looked for a casket, perhaps a precious cloth in which it was wrapped, even though it stank and was rotting … but suddenly the room went completely dark, so dark that only sounds remained: the splashing of the bloody water, the soldiers breathing hard, Jacopo’s cry of alarm.
‘What’s that?’
Dustfinger’s sparks had suddenly died down. Resa felt the bird’s heart in her breast beating even faster than usual. What had happened? Something must have happened, and it couldn’t be anything good.
One of the soldiers lit a torch, putting his hand around the flame to keep it from dazzling his master.
‘At last!’ The Adderhead’s voice sounded both relieved and surprised. He waved to the servants, and they went on pouring the contents of their buckets over his itching skin. Where had they caught all the fairies? Fairies slept at this time of year.
The door opened as if the story itself were answering her, and Orpheus came in. ‘Well?’ he asked with a deep bow. ‘Were there enough fairies, Your Highness? Or shall I get you some more?’
‘This will do for the time being.’ The Adderhead filled his hands with the red water and dipped his face into it. ‘Do you have anything to do with the fire going out?’
‘Do I have anything to do with it?’ Orpheus smiled with such self-satisfaction that Resa longed to fly down and peck his pale face to pieces with her beak. ‘I do indeed,’ he went on. ‘I’ve persuaded the Fire-Dancer to change sides.’
No. It couldn’t be true. He was lying.
The bird in her pecked at a fly, and Jacopo looked up. Keep your head down, Resa, she told herself, even though it’s dark. She wished the feathers on her breast and throat weren’t so white.
‘Good. But I hope you didn’t promise him any reward for it!’ The Adderhead plunged deep into the bloody water. ‘He’s made me a laughing-stock to my men. I want to see him dead, and dead beyond recall this time. But that can wait. What about the Bluejay?’
‘The Fire-Dancer will lead us to him. For no reward at all.’ The words were terrible enough, but the beauty of Orpheus’s voice made them even worse. ‘He’ll lay a trail of flames, and your soldiers will only have to follow it.’
No. No. Resa began trembling. Dustfinger surely hadn’t betrayed Mo again. No.
A suppressed cry came from her bird-breast, and Jacopo looked up at her again. But even if he did see her, there was nothing there but a trembling swift lost in the dark human world.
‘Is everything ready for the Bluejay to set to work at once?’ asked Orpheus. ‘The sooner he’s finished, the sooner you can kill him.’
Oh, Meggie, what kind of being did you read here? Resa thought desperately. With his shining glasses and flatteringly beautiful voice, Orpheus seemed to her like a demon.
The Adderhead heaved himself out of his bath, groaning. He stood there as bloodstained as a newborn child. Jacopo instinctively flinched back, but his grandfather beckoned him closer.
‘My lord, you need to stay in the bath longer for the blood to take effect!’ said one of the servants.
‘Later!’ replied the Adderhead impatiently. ‘You think I want to be sitting in the tub when they bring me my worst enemy? Give me those towels!’ he told Jacopo sharply. ‘And quick, or do you want me to put you in the dark cell with your mother? Did I say you were getting more like her? No, it’s your father you look like – more and more like him all the time.’
With a black look, Jacopo handed him the towels lying ready beside the tub. ‘Clothes!’
The servants hurried over to the chests, and Resa hid in the dark again, but the voice of Orpheus followed her like a deadly scent.
‘Your Grace, I … er …’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve kept my promise. The Bluejay will soon be your prisoner again, and he’ll bind you a new book. I think I’ve earned a reward.’
‘Oh, do you?’ The servants were putting black garments on the Adderhead’s blood-red skin. ‘And what were you thinking of?’
‘Well. Do you remember the book I mentioned to you? I would still very much like to have it back, and I’m sure you can find it for me. But if that can’t be done at once –’ oh, the vanity of the gesture as he smoothed his pale fair hair! ‘– I would also accept your daughter’s hand in marriage as my reward for the delivery of the Bluejay.’
Orpheus.
