lower part of the coffin lid aside. Mo kept his knife in his hand as he climbed into the sarcophagus. There was no dead body in it, but all the same Mo felt he could hardly breathe as he stretched out in the cold, cramped space. The coffin had clearly been made for a smaller man. Had Violante thrown his bones away so that she could hide her spies inside it? The darkness was almost total when the soldier pushed the cracked lid back into place. A little light and air came in through a few holes forming a flower pattern. Breathe steadily, Mo, breathe calmly, he told himself. He still had the knife in his hand; it was a pity none of the stone swords the dead were holding would be any use. ‘Do you really think it’s worth risking your own skin for a few painted goatskins?’ Battista had enquired when he asked him to make the clothes and the belt. What a fool you are, Mortimer. Hasn’t this world done enough to show you how dangerous it is? But Balbulus’s painted goatskins had been very beautiful.
A knock. A bolt was pushed back. The voices came to his ears more distinctly now. Footsteps. Mo tried to peer through the holes, but he could see only another coffin, and the black hem of Violante’s dress disappearing as she walked quickly away. His eyes weren’t going to help him. He let his head sink back on to the cold stone and listened. How loud his breathing was. Could there be any sound more suspicious here among the dead?
Suppose it isn’t just by chance that Sootbird has turned up now, something inside him whispered. Suppose Violante was only setting a trap for you? Not all daughters love their fathers. Suppose Her Ugliness was planning to give her father a very special present all the same? ‘Look who I’ve caught for you. The Bluejay. He was disguised as a crow. I wonder who he thought he’d fool that way?’
‘Your Highness!’ Sootbird’s voice echoed through the vault as if he were standing right beside the coffin where Mo lay. ‘Forgive us for disturbing you in your grief, but your son wants me to meet a visitor you received today. He insists on it. He thinks the man is an old and very dangerous acquaintance of mine.’
‘A visitor?’ Violante’s voice sounded as cool as the stone beneath Mo’s head. ‘The only visitor down here is death, and it’s not much use warning anyone against death, is it?’
Sootbird laughed uneasily. ‘No, certainly not, but Jacopo was talking about a flesh-and-blood visitor, a bookbinder, tall, dark hair …’
‘Balbulus was interviewing a bookbinder today,’ Violante replied. ‘He’s been looking for one for a long time now. Someone who knows his trade better than the bookbinders of Ombra.’
What was that noise? Of course. Jacopo hopping about on the flagstones. Obviously he sometimes acted like any other child after all. The hopping came closer. The temptation simply to stand up instead of lying there was very strong. It was difficult to keep your body as still as a corpse while you were still breathing. Mo closed his eyes so as not to see the stone around him. Keep your breath as shallow as you can, he told himself, breathe as quietly as the fairies.
The hopping stopped right beside him.
‘You’ve hidden him!’ Jacopo’s voice reached Mo inside the sarcophagus as if he were speaking the words for Mo’s ears alone. ‘Shall we look in the coffins, Sootbird?’
The boy seemed to find the notion very enticing, but Sootbird laughed nervously. ‘Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary, if we tell your mother who she’s dealing with. This bookbinder could be the very man your father is looking for so desperately, Highness.’
‘The Bluejay? The Bluejay, here in the castle?’ Violante’s voice sounded so incredulous that even Mo believed she was taken by surprise. ‘Of course! I’ve told my father time and again: one day that robber’s own daring will be his downfall. You’re not to say a word of this to the Milksop. I want to catch the Bluejay myself, and then at last my father will realize who ought to be on the throne of Ombra! Have you reinforced the guards at the gates? Have you sent soldiers to Balbulus’s workshop?’
‘Er … no.’ Sootbird was obviously confused. ‘I mean … he isn’t with Balbulus any more, he …’
‘What? You fool!’ Violante’s voice was as sharp as her father’s. ‘Lower the portcullis over the gateway. At once! If my father hears that the Bluejay was in this castle, in my library, and simply rode away again …’ How menacing she made those words sound in the chilly air! She was indeed clever; her son was right.
‘Sandro!’ That must be one of her soldiers. ‘Tell the guards at the main gates to let the portcullis down. No one is to leave the castle. No one, do you hear? I only hope it’s not too late already! Jacopo!’
‘Yes?’ There was fear and defiance in the high voice – and a trace of distrust.
‘If he finds the gates closed, where could the Bluejay hide? You know every hiding place in this castle, don’t you?’
