bedchamber.’
‘Did you indeed?’ The Piper looked at the ledge where the swift had now settled. He snatched a crossbow from one of the soldiers.
No! Resa, fly away!
Just one more word, but all Mo saw was the little bird.
The Piper shot, and the swift fluttered upwards. The arrow missed, and she flew straight into the Piper’s face.
Write, Mo! He pressed the pencil down on to the blood-soaked paper.
The Piper’s silver nose slipped when he struck out at the swift.
Death.
76
White Night
The poor Emperor could hardly breathe. It was as if something were sitting on his breast. He opened his eyes and then he saw that it was Death … and strange heads were looking out from the folds of the great velvet hangings of his bed, some of them horrible, some divinely beautiful: they were all the Emperor’s good and bad deeds looking down on him now that Death sat there on his breast.
Hans Christian Andersen,
The Nightingale
The Adderhead was freezing. He was freezing even in his sleep, although he clutched the cushion to his sore chest, the cushion containing the Book that protected him from eternal cold. Even his dreams, heavy with poppy-juice, couldn’t warm him any more. Dreams of the tortures he would inflict on the Bluejay. Once he had dreamt only of love in this castle. But wasn’t that only right and proper? Hadn’t the love he found here tormented him as much as his rotting flesh?
Oh, how cold he was. Even his dreams seemed to be covered with hoarfrost. Dreams of torture, dreams of love. He opened his eyes, and the painted walls stared at him with the eyes of Violante’s mother. That damn poppy-juice. This damn castle. And why was the fire back? The Adderhead groaned and pressed his hands to his eyes, but the sparks seemed to burn even beneath his lids.
Red. Red and gold. Light as sharp as a knife-blade, and out of the fire came the whispering, the whispering he had feared ever since he first heard it at a dying man’s side. Trembling, he peered through his swollen fingers. No. No, it couldn’t be true. It was the poppy-juice making him imagine them. Nothing else. He saw four of them all standing round his bed, white as snow – no, whiter – and they were whispering the name he had been born with. Over and over again, as if to remind him that he hadn’t always had the skin of a serpent.
It was the poppy-juice, only the poppy-juice.
The Adderhead thrust a trembling hand into the cushion to take out the Book, to hold it up and so ward them off, but their white fingers were already reaching into his breast.
How they were looking at him! With the eyes of all the dead he had sent to them.
And then they whispered his name again.
And his heart stood still.
77
Over
‘I did it!’ cried God. And he looked down at Sparrow and pointed at the vanishing marvel. ‘I did it! I made a Swift!’
Ted Hughes,
How Sparrow Saved the Birds, from The Dreamfighter
The White Woman appeared as soon as Mo closed the blood-soaked Book again. At the sight of her the Piper forgot the swift, and Violante’s son hid under the table to which Mo was chained. But this daughter of Death hadn’t come to take the Bluejay away. She was here to give him his freedom, and Resa saw the relief on Mo’s face.
At that moment he forgot everything. Resa saw that too. Perhaps he hoped, for a split second, that the story had been told to the end at last. But the Piper hadn’t died with his master. For a few precious moments fear held him transfixed, but when the White Woman disappeared she took his fear with her, and Resa spread her wings once more. She spat out the seeds as she flew at the Piper, so that she would get back hands she could use to help, feet that could run. But the bird was reluctant to leave her, and she still had claws as she landed on the flagstones right beside the two men.
Mo looked down at her in alarm, and before Resa could realize what danger she was putting him in, the Piper had taken the chains binding him to the table, to wind them around his own hand. Mo fell to his knees as the Piper tugged the chains. He was holding the knife he had been using to cut paper, but what good was a bookbinder’s knife against a sword or a crossbow?
Desperately, Resa fluttered up on the table, retching in the frantic hope that there might be a seed still under her tongue, but her feathery prison would not let her go, and the Piper pulled at Mo’s chains again.
‘Your pale angel was in a hurry to leave this time!’ he said scornfully. ‘Why didn’t she undo your chains for you? But don’t worry, we’ll leave you plenty of time to die, time enough for your white friends to come back again. Now, go on working.’
With difficulty, Mo straightened up. ‘Why should I?’ he asked, pushing the White Book over to the Piper. ‘Your master won’t be needing any second book now. That’s why the White Woman came here. I’ve written the three words in this one. See for yourself. The Adderhead is dead.’
The Piper stared at the bloodstained binding. Then he looked under the table, where Jacopo was cowering like a small, frightened animal.
‘Is he indeed?’ he said, drawing his sword. ‘Well, if that’s so … I’ve no objection to immortality myself. So, as I said, go on working.’
His soldiers began to whisper.
‘Quiet!’ the Piper snapped, pointing to one of them with his gloved hand. ‘You. Go to the Adderhead and tell him the Bluejay claims he’s dead.’
