‘Lady Cora,’ he said, ‘sometimes one has to do things which are unpalatable. When great issues are involved one can’t toy with the situation in silk gloves. No. We are making history.’
Mervyn Peake,
Titus Groan
Fenoglio was pacing up and down his room. Seven steps to the window, seven back to the door. Meggie had gone, and there was no one who could tell him if she’d found her father still alive. What an appalling muddle! Whenever he began to hope he was getting things under control again, something happened that did not remotely suit his plans. Perhaps another man really did exist somewhere – a diabolical storyteller who was continuing his tale, giving it new twists and turns, unpredictable and unpleasant developments, moving his characters as if they were chessmen, or simply placing new ones who had nothing to do with his own story on the chessboard!
And still Cosimo had sent no messenger. Well, I must exercise a little more patience, Fenoglio told himself. He’s only just ascended his throne, and I’m sure he has a great deal to do. All his subjects wanting to see him, petitioners, widows, orphans, his administrators, gamekeepers, his son, his wife … ‘Oh, nonsense! I’m the one he should have sent for first of all!’ Fenoglio uttered the words so angrily that he was startled by the sound of his own voice. ‘I, the man who brought him back to life, who made him in the first place!’
He went to the window and looked up at the castle. The Adderhead’s banner flew from the left-hand tower. Yes, the Adderhead was in Ombra, and must have ridden like the devil to see his son-in-law newly back from the dead, in person. He hadn’t brought Firefox with him this time; no doubt the man was busy looting or murdering elsewhere on his master’s behalf, but the Piper was still abroad in the streets of Ombra, always with a few men-at-arms in his wake. What did they want here? Did the Adderhead still seriously hope to place his grandson on the throne?
No, Cosimo would never allow it.
For a moment Fenoglio forgot his dark mood, and a smile stole over his face. Ah, if he could only have told the Adderhead who had wrecked his fine plans! A writer! How that would have angered him! They had given him an unpleasant surprise – he with his words, Meggie with her voice …
Poor Meggie … poor Mortimer …
How pleadingly she had looked at him. And what a farcical performance he had put on for her! Yet how could the poor thing have thought for a moment that he could help her father, when he himself hadn’t even brought Mortimer here? Quite apart from the fact that Mortimer wasn’t one of his creations in the first place. But that look of hers! He simply had not the heart to let her leave without any hope at all!
Rosenquartz was sitting on the desk with his transparent legs crossed, throwing breadcrumbs at the fairies.
‘Stop that!’ Fenoglio snapped. ‘Do you want them to grab you by the legs and try throwing you out of the window again? I won’t save you this time, believe you me. I won’t even sweep you up when you’re a little pile of broken glass down there in the pigs’ muck. The refuse collector can shovel you into his barrow instead.’
‘That’s right, take your bad temper out on me!’ The glass man turned his back on Fenoglio. ‘It won’t make Cosimo summon you any sooner, though!’
Here, unfortunately, he was right. Fenoglio went to the window. In the streets below, the excitement over Cosimo’s return had died down, and perhaps the Adderhead’s presence had cast a damper on it too. People were going about their business again, the pigs were rooting about among the refuse, children were chasing each other around the close-packed houses, and now and then an armed soldier made his way through the crowd. There were clearly more soldiers about than usual in Ombra now. Cosimo was obviously having them patrol the city, perhaps to prevent the men-at-arms riding his subjects down again just because they were in the way. Yes, Cosimo will see to everything, thought Fenoglio. He’ll be a good prince, in so far as any princes are good. Who knows, perhaps he’ll even allow the strolling players back into Ombra on ordinary market days soon.
‘That’s it. That will be my first piece of advice. To let the players back again,’ murmured Fenoglio. ‘And if he doesn’t send for me by this evening I’ll go to him unasked. What’s the ungrateful fellow thinking of? Does he suppose men get brought back from the dead every day?’
‘I thought he’d never been dead at all?’ Rosenquartz clambered up to his nest. He was out of reach there, as he very well knew. ‘What about Meggie’s father, then? Do you think he’s still alive?’
‘How should I know?’ replied Fenoglio irritably. He didn’t want to be reminded of Mortimer. ‘Well, at least no one can blame me for that mess!’ he growled. ‘I can’t help it if they’re all knocking my story about, like a tree that just has to be thoroughly pruned to make it bear fruit.’
‘Pruned?’ Rosenquartz piped up. ‘No, they’re adding things. Your story is growing – growing like a weed! And not a particularly pretty one either, if you ask me.’
Fenoglio was just wondering whether to throw the inkwell at him when Minerva put her head round the door.
‘A messenger, Fenoglio!’ Her face was flushed, as if she had run too fast. ‘A messenger from the castle! He wants to see you! Cosimo wants to see you!’
