The claw-fingered woman would probably try to escape too, and Sootbird and most of the other men. The minstrel with the injured leg who was on the cart with Mo would stay, like Twofingers, because he was afraid of the soldiers’ crossbows, and so would the old stilt-walker, who no longer trusted his legs. Benedicta, who could hardly see where she was going, would stay behind too, and Mina, whose child would soon be coming into the world … and Mo.
The road went ever more steeply downhill. Overhead, the branches of the trees were intertwined. It was a still, windless morning, cloudy and damp, but Dustfinger’s fires burned even in rain. Resa peered past the horses. How close together the trees stood, nothing but darkness showing between them even in broad daylight. The plan was for them to run to the left. Did Meggie expect her to try and escape too? How often she had asked herself that – and she always came to the same conclusion: no, Meggie knows that I won’t leave her father alone. She loves him just as much.
Resa’s pace slowed. There it was, the fallen tree, its trunk green with moss. The little girl looked up at her, wide-eyed. They had feared that one of the children would talk, but they had been silent as the grave all morning.
Firefox swore when he saw the tree. He reined in his horse, and told the first four horsemen to dismount and clear the obstacle out of the way. They obeyed, looking sullen, handed their horses’ reins to other men and strode towards the tree-trunk. Resa dared not look at the roadside, for fear that any glance of hers might give Dustfinger or Meggie away. She thought she heard fingers snapping, and then a whisper, barely audible. Not human words, but fire-words. Dustfinger had once spoken them for her in the other world, where they didn’t work, where fire was deaf and dumb. ‘They sound much better when I say them there,’ he had said, and he told her about the fire-honey he took from the elves. She remembered the sound very well, all the same – as if flames were biting their way through black coal, as if they were hungrily devouring white paper. No one else heard the whisper through the rustle of the leaves, the steady rain, the twittering of birds and the chirping of crickets.
The fire licked up from beneath the bark of the tree like a nest full of snakes. The men didn’t notice. Only when the first flame shot up, hot and greedy, rising so high that it almost brought down the leaves of the trees, did they stumble back in alarm and disbelief. The riderless horses reared and tried to break free as the fire hissed and danced.
‘Run!’ whispered Resa, and the little girl ran for it, fleet-footed as a fawn. Children, women, men, they all ran towards the trees – Sootbird, the claw-fingered woman – past the shying horses they ran, and into the shelter of the dark forest. Two soldiers shot arrows after them, but their own horses were rearing in fear of the fire, and the arrows buried themselves in the bark of trees instead of in human flesh. Resa saw fugitive after fugitive disappear among the trees while the soldiers shouted at each other, and it hurt her to stay standing there; it hurt badly.
The tree went on burning, its bark turned black … run, thought Resa, run, all of you! But she herself still stood there although her feet longed to run too, run away, run to her daughter waiting somewhere in the trees. Yet she stayed there. She stood still. There was just one thing she must not think of: that they would shut her up again. For if she did, she would run in spite of Mo. She’d run and run and never stop again. She had been a prisoner too long, she had lived on nothing but memories too long, memories of Mo, memories of Meggie … she had fed on them all those years when she served first Mortola, then Capricorn.
‘Don’t get any silly ideas, Bluejay!’ she heard one of the soldiers call back. ‘Or I’ll put an arrow through you!’
‘What kind of ideas did you have in mind?’ replied Mo. ‘Do I look stupid enough to run away from your crossbow?’ She could almost have laughed. He’d always been able to make her laugh so easily.
‘What are you waiting for? Fetch them back!’ roared the Piper. His silver nose had slipped out of place, and his horse was still shying hard as he pulled on the reins. Some of the men obeyed, stumbling half-heartedly into the forest, but retreating again as a shadow stirred in the undergrowth, growling.
‘The Night-Mare!’ one of them shouted, and next moment they were all back in the middle of the road, pale-faced and with trembling hands, as if the swords they held could do nothing to defend them from the horror lurking in the trees.
‘Night-Mare? This is broad daylight, you fools!’ Firefox yelled at them. ‘That’s a bear, nothing but a bear!’
Hesitantly, they moved towards the forest again, keeping close together like a brood of chicks hiding behind their mother. Resa heard them swearing as they used their swords to cut a path through the twining wild vines and brambles, while their horses stood in the road snorting and trembling. Firefox and the Piper put their heads together, while the soldiers still standing in the road to guard the remaining prisoners stared at the forest wide-eyed, as if the Night-Mare that looked so deceptively like a bear would leap out at any moment and swallow them up, skin and hair and all, in the usual manner of ghosts.
