Despina.
She was staring at him in astonishment. He laid his finger on his lips, crawled on, forced his way past a couple of planks, and squeezed into the place where Minerva's children had their hideout. He only just fitted in – the place wasn't meant for old men who were beginning to put on weight around the hips. The two children came here when they didn't want to go to bed or weren't keen to work. They hadn't shown their hiding place to anyone but Fenoglio, as proof of friendship – and in return for a good ghost story.
He heard Cloud-Dancer scream, he heard Basta roaring something, and Minerva weeping. He almost crawled back to them, but fear paralyzed him. And what could he do against Basta's knife and the sword that hung from Slasher's belt? He leaned against the wooden wall of the shed, heard the pigs grunting and rooting about in the ground. Meggie’s message swam before his eyes; the sheet of paper was dirty with the mud he'd crawled through, but he could still decipher what she had written.
"I don't know!" he heard Cloud-Dancer scream. "I don't know what she wrote on it. I can't read!" Brave Cloud-Dancer. He probably did know, all the same. He usually had people tell him what their messages said.
"But you can tell me where she is, can't you?" That was Basta's voice. "Out with it. Is she with Dustfinger? You whispered his name to the old man!"
"I don't know!" He screamed again, and Minerva wept louder than ever and shouted for help, her voice echoing back from the narrow houses.
"The Adderhead's men have taken them all away, my parents and the strolling players," Fenoglio read. "Dustfinger is following… the Spelt-Mill…" The letters blurred as he looked at them. Yet again he heard screaming out there. He bit his knuckles so hard that they began to bleed. "Write something, Fenoglio. Save them. Write…" It was as if he could hear Meggie's voice. Another scream. No. No, he couldn't just sit here. He crawled out, on and on, until he could rise to his feet.
Basta was still holding Cloud-Dancer in a firm grip, pressing him back against the wall of the house. The old tightrope-walker's shirt was slit and bloody, and Slasher was standing in front of him with a knife in his hand. Where was Minerva? She was nowhere to be seen, but Despina and Ivo were there, in hiding near the sheds, watching what one man can do to another. With a smile on his lips.
"Basta!" Fenoglio took a step forward. He put all his rage and all his fear into his voice and held Meggie's close-written sheet of paper up in the air.
Basta turned with assumed surprise. "Oh, there you are!" he called. "With the pigs. I might have known it. You'd better bring us that letter before Slasher finishes slicing up your friend here."
"You'll have to fetch it yourselves."
"Why?" Slasher laughed. "You can read it to us, can't you?"
Yes. He could. Fenoglio stood there at his wits' end. Where were all the lies, the clever lies that usually sprang to his lips so easily? Cloud-Dancer was staring at him, his face twisted with pain and fear – and suddenly, as if he couldn't stand the fear a moment longer, he tore himself away from Basta and ran toward Fenoglio. He ran fast in spite of his stiff knee, but Basta's knife was faster – so much faster. It went straight into Cloud-Dancer's back, just as the Adderhead's arrow had pierced the gold-mocker's breast. The tightrope-walker fell in the mud, and Fenoglio, standing there, began to tremble. He was trembling so much that Meggie's letter slipped out of his hand and fluttered to the ground. But Cloud-Dancer lay there unmoving, his face in the dirt. Despina came out of hiding, hard as Ivo tried to haul her back, and stared wide-eyed at the motionless figure lying before Fenoglio's feet. It was quiet in the yard, very quiet.
"Read it out, scribbler!"
Fenoglio raised his head. Basta stood there in front of him, holding the knife that had been sticking into Cloud-Dancer's back just now. Fenoglio stared at the blood on the bright blade and at Meggie's message. In Basta's hand. Without thinking, he clenched his fists. He struck Basta in the chest as if neither the knife nor Slasher existed. Basta staggered back, anger and astonishment on his face. He fell over a bucket full of weeds that Minerva had been pulling out of her vegetable plots. Cursing, he got to his feet. "Don't do that again, old man!" he spat. "I'm telling you for the last time, read that out!"
