But Cosimo only smiled. "The moon is red, poet! The soothsayers think that's a good sign. A sign that we mustn't miss the moment, or all may come to grief."
What nonsense! Fenoglio bowed his head to keep Cosimo from seeing the annoyance in his face. Cosimo knew, anyway, that his love of soothsayers and fortune-tellers irritated Fenoglio, who thought them all a set of avaricious frauds. "Let me say it once again. Your Grace!" He had repeated this warning so often that it was beginning to sound flat. "The only thing that will bring you bad luck is setting out too soon!"
But Cosimo merely shook his head indulgently.
"You're an old man, Fenoglio," he said. "Your blood flows slowly, but I'm young! What should I wait for? For the Adderhead to recruit mercenaries, too, and barricade himself in the Castle of Night?"
He probably did that long ago, thought Fenoglio. And that's why you must wait for the words, my words, and for Meggie to read them, the way she read you here. Wait for her voice! "Just one or two weeks more. Your Grace!" he said urgently. "Your peasants must bring in their harvest. What else will they have to live on in winter?"
But Cosimo didn't want to hear about such things. "That truly is old man's talk!" he said angrily. "Where are your fiery words now? They'll live on the Adderhead's stores of provisions, on the good fortune of our victory, on the silver from the Castle of Night. I'll have it distributed in the villages!"
They can't eat silver, Your Grace, thought Fenoglio, but he did not say so aloud. Instead, he looked up at the sky. Dear God, how high the moon had risen already! But Cosimo still had something on his mind.
"There's a question I've been meaning to ask you for some time," he said, just as Fenoglio was about to take his leave with some stammered excuse. "You're so friendly with the strolling players. Everyone's talking about that fire-eater, the one they say can talk to the flames…"
Out of the corner of his eye, Fenoglio saw Brianna bend her head.
"You mean Dustfinger?"
"Yes, that's his name. I know he's Brianna's father," said Cosimo, casting her a loving glance, "but she won't talk about him. And she says she doesn't know where he is now. But perhaps you do?" Cosimo patted his horse's neck. His face seemed to burn with beauty.
"Why? What do you want of him?"
"Isn't that obvious? He can talk to fire! They say he can make the flames grow to a great height without burning him."
Fenoglio understood even before Cosimo explained. "You want Dustfinger for your war." He couldn't help it, he laughed aloud.
"What's so funny about that?" Cosimo frowned.
Dustfinger the fire-dancer as a weapon. Fenoglio shook his head. "Oh no," he said. "I know Dustfinger very well" – he saw Brianna give him a look of surprise as he said so – "and he is many things but certainly not a warrior. He'd laugh in your face."
"He had better not." There was no mistaking the anger in Cosimo's voice. But Brianna was looking at Fenoglio as if she had a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue. Well, this was no time for them! "Your Highness," he said hastily, "please excuse me now! One of Minerva's children is ill, and I promised to get a few herbs from Brianna's mother for her."
"Oh, I see. Of course. Yes, of course, ride on, and we'll talk later." Cosimo gathered up his reins again. "If the child doesn't improve let me know, and I'll send a physician."
"Thank you," said Fenoglio, but before he finally went on his way there was one question he himself had to ask. "I've heard your wife isn't well, either?" Balbulus, who at present was the only visitor allowed to see Violante, had told him so.
"Oh, she's just in a temper." Cosimo took Brianna's hand as if to comfort her for the fact that they were talking about his wife. "Violante loses her temper easily. She gets it from her father. She simply will not understand why I won't let her leave the castle, yet it's obvious that her father's informers are everywhere, and who would they try to pump for information first? Violante and Jacopo." It was hard not to believe every word that those beautiful lips uttered, particularly when they spoke with so much genuine conviction.
"Well, I expect you're right! But please don't forget that your wife hates her father."
"You can hate someone and obey him all the same. Isn't that so?" Cosimo looked at Fenoglio with that naked expression in his eyes, like the eyes of a very young baby.
