He dipped his pen in the ink with a soft laugh – and spun around when the door opened behind him. Farid came in. Damn it, where was Oss? "What do you want?" he snapped at the boy. "How often do I have to tell you to knock before coming in? Next time I'll throw the inkwell at your stupid head. Bring me wine! The best we have."
How the lad looked at him as he closed the door. He hates me, thought Orpheus.
He liked that idea. In his experience only the powerful were hated, and that was what he meant to be in this world.
Powerful.
23. THE GRAVEYARD OF THE STROLLING PLAYERS
He sits down on a hill and sings. They are songs of magic, strong enough to wake the dead to life. Softly, cautiously, his song rises, then it grows louder and more insistent, until the turf opens up and the cold earth cracks.
Tor Age Bringsvaerd, The Wild Gods
The strolling players' graveyard lay above a deserted village. Carandrella. It had kept its name, although the inhabitants had left long ago. Why and where they went no one knew now – an epidemic, some said, while others spoke of famine, and others again of two warring clans who had slaughtered each other and driven out any survivors. Whichever story was true, it wasn't in Fenoglio's book, nor was this graveyard where the peasants had buried their dead among the Motley Folk, so that now they slept side by side forever.
A narrow, stony path wound its way from the abandoned cottages up the furze-grown slope and ended on a rocky headland. Standing there you could look far south over the treetops of the Wayless Wood toward Argenta, where the sea lay somewhere beyond the hills. The dead of Carandrella, they said in Lombrica, have the best view in the country.
A crumbling wall surrounded the graves. The gravestones were of the pale stone that was also used to build houses here. Stones for the living, stones for the dead. Names were incised on some of them, scratched clumsily as if whoever wrote them had learned the letters only to preserve the sound of a beloved name, rescuing it from the silence of death.
Meggie felt as if the stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past the graves – Farina, Rosa, Lucio, Renzo. Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that had forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn't mind what their names had once been?
Mo was still talking to Orpheus. The Strong Man was sizing up his bodyguard, Oss, as if wondering which of them had the broader chest.
Mo. Don't do it! Please.
Meggie looked at her mother, and abruptly turned her face away when Resa returned her glance. She was so angry with her. It was all because of Resa's tears, and because she had ridden off to see Orpheus, that Mo was here now.
The Black Prince had come with them as well as the Strong Man – and Doria, although his brother had told him to stay behind. Like Meggie, he was standing among the graves, looking around him at the things lying in front of the gravestones: faded flowers, a wooden toy, a shoe, a whistle. A fresh flower lay on one grave. Doria picked it up. The flower was white, like the beings they were waiting for. When he saw Meggie looking at him he came over to her. He really wasn't at all like his brother. The Strong Man wore his brown hair short, but Doria's was wavy and shoulder length. Sometimes Meggie felt as if he had come out of one of the old fairy-tale books that Mo had given her when she'd just learned to read. The pictures in the books had been yellow with age, but Meggie used to look at them for hours, firmly convinced that the fairies featured in some of the tales had painted them with their tiny hands.
"Can you read the letters on the stones?" Doria was still holding the white flower as he stopped in front of her. Two fingers of his left hand were stiff. His father had broken them long ago in a drunken rage when Doria tried to protect his sister from him. At least, that was how the Strong Man told the story.
"Yes, of course." Meggie looked her father's way again. Fenoglio had sent him a message, delivered by Battista. You can't trust Orpheus, Mortimer! All useless.
Don't do it, Mo. Please!
"I'm looking for a name." Doria sounded shyer than usual. "But I can’t… I can’t read. It's my sister's name."
"What was she called?"
If the Strong Man was right, Doria had been fifteen on the very day when the Milksop was going to hang him. Meggie thought he looked older. "Ah, well," the Strong Man had said. "Could be he's older. My mother's not that good at counting. She can't even remember my birthday."
"Her name was Susa." Doria looked at the graves as if the name alone could conjure up his sister. "My brother says she's supposed to be buried here, only he can't remember just where."
They found the gravestone. It was overgrown with ivy, but the name was still clearly legible. Doria bent down and moved the ivy leaves aside. "She had hair as bright as yours," he said. "Lazaro says my mother turned her out because she wanted to go and live with the strolling players. He never forgave her for that."
"Lazaro?"
"My brother. You call him the Strong Man." Doria traced the letters with his finger. They looked as if someone had scratched them into the stone with a knife. The first S was overgrown with moss.
Mo was still talking to Orpheus. Orpheus handed him a sheet of paper: the words he had written at Resa's request. Was Mo going to read them this very night, if the White Women really did appear? Would they all be back in Elinor's house before it was day? Meggie didn't know whether the idea made her feel sad or relieved. She didn't want to think about it, either. All she wanted was for Mo to get on his horse and ride away again, and for her mother's tears never to have brought him here.
Farid was standing a little way off with Jink on his shoulder. At the sight of him, Meggie's heart felt the same chill as when she looked at Resa. Farid had taken Orpheus's demand to Mo knowing what danger it could mean for her father, knowing, too, that if the deal went through they might never see each other again. But all that meant nothing to Farid. He cared for only one person, and that was Dustfinger.