Resa saw Mo glance at her, saw the relief in his face when he saw her – and his disappointment that she was still there too. He was still pale, but no longer as pale as if the hand of Death had touched his face. She took a step towards the cart, wanting to go to him, take his hand, see if it was still hot with the fever, but one of the soldiers roughly pushed her back.
The tree was still burning. The flames crackled as if they were singing a mocking song about the Adderhead, and when the men who had gone into the forest came back, they brought not a single one of the escaped prisoners with them.
45
Poor Meggie
‘Hello,’ said a soft, musical voice, and Leonardo looked up. In front of him stood the most beautiful young girl he had ever seen, a girl who might have frightened him but for the sad expression in her blue eyes. He knew about sadness.
Eva Ibbotson,
The Mystery of the Seventh Witch
Meggie did not say a word. However hard Farid tried to cheer her up she just sat there among the trees, her arms wrapped around her legs, perfectly silent. Yes, they had set many of the captives free, but her parents were not among them.
Not one of those who managed to escape had been injured. One of the children had twisted his ankle, that was all, and he was small enough for the grown-ups to carry him. The forest had swallowed them up so quickly that after only a few steps the Adderhead’s men had found themselves chasing shadows. Dustfinger hid the children inside a hollow tree, the women crawled underneath a thicket of wild vine and nettles, while the Prince’s bear kept the soldiers at a distance. The men had climbed trees and perched high up among the leaves; Dustfinger and the Prince were the last to hide, after leading the soldiers astray in different directions.
The Black Prince advised the freed captives to go back to Ombra and, for the time being, to join the strolling players still encamped there. He himself had other plans. Before he left he spoke to Meggie, and she did not look quite so hopeless after that.
‘He said he won’t let anyone hang my father,’ she told Farid. ‘He says he knows that Mo is not the Bluejay, and he and his men will make the Adderhead realize that he’s caught the wrong man.’ And she looked so hopeful as she said this that Farid just nodded and murmured, ‘That’s great!’ – although he could think only that the Adderhead would execute Silvertongue all the same.
‘What about the informer the Piper mentioned? Will the Prince look for him?’ he asked Dustfinger, as they set out again.
‘He won’t have to look for long,’ Dustfinger said. ‘He just has to wait until one of the strolling players suddenly has his pockets full of silver.’
Silver. Farid had to admit that he was curious to see the silver towers of the Castle of Night. Even the battlements were said to be lined with silver. But they would not choose the same route as Firefox. ‘We know where they’re going,’ said Dustfinger, ‘and there are shorter and safer ways to the
Castle of Night than the road.’
‘What about the Spelt-Mill?’ asked Meggie. ‘The mill in the forest that you mentioned? Aren’t we going there first?’
‘Not necessarily. Why?’
Meggie didn’t answer at once. Obviously she guessed that the reply would not please Dustfinger. ‘I gave Cloud-Dancer a letter for Fenoglio,’ she said at last, reluctantly. ‘I asked him to write something to save my parents, and to send it to the mill.’
‘A letter?’ Dustfinger’s voice was so cutting that Farid instinctively put his arm round Meggie’s shoulders. ‘Oh, wonderful! And suppose the wrong eyes read it?’
Farid ducked his head, but Meggie did not. Instead, she returned Dustfinger’s glance. ‘Nobody but Fenoglio can help them now,’ she said. ‘You know that. You know it perfectly well.’
46
A Knock on the Door
Lancelot considered his cup.
‘He is inhuman,’ he said at last. ‘But why should he be human? Are angels supposed to be human?’
T.H. White,
The Ill-Made Knight
The horseman Fenoglio had sent after Meggie had been gone for days now. ‘You must ride like the wind,’ he had told the man, saying that the life or death of a young and, of course, beautiful girl was at stake. (After all, he wanted to be sure that the man would really do his best.) ‘But I’m afraid you won’t be able to persuade her to come back with you. She’s very obstinate,’ he had added, ‘so decide on a new meeting-place with her – a safe one this time – and tell her you’ll be back as soon as possible with a letter from me. Can you remember that?’
