‘You’re slipping, Basta!’ remarked Capricorn. ‘Your hot temper clouds your judgement. But let’s move on to this other souvenir of yours.’
Fenoglio had never taken his eyes off Capricorn. He was looking at him like a painter seeing one of his pictures again after many long years, and judging by the expression on his face what he saw pleased him. Meggie couldn’t see a trace of fear in his eyes, just incredulous curiosity, and satisfaction – with himself. She also saw that Capricorn did not care for that expression at all. He wasn’t used to being inspected as fearlessly as this old man was scrutinising him now, not even by his men.
‘Basta has told me some strange things about you, Signor …?’ ‘Fenoglio.’
Meggie was watching Capricorn’s face. Had he ever read the name on the cover of Inkheart just below the title itself?
‘Even his voice sounds the way I imagined!’ Fenoglio whispered to her. She thought he was captivated, like a child looking at a caged lion – except that Capricorn wasn’t in a cage. At a signal from him Basta jammed his elbow into the old man’s back so roughly that Fenoglio was left gasping for air.
‘I don’t like whispering in my presence,’ Capricorn said softly, while Fenoglio was still struggling to get his breath back. ‘As I said, Basta has told me a strange story – he says you claimed to be the man who wrote a certain book – what was its name again?’
‘Inkheart.’ Fenoglio rubbed his aching back. ‘Its title is Inkheart because it’s about a man whose wicked heart is black as ink, filled with darkness and evil. I still like the title.’
Capricorn raised his eyebrows – and smiled. ‘And how am I supposed to take that? As a compliment, maybe? After all, it’s my story you’re talking about.’
‘No, no, it’s mine. You just appear in it.’
Meggie saw Basta look enquiringly at Capricorn, but he shook his head again very slightly, and Fenoglio’s back was spared for the time being.
‘How interesting. So you’re sticking to your lies.’ Capricorn uncrossed his legs and rose from his chair. With slow strides, he came down the steps.
Fenoglio smiled conspiratorially at Meggie.
‘What are you grinning for?’ Capricorn’s voice was as sharp as Basta’s knife now. He stopped right in front of Fenoglio.
‘Oh, I was only thinking that vanity is one of the qualities I gave you, vanity and –’ Fenoglio paused for effect before continuing – ‘and a few other weaknesses that I expect you’d rather I didn’t mention in front of your henchmen.’
Capricorn examined him in silence, a silence that seemed to last an eternity. Then he smiled. It was a faint, thin smile, little more than a lift at the corners of his mouth, while his eyes scanned the church as if he had entirely forgotten Fenoglio. ‘You’re a shameless old man,’ he said. ‘And a liar into the bargain. But if you hope to impress me with your bare-faced lying and boasting the way you’ve impressed Basta, I must disappoint you. Your claims are ridiculous, just as you are, and it was more than stupid of Basta to bring you here, because now we have to get rid of you somehow.’
Basta turned pale. He hurried over to Capricorn, head lowered in submission. ‘But suppose he isn’t lying?’ Meggie heard him whisper to Capricorn. ‘They both say we shall all die if we touch the old man.’
Capricorn gave him a look of such contempt that Basta flinched backwards as if he had been struck.
Fenoglio, however, looked as if he were enjoying himself hugely. It seemed to Meggie that he was watching the whole scene as if it were a play performed especially for him. ‘Poor Basta!’ he said to Capricorn. ‘You’re doing him a great injustice again, for he’s right. Suppose I’m not lying? Suppose I really did invent you both – you and Basta? Will you simply dissolve into thin air if you do anything to me? It seems very likely.’
Capricorn laughed, but Meggie sensed he was thinking over what Fenoglio had said, and it made him uneasy – even if he was taking great pains to hide his concern under a mask of indifference.
‘I can prove that I’m what I say I am!’ said Fenoglio, so quietly that apart from Capricorn only Basta could hear his words. ‘Shall I do it here, in front of your men and those women? Shall I tell them about your parents?’
All was quiet in the church now. No one moved, neither Basta nor the other men waiting at the foot of the steps. Even the women cleaning the floor under the tables straightened up to look at Capricorn and the strange old man. Mortola was standing beside his chair, her chin jutting as if that would help her to hear what they were whispering about.
Capricorn inspected his cufflinks in silence. They were like drops of blood on his pale shirt. Then, at last, he turned his colourless eyes to Fenoglio’s face again.