"Yes, yes, probably," he replied uncomfortably. Every time
Cosimo looked at him like that, Fenoglio felt as if he had found an empty page in a book, a moth hole in the finely woven carpet of words.
"Your Highness!" he said, bowing his head again, and he finally, if not very elegantly, got his horse to trot out of the gateway.
Brianna had given him a good description of the way to her mother's farmhouse. He had asked her about it after Roxane's visit, apparently in all innocence, saying that he was plagued by aching bones. Dustfinger's daughter was a strange child. She wanted nothing to do with her father and obviously not much with her mother, either. Luckily, she had warned him about the goose, so he was holding the horse's reins firmly when the cackling bird came toward him. Roxane was sitting outside her house when he rode into the yard. It was a poor place. Her beauty seemed to fit into it as little as a jewel in a beggar's hut. Her son was sleeping in the doorway beside her, curled up like a puppy, his head on her lap.
"He wants to come with me," she said as Fenoglio slid clumsily off the horse. "The little girl cried, too, when I told her I had to go away. But I can't take them, not to Argenta. The Adderhead's had children hanged before now. A friend is going to look after the girl for me, and Jehan, and the plants and animals, too."
She stroked her son's dark hair, and for a moment Fenoglio didn't want her to ride away. But what would become of his words then? Who else would find Meggie? Should he ask Cosimo for another horseman who might not come back, either? "Well, who knows, maybe Roxane won't come back," the insidious voice inside him whispered. "And then your precious words will be lost." "Nonsense!" he said angrily, out loud. "I made a copy, of course."
"What did you say?" Roxane looked at him in surprise.
"Oh, nothing, nothing!" Heavens above, now he was talking to himself. "There's something else I have to tell you – don't ride to the mill! A minstrel who sings for Cosimo has brought me news from the Black Prince."
Roxane pressed her hand to her mouth.
"No, no. It's not so bad!" Fenoglio quickly reassured her. "The fact is, Meggie's father has obviously been taken prisoner by the Adderhead, but to be honest I feared as much. As for Dustfinger and Meggie – well, to be brief, the mill where Meggie was going to wait for my letter seems to have burned down. Apparently, the miller is telling everyone that a marten made fire rain down from the roof, while a wizard with a scarred face spoke to the flames. It seems this wizard had a demon with him in the shape of a dark-skinned boy who saved him when he was wounded and helped him and a girl to escape."
Roxane looked at him with a thoughtful expression, as if she had to search for the meaning of what he said. "Wounded?"
"Yes, but they escaped! That's the main thing. Roxane, do you really think you can find them?"
She passed a hand over her forehead. "I'll try."
"Don't worry," said Fenoglio. "You heard what they're saying. Dustfinger has a demon protecting him now. In any case, hasn't he always managed very well on his own?"
"Oh yes, indeed he has!"
Fenoglio cursed every wrinkle on his old face, she was so beautiful. Why didn't he have Cosimo's good looks? Although would she like that? She liked Dustfinger, who ought to have been dead by now if the story had gone the way he had once written it. Fenoglio, he told himself, this is going too far. You're behaving like a jealous lover!
But Roxane was taking no notice of him, anyway. She looked down at the boy sleeping in her lap. "Brianna was furious when she heard I was going to ride after her father," she said. "I only hope Cosimo will look after her and won't begin his war before I get back."
Fenoglio made no reply
to that. Why tell her about Cosimo's plans? To make her even more anxious? No. He took out the letter for Meggie from under his cloak. Written words that could become sound, a mighty sound… He had never before made Rosenquartz seal a letter so carefully.
"This letter can save Meggie's parents," he said urgently. "It can save her father. It can save us all, so take good care of it!"
Roxane turned the sealed parchment this way and that, as if it seemed to her too small for such great claims. "I never heard of a letter that could open the dungeons of the Castle of Night," she said. "Do you think it's right to give the girl false hopes?"
"They aren't false," said Fenoglio, rather hurt to find that she had so little faith in his words.
"Very well. If I find Dustfinger, and the girl is still with him, she'll get your letter." Roxane stroked her son's hair again, very gently, as if to brush away a leaf. "Does she love her father?"