Fenoglio hurried to the door, smoothing down the tunic that Minerva had made him. He had been wearing it for days, it was badly crumpled, but there was no helping that now. When he had tried to pay Minerva for it she had just shaken her head, saying he’d paid already – with the stories he told her children day after day, evening after evening. It was a fine tunic, though, even if fairy-tales for children had paid for it.
The messenger was waiting down in the street outside the house, looking important and frowning impatiently. He wore the black mourning cloak, as if the Prince of Sighs were still on the throne.
Oh well, it will all be different now, thought Fenoglio. It will most definitely be different. From now on I, and not my characters, will be telling this story again.
His guide didn’t even look round at him as he hurried along the streets after the man. Surly oaf! Fenoglio thought. But this character probably really was a product of his, Fenoglio’s, pen – one of the many anonymous people with whom he had populated this world so that his main characters wouldn’t be rattling about it on their own.
A number of men-at-arms were loafing around outside the stables in the Outer Courtyard of the castle. Fenoglio wondered, with annoyance, what they were doing there. Cosimo’s men were pacing back and forth up on the battlements, like hounds set to keep watch on a pack of wolves. The men-at-arms stared up at them with hostility. Yes, you look at that, thought Fenoglio. There’ll be no leading part in my story for your dark lord, only a death fit for a thoroughgoing villain. Perhaps he’d invent another one some time, for stories soon get boring without a proper villain, but it was unlikely that Meggie would lend him her voice to call such a character to life.
The guards at the Inner Gate raised their spears.
‘What’s all this?’ Fenoglio heard the Adderhead’s voice the moment he set foot in the Inner Courtyard. ‘Are you telling me he’s still keeping me waiting, you lousy fur-faced creature?’
A softer voice answered, apprehensive and scared. Fenoglio saw the Laughing Prince’s dwarfish servant Tullio facing the Adderhead. He came only up to the prince’s silver-studded belt. Two of the Laughing Prince’s guards stood behind him, but the Adderhead was at the head of at least twenty heavily armed men: an intimidating sight, even if Firefox wasn’t with them, and nor was there any sign of the Piper.
‘Your daughter will receive you, sir.’ Tullio’s voice shook like a leaf in the wind.
‘My daughter? If I want Violante’s company I’ll summon her to my own castle. No, I want to see this dead man who’s come to life! So you will now take me to Cosimo at once, you stinking brownie bastard!’
The unfortunate Tullio began trembling. ‘The Prince of Ombra,’ he began again, in a thread of a voice, ‘will not receive you!’
; These words made Fenoglio stumble back as if he had been struck in the chest – right into the nearest rosebush, where the thorns caught in his new tunic. What was going on? Cosimo wouldn’t receive the Adderhead? Was that part of his own plan?
The Adderhead thrust out his lips as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. The veins at his temples stood out, dark on his blotched and ruddy skin. His lizard-like eyes stared down at Tullio. Then he took the crossbow from the nearest soldier’s hand and, as Tullio ducked like a frightened rabbit, aimed at one of the birds in the sky above. It was a good shot. The bird fell right at the Adderhead’s feet, its yellow feathers red with blood. A gold-mocker: Fenoglio had invented them especially for the castle of the Prince of Sighs. The Adderhead bent and pulled the arrow out of its tiny breast.
‘Here, take that!’ he said, pressing the dead bird into Tullio’s hand. ‘And tell your master that he has obviously left his common sense behind in the realm of the dead. I’ll allow that to be some excuse this once, but should he send you to me with such an outrageous message when next I visit him, he’ll get not a bird back, but you with an arrow in your breast. Will you tell him that?’
Tullio stared at the blood-stained bird he was holding, and nodded.
As for the Adderhead, he turned on his heel and waved to his men to follow him. Fenoglio’s guide bent his head timorously as they marched past. ‘Look him straight in the eye!’ Fenoglio told himself, as the Adderhead passed so close to him that he thought he could smell his sweat. ‘You invented him!’ But instead he hunched his head between his shoulders, like a tortoise sensing danger, and did not move until the Inner Gate had closed behind the last of the men-at-arms.
Tullio was still waiting at the door which had shut behind the Adderhead, staring at the dead bird in his hand. ‘Should I show it to Cosimo?’ he asked, looking distressed, as they came up to him.
‘Oh, have it roasted in the kitchen and eat it if you like!’ Fenoglio’s guide snarled at him. ‘But get out of my way.’
The throne-room hadn’t changed since Fenoglio’s last visit. The windows were still hung with black. The only light came from candles, and the blank eyes of the statues stared at everyone who approached the throne itself. But now their living, breathing model sat on the throne, resembling his stone copies so much that the dark hall seemed to Fenoglio like a cabinet of mirrors.