The soldier, a fresh-faced youth, had repeated his instructions without any trouble and galloped away, saying he would be back in three days’ time at the latest. Three days. If the lad kept his word, he’d soon be back – but Fenoglio would have no letter for him to take to Meggie. For the words that were to put the whole story right again – save the good, punish the bad – simply would not come.
Fenoglio sat day and night in the room that Cosimo had given him, staring at the sheets of parchment that Minerva had brought him, in the company of the terrified Rosenquartz. But there seemed to be a jinx on it: whatever he began to write seeped out of his head like ink running on damp paper. Where were the words he wanted? Why did they stay as dead as dry leaves? He argued with Rosenquartz, told him to send for wine, roast meat, sweetmeats, different ink, a new pen – while the smiths were hammering and forging metal out in the castle courtyards, the castle gates were reinforced, the pans for pitch were cleaned and spears sharpened. Preparing for war was a noisy business. Particularly when you were in a hurry.
And Cosimo was in a great hurry. The words for him had almost written themselves: words full of righteous anger. Cosimo’s criers had already gone out proclaiming them in every market place and every village. Ever since then volunteers had been flocking to Ombra, soldiers recruited for the fight against the Adderhead. But where were the words with which Cosimo’s war would be won and Meggie’s father saved from the gallows at the same time?
How he racked his old brains! But nothing occurred to him. The days went by, and despair entered Fenoglio’s heart. Suppose the Adderhead had hanged Mortimer long ago? Would Meggie still read what he had written then? If her father was dead, wouldn’t what happened to Cosimo and this world itself be a matter of indifference to her? ‘Nonsense, Fenoglio,’ he muttered, as he crossed out sentence after sentence after hours of work. ‘And I’ll tell you what: if you can’t think of any words they’ll have to do without them for once. Cosimo will just have to rescue Mortimer!’
Oh yes? Suppose they storm the Adderhead’s castle, and everyone in the dungeons dies as the building burns? a voice inside him whispered. Or suppose Cosimo’s troops are dashed to pieces on the steep and towering walls of the Castle of Night?
Fenoglio put his pen down and buried his face in his hands. It was dark again outside, and his head was as empty as the parchment in front of him. Cosimo had sent Fenoglio an invitation, brought by Tullio, to dine at his table – but he had no appetite, although he liked to watch Cosimo listening with shining eyes to the songs he had written about him. Her Ugliness claimed that their words bored her husband, but this version of Cosimo loved what Fenoglio wrote for him: wonderful fairy-tales about his heroic deeds in the past, the time he had spent with the White Women, and the battle at Capricorn’s fortress.
Yes, he was in high favour with the handsome Prince, just as he himself had written – while Her Ugliness was more and more often refused admittance to her husband’s presence. So Violante spent even more time in the library than she had before Cosimo’s return. Since her father-in-law’s death, she no longer had to steal into it secretly or bribe Balbulus with her jewels, for Cosimo didn’t mind whether or not she read books. All that interested him was whether she was writing letters to her father, or trying to make contact with the Adderhead in some other way. As if she ever had!
Fenoglio felt sorry for Violante, lonely as she was, but he consoled himself by remembering that she had always been solitary by nature. Even her son hadn’t changed that. And yet – she had probably never before wanted any human being’s company as much as she wanted Cosimo’s. The mark on her face had faded, but something else burned there now – love, just as pointless as the birthmark, for Cosimo did not return her love. On the contrary, he was having his wife watched. For some time Violante had been followed by a sturdy, bald-headed man who used to train the Laughing Prince’s hounds. Now he shadowed Her Ugliness as if he had turned himself into a dog, a sniffer dog trying to pick up the scent of all her thoughts. Apparently Violante asked Balbulus to write letters to Cosimo, pleading letters assuring him of her loyalty and devotion, but people said he didn’t read them. One of his courtiers even claimed that Cosimo had forgotten how to read.
Fenoglio took his hands away from his face and looked enviously at the sleeping Rosenquartz, lying beside the inkwell and snoring peacefully. He was just picking up his pen again when there was a knock at the door.
Who could it be so late at night? Cosimo usually went out riding at this hour.
It was his wife standing at the door. Violante was wearing one of the black dresses she had put away when Cosimo returned. Her eyes were reddened, as if sore with weeping, but perhaps she was just using the beryl too often.