But Fenoglio had snatched Minerva's pitchfork from the dirty straw piled up outside the pigsty. "Murderer!" he whispered, pointing the crudely forged prongs at Basta. What had happened to his voice? "Murderer, murderer!" he repeated, louder and louder, and he thrust the pitchfork at the place in Basta's breast where his black heart beat.
Basta retreated, his face distorted with rage.
"Slasher!" he roared. "Slasher, come here and get that damn fork away from him!"
But Slasher had gone beyond the houses, sword in hand, and was listening. Horses' hooves were clattering along the alley outside. "We must go, Basta!" he called. "Cosimo's guards are on their way!"
Basta stared at Fenoglio, his narrowed eyes full of hate. "We'll meet again, old man!" he whispered. "And next time you'll be lying in the dirt in front of me, like him." He stepped heedlessly over the motionless Cloud-Dancer. "As for this," he said, tucking Meggie’s letter under his belt, "Mortola will read it to me.
Who'd have thought that the third little bird would write telling us where to find her in her own fair hand? And we'll pick up the fire-eater for free into the bargain!"
"Come on, quickly, Basta!" Slasher beckoned impatiently.
"What are you bothered about? You think they'll string us up because there's one less strolling player in the world?" replied Basta calmly, but he turned away from Fenoglio. He waved to him one last time before disappearing among the houses.
Fenoglio thought he heard voices, the clink of weapons, but perhaps it was something else. He kneeled down beside Cloud-Dancer, turned him gently on his back, and put his ear to his chest – as if he hadn't seen death in his face some moments ago. He sensed the two children coming up beside him. Despina put her hand on his shoulder. It was slim and light as a leaf.
"Is he dead?" she whispered.
"You can see he is," said her brother.
"Will the White Women come to fetch him now?"
Fenoglio shook his head. "No, he's going to them of his own accord," he answered quietly. "You can see that. He's gone already. But they'll welcome him to their White Castle. It's built of bones but very beautiful. There's a courtyard in that castle, full of fragrant flowers, with a tightrope made of moonlight stretched across it just for Cloud-Dancer…" The words came easily: beautiful, comforting words, but were they really true? Fenoglio didn't know. He had never taken any interest in what came after death, either in this world or the other one. Probably just silence, silence without a single word of comfort.
Minerva came stumbling back from the alley, a cut on her forehead. The physician who lived on the corner was with her, and two other women, their faces pale with fear. Despina ran to her mother, but Ivo stayed beside Fenoglio.
"No one would come." Minerva sobbed as she fell to her knees beside the dead man. "They were all afraid. Every one of them!"
"Cloud-Dancer," murmured the physician. Bone-knitter, he was often called, Stonecutter, Piss-Prophet, and sometimes, when he had lost a patient, Angel of Death. "Only a week ago he was asking if I knew anything that would do the pain in his knee good."
Fenoglio remembered seeing the physician with the Black Prince. Should he tell him what Cloud-Dancer had said about the Secret Camp? Could he trust him? No, it was better to trust no one. Nothing and no one. The Adderhead had many spies. Fenoglio straightened up. Never before had he felt so old, so very old that it seemed as if he couldn't survive another single day. The mill that Meggie had mentioned in her letter, where the devil was it? The name had sounded familiar… Well, of course it did; he himself had described it in one of the last chapters of Inkheart. The miller was no friend to the Adderhead, even though his mill stood near the Castle of Night, in a dark valley south of the Wayless Wood.
"Minerva," he asked, "how long does it take a mounted
man to get from here to the Castle of Night?"
"Two days for sure, if he's not going to ruin his horse," replied Minerva quietly.
Two days, if not less, before Basta found out what was in Meggie’s letter. If he rode to the Castle of Night with it, that was. But he's sure to do that, thought Fenoglio. Basta can't read, so he will take the letter to Mortola, and the Magpie is sure to be at the Castle of Night. Yes, there were probably two days to go before Mortola would read what Meggie had said and send Basta to the mill. Where Meggie might already be waiting… Fenoglio sighed. Two days. Perhaps that would be enough to get a warning to her, but not to write the words she hoped he would send – words to save her parents.