‘Say what you like, old man! But if you value your life say it so that only I can hear.’ He spoke softly, but Meggie heard the fury in his voice, suppressed with difficulty but lurking behind every word. She had never felt more afraid of him.
Capricorn signed to Basta, who reluctantly took a few steps backwards.
‘I suppose the child can hear what I have to say?’ asked Fenoglio, putting his hand on Meggie’s shoulder. ‘Or are you afraid of her too?’
Capricorn did not even look at Meggie. He had eyes only for the old man who had invented him. ‘Well, come on, let’s hear you, even if you have nothing to say! You’re not the first person to try saving his skin in this church with a few lies, but if you hedge your bets any longer I shall tell Basta to wrap a pretty little viper around your neck. I always keep a few around the place for such occasions.’
Even this threat didn’t particularly impress Fenoglio. ‘Very well,’ he said, looking all round him as if sorry not to have a larger audience, ‘where shall I begin? First, something basic: a storyteller never writes down everything he knows about his characters. There’s no need for readers to know everything. Some of it is better kept secret between the author and his creations. Take him, for instance,’ he added, pointing to Basta. ‘I always knew he was a very unhappy boy before you picked him up. As it says in a another very fine book, it’s terribly easy to persuade children that they are worthless. Basta was convinced of it. Not that you taught him any better, oh no! Why would you? But suddenly here was someone to whom he could devote himself, someone who told him what to do – he’d found a god, Capricorn, and if you treated him badly, well, who says that all gods are kindly? Most of them are stern and cruel, wouldn’t you agree? I didn’t write all this in the book. I knew it, that was enough. But never mind Basta now, let’s move on to you.’
Capricorn’s eyes did not move from Fenoglio. His face was as rigid as if it had turned to stone.
‘Capricorn.’ Fenoglio’s voice sounded almost tender as he spoke the name. He gazed over Capricorn’s shoulder as if he had forgotten that the man he was talking about was standing right in front of him, and no longer existed only in an entirely different world between the covers of a book. ‘He has another name too, of course, but even he doesn’t remember it. He has called himself Capricorn since he was fifteen, after the star sign under which he was born. Capricorn the unapproachable, unfathomable, insatiable, who likes to play God or the Devil as the fancy takes him. The Devil doesn’t have a mother, though, does he?’ Fenoglio then looked Capricorn in the eye. ‘But you do.’
Meggie looked up at the Magpie. She had come to the edge of the steps, listening, her bony hands clenched into fists.
‘You like to spread the rumour that she was of noble birth,’ Fenoglio went on. ‘Indeed, it sometimes even pleases you to say she was a king’s daughter, and your father, you claim, was an armourer at her father’s court. A very nice story too. Shall I tell you my version?’
For the first time, Meggie saw something like fear on Capricorn’s face, a nameless fear without beginning or end, and behind it hatred rose like a vast black shadow.
Meggie felt sure that Capricorn wanted to strike Fenoglio to the ground, but his fear was too strong, leaving him helpless to act.
Did Fenoglio see that too?
‘Go on, tell your story. Why not?’ Capricorn’s eyes were unblinking, like a snake’s.
Fenoglio smiled as mischievously as one of his grandsons. ‘Very well, let’s go on. The tale of the court armourer was all lies, of course.’ Meggie still had a feeling that the old man was enjoying himself enormously. He might have been teasing a kitten. Did he know so little about his own creation? ‘Capricorn’s father was an ordinary blacksmith,’ he went on, refusing to let the cold rage in Capricorn’s eyes distract him. ‘He made his son play with hot coals, and sometimes he beat him almost as hard as he beat the iron he forged. There were blows if the boy ever showed pity, and more blows for shedding tears and for every time the lad said, “I can’t” or “I’ll never do it”. “Power is all that counts,” he taught his son. “Rules are made by the strongest, so be sure that you’re the one who makes them.” Capricorn’s mother thought that was the only real truth in the world, and she told her son day in, day out that one day he would be the strongest of all. She was no princess but a serving maid, with coarse hands and roughened knees, and she followed her son like a shadow, even when he began to be ashamed of her and invented a new mother and new father for himself. She admired him for his cruelty; she loved to see the terror he spread abroad. And she loved his ink-black heart. Your heart is a stone, Capricorn, a black stone with about as much human sympathy as a lump of coal, and you are very, very proud of that.’