‘Cosimo has taken Brianna with him again!’ she said in a broken voice. ‘She’s allowed to ride with him, eat with him, she even spends the nights with him. She tells him stories now instead of me, she reads to him, sings for him, dances for him the way she once did for me. And I’m left alone.’
Fenoglio rose from his chair. ‘Come in!’ he said. ‘Where’s your shadow?’
‘I bought a litter of puppies and told him to train them, as a surprise for Cosimo. Since then he disappears on occasion.’
She was clever, oh yes, in fact very clever. Had he known that? No, he hardly even remembered making her up.
‘Sit down!’ He gave her his own chair – there was no other – and sat on the chest under the window where he kept his clothes. Not his old, moth-eaten garments, but the new ones that Cosimo had given him, magnificent clothes made for a court poet.
‘Can’t you talk to her?’ Violante passed nervous hands over her black dress. ‘Brianna loves your songs, she might listen to you! I need her. I have no one else in this castle except for Balbulus, and all he wants is for me to give him gold to buy more pigments.’
‘What about your son?’
‘He doesn’t like me.’
Fenoglio did not reply, for she was right. Jacopo didn’t like anyone except his sinister grandfather, and no one liked Jacopo either. He wasn’t easy to like.
Night came in from outside, and the hammering of the smiths. ‘Cosimo is planning to reinforce the city walls,’ Violante went on. ‘He’s going to fell every tree from here to the river. They say Nettle cursed him for it. They say she said she’d go to the White Women and tell them to fetch hi
m back again.’
‘Don’t worry. The White Women don’t do as Nettle says.’
‘Are you sure?’ She rubbed her sore eyes. ‘Brianna is supposed to read to me! He has no right to take her away. I want you to write to her mother. Cosimo has all my letters read, but you can ask her to come. He trusts you. Write and tell Brianna’s mother that Jacopo wants to play with her son, and say she’s to bring him to the castle about midday. I know she used to be a minstrel woman, but I’m told she grows herbs now; all the physicians in the city go to her. I have some very rare plants in my garden. Write and tell her she can take anything from the garden that she likes: seeds, root runners, cuttings, anything at all if only she will come.’
Roxane. She wanted Roxane to come here.
‘Why do you want to talk to her mother and not Brianna herself? She’s not a little girl any more.’
‘I tried! She won’t listen. She just looks at me in silence, murmurs excuses – and goes back to him. No, I have to speak to her mother.’
Fenoglio said nothing. From all he knew of Roxane, he wasn’t sure that she would come. After all, he himself had given her a proud nature and a dislike of royal blood. On the other hand – hadn’t he promised Meggie to keep an eye on Dustfinger’s daughter? If he couldn’t keep any other promise, because his words had failed him so pitifully, perhaps he should at least try with this one … Heavens, he thought. I wouldn’t like to be anywhere near Dustfinger when he hears that his daughter is spending her nights with Cosimo!
‘Very well, I’ll send Roxane a messenger,’ he said. ‘But don’t expect too much. I’ve heard that she isn’t particularly happy to have her daughter living at court.’
‘I know!’ Violante rose, and glanced at the paper waiting on his desk. ‘Are you writing a new story? Is it about the Bluejay? You must show it to me first!’ For a moment she was very much the Adderhead’s daughter.
‘Of course, of course,’ Fenoglio hastily assured her. ‘You’ll get it before even the strolling players. And I’ll write it the way you like a story best: dark, hopeless, sinister …’ Cruel too, he added silently. For Her Ugliness loved stories full of darkness. She didn’t want to be told tales of good fortune and beauty; she liked to hear about death, ugly things, secrets heavy with tears. She wanted her very own world, and it had never heard of beauty and good fortune.
She was still gazing at him, with the same arrogant look that her father turned on the world. Fenoglio remembered the words he had once written about her kindred: Noble blood – for centuries the Adderhead’s kin firmly believed that the blood flowing in their veins made them bolder, cleverer, stronger than all who were their subjects. The same look in their eyes for hundreds and hundreds of years, even in those of Her Ugliness, whom her noble family would happily have drowned at birth in the castle moat, like a puppy born deformed.
‘The servants say Brianna’s mother can sing even better than she does. They say her mother knew how to make stones weep and roses blossom with her voice.’ Violante patted her face, just where the birthmark had been such a fiery red only a short time ago.
Inkspell Page 33