"They say you come from far away, you and the Bluejay." Doria had drawn the knife from his belt and was scratching the moss away from his sister's name. "Is it different there?"
What could she say to that? "Yes," she murmured at last. "Very different."
"Really? Farid says there are coaches that can drive without horses, and music that comes out of a tiny black box."
Meggie couldn't help smiling. "Yes, that's right," she said quietly.
Doria placed the white flower on his sister's grave and stood up. "Is it true that there are flying machines in that country, too?"
How curious he was! "I once tried making myself wings. I even flew a little way with them, but not very far."
"Yes, there are flying machines there as well," replied Meggie distractedly. "Resa can draw them for you."
Mo folded the sheet of paper that Orpheus had given him. Her mother went over to him and began talking to him urgently. Why bother? He wouldn't listen to her. "There's no other way, Meggie," was all he had said, when she herself had begged him not to agree to the offer made by Orpheus. "Your mother is right. It's time to go back. This is getting more dangerous every day." And what could she say to that? The robbers had moved camp three times over the last few days because of the Piper's patrols, and they had heard that women were going to Ombra Castle all the time, claiming to have seen the Bluejay, in the hope of saving their children. Oh, Mo.
"He'll come to no harm," said Doria behind her. "You wait and see, even the White Women love his voice."
Nonsense. Nothing but poetic nonsense!
When Meggie went over to Mo her boots left traces in the hoarfrost as if a ghost had been walking over the graveyard. Mo's face was so serious. Was he afraid? Well, what do you think, Meggie? she asked herself. He wants to call the White Women. They're made of nothing but longing, Meggie.
Farid looked awkwardly away as she passed him.
"Please! You don't have to do it!" Resa's voice sounded far too loud among all the dead, and Mo gently laid his hand on her lips.
"I want to," he said. "And you mustn't be afraid. I know the White Women better than you think." He tucked the folded sheet of paper into her belt. "There. Take good care of it. If for any reason I'm unable to read it, then Meggie will do it."
If for any reason I'm unable to read it… if they kill me with their cold white hands, the way they killed Dustfinger. Meggie opened her mouth – and shut it again when Mo looked at her. She knew that look. No arguing. Forget it, Meggie.
"Good. Very well, then. I've done my part of the bargain. I… er, I don't think we should wait any longer!" Orpheus was visibly impatient. He was stepping from foot to foot, with an unctuous smile on his lips. "They're said to like it when the moon is shining, before it disappears behind the clouds…"
Mo just nodded and signaled to the Strong Man, who gently led Resa and Meggie away from the graves to an oak growing at the side of the graveyard. At a gesture from his brother, Doria joined them under the tree.
Orpheus, too, took a couple of steps back, as if it were too dangerous to stand beside Mo now.
Mo exchanged a glance with the Black Prince. What had he told him? That he was going to try calling the White Women only for Dustfinger's sake? Or did the Prince know about the words that act would buy the Bluejay? No, surely not.
Side by side, the two of them walked among the graves. The bear trotted after them. As for Orpheus, he and his bodyguard hurried over to the oak where Meggie and Resa were standing. Only Farid stayed put as if rooted to the spot, on his face both fear of the beings whom Mo was about to summon and longing for the man they had taken away with them.
A light wind blew over the graveyard, cool as the breath of those they were waiting for, and Resa instinctively took a step forward, but the Strong Man drew her back.
"No," he said quietly, and Resa stood still in the shade of the branches and stared, like Meggie, at the two men who had now stopped in the middle of the graveyard.
"Show yourselves, daughters of Death!"
Mo's voice sounded as calm as if he had called on them many times before. "You remember me, don't you? You remember Capricorn's fortress, you remember following me into the cave, and how faintly my heart beat against your white fingers. The Bluejay wants to ask you about a friend. Where are you?"
Resa put a hand to her heart. It must be beating as fast as Meggie's.
The first White Woman appeared right beside the gravestone where Mo was standing. She had only to reach out her arm to touch him, and she did touch him, as gently as if she were greeting a friend.
The bear moaned and lowered his head. Then he retreated step by step and did something he had never done before. He left his master's side. But the Black Prince stood his ground next to Mo, although his dark face showed fear such as Meggie had never seen on it before.
Mo's face, however, gave nothing away when the pale fingers caressed his arm. The second White Woman appeared to his right. She put her hand to his breast, to the place where his heart was beating. Resa cried out and took another step forward, but the Strong Man held her back again.
"They won't harm him. Watch!" he whispered to her.
Another White Woman appeared, then a fourth, and a fifth. They surrounded Mo and the Black Prince until Meggie saw the two men only as shadows among those misty figures. They were so beautiful – and so terrible – and for a moment Meggie wished Fenoglio could see them, too. She knew how proud he would have been of the sight, proud of the flightless angels he had created.
More and more kept coming. They seemed to form from the white vapor that Mo and the Prince exhaled into the air. Why were there so many? Meggie saw the same enchantment that she felt on Resa's face, too, even on Farid's, although he was so frightened of ghosts.