Capricorn went on playing with his cufflink, turning it round and looking at it as intently as if he were giving all his attention not to Fenoglio’s words but to the little red piece of metal. When the old man fell silent, Capricorn carefully pulled the sleeve of his jacket down over his wrist and brushed a speck of fluff off his arm. With it, he seemed to have brushed off his anger – his pale, indifferent eyes no longer showed rage, hatred or fear.
‘That really is an amazing story, old man,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘I like it. You’re a born liar, so I shall keep you here – for the time being – until I tire of your stories.’
‘Keep me here?’ Fenoglio stood very straight. ‘I’ve no intention of staying here! What on earth—’
But Capricorn put a hand over his mouth. ‘Not another word!’ he hissed. ‘Basta has told me about your three grandchildren.
If you give me any trouble, or tell your lies not to me but to my men, I shall get Basta to gift-wrap a few young vipers and leave them outside your grandchildren’s door. Do I make myself clear, old man?’
Fenoglio’s head drooped as if Capricorn had broken his neck with nothing but a few softly spoken words. When he looked up again, fear showed in every wrinkle of his face.
With a satisfied smile, Capricorn put his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Yes, you all love something, soft-hearted as you are,’ he said. ‘Children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, parents, dogs, cats, canary birds … There are no exceptions: farmers, shopkeepers, even policemen have families or at least keep a dog. You have only to look at her father!’ Capricorn pointed at Meggie so suddenly, she jumped. ‘He’ll come here even though he knows I shan’t let him go again, any more than I shall let his daughter go. He’ll come all the same. Isn’t this world an amazing place?’
‘Amazing indeed,’ murmured Fenoglio, and for the first time he looked at his creation with revulsion rather than admiration. Capricorn seemed to prefer that.
‘Basta!’ he called, beckoning him. Basta strolled over deliberately slowly. He was still looking sulky. ‘Take the old man to the room where we once locked Darius,’ Capricorn ordered. ‘And post a guard outside the door.’
‘You want me to take him into your house?’ Basta sounded surprised.
‘Yes, why not? After all, he claims to be almost like a father to me. Anyway, his tales amuse me.’
Basta shrugged and grasped Fenoglio’s arm. Meggie looked at the old man, horrified. She would soon be all alone with nothing but the windowless walls and a locked door. But Fenoglio reached for her hand before Basta could haul him away. ‘Leave the girl with me,’ he said to Capricorn. ‘You can’t shut her up in that hole again all by herself. And I promised her father I’d look after her.’
Capricorn turned his back, looking indifferent. ‘As you like. Her father will be here soon in any case.’
Yes, Mo would come. Meggie could think of nothing else as Fenoglio led her away with him, his arm round her shoulders as if he really could protect her from Capricorn and Basta and all the others. But he couldn’t. Would Mo be able to protect her? Of course not. He mustn’t come, she thought. Please. Perhaps he won’t be able to find the way again! He mustn’t come. Yet there was nothing she wanted more, nothing in the whole wide world.
35
Different Aims
Faber sniffed the book. ‘Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy.’
Ray Bradbury,
Fahrenheit 451
It was Farid who saw the car. Dustfinger was lying under the trees as it came along the road. He was trying to think clearly, but since learning that Capricorn was back he couldn’t pull his thoughts together. He still didn’t know where to look for the book. The leaves of the trees cast shadows on his face, the sun sent white-hot needles down through the branches, and his forehead felt feverish. Basta and Flatnose were back too, of course. What had he expected? Had he thought they’d stay away for ever? ‘Why get so agitated, Dustfinger?’ he whispered up at the leaves. ‘You didn’t have to come back here. You knew it would be dangerous.’ Then he heard footsteps approaching, rapidly.
‘A grey car!’ Farid had run so fast that he was gasping for breath as he flung himself down on the grass beside Dustfinger. ‘I think it’s Silvertongue!’
Dustfinger jumped up. The boy knew what he was talking about. He really could tell those stinking metal beetles apart from each other. He himself had never got the knack of it.
He quickly followed Farid to where there was a view of the bridge. The road wound away from it towards Capricorn’s village like a slow-moving snake. They didn’t have much time if they wanted to stop Silvertongue. At top speed, they stumbled down the hillside. Farid was the first to reach the road. Dustfinger had always been proud of his own agility, but the boy was far nimbler, fast as a deer and with legs just as agile. And he was getting better at playing with fire now too, as fascinated as a boy with a puppy.
Silvertongue braked sharply when he saw Dustfinger and Farid in the road. He looked tired, as if he had slept badly for the last few nights. Elinor was in the car beside him. Where had she sprung from? Hadn’t she gone home to her book-lined tomb? And where was Meggie?