Cosimo was alone. Neither Her Ugliness nor her son was to be seen. There were only six guards standing in the background, almost invisible in the dim light.
Fenoglio stopped at a suitable distance from the steps up to the throne, and bowed. Although it was his opinion that no one in this or any other world deserved to have him – Fenoglio – bow his head to them, certainly not those whom his own words had called to life, nevertheless he too had to observe the rules of the game in this world of his own creation. Here it was as natural to bow to nobles dressed in silk and velvet as it had been to shake hands in his old world.
Go on, then, old man, bow, even if it hurts your back, he thought, bending his head a little more humbly. You fixed it this way yourself.
Cosimo examined him as if he were not sure whether he remembered his face. He was dressed entirely in white, which emphasized his likeness to the statues even more.
‘You are the poet Fenoglio, also known as the Inkweaver, is that so?’ Fenoglio had imagined that the voice would be rather fuller. Cosimo looked at the statues, letting his eyes wander from one to another. ‘Someone recommended me to summon you. I believe it was my wife. She says you have the cleverest mind to be found between this castle and the Adderhead’s, and she thinks I shall need clever minds. But that’s not why I called for you.’
Violante? Violante had recommended him? Fenoglio tried to hide his surprise. ‘No? Why then, Your Grace?’ he asked.
Cosimo’s eyes rested on him as abstractedly as if he were looking straight through him. Then he glanced down at himself, plucked at the magnificent tunic he wore, and adjusted his belt. ‘My clothes don’t fit any more,’ he observed. ‘They’re all a little too long or too wide, as if they’d been made for those statues and not for me.’
He smiled at Fenoglio rather helplessly. It was the smile of an angel.
‘You … er … you’ve been through a difficult time, Your Grace,’ said Fenoglio.
‘Yes. Yes, so I’m told. You see, I don’t remember. There’s very little I can remember at all. My head feels strangely empty.’ He passed a hand over his brow and looked at the statues again. ‘That’s why I summoned you,’ he said. ‘They say you’re a master of words, and I want you to help me to remember. I’m giving you the task of writing down everything there is to say about Cosimo. Get my soldiers to tell you, my servants, my old nurse, my … wife.’ He hesitated for a moment before saying that last word. ‘Balbulus will write your stories out and illuminate them, and then I’ll have them read to me, to fill the empty space in my head and heart with words and images again. Do you think you can do it?’
Fenoglio hastily nodded. ‘Oh yes, of course, Your Grace. I’ll write it all down. Stories of your childhood, when your worthy father was still alive, tales of your first rides through the Wayless Wood, everything about the day your wife came to this castle, and the day your son was born.’
Cosimo nodded. ‘Yes, yes!’ he said, and there was relief in his voice. ‘I see you understand. And don’t forget my victory over the fire-raisers, and the time I spent with the White Women.’
‘I certainly will not.’ Fenoglio examined the handsome face as unobtrusively as possible. How could this have happened? He had been meant not just to believe that he was the real Cosimo, but to share all the dead man’s memories too …
Cosimo rose from the throne occupied by his father not so long ago, and began pacing up and down. ‘I’ve already been told several stories myself. By my wife.’
Her Ugliness again. Fenoglio looked around for her. ‘Where is your wife?’
‘Looking for my son. He ran away because I wouldn’t receive his grandfather.’
‘If I may make so bold, Your Grace – why wouldn’t you receive him?’
The heavy door opened behind Fenoglio’s back, and Tullio scurried in. He was no longer holding the dead bird as he crouched on the steps at Cosimo’s feet, but fear still lingered on his face.
‘I do not intend ever to receive him again.’ Cosimo stopped in front of the throne and patted the emblem of his house. ‘I have told the guards at the gate not to let my father-in-law into this castle another time, or any who serve him.’
Tullio looked up at him in alarm and incredulity, as if he already felt the Adderhead’s arrow in his own furry breast.
But Cosimo, unmoved, was continuing. ‘I have had myself informed of what went on in my realm while I—’ and he hesitated for a moment again before going on – ‘while I was away. Yes, let’s call it that: away. I have listened to my administrators, head foresters, merchants and peasants, my soldiers and my wife. In the process I have learned some very interesting things. Alarming things. And just imagine, poet: my father-in-law had something to do with almost every bad tale that I hear. Tell me, since I believe you go in and out of the strolling players’ tents: what do the Motley Folk say about the Adderhead?’
‘The Motley Folk?’ Fenoglio cleared his throat. ‘Well, what everyone says. They say he’s very powerful, perhaps rather too powerful.’
Cosimo uttered a mirthless laugh. ‘Oh yes. He is indeed. And?’