Write something, Fenoglio. Write…
As if it were so simple! Meggie, Cosimo, they all wanted words from him. It was easy for them to talk. You needed time to find the right words, and enough time was exactly what he didn't have!
"Minerva, tell Rosenquartz I have to go to the castle," said Fenoglio. Suddenly, lie felt dreadfully tired. "Tell him I'll fetch him later."
Minerva stroked Despina's hair – the girl was sobbing into her skirt – and nodded. "Yes, you go to the castle!" she said huskily. "Go and tell Cosimo to send soldiers after those murderers. By God, I'll be in the front row to watch them hang!"
"Hang? What are you talking about?" The physician ran a hand through his sparse hair and looked sadly down at the dead man. "Cloud-Dancer was one of the strolling players. No one gets hanged for stabbing a strolling player. There's a harsher penalty for killing a hare in the forest."
Ivo looked incredulously at Fenoglio. "Will they really not punish them?"
What was he to tell the boy? No, it was a fact. No one would punish them. Perhaps the Black Prince might someday, or the man who had taken to wearing the Bluejay's mask, but Cosimo wouldn't send a single soldier after Basta. The Motley Folk were all outlaws, in Lombrica and Argenta alike. Subject to none, protected by none. But Cosimo will give me a horseman if I ask him, thought Fenoglio, a fast horseman who can warn Meggie of Basta. "Write something, Fenoglio. Save them! Write something that will set them all free and kill the Adderhead…" Yes, by God, he would. He'd write rousing songs for Cosimo and powerful words for Meggie. And then her voice could help this story to find a good ending at last.
40. NO HOPE
The mustard-pot got up and walked over to his plate on thin silver legs that waddled like the owl's… "Oh, I love the mustard-pot!" cried the Wart. "Wherever did you get it?"
T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone
Luckily, Darius was a good cook, or Orpheus would probably have locked up Elinor in the cellar again after the very first meal and read himself food to eat out of her books. Thanks to Darius's cooking, however, they were able to spend time upstairs more often – although under the watchful eye of Sugar – for Orpheus liked his food, and plenty of it, and he enjoyed what Darius cooked.
Fearing that otherwise Orpheus might let only Darius upstairs, they pretended that Elinor had concocted all those delicacies with their appetizing aromas and Darius was just her assistant, tirelessly chopping, stirring, and tasting; but as soon as Sugar, getting bored, left the kitchen to stare at the bookshelves, Darius took over the wooden spoon and Elinor the chopping – not that she was much better at chopping than cooking.
Now and then some bewildered figure, looking around as if lost, stumbled into the kitchen. Sometimes the visitor was human, sometimes furry or feathered, once it was even a talking mustard-pot. Elinor could usually work out, from the appearance of each one, which of her poor books Orpheus had in his pale hands at that moment. Tiny men with old-fashioned hairstyles were presumably from Gulliver's Travels. The mustard-pot was very probably from Merlin's cottage, and the enchanting and extremely confused faun who tripped in one lunchtime on delicate goat's hooves must have come from Narnia.
Naturally, Elinor wondered anxiously if all these creatures were in her library when they didn't happen to be standing glassy-eyed in the kitchen, and finally she asked Darius to go and find out, on the pretext of asking what Orpheus wanted to eat. He came back with the reassuring news that her Holy of Holies was still in dreadful disorder, but apart from Orpheus, his horrible dog, and a rather pale gentleman who looked to Darius suspiciously like the Canterville Ghost, no one was pawing, soiling, sniffing, or otherwise damaging Elinor's books.
"Thank God!" she sighed, relieved. "He obviously makes them all disappear again. I must say that appalling man really does know his trade. And it looks as if he can read them out of a book by now without making someone else disappear into it!"
"No doubt about that," remarked Darius – and Elinor thought she heard a trace of envy in his gentle voice.
"He's a monster all the same," she said, in a clumsy attempt to console him. "It's just a pity this house is so well stocked with provisions, or he'd have had to send the wardrobe-man shopping, and then he'd be alone facing the two of us."