Silvertongue’s face darkened when he saw Dustfinger. As he got out of the car he was rigid with anger. ‘Of course! You told them!’ he cried, coming towards him. ‘You told them where we were! Who else? What did Capricorn promise you this time?’
‘I told who what?’ Dustfinger retreated. ‘I never told anyone anything! Ask the boy.’
But Silvertongue didn’t so much as glance at Farid. The bookworm woman had got out too. She stood beside the car looking grim.
‘The only person who told anyone anything was you!’ Dustfinger accused him. ‘You told the old man about me even though you promised you wouldn’t.’
Silvertongue stopped in his tracks. It was so easy to make him feel guilty.
‘Better hide the car under the trees there.’ Dustfinger pointed to the side of the road. ‘One of Capricorn’s men could pass at any time, and they don’t like to see strange cars here.’
Silvertongue turned and looked down the road.
‘Surely you don’t believe him?’ cried Elinor. ‘Of course he’s given you away, who else could? The man starts telling lies the moment he opens his mouth.’
‘Basta took Meggie away.’ Silvertongue sounded hoarse, quite unlike himself, as if when he lost his daughter he had lost the sound of his voice too. ‘They took Fenoglio as well – yesterday morning when I went to meet Elinor at the airport. We’ve been looking for the wretched village ever since. I had no idea how many deserted villages there are in these hills. It wasn’t until we came to the barrier over the road that I felt sure we were on the right track at last.’
Dustfinger said nothing, but looked up at the sky. A few birds as black as Capricorn’s men were flying south. He had not seen them bringing the girl in, but then he hadn’t spent the whole day watching that accursed village.
‘Basta was gone for several days. I thought he must be looking for the two of you,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky he didn’t get hold of you too.’
‘Lucky?’ Elinor was still standing beside the car. ‘Tell him to get out of the way!’ she told Silvertongue. ‘Or I’ll run him down myself! He’s been hand in glove with those miserable fire-raisers all along.’
Silvertongue was still looking at Dustfinger as if he couldn’t decide whether or not to believe him. ‘Capricorn’s men broke into Elinor’s house,’ he said at last. ‘They took all the books from her library into the garden and burned them.’
Dustfinger had to admit that for a split second he felt something almost like satisfaction. What had the silly bookworm woman expected? Did she think Capricorn would simply forget her? He shrugged his shoulders and looked at Elinor, his face unreadable. ‘Only to be expected,’ he said.
‘Only to be expected!’ Elinor’s voice almost cracked. Belligerent as a bull terrier, she marched up to him. Farid tried to bar her way, but she pushed him aside so roughly that he fell on the hot asphalt of the road. ‘Maybe you can fool the boy with your fire-breathing and your coloured balls, matchstick-eater!’ she snapped at Dustfinger. ‘But it won’t work with me! There’s nothing left of the books in my library but a load of ash. The police were full of admiration for what those villains had done. “At least they didn’t burn your house down, Signora Loredan! Even your garden is all right except for the scorch mark on the lawn.” What do I care for the house? What do I care for the wretched lawn? They burned my most valuable books!’
Dustfinger saw the tears in her eyes, although she quickly turned her face aside, and suddenly something like sympathy did awake in him. Perhaps she was more like him than he’d thought: her home too had consisted of paper and printer’s ink. She probably felt as lost as he did in the real world. He didn’t let her see his sympathy, of course, but hid it behind a mask of mockery and indifference, just as she hid her despair behind rage. ‘What did you expect? Capricorn knew where you lived. Anyone could foresee that he’d send his men out when you’ve escaped him. He always takes revenge.’
‘Oh yes, and who told him where I live? You did!’ Elinor swung her arm back with her fist clenched, but Farid caught it. He had grazed his knee on the road. ‘He didn’t give anything away!’ he cried. ‘Nothing at all. He’s only here to steal something.’
Elinor lowered her arm.
‘So that’s it!’ Silvertongue went up to them. ‘You’re here to get hold of the book. That’s crazy!’
‘Well, how about you? What are you planning to do?’ Dustfinger looked at him scornfully. ‘You’re just going to walk into Capricorn’s church and ask for your daughter back, are you?’
Silvertongue did not reply.
‘He won’t hand her over and you know it!’ Dustfinger went on. ‘She’s only the bait, and as soon as you’ve swallowed it the pair of you will be Capricorn’s prisoners – for the rest of your lives, most likely.’