Inkspell

45. A KNOCK ON THE DOOR

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 marketplace 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 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 down his pen 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 favor 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 him 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 anymore."

"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.

"Yes, I've heard much the same," Fenoglio followed her to the door.

"They even say she sang in my father's castle, but I don't believe that. My father never let any strolling players though his gate. The nearest they came was to be hanged outside it." Yes, because there was once a rumor that your mother betrayed him with a minstrel, thought Fenoglio as he opened the door for her.

"Brianna says her mother doesn't sing anymore because she believes her voice brings great misfortune to everyone she loves. It seems that happened to Brianna's father."

"I've heard that story, too."

Violante went out into the corridor. Even at close quarters her birthmark was barely visible now. "You'll send the messenger to her tomorrow morning?"

"If that's what you want."

She looked down the dark corridor. "Brianna will never talk about her father. One of the cooks says he was a fire-eater. The way that cook tells the story, Brianna's mother was deeply in love

with him, but then one of the fire-raisers fell in love with her himself and slashed the fire-eater's face."

"Yes, I've heard that one as well!" Fenoglio looked at her thoughtfully. Dustfinger's bittersweet story was certainly very much to Violante's taste.

"She took him to a physician, the cook says, and stayed with him until his face was healed." How far away her voice sounded, as if she had lost herself among the words. Fenoglio's words. "But he left her all the same." Violante turned her face away. "Write that letter!" she said abruptly. "Write it tonight." Then she hurried away in her black dress, in such haste that it looked as if she were suddenly ashamed of coming to see him.

"Rosenquartz," said Fenoglio, closing the door behind her. "Do you think I'm only any good at making up characters who are sad or bad?"

But the glass man was still asleep beside the quill, from which ink dripped onto the empty sheet of parchment.