Resa thought of the day when she had first set eyes on him, in Elinor’s house, accompanied by Mortola and Basta. At the time she had only noticed that he didn’t resemble the men with whom Mortola usually liked to surround herself. He looked strangely harmless, almost innocent, with that childlike face. How stupid she had been. He was worse than any of them, much, much worse.
‘Your Highness.’ That was the Piper’s voice. Resa hadn’t heard him come in. ‘We’ve caught the Bluejay. Him and the book illuminator. Shall we bring the Jay straight to you?’
‘Aren’t you going to tell us how you caught him?’ purred Orpheus. ‘Did you pick up his scent with that silver nose of yours?’
The Piper replied in as reluctant a voice as if every word bit his tongue. ‘The Fire-Dancer gave him away. With a trail of flames.’
Resa wanted to spit out the seeds so that she could shed human tears.
But Orpheus laughed out loud, happy as a child. ‘And who told you about that trail? Come on, out with it!’
It took the Piper a long time to answer. ‘You, who else?’ he said hoarsely at last. ‘And some day I’ll find out what devilry you used to do it.’
‘Well, he’s done it, anyway!’ said the Adderhead. ‘After you let the Jay escape twice. Take the prisoner to the Hall of a Thousand Windows. Chain him to the table where he’s to bind the book, and have every move he makes watched. If this new Book makes me sick too, I’ll cut your heart out with my own hands, Piper, and believe me, a heart’s not as easily replaced as a nose.’
Bird-thoughts were obscuring Resa’s mind. It frightened her, but how was she to reach Mo without wings? And even if you do fly to him, she asked herself, what then? Are you going to peck out the Piper’s eyes so that he can’t see the Bluejay escape? Fly away, Resa, it’s all over, she thought. Save your unborn child even if you can’t save its father. Go back to Meggie. Birdlike fears filled her, birdlike fears and human pain – or was it the other way around? Was she going crazy? Crazy like Mortola?
She perched there, trembling, waiting for the bedchamber to empty and for the Adderhead to go and see his prisoner. Why did Dustfinger give him away, she wondered. Why? What did Orpheus promise him? What can be worth more than the life Mo gave him back?
The Adderhead, Orpheus, the Piper, the soldiers, two servants with the cushions to support their master’s aching flesh – Resa saw them all go, but just as she thought she was alone and was putting her head over the edge of the wardrobe, there stood Jacopo staring straight up at her.
One of the servants came back to fetch the Adderhead his coat.
‘See that bird up there?’ Jacopo asked. ‘Catch it for me!’
But the servant dragged him unceremoniously to the door. ‘You don’t give the orders around here! Go and see your mother. I’m sure she’ll be glad of company where she is now!’
Jacopo resisted, but the servant pushed him roughly through the doorway. Then he closed the door – and came over to the wardrobe. Resa retreated. She heard him pushing something in front of the wardrobe. Fly into his face, she told herself. But then where? The door was closed, the windows draped. The servant threw a black coat at her. She fluttered against the door, against the walls, heard the man cursing. Where could she go? She flew up to the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, but something hit her wing. It hurt, it hurt badly, and she fell.
‘You just wait, I’ll wring your neck! Who knows, maybe you won’t taste bad. Sure to be better than what our fine master gives us to eat.’ Hands reached for her. She tried to fly away, but her wing hurt, and the man’s fingers held on tightly. In desperation, she pecked them with her beak.
‘Let it go!�
��
Bewildered, the servant turned, and Dustfinger struck him to the ground. There was fire behind him. A traitor’s fire. Gwin was staring hungrily at her, but Dustfinger shooed him away. Resa tried to peck his hands when he reached for her, but she had no strength left, and he carefully lifted her from the floor and stroked her feathers.
‘What’s the matter with your wing? Can you move it?’
The bird in her trusted him, as all wild creatures did, but her human heart remembered what the Piper had said. ‘Why did you give Mo away?’
‘Because that’s what he wanted. Spit the seeds out, Resa! Have you forgotten that you’re human?’
