Not a bad idea, Elinor told herself. I’d never have thought of that. But what was making him stammer again?
‘Darius! You did it!’ she whispered, hugging him so hard that his glasses slipped. ‘Thank you! Thank you so, so much!’
‘Hey, you there, where’d that dog come from?’
Cerberus pressed close to Elinor’s legs, growling. Two soldiers were facing them. The soldiers are worse than the highwaymen. Hadn’t Resa told her that too? Most of them will kill for fun some time or other.
Involuntarily, Elinor took a step back, but she just came up against the wall of the house behind her.
‘Well, cat got your tongues?’ One of the men punched Darius in the belly with his gloved fist, so hard that he doubled up.
‘What do you think you’re doing? Leave him alone!’ Elinor’s voice didn’t sound half as fearless as she had hoped. ‘That’s my dog.’
‘Yours?’ The soldier approaching her had only one eye. Fascinated, Elinor stared at the place where the other eye had once been. ‘Only princesses may keep dogs. Trying to tell me you’re a princess?’
He drew his sword and ran the blade over Elinor’s dress. ‘And what sort of clothes are those? You think they make you look a fine lady? What seamstress made that dress? She ought to be put in the pillory, so she ought!’
The other soldier laughed. ‘The strolling players wear such garments!’ he said. ‘She’s a minstrel woman rather past her prime.’
‘A minstrel woman? Nah, too ugly for that.’ The one-eyed man scrutinized Elinor as if he were about to strip her dress off.
She longed to tell him what she thought of his own appearance, but Darius cast her a pleading glance, and the point of the sword pressed menacingly against her stomach as if the one-eyed soldier was thinking of boring a second navel in it. Look down, Elinor! Remember what Resa said. Women keep their eyes lowered in this world.
‘Please!’ With difficulty, Darius scrambled to his feet. ‘We … we’re strangers here. W-w-we come from far away …’
‘And you come to Ombra?’ The soldiers laughed. ‘By the Adderhead’s silver, who’d come here of his own free will?’
The one-eyed man was staring at Darius. ‘Take a look at this!’ he said, lifting off his glasses. ‘He’s got the same kind of frame thing as Four-Eyes, the fellow that got the unicorn and the dwarf for the Milksop.’
Making a big performance of it, he perched the glasses on his own nose.
‘Hey, take that off!’ The other man uneasily retreated.
The one-eyed soldier blinked at him through one thick lens and grinned. ‘I can see all your lies. All your black lies!’
Laughing, he threw the glasses at Darius’s feet.
‘Wherever you come from,’ he said, reaching out for Cerberus’s collar, ‘you’re going back without any dog. Dogs belong to princes. This one’s an ugly brute, but the Milksop will like it all the same.’
Cerberus bit the gloved hand so hard that the soldier screamed and fell to his knees. The other man drew his sword, but Orpheus’s dog wasn’t half as stupid as he was ugly. With the soldier’s glove still in his jaws, he turned and ran for his life.
‘Quick, Elinor!’ Darius swiftly snatched up his twisted glasses and dragged her away with him, while the soldiers, cursing, stumbled off in pursuit of the hell-hound. Elinor couldn’t remember when she had last run so fast – and even if her heart still felt like a young girl’s, her legs were the legs of a rather too stout old woman.
Elinor, this was not the way you imagined your first hours in Ombra, she told herself as she followed Darius down an alley so narrow that she was afraid of getting stuck between the houses. But even if her feet hurt, and she could still feel the tip of that one-eyed oaf’s sword in her stomach – never mind! She was in Ombra! At last she was behind the letters on the page! That was all that mattered. And it was hardly to be expected that life would be as tranquil here as in her house at home – leaving aside the fact that it hadn’t been so tranquil there either recently. Well, never mind that … she was here! She was here at last! In the only story with an ending that she really wanted to know, because all the people she loved were in it.
But it’s a pity the dog has gone, she thought, as Darius stopped at the end of the alley, unsure which way to go. Cerberus’s ugly nose would have come in very useful in this maze of alleyways, and she was probably going to miss him too. Resa, Meggie, Mortimer – she felt like shouting their names through the streets. Where are you? I’m here, I’m here at last!
