Inkspell

21. THE PRINCE OF SIGHS

The windows of the hall where the Prince of Sighs, once the Laughing Prince, received Fenoglio were hung with black draperies. The place smelled like a crypt, of dried flowers and soot from the candles. The candles were burning in front of statues that all had the same face, sometimes a good likeness, sometimes less good. Cosimo the Fair, thought Meggie. He stared down at her from countless pairs of marble eyes as she walked toward his father with Fenoglio.

The throne in which the Prince of Sighs sat enthroned stood between two other high-backed chairs. The dark green upholstery of the chair on his left was occupied only by a helmet with a plume of peacock feathers, its metal brightly polished as if it were waiting for its owner. A boy of about five or six sat in the chair on his right. He wore a black brocade doublet embroidered all over with pearls as if it were covered in tears. This must be the birthday boy: Jacopo, grandson of the Prince of Sighs, but the Adderhead's grandson, too.

The child looked bored. He was swinging his short legs restlessly, as if he could hardly prevent himself from running outside to the entertainers, and the sweet cakes, and the armchair waiting for him on the platform adorned with prickly bindweed and roses. His grandfather, on the other hand, looked as if he never intended to rise from his chair again. He sat there as powerless as a puppet, in black robes that were too large for him now, as if hypnotized by the eyes of his dead son. Not particularly tall but fat enough for two men, that was how Resa had described him; seldom seen without something to eat in his greasy fingers, always rather breathless because of the weight his legs, which were not especially strong, had to carry, and yet always in the best of tempers.

The prince whom Meggie saw now, sitting in his dimly lit castle, was nothing like that. His face was pale and his skin hung in wrinkled folds, as if it had once belonged to a larger man. Grief had melted the fat from his limbs, and his expression was fixed, as if it had frozen on the day when they brought him the news of his son's death. Only his eyes still showed his horror and bewilderment at what life had done to him.

Apart from his grandson and the guards standing silent in the background, there were only two women with him. One kept her head humbly bent like a maidservant, although she wore a dress fit for a princess. Her mistress stood between the Prince of Sighs and the empty chair on which the plumed helmet lay. Violante, thought Meggie. The Adderhead's daughter and Cosimo's widow. Her Ugliness, as people called her. Fenoglio had told Meggie about her, emphasizing the fact that she was indeed one of his creations, but that he had never intended her to be more than a minor character: the unhappy child of an unhappy mother and a very bad father. "It's absurd to marry her to Cosimo the Fair!" Fenoglio had said. "But as I told you, this story is getting out of hand!"

Violante wore black, like her son and her father-in-law. Her dress, too, was embroidered with pearly tears, but their precious luster didn't suit her particularly well. Her face looked as if someone had drawn it on a stained piece of paper with a pencil too pale for the purpose, and the dark silk of her dress made her look even plainer. The only thing you noticed about her face was the purple birthmark, as big as a poppy, disfiguring her left cheek.

When Meggie and Fenoglio came across the dark hall, Violante was just bending down to her father-in-law, speaking to him quietly. The prince's expression did not change but finally he nodded, and the boy slipped down from his chair in relief.

Fenoglio signaled to Meggie to stay where she was. His head respectfully bent, he stepped aside, and unobtrusively signaled to Meggie to do the same. Violante nodded to Fenoglio as she passed him, her head held high, but she didn't even look at Meggie. She ignored the stone statues of her dead husband, too. Her Ugliness seemed to be in a hurry to escape this dark hall – in almost as much of a hurry as her son. The maid who followed her passed so close to Meggie that the servant girl's dress almost touched her. She didn't seem much older than Meggie herself. Her hair had a reddish tinge, as if firelight were falling on it, and she wore it loose, as only the women among the strolling players usually did in this world. Meggie had never seen lovelier hair.

"You're late, Fenoglio!" said the Prince of Sighs as soon as the doors had closed behind the women and his grandson. His voice still came out of his mouth with an effort, like a very fat man's. "Did you run short of words?"

"I won't run short of words until my last breath, My Prince," replied Fenoglio, with a bow. Meggie wasn't sure whether to copy him. In the end she decided on a clumsy curtsy.

At close quarters the Prince of Sighs looked even more fragile. His skin resembled withered leaves, the whites of his eyes like yellowed paper. "Who's the girl?" he asked, bending his weary gaze on her. "Your maid? Too young to be your lover, isn't she?"

Meggie felt the blood rise to her face.