The soldier hurried away. The others watched him go with fear in their eyes. But the Piper put the point of his sword to Mo’s chest. ‘You’re not working yet!’
Mo stepped as far back as the chains would allow, the knife in his hand. ‘There won’t be any other book. No book with white pages. Off you go, Jacopo! Run to your mother and tell her everything will be all right.’
Jacopo crawled out from under the table and ran for it. The Piper didn’t even look at him as he disappeared. ‘When the Adderhead’s son was born I advised him to dispose of Cosimo’s little bastard,’ he said, looking at the White Book. ‘But he wouldn’t hear of it. Stupid of him.’
The soldier he had sent to the Adderhead came stumbling back into the dark hall, out of breath.
‘The Jay’s telling the truth!’ he gasped. ‘The Adderhead is dead, and the White Women are everywhere.’
The other soldiers lowered their crossbows.
‘L-l-let’s go back to Ombra, sir!’ stammered one of them. ‘This castle is bewitched. We can take the Bluejay with us!’
‘A good idea,’ said the Piper. And he smiled.
No.
Resa fluttered into his face once more, pecking the smile from his lips. It was the bird who did it – or was it the woman, the wife? She heard Mo cry out as the Piper struck at her with his sword. The blade cut deep into her wing. She fell, and suddenly she had human limbs again, as if the Piper had cut the bird out of her. The Piper stared at her in disbelief, but as he raised his sword Mo thrust the knife deep into his chest, right through his expensive clothes. And the Piper looked at him in astonishment as he died.
His soldiers, however, were still there. Mo snatched the Piper’s sword and drove them back, away from his wife. But there were too many of them, and he was still chained to the table. Soon there was blood everywhere, on his chest, on his hands and arms. Was it his own?
They were going to kill him, and once again Resa could only watch, stand by and watch as she had done so often in the course of this story. But suddenly fire was consuming the chains and Dustfinger stood over her to protect her, with the marten on his shoulder. Beside him stood Jacopo.
‘Is she dead too?’ Resa heard him ask as the soldiers ran from the fire, screaming.
‘No,’ Dustfinger answered. ‘It’s only her arm that’s wounded.’
‘But she was a bird!’ said Jacopo.
‘Yes.’ That was Mo’s voice. ‘Don’t you think that sounds like a good story?’
It was suddenly so quiet in the great hall. No more
fighting, no screams, only the crackling of the fire as it talked to Dustfinger.
Mo knelt down beside her. There was blood everywhere, but he was alive, and once again Resa had a human hand to take his. And all was well.
78
Staked on the Wrong Card
Like Orpheus I play death on the strings of life.
Ingeborg Bachmann,
To Speak of the Dark
Orpheus was reading frantically, he realized that himself. He was reading in too loud a voice, and much too fast. As if his tongue were trying to thrust the words through the bookbinder’s body like knives. He had written him the torments of hell in revenge for the Piper’s mocking smile. That smile still haunted him. How small it had made him, just when he was feeling so full of grandeur! But at least there’d soon be no more smiling for the Bluejay.
Ironstone stirred the ink and looked at him anxiously. His fury obviously showed on his face, written there in small beads of sweat.
Concentrate, Orpheus, he told himself – and tried again. There were a few words that he could hardly decipher because the letters ran together so unsteadily, drunk with his own rage.
Why did he feel as if he were reading the words into a void? Why did they seem like pebbles being dropped down a well, where their echo was lost in the darkness? Something was wrong. He’d never felt like this before when he was reading aloud.
‘Ironstone!’ he ordered the glass man. ‘Run to the Hall of a Thousand Windows and see how the Bluejay is doing. He ought to be doubled up in agony like a poisoned dog by now.’
The glass man lowered the twig he was using to stir the ink and looked at him in alarm. ‘But … but master, I don’t know the way.’
‘Don’t make such a stupid fuss, or do you want me to ask the Night-Mare if it fancies a glass man for a change? Turn right outside this room and then go straight ahead. Ask the guards the way!’
Unhappily, Ironstone set off. Silly creature! Fenoglio really might have thought up a less ridiculous kind of assistant to help scribes. But that was the trouble with this world – at heart, it was childish. Why had he loved the book so much when he was a child? Well, for that very reason! But now he was grown up, and it was time this world grew up too.
Another sentence – and once again the strange feeling that the words were dying away even before he spoke them. Damn it!
Dizzy with rage, he was reaching for the inkwell to throw it at the painted wall when he suddenly heard loud shouts outside. Orpheus put the inkwell back on the table and listened. What was all this? He opened his door and looked down the corridor. There were no guards outside the Adderhead’s bedchamber any more, and two servants ran past him in a state of great agitation. By all the devils in hell, what did this mean? And why was Dustfinger’s fire burning on the walls again?
Orpheus hurried out into the passage and stopped outside the Adderhead’s door. It was open, and the Silver Prince lay dead on his bed, his eyes open so wide that it wasn’t difficult to guess what his last sight had been.