But perhaps they’re not here any more, Elinor, a voice inside her whispered, while the strange sky above them grew dark. Perhaps the three of them died long ago. Hush, she thought. Hush, Elinor. That thought wasn’t allowed. It simply was not allowed.
33
Herbs for Her Ugliness
The soul is silent.
If it speaks at all
it speaks in dreams.
Louise Glück,
Child Crying Out
Violante went down to the dungeons where the Milksop had imprisoned the children several times a day, with two maids who were still loyal to her, and one of the boys who served her as soldiers. Child soldiers, the Piper called them, but her father had made sure that these boys weren’t children any more when he had their fathers and brothers slaughtered in the Wayless Wood. And the children in the dungeons soon wouldn’t be children either. Fear was making them grow up fast.
The mothers stood outside the castle, begging the guards at least to let them go in to see their youngest children. They brought clothes, dolls, food, in the hope that at least some of it might end up in the hands of their sons and daughters. But the guards threw most of these things away, although Violante kept sending her maids to them to collect what the mothers had brought.
Fortunately the Piper did at least allow her to do that. Fooling the Milksop was easy. He was even more stupid than his doll-like sister, and had never realized how Violante was spinning her web behind his back. But the Piper was clever, and only two things made it possible to manipulate him: his fear of the Adderhead and his vanity. Violante had flattered the Piper from the day he first rode into Ombra. She made out that she was glad he had come, saying she was tired of the Milksop’s feeble stupidity. She told the Piper how he squandered money, and commissioned Balbulus to write out the Piper’s dark songs on his best parchment and illuminate them (even though the commission made Balbulus so furious that he broke three of his most valuable brushes before her eyes).
After Sootbird had lured the children into the trap on the Piper’s orders, Violante had praised the silver-nosed man for his wiliness – and was sick in her bedchamber later. Nor did she let him see that these days she couldn’t sleep because she thought she heard the children crying in the dungeons by night. She wasn’t letting him know that.
She had been just four herself when her father had her and her mother shut up in the Old Chamber in the Castle of Night, but her mother had taught her to hold her head high all the same. ‘You’ve a man’s heart, Violante,’ her father-in-law had once told her. Sad, stupid old man. To this day she didn’t know if he had been paying her a compliment or expressing disapproval. She knew only that all the things she most wanted belonged to men: freedom, knowledge, strength, cleverness. Power …
Was the thirst for revenge masculine too, or a wish to rule, or impatience with others? She’d inherited all those from her father.
Her Ugliness …
Her disfiguring birthmark had faded, but the name stuck. It was part of her, like her very pale face and ridiculously slight body. ‘Her Craftiness, that’s what they ought to call you,’ Balbulus sometimes said. No one knew her better than Balbulus. No one saw through her more clearly, and Violante knew that whenever Balbulus hid a fox in one of his pictures he meant her. Her Craftiness. She was certainly crafty. The sight of the Piper made her physically ill, but she smiled at him as she had learnt to do from watching her father: with condescension mingled with a touch of cru
elty. She wore shoes that made her look taller (Violante had always hated being so short) but she did nothing to make her face prettier, since it was her opinion that beautiful women might be desired but were never respected, certainly not feared. Anyway, she would have felt ridiculous with her lips painted red or her brows plucked to a narrow arch.
Some of the child prisoners were injured. The Piper had allowed Violante to send the Barn Owl to tend them, but there was no persuading him to let them go. ‘Not until we’ve caught our bird,’ he had replied to her request. ‘They’re here as bait for him!’
And Violante had seen it in her mind’s eye – she saw them dragging the Bluejay to the castle once the mothers weeping down there outside the gates had given him away. He was bleeding like the unicorn that the Milksop had killed in the forest. That image remained with her, even clearer than the pictures that Balbulus painted, but in her dreams she saw another. In that one the Bluejay killed her father and set a crown on her head, on her mouse-brown hair …
‘The Bluejay will soon be a dead man,’ Balbulus had said to her only yesterday. ‘I hope he’ll at least ensure that his death makes a good picture.’
Violante could have struck him in the face, but her anger had never yet impressed him. ‘Take care, Your Ugliness,’ he had murmured to her. ‘You’re always giving your love to the wrong men. But at least the last one had blue blood.’
She should have had his tongue cut out for such impertinence – her father would have done it on the spot – but then who would tell her the truth, much as it might hurt? Brianna used to. But Brianna had gone.
