the meaning of her words. Suddenly he had to laugh. So loudly that the guard opened the barred flap in the door and stared suspiciously in. Mo wiped the laugh off his face and stared back until the guard disappeared again, cursing. Then he leaned his head against the wall behind him and closed his eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Mo,’ whispered Meggie. ‘So sorry. Sometimes Fenoglio is a terrible old man!’
‘Well, yes.’
Perhaps that was why Orpheus had found it so easy to read him here. Because he was already in this story anyway. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Do I feel honoured, or do I wring Fenoglio’
s old neck?’
Meggie put her hand on his forehead. ‘You’re all hot! Lie down. You must rest.’
How often had he said the same to her, how many nights had he spent sitting beside her bed? Measles, chickenpox, scarlet fever … ‘Lord, Meggie,’ he had groaned when she caught whooping cough too, ‘can’t you leave out at least one childhood illness?’
The fever was pouring hot lead into his veins, and when Meggie bent over him, he thought for a moment that Resa was sitting beside him. But Meggie’s hair was fairer.
‘Where are Dustfinger and Farid? They were with you, weren’t they? Have they been captured too?’ The fever made his tongue heavy.
‘No, I don’t think so. Did you know Dustfinger has a wife?’
‘Yes, it was because of her that Basta cut his face. Have you met her?’
Meggie nodded. ‘She’s very beautiful. Farid is jealous of her.’
‘Really? I thought he was in love with you.’
She went red, bright red.
‘Meggie?’ Mo sat up. When on earth was this fever finally going to go away? It made him as weak as an old man. ‘Oh no!’ he said quietly. ‘I see I’ve missed something. My daughter falls in love and I fail to notice! One more reason to curse that damned book. You should have stayed with Farid. I’d have been all right.’
‘You wouldn’t! They’d have hanged you!’
‘They may yet. The boy must be worried out of his mind about you now. Poor fellow. Has he kissed you?’
‘Mo!’ She turned her face away, embarrassed, but she was smiling.
‘I have to know. I think I even have to give my permission, don’t I?’
‘Mo, stop it!’ She nudged him in the ribs with her elbow, as usual when he was teasing her, and was horrified to see his face twist with pain. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she whispered.