‘Of course!’ Now Jacopo sounded flattered. ‘I can show you all of them.’
‘Good. Take three of the guards from outside the throne-room upstairs and post them at the most likely hiding places you know. I’ll go and talk to Balbulus. The Bluejay! In my castle!’
Sootbird stammered something. Violante brusquely interrupted him, ordering him to go with her. Their footsteps and voices moved away, but Mo thought he could still hear them for some time on the endless stairs leading up and away from the dead, back to the world of the living, to the daylight where you could breathe easily …
Even when all was perfectly still again he lay there for a few more agonizing moments, listening until he felt as if he could hear the dead themselves breathing. Then he braced his hands against the stone lid – and hastily reached for his knife when he heard footsteps again.
‘Bluejay!’
It was no more than a whisper. The cracked lid was pushed aside, and the soldier who had helped him into his hiding place reached out a hand to him.
‘We must hurry!’ he whispered. ‘The Milksop has raised the alarm. There are guards everywhere, but Violante knows ways out of this castle that even Jacopo hasn’t found yet. I hope,’ he added.
As Mo clambered out of the sarcophagus, legs stiff from lying in its cramped space, he still had the knife in his hand.
The boy stared at it. ‘How many have you killed?’ His voice sounded almost awestruck. As if killing were a high art, like the painting of Balbulus. How old would the lad be? Fourteen? Fifteen? He looked younger than Farid.
How many? What was he to say to that? Only a few months ago the answer would have been so simple. Perhaps he’d even have laughed out loud at such a ridiculous question. Now he just said, ‘Not as many as those who lie here,’ although he wasn’t sure that he was telling the truth.
The boy looked along the rows of the dead as if counting them. ‘Is it easy?’
Judging by the curiosity in his eyes, he really didn’t seem to know the answer, despite the sword at his side and his shirt of chain mail.
Yes, thought Mo. Yes, it’s easy … if you have a second heart beating in your breast, cold and sharp-edged as the sword you carry. A certain amount of hatred and anger, a few weeks of fear and helpless rage, and you’ll have a heart like that. It beats time for you when you come to kill, a wild, fast rhythm. And only later do you feel your other heart again, soft and warm. It shudders in time with the other one at the thought of what you did. It trembles and feels pain … but that’s only afterwards.
The boy was still looking at him.
‘Killing is too easy,’ said Mo. ‘Dying is harder.’
Although Cosimo’s stony smile claimed otherwise.
‘Didn’t you say we must hurry?’
The boy turned red under his shiny polished helmet. ‘Yes … yes, of course.’
A stone lion kept watch in front of a niche behind the coffins, the emblem of Ombra on its breast – presumably the only example of the old coat of arms that the Milksop hadn’t had smashed. The soldier put his sword between the lion’s bared teeth, and the wall of the vault opened just far enough for a grown man to squeeze through it. Hadn’t Fenoglio described this entrance? Words that Mo ha
d read long ago came back to his mind, about one of Cosimo’s ancestors who had escaped his enemies several times along the passage beyond. And words will save the Bluejay again, he thought. Well, why not? He’s made of them. All the same, his fingers passed over the stone as if they needed to reassure themselves that the walls of the vault weren’t just made of paper.
‘The passage comes out above the castle,’ the boy whispered to him. ‘Violante couldn’t get your horse from the stables. It would have attracted too much attention, but there’ll be another waiting there. The forest will be swarming with soldiers, so be careful! And I’m to give you these.’
Mo put his hand into the saddlebags that the boy handed him.
Books.
‘Violante says I’m to tell you they’re a present for you, made in the hope that you will accept the alliance she offers you.’
The passage was endless, almost as oppressively narrow as the sarcophagus, and Mo was glad when at last he saw the light of day again. The way out was little more than a crack between a couple of rocks. The horse was waiting under the trees, and he saw Ombra Castle, the guards on the walls, the soldiers pouring out of the gates like a swarm of locusts. Yes, he would have to be very careful. All the same, he undid the saddlebags, hid among the rocks – and opened one of the books.
10
As If Nothing Had Happened
How cruel the earth, the willows shimmering,
the birches bending and sighing.
How cruel, how profoundly tender.