Outside, the second night was falling on the children in the dungeons, and Violante had just asked one of her maids to bring her hot wine, hoping that for a few hours it would at least make her forget those little faces, the small hands clutching her skirt, when Vito entered her room.
‘Your Highness!’ The boy was just fifteen, and the oldest of her soldiers, the son of a smith. A dead smith, of course. ‘Your former maidservant is at the gate. Brianna, that woman healer’s daughter.’
Tullio cast Violante a doubtful glance. He had wept when she had turned Brianna out. For that she wouldn’t allow him to come to her room for more than two days.
Brianna. Had Violante’s own thoughts summoned her? The name still sounded so comforting. She’d probably spoken it more often than her son’s. Why was her silly heart beating faster? Had it already forgotten how much pain the girl had caused it? Her father was right: the heart was a weak, changeable thing, bent on nothing but love, and there could be no more fatal mistake than to make it your master. Reason must be in charge. It comforted you for the heart’s foolishness, it sang mocking songs about love, derided it as a whim of nature, transient as flowers. So why did she still keep following her heart?
It was her heart that leapt up at the sound of Brianna’s name, while her reason asked: what does she want here? Does she miss her comfortable life? Is she tired of being a maid scrubbing floors for Four-Eyes, who bows so low to the Milksop that his chin almost collides with his plump knees? Or is she going to beg me to let her go down into the vault to kiss my dead husband’s mouth?
‘Brianna says she’s bringing herbs from her mother for the children in the dungeon. But she’ll give them only to you in person.’
Tullio looked pleadingly at her. He had no pride, but a loyal heart. Too loyal. Yesterday a few of the Milksop’s friends had shut him in the dog-pens with the hounds again. Her own son had been with them.
‘Good. Go and bring her in, Tullio!’ Your voice can give you away, but Violante knew how to make hers sound indifferent. Only once had she shown what she really felt, when Cosimo had come back – and then she felt all the more ashamed to find that he preferred her maidservant to her.
Brianna.
Tullio shot eagerly off, and Violante patted her hair, which was severely pinned back, and looked dubiously at her dress and the jewels she was wearing. Brianna had that effect on people. She was so beautiful that everyone felt clumsy and colourless in her presence. Violante had once liked that. She had hidden behind Brianna’s beauty, relishing the fact that her maid made others feel as she herself always did – ugly. It had pleased her that so much beauty served her, admired her, perhaps even loved her.
Tullio was smiling foolishly all over his furry face as he came back with Brianna. She hesitated as she entered the room where she had spent so many hours. It was said that she wore a coin with Cosimo’s picture around her neck, and kissed it so often that by now the face could hardly be made out. But grief had only made her more beautiful. How could that be? How could there be any justice in the world if even beauty wasn’t fairly shared out?
Brianna sank down in a low curtsey – no one could do it more charmingly – and handed Violante a basket full of herbs. ‘My mother has heard from the Barn Owl that some of the children are hurt, and many won’t eat. These herbs may help. She has written to tell you how they work and how they must be given.’ Brianna took a sealed letter out from under the leaves, handing it to Violante with another curtsey.
A seal, for a healer’s instructions?
Violante sent away the maid who was busy turning back her bed – she didn’t trust the girl – and picked up her new reading glasses. The same glazier who had made a new frame for the glasses worn by Four-Eyes – a gold frame, of course – had made hers. She had paid him with her last ring. The glasses did not reveal lies to her, as it was said those that Four-Eyes wore did. Balbulus’s lettering was not much clearer than when seen through the beryl she normally used, but at least the world wasn’t red any more, and she could see better with both eyes at once, even though she couldn’t wear the glasses for too long without straining her eyes. ‘You read too much!’ Balbulus was always saying, but what was she to do? Without words she would die, she’d simply die, even faster than her mother had done.
The seal of the letter was a unicorn’s head. Whose seal was that?
Violante broke it – and instinctively glanced at the door when she realized who had written to her. Brianna followed her glance. She had lived in this castle long enough to know that the walls and doors had ears, but fortunately written words made no sound. Nonetheless, Violante felt as if she could hear the Bluejay’s voice as she read – and she understood exactly what he was telling her, even if he had hidden his real words behind the written ones with great skill.