Perhaps I want to forget it, she thought, but she obediently spat the little seeds out into his hand. This time none were missing, but she still felt the bird growing stronger and stronger inside her. Small and large, large and small, skin with feathers, skin without feathers … she stroked her arms, felt fingers again, not claws, felt tears in her eyes, a woman’s tears.
‘Did you see where the White Book is hidden?’
She shook her head. Her heart was so glad that it could love him again.
‘We have to find it, Resa,’ Dustfinger whispered. ‘Your husband is going to bind the Adder another book, remembering his old trade and forgetting the Bluejay, and in that way he will be safe from Orpheus’s words. But that book must never be finished, do you understand?’
Yes, she understood. They looked everywhere by the light of the fire, groping among damp towels, clothes and boots, swords, pitchers, silver salvers and embroidered cushions. They even reached into the bloody water. When they heard footsteps outside Dustfinger dragged the unconscious servant with him, and they hid behind the wardrobe on which Resa had been perching. For a bird, the room had seemed as large as a whole world, but now it seemed too cramped to breathe in. Dustfinger placed himself in front of Resa to protect her, but the servants who came in were too busy emptying their master’s bath of blood to notice anything. They cursed as they cleared the damp towels away, covering up for their disgust at the Adderhead’s rotting flesh with mockery. Then they carried the tub out and left Dustfinger and Resa alone again.
Search … in every corner, in every chest, in and under the tumbled bed. Search for the Book.
70
Burning Words
It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.
You bastards, she thought.
You lovely bastards.
Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.
Markus Zusak,
The Book Thief
Farid found Doria. When they carried him to the tree Meggie thought at first that the giant had crushed him, just as he had crushed the Milksop’s men, who lay in the frosty grass like broken dolls.
‘No, it wasn’t the giant,’ said Roxane, as they put Doria down with the other injured men: the Black Prince and Woodenfoot, Silkworm and Hedgehog. ‘This is the work of humans.’
Roxane had made one of the lowest nests into a sickroom. Luckily there were only two dead among the robbers, while the Milksop had lost many men. Even fear of his brother-in-law wasn’t going to bring him back another time.
Sootbird too was dead. He lay on the grass with his neck broken, staring up at the sky with empty eyes. Wolves prowled among the trees, lured by the smell of blood. But they dared not come any closer, because the giant was curled up like a child under the tree with its nests, sleeping as deeply as if Roxane’s singing had sent him into the realm of dreams for ever.
Doria did not come round when Minerva bandaged his bleeding head, and Meggie sat beside him as Roxane cared for the other wounded. Hedgehog was in a very bad way, but the other men’s injuries would heal. Fortunately the Black Prince had only a couple of broken ribs. He wanted to go down to his bear, but Roxane had forbidden it, and Battista had to keep assuring him that the bear was already chasing snow hares again, now that Roxane had pulled out the arrow from his furry shoulder. But Doria didn’t move. He just lay there, his brown hair full of blood.
‘What do you think? Will he ever wake up again?’ Meggie asked as Roxane bent over him.
‘I don’t know,’ Roxane replied. ‘Talk to him. Sometimes that calls them back.’
Talk to him. What should she tell Doria? He had asked her about the other world again and again, so in a soft voice Meggie began talking to him about horseless carriages and flying machines, ships without sails and devices that carried voices from one part of the world to another. Elinor came to see how she was. Fenoglio sat beside her for a while. Even Farid came and held her hand while she held Doria’s, and for the first time Meggie felt as close to him as she had when the two of them followed her captured parents with Dustfinger. Can one heart love two boys at once?
‘Farid,’ said Fenoglio quietly after a while, ‘let’s see what your fire can tell us about the Bluejay, and then this story will be brought to an end. A good end.’
‘Maybe we ought to send the giant to the Bluejay!’ said Silkworm. Roxane had cut an arrow out of his arm, and his tongue was heavy with the wine she had given him to dull the pain. The Milksop had left all sorts of things behind: wine and blankets, weapons, riderless horses.