Instinctively, Orpheus looked round before he went up to the bed, but of course the White Women had left long ago. They had what they’d been waiting so long for. But how? How had it happened?
‘Yes, you’ll have to look for a new master, Four-Eyes!’ Thumbling came out from behind the hangings of the bed and gave him a hawkish smile. Orpheus saw the ring that the Adderhead had used to seal death sentences on his lean hand. Thumbling was also wearing the Silver Prince’s sword.
‘Let’s hope the stink washes out!’ he murmured to Orpheus in a confidential tone as he flung his master’s heavy velvet coat over his shoulders. Then he strode away, down the corridor where Dustfinger’s fire whispered along the walls.
But Orpheus stood there feeling the tears run down his nose. All was lost! He’d staked everything on the wrong card; he’d put up with the stench of the rotting prince, bowed low to him and wasted his time in this dark castle all for nothing! It wasn’t he who had written the last song but Fenoglio, who else could it have been? And presumably the Bluejay featured as the hero again, while Orpheus was the villain. No, worse! He played the ridiculous part of the loser!
He spat in the Adderhead’s rigid face and stumbled back to his room, where the useless words still lay on the table. Trembling with rage, he picked up the inkwell and poured its contents over what he had written.
‘Master, master! Have you heard?’ The glass man, out of breath, was standing in the doorway. He was quick on his spidery legs, you had to give him that.
‘Yes, I know, the Adderhead’s dead! What about the Bluejay?’
‘They’re fighting! He and the Piper are fighting.’
‘Aha. Well, perhaps Silver-Nose may run him through yet. That would at least be something.’ Orpheus snatched up his things and stuffed them into the fine leather bag he had brought from Ombra: pens, parchment, even the empty inkwell, the silver candelabrum that the Adderhead had given him, and of course the three books – Jacopo’s, and the two about the Bluejay. He wasn’t giving up yet, not he.
He picked up the glass man and put him in the pouch at his belt.
‘What are you going to do, master?’ asked Ironstone anxiously.
‘We’ll summon the Night-Mare and get out of this castle!’
‘The Night-Mare’s gone, master! They say the Fire-Dancer sent it up in smoke!’
Damn, damn, damn. Of course. That was why fire was burning on the walls again! Dustfinger had recognized the Night-Mare. He had seen who was breathing there in the heart of darkness! Well, Orpheus, you’ll just have to read yourself another Night-Mare out of Jacopo’s book, he thought. It wasn’t all that difficult. Only this time he must give it a name that Dustfinger didn’t know!
He listened for sounds in the corridor. Nothing. The rats had deserted the sinking ship. The Adderhead was alone in death. Orpheus went back into the bedchamber where his bloated corpse lay and stole what silver he could find, but Thumbling hadn’t missed much. Then he hurried with the wailing glass man to the tunnel that had brought the Piper to the castle. Water was running down the stone walls as if the passage were sticking in the lake’s moist flesh like a thorn.
The guards posted on the bank to keep watch on the way out were gone, but a few dead soldiers lay among the rocks. In the end they had clearly killed each other in their panic. Orpheus took a sword from one of the dead men, but threw it away again when he discovered how heavy it was. Instead he took a knife from another dead man’s belt and put the soldier’s coarse cloak over his shoulders. It might look ugly, but it was warm.
‘Where are we going, master?’ faltered Ironstone. ‘Back to Ombra?’
‘Why would we want to go back there?’ was all that Orpheus replied, as he looked up at the dark slopes barring the way to the north.
To the north … he had no idea what to expect there. As with so much else in his book, Fenoglio had written nothing about it, and that was just why he would go north. The mountains looked far from inviting, with their snowy peaks and bleak slopes. But it was the best way to go now that Ombra, he supposed, would soon belong to Violante and the Bluejay. To hell with that wretched bookbinder, to the hottest hell the human mind can imagine, he thought. And may Dustfinger freeze in eternal ice until his treacherous fingers break off!
Orpheus looked back at the bridge one last time before making for the trees. There went the Silver Prince’s soldiers, running away. And what were they running away from? Two men and their white guardian angels. And their lord’s bloated body.
‘Master, master, couldn’t you put me on your shoulder?
Suppose I fall out of this pouch?’ the glass man wailed.
‘Then I’ll need a new glass man!’ Orpheus replied.
Northward into unwritten country. Yes, he thought as his feet, with difficulty, sought a way up the steep slope. Maybe that part of this world will obey my words.
79
Leaving
‘Tell me a story,’ says Alba, leaning against me like
cold cooked pasta.
I put my arm around her. ‘What kind of story?’
‘A good story. A story about you and Mama …’
‘Hmm. Okay. Once upon a time—’
‘When was that?’
‘All times at once. A long time ago, and right now.’
Audrey Niffenegger,
The Time Traveller’s Wife