The written words spoke of the children and how the Bluejay was giving himself up in exchange for their freedom. They promised her father that the White Book would be cured if the Piper let the children go. But the hidden words said something else, something that only she could read between the lines. They said that at last the Bluejay was ready to strike the bargain she had offered him beside Cosimo’s coffin.
He would help her to kill her father.
We can do it easily together.
Could they really? She lowered the letter. What had she been thinking when she made that promise?
She sensed Brianna’s eyes on her, and abruptly turned her back to the girl. Think, Violante! She pictured what would happen, step by step, image by image, as if leafing through one of Balbulus’s books.
Her father would come to Ombra as soon as the Bluejay had given himself up. That much was certain. After all, he still hoped that the man who had bound the White Book for him could cure its ills. And as he trusted no one else with the Book, he would have to bring it to the Bluejay himself. Of course, her father would come with the intention of killing the Jay. He was desperate, half crazed with what the rotting pages were doing to him, and even on the journey he would be thinking how to put his enemy to death in the most painful possible way. But first he must hand the book over to that enemy. And as soon as the Bluejay had the White Book in his hands it would all depend on her. How much time does it take to write three words? She must gain him that time. Just three words, a few seconds when he was unobserved, a pen and some ink, and then not the Bluejay but her father would die – and Ombra wo
uld be hers.
Violante felt her breath coming fast, her own blood roaring in her ears. Yes, it could work. But it was a dangerous plan, and far more dangerous for the Bluejay than for her. Nonsense, it will work, said her reason, her cool reason, but her heart was beating so fast that she felt dizzy. Once he’s in the castle, her reason kept asking, how are you going to protect him? What about the Piper and the Milksop?
‘Your Highness?’
Brianna’s voice sounded different. As if something in her had broken. Good! I hope she sleeps badly, thought Violante. I hope her beauty fades while she’s on her knees scrubbing floors. But when she turned and looked at Brianna, all she wanted was to hold her close and laugh with her again, the way they used to laugh.
‘There’s something else I’m to tell you.’ Brianna didn’t lower her eyes when she looked at Violante. She was still as proud as ever. ‘These herbs will taste very bitter. They will help only if you use them properly. In the worst case, they can even be deadly. It’s all up to you.’
As if she had to have that explained to her! But Brianna was still looking at her. Protect him, said her eyes. If you don’t, then all is lost!
Violante stood up straight as a ramrod.
‘I understand you very well!’ she said brusquely. ‘I am sure that the children will be very much better in three days’ time. Their troubles will be over, and I’ll use the herbs with all the necessary care. Take that message back. And now go. Tullio will escort you back to the gates.’
Brianna sank into another curtsey. ‘Thank you. I know they’ll be in the best of hands with you.’ She rose, hesitantly. ‘I know you have plenty of maids,’ she added quietly, ‘but if you ever want my company again, please send for me! I miss you.’ She uttered the last words so softly that Violante could hardly hear them.
I miss you too. The words were on the tip of Violante’s tongue, but she didn’t let them pass her lips. Be quiet, heart, you stupid forgetful thing.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But I don’t feel like hearing songs at present.’
‘No. Of course not.’ Brianna turned as pale as when Violante had hit her, after she had been with Cosimo and then lied to Violante about it. ‘But who’s reading to you? Who’s playing with Jacopo?’
‘I’m reading to myself.’ Violante was proud of the cold rejection in her voice, although her heart felt so differently. ‘As for Jacopo, I don’t see much of him. He goes around wearing a tin nose that he had the smith make him, he sits on the Piper’s knee and tells everyone he’d never have been stupid enough to let Sootbird entice him into the marketplace.’
Brianna put her hand to her throat. She really did wear a coin there. ‘Do you sometimes see him too?’
‘See who?’
‘Cosimo. I see him every night in my dreams. And in the day I sometimes feel as if he were standing behind me.’
Stupid creature. In love with a dead man. What did she still love about him? His beauty was food for worms now, and what else was there in Cosimo for anyone to love? No, Violante had buried her love with him. It had gone away like the silly happiness you feel after a jug of wine.
‘Would you like to go down to the vault?’ Violante couldn’t believe that her mouth had uttered those words.
Brianna was looking at her incredulously.