But then the whispering began, in voices that seemed as ethereal as the pale women themselves. It grew louder and louder, and enchantment turned to fear. Mo's outline blurred, as if he were dissolving in all the whiteness. Doria looked at his brother in alarm. Resa called Mo's name. The Strong Man tried to hold her back once more, but she tore herself away and began to run. Meggie ran after her, plunging into the mist of translucent bodies. Faces turned to her, as pale as the stones over which she stumbled. Where was her father?
She tried to push the white figures aside, but she only reached into a void again and again, until suddenly she touched the Black Prince. There he stood, his face ashen, his sword in his trembling hand, looking around him as if he had forgotten where he was. But the White Women were no longer whispering. They dissolved like smoke blowing in the wind. The night seemed darker when they were gone. So dark. And so terribly cold.
Resa called Mo's name again and again, and the Prince looked around desperately, his useless sword in his hand.
But Mo was not there.
24. TO BLAME
Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very own presence can come together.
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
Resa waited among the graves until day began to dawn, but Mo did not come back. She felt Roxane's pain now, except that she didn't even have a dead man to mourn. Mo was gone as if he had never existed. The story had swallowed him up, and she was to blame.
Meggie was crying. The Strong Man held her in his arms while tears ran down his own broad face.
"It's your fault!" Meggie had kept shouting, pushing Resa and Farid away, not even letting the Prince comfort her. "You two persuaded him! Why did I save him after Mortola shot him, if they were going to take him now?"
"I'm so sorry. I really am so very sorry." Orpheus's voice still clung to Resa's skin like something venomously sweet. When the White Women disappeared, he had stood there as if waiting for something, making an effort
to hide the smile that kept returning to his lips. But Resa had seen it. Indeed she had… and so had Farid.
"What have you done?" He had seized Orpheus by his fine clothes and hammered at the man's chest with his fists. Orpheus's bodyguard tried to grab Farid, but the Strong Man held him off.
"You filthy liar!" Farid had cried, sobbing. "You double-tongued snake! Why didn't you ask them anything? You were never going to ask them anything, were you? You just wanted them to take Silvertongue! Ask him! Ask him what else he wrote! He didn't just write the words he promised Silvertongue, there was a second sheet, too! He thinks I don't know what he gets up to because I can't read – but I can count. There were two sheets – and his glass man says he was reading out loud last night."
He's right, a voice whispered inside Resa. Oh God, Farid is right!
Orpheus, however, had taken great pains to look genuinely indignant. "What's all this stupid talk?" he had cried. "Do you think I'm not disappointed myself? How can I help it if they took him away with them? I've fulfilled my part of the bargain! I wrote exactly what Mortimer asked for! But did I get a chance to ask them about Dustfinger? No! All the same, I won't ask for my words back. I hope it's clear to all of you here," and he looked at the Black Prince, who still had his sword in his hand, "that I'm the one who gets nothing out of this deal!"
The words he had written were still tucked into Resa's belt. She had been going to throw them after him when he rode away, but then she had kept them after all. The words that were to take them back… she hadn't even looked to see what they said. They had been bought at too high a price. Mo was gone, and Meggie would never forgive her. She had lost them both, again, for the sake of those words.
Resa leaned her forehead against the gravestone beside her. It was a child's grave; a tiny shirt lay on it. I'm so sorry. Once again she remembered Orpheus's deep, soft voice mingled with her daughter's sobbing. Farid was right. Orpheus was a liar. He had written what was to happen, and his voice made it come true. He had gotten rid of Mo because he was jealous of him, as Meggie had always said – and she had helped him to do it.
With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper that Mo had tucked into her belt. It was damp with dew, and Orpheus's coat of arms stood above the words, lavish as a pri
nce's. Farid had told them how he had commissioned it from a designer of crests in Ombra – a crown for the lie that he came from a royal family, a pair of palm trees for the foreign land he claimed to come from, and a unicorn, its winding horn black with ink.
Mo's own bookbinder's mark was a unicorn, too. Resa felt tears coming again. The words blurred before her eyes as she began to read them. The description of Elinor's house was a little stilted. But Orpheus had found the right words for her homesickness and her fear that this story could make her husband into someone else… How did he know so well what went on in her heart? From you yourself, Resa, she thought bitterly. You took all your despair to him. She read on – and stopped short.
And mother and daughter went away, back to the house full of books, but the Bluejay stayed – promising to follow them when the time came and he had played his part…
"I wrote exactly what Mortimer asked for!" she heard Orpheus saying, his voice full of injured innocence.
No. It couldn't be true! Mo had wanted to go with her and Meggie… hadn't he?
You'll never know the answer, she told herself, bent double over the little grave from the pain in her heart. She thought she heard the child inside her weeping, too.
"Let's go, Resa!" The Black Prince was there beside her, offering her his hand. His face showed no reproach, although it was sad, very sad. Nor did he ask about the words that Orpheus had written. Perhaps he believed the Bluejay had really been an enchanter after all. The Black Prince and the Bluejay, the two hands of justice – one black, the other white. Now there was only the Prince again.
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