What was he getting at? You should know, Fenoglio, he told himself uneasily. If you don’t know what’s going on in his head, then who does? ‘Well, they say the Adderhead rules with an iron fist,’ he went on hesitantly. ‘There’s no law in Argenta but his own word and his seal. He is vengeful and vain, he extorts so much from his peasants that they go hungry, he sends rebellious subjects to his silver mines, even children, until they’re spitting blood down in the depths. Poachers caught in his part of the forest are blinded, thieves have their right hands cut off – I am glad to
say your father abolished that custom some time ago – and the only minstrel who can safely approach the Castle of Night is the Piper – when he’s not plundering villages with Firefox.’ Good heavens, did I write all this? thought Fenoglio. I suppose I did.
‘Yes, I’ve heard all that too. What else?’ Cosimo folded his arms over his chest and began pacing up and down, up and down. He really was as beautiful as an angel. Perhaps I ought to have made him a little less beautiful, thought Fenoglio. He looks almost unreal.
‘What else?’ He frowned. ‘The Adderhead was always afraid of death, but as he gets older they say it’s become almost an obsession. He is said to spend the night on his knees, sobbing and cursing, shaking with fear that the White Women will come for him. They also say that he washes several times a day, for fear of sickness and infection, and he sends envoys to distant lands, with chests full of silver to buy him miracle cures for old age. And the women he marries are younger and younger. He hopes that a son will be born to him at long last.’
Cosimo had stopped pacing. ‘Yes!’ he said softly. ‘Yes, I have heard all that too. But there are even worse stories. When are you coming to those – or must I tell them myself?’ And before Fenoglio could answer he went on: ‘They say the Adderhead sends Firefox over the border by night to extort goods from my peasants. They say he claims the whole Wayless Wood for himself, he has my merchants plundered when they come ashore in his harbours, demands high tolls from them for the use of his streets and bridges, and pays footpads to make my roads unsafe. They say he has the timber for his ships chopped down in my part of the forest, and keeps his informers in this castle and in every street in Ombra. They say he even paid my own son to tell him everything my father discussed with his councillors in this hall. And finally –’ Cosimo paused for effect before he went on – ‘I am assured that the messenger who warned the fire-raisers of my forthcoming attack on them was sent by my father-in-law. I’m told he ate quails covered in silver leaf to celebrate my death, and sent my father a letter of sympathy on parchment so cleverly painted with poison that every character on it was deadly as snake’s venom. So do you still wonder why I wouldn’t receive him?’
Poisoned parchment? Good heavens, who’d think up something like that? thought Fenoglio. Not I, for one!
‘Are you at a loss for words, poet?’ asked Cosimo. ‘Well, I can tell you I felt the same when I was told all these terrible things. What can one say of such a neighbour? What do you think of the rumour that the Adderhead had my wife’s mother poisoned because she liked listening to a minstrel too much? What do you think of his sending Firefox his own men-at-arms as reinforcements, to make quite sure that I never returned from the fire-raisers’ fortress? My father-in-law tried to do away with me, poet! I have forgotten a year of my life, and everything before it is as vague in my mind as if someone else had lived it. They say I was dead. They say the White Women took me away. They ask: where have you been, Cosimo? And I don’t know the answer! But now I know who wanted my death, and I know who to blame for the way I feel now: empty like a gutted fish, younger than my own son. Tell me, what’s the appropriate punishment for crimes of such a monstrous kind against both me and others?’
But Fenoglio could only look at him. Who is he? he asked himself. For heaven’s sake, Fenoglio, you know what he looks like, but who is he? ‘You tell me!’ he replied at last, hoarsely.
And Cosimo gave him that angelic smile again. ‘Why, there’s only one appropriate punishment, poet!’ he said. ‘I will go to war. I’ll wage war against my father-in-law until the Castle of Night is razed to the ground and his name is forgotten.’
Fenoglio stood there in the darkened hall, hearing his own blood roaring in his ears. War? I must have misheard, he thought. I never wrote anything about war. But a voice began whispering inside him: a great new age, Fenoglio! Didn’t you write something about a great new age?
‘He has the impudence to ride to my castle with men in his retinue who have already pillaged and burned for Capricorn; he’s made Firefox, whom I rode out to defeat, his herald; he’s sent the Piper here as protector of my son! The audacity of it! Perhaps he could deride my father in that way, but not me. I’ll show him he’s not dealing with a prince who’s either shedding tears or over-eating now.’ A faint flush had risen to Cosimo’s face. Anger made him even more handsome.
War. Think, Fenoglio. Think. War! Is that what you wanted? He felt his old knees beginning to tremble.
As for Cosimo, he laid his hand almost lovingly on his sword. He slowly drew it from the scabbard. ‘It was for this alone that death spared me, poet,’ he said, cutting the air with the long, slender blade. ‘So that I could bring justice to this world and turn the Devil himself
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