Louise Glück,
Lament
Farid was holding Meggie’s hand. He let her bury her face in his shirt while he kept whispering that everything would be all right. But the Black Prince still wasn’t back, and the crow sent out by Gecko brought the same news as Doria, the Strong Man’s younger brother, who had been spying for the robbers ever since Snapper had saved him and his friend from hanging. The alarm had been raised at the castle. The portcullis was lowered, and the guards at the gate were boasting that the Bluejay’s head would soon be looking down on Ombra from the castle battlements.
The Strong Man had taken Meggie and Resa to the robbers’ camp, although they would both have preferred to go back to Ombra. ‘That’s what the Bluejay would want,’ was all he had said, and the Black Prince set off with Battista to the farm they’d called home for the last few weeks – such happy weeks, so deceptively peaceful in the turmoil of Fenoglio’s world. ‘We’ll bring you your things,’ was all the Prince had said, when Resa asked him what he was going there for. ‘You can’t go back.’ Neither Resa nor Meggie asked why. They both knew the answer – because the Milksop would have the Bluejay questioned, and no one could be sure that a time wouldn’t come when Mo might reveal where he had been hiding during those recent weeks.
The robbers themselves moved camp only a few hours after hearing of Mo’s arrest. ‘The Milksop has some very talented torturers,’ Snapper remarked, and Resa sank down under the trees away from the others and buried her face in her arms.
Fenoglio had stayed in Ombra. ‘Perhaps they’ll let me see Violante. And Minerva’s working in the castle kitchen tonight, maybe she’ll find out something there. I’ll do everything I can, Meggie!’ he had promised as he said goodbye.
‘Like getting into bed and drinking two jugs of wine!’ was all Farid said to that, but he kept remorsefully silent when Meggie began to cry.
Why had she let Mo ride to Ombra? If only she’d at least gone to the castle with him, but she’d wanted to be with Farid so much. She saw the same accusation in her mother’s eyes: you could have stopped him, Meggie, no one else but you could have done it.
When darkness began to fall Woodenfoot brought them something to eat. His stiff leg had earned him his name. Although not the fastest of the robbers, he was a good cook, but neither Meggie nor Resa could swallow a morsel. It was bitterly cold, and Farid tried to persuade Meggie to sit by the fire with him, but she just shook her head. She wanted to be alone with herself in the dark. The Strong Man brought her a blanket. His brother was with him, Doria. ‘Not much good at poaching, but he’s a first-class spy,’ the Strong Man had whispered to her when he introduced them. The two brothers were not very much alike, although they had the same thick brown hair and Doria was already strong for his age (something that filled Farid with envy). He wasn’t very tall. Doria only just came up to his elder brother’s shoulder, and his eyes were as blue as the skin of Fenoglio’s fairies, while the Strong Man’s eyes were acorn-brown. ‘We have different fathers,’ the Strong Man had explained when Meggie expressed her surprise at the difference between them. ‘Not that either of them’s worth a lot.’
‘You mustn’t worry.’ Doria’s voice sounded very grown-up.
Meggie raised her head.
He put the blanket around her shoulders, and stepped shyly back when she looked up at him, but he did not avoid her eyes. Doria looked everyone in the face, even Snapper – and most people looked away from Snapper.
‘Your father will be all right, believe me. He’ll outwit them all: the Milksop, the Adderhead, the Piper …’
‘After they’ve hanged him?’ asked Meggie. She sounded as bitter as she felt, but Doria just shrugged his shoulders.
‘Nonsense. They were going to hang me too,’ he said. ‘He’s the Bluejay! He and the Black Prince will save us all, you wait and see.’ He made it sound as if it couldn’t turn out any other way. As if he, Doria, were the only one who had read to the end of Fenoglio’s story.
But Snapper, sitting under the trees with Gecko only a little way off, laughed hoarsely. ‘Your brother’s as big a fool as you!’ he called over to the Strong Man. ‘It’s his bad luck he doesn’t have your muscles, so I guess he won’t live to be very old. The Bluejay is finished! And what does he leave behind as his legacy? The immortal Adderhead!’
The Strong Man clenched his fists and was about to go for Snapper, but Doria pulled him back when Gecko drew his knife and rose to his feet. The two of them often quarrelled, but suddenly they both raised their heads and listened. A jay was calling in the oak above them.
‘He’s back! Meggie, he’s back!’ Farid climbed down from his lookout post so fast that he almost lost his balance.
The fire had burnt low; only the stars shone down into the dark ravine where the robbers had pitched their new camp, and Meggie didn’t see Mo until Woodenfoot limped over to him with a torch. Battista and the Black Prince were with him. They all seemed unharmed. Doria turned to her. Well, Bluejay’s daughter, his smile seemed to be saying, what did I tell you?