As it was, however, days passed by, and there was nothing they could do about either their own imprisonment or the fact that Mortimer and Resa were probably in deadly danger. Elinor tried not even to think of Meggie. And Orpheus, the one person who could obviously have put everything right with such ease, sat in her library like a pale, fat spider, playing with her books and the characters who populated them, as if they were toys to be taken out and put away again.
"How much longer is he planning to go on like this, I ask myself?" she said for about the hundredth time as Darius was putting rice in a serving dish – rice cooked just long enough, of course, so that it was soft but the grains were all separate. "Is he planning to keep us cooking and cleaning for him as unpaid servants for the rest of his life, while he amuses himself with my poor books? In my house?"
Darius did not reply. Instead, and without a word, he piled food onto four plates – this was a meal that certainly wasn't going to send Orpheus out of the house.
"Darius!" whispered Elinor, putting a hand on his thin shoulder. "Won't you just have a try? I know he always keeps the book close to him, but perhaps we can get our hands on it somehow. You could put something in his food…"
"He gets Sugar to taste everything he's going to eat."
"Yes, I know. Right, so we must try something else, anything, and then you can read us into the book! If this repulsive creature won't bring them out for us, then we'll simply go after them!"
But Darius shook his head, as he had done every time Elinor had suggested the same thing, although in slightly different words. "I can't do it, Elinor!" he whispered, and his glasses clouded over, whether with the steam of cooking or tears rising to his eyes she thought it better not to inquire. "I've never read anyone into a book, only out of it, and you know what happened then."
"Oh, all right, then read someone here, someone strong and heroic who'll chase those two out of my house! Who cares if his nose has been flattened or he's lost his voice like Resa, just so long as he has plenty of muscles!"
As if on cue, Sugar put his head around the door. Elinor wasconstantly amazed to see that it was not much wider than his neck. "Orpheus wants to know where dinner is."
"Just ready," replied Darius, handing him one of the steaming plates.
"Rice again?" growled Sugar.
"Yes, sorry about that," said Darius, as he pushed past him with Orpheus's plate.
"And you see about the dessert!" Sugar ordered Elinor as she was about to put the first forkful into her own mouth.
No, this just couldn't go on. Acting the kitchen maid in her own house, with a horrible man in her library throwing her books on the floor, treating them like boxes of chocolates, nibbling something from one book here, another there.
There must be a way to do it, she thought, spooning walnut ice cream into two dishes with a gloomy expression on her face. There must. There must. Why couldn't her stupid brain work it out?
41. THE CAPTIVES
"Then you don't think he's dead, then?"
He put on his hat. "
Now I may be wrong, of course, but I think he's very alive. Shows all the symptoms of it. Go have a look at him, and when I come back we'll get together and decide."
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Night had fallen long ago when Meggie and Farid set out to follow Dustfinger. Go south, keep going south, Cloud-Dancer had told them, but how did you know you were going south when there was no sun to show you the way, no stars shining through the black leaves? The darkness seemed to have devoured everything: the trees, even the ground before their feet. Moths fluttered into their faces, attracted by the fire that Farid was nursing in his fingers like a little animal. The trees seemed to have eyes and hands, and the wind carried voices to their ears, soft voices whispering words to Meggie that she didn't understand. On any other night a point would probably have come when she just stopped or ran back to where Cloud-Dancer and Nettle might still be sitting by the fire; but tonight she knew only that she must find Dustfinger and her parents, for neither night nor the forest could hold any terrors for her greater than the fear that had taken root in her heart when she saw Mo's blood on the straw.
At first, and with the fire to help him, Farid kept finding traces: a print left by one of Dustfinger's boots, a broken twig, amarten's trail… but the time came when he stood there at a loss, not sure which way to go. Tree grew beside tree in the pale moonlight whichever way you looked, so close together that you couldn't make out any path between their trunks, and Meggie saw eyes: eyes above her, behind her, beside her… hungry eyes, angry eyes, so many of them that she wished the moon wouldn't shine so brightly through the leaves.
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