"Your Grace, what an idea!" said Fenoglio, dismissing it and putting an arm around her shoulders. "This is my granddaughter who's come to visit me. My son hopes I shall find her a husband, and what better place for her to look for one than at the wonderful festivities you're holding today?"

Meggie blushed more than ever, but she forced herself to smile.

"You have a son, do you?" The voice of the Prince of Sighs sounded envious, as if he begrudged any of his subjects the luck of having a living son. "It's not wise to let your children go too far away," he murmured, without taking his eyes off Meggie. "Only too likely that they may never come back!"

Meggie didn't know where to look. "I'll be going home soon," she said. "My father knows that." I hope, she added in her mind.

"Yes. Yes, of course. Shell be going back. When the time comes." Fenoglio's voice sounded impatient. "But now we come to the reason for my visit." He took the roll of parchment so carefully sealed by Rosenquartz from his belt and climbed the steps to the princely chair with his head respectfully bent. The Prince of Sighs seemed to be in pain. He tightened his lips as he leaned forward to take the parchment, and cool though it was in the hall, sweat stood out on his forehead. Meggie remembered what Minerva had said: This prince of ours will sigh and lament himself to death. Fenoglio seemed to think so, too.

"Aren't you feeling well, My Prince?" he asked with concern.

"No, I am not!" snapped the prince, annoyed. "Unfortunately, the Adderhead noticed it today, too." He leaned back, sighing, and struck the side of his chair with his hand. "Tullio!"

A servant clad in black, like the prince, shot out from behind the chair. He would have looked like a rather short human being but for the fine fur on his face and hands. Tullio reminded Meggie of the brownies in Elinor's garden who had turned to ashes, although he clearly had more of the human being about him.

"Go and get me a minstrel – one who can read!" ordered the prince. "He can sing me Fenoglio's song." And Tullio scurried off, as willing as a puppy.

"Did you send for Nettle, as I advised?" Fenoglio's voice sounded urgent, but the prince just waved away the idea angrily.

"Nettle? What for? She wouldn't come, or if she did it would probably just be to poison me, because I had a couple of oaks felled for my son's coffin. How can I help it if she'd rather talk to trees than human beings? None of them can help me, not Nettle nor any of the physicians, stonecutters, and bone-knitters whose evil-smelling potions I've swallowed. No herb grows that can cure grief." His fingers trembled as he broke Fenoglio's seal, and all was so still in the darkened hall as he read that Meggie heard the candle flames hiss as the wicks burned down.

Almost soundlessly, the prince moved his lips as his clouded eyes followed Fenoglio's words. "He will awake no more, oh nevermore," Meggie heard him whisper. She looked sideways at Fenoglio, who flushed guiltily when he noticed her glance. Yes, he had stolen the lines, and certainly not from any poet of this world.

The Laughing Prince raised his head and wiped a tear from his clouded eyes. "Fair words, Fenoglio," he said bitterly, "yes, you know all about those. But when will any of you poets find the words to open the door through which Death takes us?"

Fenoglio looked around at the statues. He stared at them, lost in thought, as if he were seeing them for the first time. "I am sorry, but there are no such words, My Prince," he said. "Death is all silence. Even poets have no words once they have passed the door Death closes behind us. If I may, then, I would humbly beg your leave to go. My landlady's children are waiting outside, and if I don't catch them again soon they may well run off with the strolling players, for like all children they dream of taming bears and dancing between heaven and hell on a tightrope."

"Yes, yes, go away!" said the Prince of Sighs, wearily waving his beringed hand. "I'll send to let you know when I want words again. They are sweet-tasting poison, but still, they're the only way to make even pain taste bittersweet for a few moments."

He will awake no more, oh nevermore… Elinor would certainly have known who wrote those lines, thought Meggie as she walked back down the dark hall with Fenoglio. The herbs scattered on the floor rustled under her boots. Their fragrance hung in the cool air as if to remind the sad prince of the world waiting for him out there. But perhaps it reminded him only of the flowers in the crypt where Cosimo lay.

At the door, Tullio came to meet them with the minstrel, hopping and leaping in front of the man like a trained, shaggy animal. The minstrel wore bells at his waist and had a lute on

his back. He was a tall, thin fellow with a sullen set to his mouth and so garishly clothed that he would have put a peacock's tail to shame.

"That fellow can actually read, can he?" Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he pushed her through the door. "I don't believe it! What's more, his singing sounds as sweet as the cawing of a crow. Let's be off before he gets his great horsey teeth into my poor lines of verse!"