‘Have you forgotten where the Bluejay is?’ asked the Black Prince. Meggie was so glad he was alive. ‘No giant can wade through the Black Lake. Even if they did once like to look at their reflections in its water.’
No, it wouldn’t be as simple as that.
‘Come on, Meggie, let’s ask the fire,’ said Farid, but Meggie was reluctant to let go of Doria’s hand.
‘You go. I’ll stay with him,’ said Minerva, and Fenoglio whispered, ‘Don’t look so anxious! Of course the boy will wake up again! Have you forgotten what I told you? His story is only just beginning.’
But Doria’s pale face made that hard to believe.
The branch that Farid knelt on to summon the fire was as broad as the road outside Elinor’s garden gate. As Meggie crouched beside him, Fenoglio looked suspiciously up at the children sitting in the branches above them watching the sleeping giant.
‘Don’t you dare!’ he called, pointing to the fir cones in their small hands. ‘The first of you to throw one of those at the giant will go down after it. I promise you!’
‘But they will throw one sometime, and then what?’ asked Farid as he carefully sprinkled a little ash on the tree’s wooden skin. There wasn’t much left, even though he gathered it up again meticulously every time he’d used it. ‘What will the giant do when he wakes up?’
‘How would I know?’ grumbled Fenoglio, casting a slightly worried look downwards. ‘I just hope poor Roxane doesn’t have to spend the rest of her life singing him to sleep.’
The Black Prince came over to them too. Battista had to support him. He sat down beside Meggie without a word. The fire was sleepy today. However hard Farid enticed and flattered it, it seemed forever before flames rose from the ashes. The giant began humming to himself in his sleep. Jink jumped up on to Farid’s knees, a dead bird in his mouth, and suddenly the pictures came: Dustfinger in a courtyard, surrounded by large cages. There was a girl in one of them, weeping. Brianna. A black figure stood between her and her father.
‘Night-Mare!’ whispered Battista. Meggie looked at him in alarm. The picture dissolved into greyish smoke, and another appeared in the heart of the flames. Farid took Meggie’s hand, and Battista uttered a soft curse. Mo. He was chained to a table. The Piper was with him. And the Adderhead, his swollen face looking even more terrible than Meggie had seen it in her worst dreams. Leather and blank sheets of paper lay on the table.
‘He’s binding him another White Book!’ whispered Meggie. ‘What does that mean?’ In alarm, she looked at Fenoglio.
‘Meggie!’ Farid drew her attention to the fire again.
Letters were rising from the flames, burning letters that formed into words.
&nb
sp; ‘What the devil is that!’ Fenoglio uttered. ‘Who wrote that?’
The words blew away and went out among the branches before anyone could read them. But the fire gave Fenoglio the answer to his question. A round, pale face appeared in the flames, its circular glasses looking like a second pair of eyes.
‘Orpheus!’ Farid whispered.
The flames burnt low, slipping back into the ashes as if returning to their nest, but a few fiery words still drifted through the air. Bluejay … fear … broke … die …
‘What does that mean?’ asked the Black Prince.
‘It’s a long story, Prince,’ Fenoglio replied wearily. ‘And I’m afraid the wrong man has written the end of it.’
71
The Bookbinder
The real author was neither one of us: a fist is more than the sum of its fingers.
Margaret Atwood,
The Blind Assassin
Fold. Cut. The paper was good, better than last time. Mo’s fingertips felt the fibres on its pale white surface, ran along the edges in search of memories. And they came, filling his heart and mind with a thousand images, a thousand and more forgotten days. The smell of the glue took him back to all the places where he had been alone with a sick book, and the familiar gestures made him feel his old satisfaction in giving new life and beauty to a book, saving it from time’s sharp teeth, at least for a while. He’d forgotten the peace that came when his hands were doing their work. Fold, cut, pull a thread through the paper. Mortimer was back again: Mortimer the bookbinder, for whom a knife didn’t have to be sharp because a sharp blade killed better, and who wasn’t threatened by the
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