"Yes. Yes, she loves him very much."
"My daughter loves hers, too. Brianna loves him so much that she won't speak a word to him now. When he went away in the old days, when he just used to go into the forest or down to the sea, anywhere that fire or the wind happened to lure him, she would try to run after him on her little feet. I don't think he even noticed, he always disappeared so fast, quick as a fox that has stolen a chicken. But she loved him all the same. Why? That boy loves him, too. He even thinks Dustfinger needs him, but he needs no one, only fire."
Fenoglio looked thoughtfully at her. "You're wrong," he said.
"He was wretchedly unhappy when he was away. You should have seen him."
She eyed him incredulously. "You know where he was?"
Now what? Old fool that he was, what had he said this time? "Well, yes," he stammered. "Yes. Yes, I was there myself." He needed some lies, and where were they? The truth wasn't going to be much use this time. A few good lies were needed to explain everything. Why shouldn't he find a few good words for Dustfinger for a change – even if he envied him his wife?
"He says he couldn't come back." She didn't believe it, but you could tell from Roxane's voice how much she wished she did.
"That's exactly how it was! He had a bad time! Capricorn set Basta on him, they took him far, far away and tried to make him tell them how to talk with fire." Here came the lies now, and they might even be close to the truth, who could say? "Believe me, Basta took his revenge for your preference for Dustfinger! They shut him away for years, and he finally escaped, but they soon found him and beat him half to death." Meggie had told him that part. A little of the truth couldn't hurt, and Roxane didn't have to know that it was because of Resa. "It was dreadful, dreadful!" Fenoglio felt the pleasure of storytelling run away with him, the pleasure of watching Roxane's eyes widen as she hung on his lips, waiting eagerly for his next words. Should he make Dustfinger a little villainous after all? No, he'd killed him once already, he'd do him a favor today. He would make his wife forgive him, once and for all, for staying away those ten years. Sometimes I can be a truly benevolent person, thought Fenoglio.
"He thought he'd die. He thought he'd never see you again, and that was the worst of it for him." Fenoglio had to clear his throat. He was moved by his own words – and so was Roxane. Oh yes, he saw the distrust disappear from her eyes, he saw them soften with love. "After that he wandered in strange lands, like a dog turned out of doors, looking for a way that would take him not to Basta or Capricorn but to you." The words were coming as if of their own accord now. As if he really knew what Dustfinger had felt all those years. "He was forlorn, truly forlorn, his heart was cold as a stone from loneliness. There was no room in it for anything but longing – longing for you. And for his daughter."
"He had two daughters." Roxane's voice was almost inaudible.
Damn it, he'd forgotten that. Two daughters, of course! But Roxane was so rapt with his words that his mistake didn't break the spell.
"How do you know all this?" she asked. "He never told me you knew each other so well."
Oh, no one knows him better, thought Fenoglio. I can assure you, my beauty, no one knows him better.
Roxane pushed her black hair back from her face. Fenoglio saw a trace of gray in it, as if she had combed it with a dusty comb. "I shall ride early in the morning," she said.
"Excellent." Fenoglio drew his horse to his side. Why was it so difficult to get onto these creatures with anything like elegance? "Look after yourself," he said, when he was finally on the horse's back. "And the letter, too. And give Meggie my love. Tell her everything will be all right. I promise."
As he rode away she stood beside her sleeping son, looking thoughtful, and watched him go. He really did hope she would find Dustfinger, and it wasn't just that he wanted Meggie to get his words. No. A little happiness in this story couldn't hurt, and Roxane was not happy without Dustfinger. That was the way he'd fixed it.
He doesn't deserve her, all the same, thought Fenoglio again as he rode toward the lights of Ombra, which were neither as bright nor as many as the lights of his old world but were at least equally inviting. Soon the houses behind the protecting walls would be without their menfolk. They would all be going with Cosimo, including Minerva's husband – although she had begged him to stay – and the cobbler whose workshop was next to his. Even the rag-collector who went around every Tuesday was going to fight the Adderhead. Would they follow Cosimo as willingly if I'd made him ugly? Fenoglio wondered. Ugly as the Adderhead with his butcher's face? No, people find it easier to believe that a man with a handsome face has good intentions, so he had done well to put an angel on the throne. Yes, that was clever, extremely clever. Fenoglio caught himself humming quietly as the horse carried him past the guards. They let him in without a word, their prince's poet, the man who put their world into words and had made it out of words. Bow your heads to Fenoglio!