Resa jumped up in such haste that she stumbled over her blanket. She made her way through the crowd of robbers standing around Mo and the Prince. As if in a dream, Meggie followed her. It was too good not to be a dream.
Mo was still wearing the black clothes that Battista had made him. He looked tired, but he did indeed seem to be uninjured.
‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right,’ Meggie heard him say as he kissed the tears from her mother’s face, and when Meggie was there in front of him he smiled at her as if this were their old life, and he had only been on a short journey to cure a few sick books, not from a castle where people wanted to kill him.
‘I’ve brought you something,’ he whispered to her, and only the way he hugged her so tight and for so long told her that he had been as frightened as she was.
‘Leave him alone, will you?’ the Black Prince told his men as they crowded around Mo, wanting to know how the Bluejay had escaped from Ombra Castle as well as the Castle of Night. ‘You’ll hear the story soon enough. And now, double the guard.’
They reluctantly obeyed, sat around the dying fire grumbling, or disappeared into the tents that had been patched together out of pieces of fabric and old clothes, offering only scant shelter from nights that were growing colder all the time. But Mo beckoned Meggie and Resa over to his horse and delved into the saddlebags. He brought out two books, handling them as carefully as if they were living creatures. He
gave one to Resa and one to Meggie – and laughed when Meggie snatched hers so quickly that she almost dropped it.
‘It’s a long time since the two of us had a book in our hands, right?’ he whispered to her with an almost conspiratorial smile. ‘Open it. I promise you, you never saw a more beautiful book.’
Resa had taken her book too, but she didn’t even look at it. ‘Fenoglio said that illuminator was the bait for you,’ she said in an expressionless voice. ‘He told us they arrested you in his workshop.’
‘It wasn’t exactly what it seemed. As you can see, no harm came of it. Or I wouldn’t be here, would I?’
Mo said no more, and Resa asked no further questions. She didn’t say a word when Mo sat down on the short grass in front of the horses and drew Meggie down beside him.
‘Farid?’ he said, and Farid left Battista, whom he was obviously trying to question about events in Ombra, and went over to Mo with the same awe on his face that Meggie had seen on Doria’s.
‘Can you make some light for us?’ Mo asked, and Farid knelt down between them and made fire dance on his hands, although Meggie could clearly see that he didn’t understand how the Bluejay could sit there right after his narrow escape from the Milksop’s soldiers, showing his daughter a book before he did anything else.
‘Did you ever see anything so beautiful, Meggie?’ Mo whispered as she caressed one of the gilded pictures with her finger. ‘Apart from the fairies, of course,’ he added with a smile as one of them, pale blue like the sky Balbulus painted, settled drowsily on the pages.
Mo shooed the fairy away as Dustfinger had always done, by blowing gently between her shimmering wings, and Meggie, beside him, bent her head over the pages and forgot her fears for him. She forgot Snapper, she even forgot Farid, who didn’t so much as glance at what she couldn’t tear her own eyes away from: lettering in sepia brown, as airy as if Balbulus had breathed it on to the parchment, dragons, birds stretching their long necks at the heads of the pages, initials heavy with gold leaf like shining buttons among the lines. The words danced with the pictures and the pictures sang for the words, singing their colourful song.
‘Is that Her Ugliness?’ Meggie laid a finger on the finely drawn figure of a woman. There she stood, slender beside the written lines, her face barely half the size of Meggie’s little fingernail, yet you could see the pale birthmark on her cheek.
‘Yes. And Balbulus made sure she’ll still be recognized many hundreds of years from now.’ Mo pointed to the name that the illuminator had written in dark-blue ink, clearly visible above the tiny head: Violante. The V had gold edging as fine as a hair. ‘I met her today. I don’t think she deserves her nickname,’ Mo went on. ‘She’s rather too pale, and I think she could bear a grudge for a long time, but she fears nothing.’
A leaf landed on the open book. Mo flicked it away, but it clung to his finger with thin, spidery arms. ‘Well, how about this!’ he said, holding it up to his eyes. ‘Is it one of Orpheus’s leaf-men? His creations obviously spread fast.’
‘And they’re seldom very nice,’ said Farid. ‘Watch out. Those creatures spit.’
‘Really?’ Mo laughed softly and let the leaf-man fly away just as it