The guards would go with Cosimo, too, and the soldiers up in the castle, and the grooms who were hardly as old as the boy who went around with Dustfinger. Even Minerva's son Ivo would have gone if she had let him. They'll all come back, thought Fenoglio, as he rode toward the stables. Or most of them, at least. It will end well, I know it will. Not just well, but very well indeed!
52. ANGRY ORPHEUS
All words are written in the same ink, "flower" and "power," say, are much the same, and though I might write "blood, blood, blood" all over the page, the paper would not be stained nor would I bleed.
Philippe Jaccottet, "Chant d'en Bas"
Elinor lay on her air mattress staring at the ceiling. She had quarreled with Orpheus again, even though she knew she'd be punished with the cellar. Sent to bed early, Elinor! she thought bitterly. That was how her father used to punish her as a child when he caught her yet again with a book that he didn't think she should be reading at her age. Sent to bed early, sometimes at five in the afternoon. It had been particularly bad in summer, when the birds were singing and her sister was playing outside under the window – her sister who didn't care for books at all, but liked nothing so much as telling tales on Elinor when, instead of playing with her, she buried her head in a book that her father had said she mustn't read.
"Elinor, please don't quarrel with Orpheus!" Darius had
tried drumming that into her so often, but no, she just couldn't control her temper! How could she be expected to, when his wretched dog slobbered all over some of her most valuable books because his master never thought of putting them back on their shelves when he'd had his fun with them?
Recently, however, he hadn't been taking any more books off the shelves, not one. That at least was a small comfort. "He just reads Inkheart," Darius had whispered to her as they were washing the dishes together in the kitchen. Her dishwasher had broken down. As if it wasn't bad enough to be working as a kitchen maid in her own house, now her hands were all swollen with washing-up water! "He seems to be looking for words," Darius whispered. "Then he puts them together differently, writes them down, writes and writes; the wastepaper basket is brimming over. He keep
s on trying, and then he reads what he's written out loud, and when nothing happens…"
"Yes? Then what?"
"Oh, nothing," Darius had said evasively, scrubbing away industriously at a pan encrusted with fat, but Elinor knew that if it was "nothing" he wouldn't have turned so embarrassed and silent.
"Then what?" she repeated – and Darius, blushing to his ears, had finally told her. Then Orpheus threw her books, her wonderful books, at the walls. He flung them on the floor in his rage – now and then one even sailed out of the window – and all because he couldn't do what Meggie had done. Inkheart was closed to him, however lovingly he cooed and implored in his velvety voice, reading and rereading the sentences he so longed to slip between.
Of course, she had run straight off when she next heard him shouting. She'd gone to save her printed children. "No!" Orpheus had yelled, so loudly that you could hear him in the kitchen. "No, no, no! Let me in, you thrice-accursed thing! I sent Dustfinger back into you! Can't you understand that? What would you be without him? I gave you back Mortola and Basta! I've earned my reward, haven't I?"
The man built like a wardrobe wasn't standing outside the library door to stop Elinor. He was probably roaming the house yet again, to see if he could find something worth stealing after all. Not in a hundred years would it have occurred to him that the books were by far the most valuable things in the place. Later, Elinor couldn't remember the names she had called Orpheus. She remembered only the book he was holding in his raised hand, a beautiful edition of the poems of William Blake. And for all her furious insults, he threw it out of the window, while the wardrobe-man grabbed her from behind and dragged her to the cellar stairs.
Oh, Meggie! thought Elinor as she lay on the air mattress, staring up at the crumbling plaster on her cellar ceiling. Why didn't you take me with you? Why didn't you at least ask if I'd like to come, too?
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