Inkspell

8. THE MINSTREL WOMAN

It was just getting light when Dustfinger reached the farm that Cloud-Dancer had described to him. It lay on a south-facing slope, surrounded by olive trees. The soil, said Cloud-Dancer, was poor and stony there, but it suited the herbs that Roxane grew. The house stood alone, with no village nearby to protect it. There was only a wall, hardly chest-high, and a wooden gate. You could see the rooftops of Ombra in the distance, the castle towers rising high above the houses, and the road winding toward the city gate – so near, and yet too far to be a refuge if highwaymen or soldiers coming home from war thought it a good idea to loot this lonely farm, where only a woman and two children lived.

Perhaps at least she has a farmhand, thought Dustfinger as he stood behind some bushes of broom. Their branches hid him, but he had a good view of the house.

It was small, like most farmhouses – not as poor as many of them but not much better, either. The whole house would have fitted a dozen times over and more into one of the great halls where Roxane had once danced. Even the Adderhead used to invite her to his castle, poorly as he thought of the Motley Folk, for in those days everyone had wanted to hear her sing. Rich traders, the miller down by the river, the spice merchant who had sent her presents for more than a year… so many men had wanted to marry her, had given her jewelry and costly dresses, offered her fine apartments in their houses, and every one of those apartments was certainly larger than the little house where she lived now. But Roxane had stayed with the Motley Folk. She had never been one of those women among the strolling players who would sell their voices and their bodies to a lord and master for a little security, a settled home…

However, the day had come when she, too, had tired of traveling and had wanted a home for herself and her children. For no law protected those who lived on the road, and that meant the Motley Folk as well as robbers and highwaymen. If you stole from a player you need not fear any punishment, if you did violence to one of their women you could safely go back to your comfortable home, and even if you killed a traveler you need not fear the hangman. All his widow could do in revenge was strike the killer's shadow as the sun cast it on the city wall, only his shadow, and she had to pay for her husband's funeral, too. The Motley Folk were fair game. People called them the Devil's decoys, they liked to be entertained by them, listened to their songs and stories, watched their clever tricks – and barred their doors and gates to them when evening came. The players had to camp outside towns and villages, outside the protection of the walls, always on the move, envied for their freedom, yet despised because they served many masters for money and bread.

Not many strolling players ever left the road – the road and the lonely paths. But that was obviously what Roxane had done.

There was a stable beside the house, a barn, and a bakehouse, and between them a yard with a well in the middle of it. There was a garden, fenced off to keep chickens and goats from uprooting the young plants, and a dozen narrow fields on the slope beyond. Some had been harvested, while in others the herbs stood high, bushy, and heavy with their own seed. The fragrance borne across to Dustfinger on the wind made the morning air both sweet and bitter.

Roxane was kneeling in the farthest field, among plants of flax, comfrey, and wild mallow. She seemed to have been at work for a long time already, although the morning mist still hung in the nearby trees. A boy of perhaps seven or eight kneeled beside her. Roxane was talking to him and laughing. How often Dustfinger had summoned up her face in his memory, every part of it: her mouth, her eyes, her high forehead. It had been more difficult with every passing year, and with every year the picture had dimmed, desperately as he had tried to remember more clearly. Time had blurred her face and covered it with dust.

Dustfinger took a step forward – and two steps back. He had thought of turning back three times already, of stealing away again as silently as he had come, but he had stayed. A wind blew through the broom bushes, catching him in the back as if to give him fresh heart, and Dustfinger plucked up his courage, pushed the branches aside, and walked toward the house and the fields.

The boy saw him first, and a goose rose from the tall grass by the stable and came toward him, cackling and beating her wings. Peasants were not allowed to keep dogs, that was a privilege reserved for princes, but a goose was a reliable guard, too – and just as alarming. But Dustfinger knew how to avoid the gaping beak and stroked the excited bird's white neck until she folded her wings like a freshly ironed dress and waddled peacefully away, back to her place in the grass.

Roxane had risen to her feet. She wiped the earth off her hands onto her dress and looked at him, just looked. She had indeed pinned up her hair like a farmer's wife, but it was obviously as long as ever and still as black, apart from a few gray strands. Her dress was as brown as the earth where she had been kneeling, no longer brightly colored like the skirts she used to wear. But her face was still as familiar to Dustfinger as the sight of the sky, more familiar than his own reflection.

The boy picked up the rake lying on the ground beside him. He clutched it with a grimly determined air, as if he were used to protecting his mother from strangers. Clever lad, thought Dustfinger, never trust anyone, certainly not a scar-faced man like me suddenly emerging from the bushes.

What was he going to say when she asked him where he'd been?

Roxane whispered something to the boy, who reluctantly lowered the rake. Suspicion still lingered in his eyes.

Ten years.

He'd often been gone a long time – in the forest, in the towns on the coast, among the isolated villages lying in the hills around – like a fox that visited farmyards only when its stomach rumbled. "Your heart's a vagabond," Roxane always said. Sometimes he'd had to search for her when she had moved on with the others. They lived together in the forest for a while, in an abandoned charcoal-burner's hut, and then in a tent with other strolling players. They even managed to hold out within the solid walls of Ombra all one winter. He was always the one who wanted to move on, and when their first daughter was born and Roxane wanted to stay put more often – in some reasonably familiar place, with the other women among the strolling players, close to the shelter of walls – he would go off alone. But he always came back to her and the children, much to the annoyance of all the rich men who flocked around her wanting to make an honest woman of her.

What had she thought when he stayed away for a whole ten years? Had she, like Cloud-Dancer, thought him dead? Or did she believe he had simply left without a word, without saying good-bye?

He could not find the answer in Roxane's face. He saw bewilderment there, anger, perhaps love, too. Perhaps. She whispered something to the boy, took his hand, and made him walk beside her. She went slowly, as if she must prevent her feet from going faster. He longed to run to her, leaving one of those years behind him at every step, but he had used up all his courage. He stood there as if rooted to the spot, looking at her as she came toward him after all those years, all the years for which he had no explanation… except one that she wouldn't believe.

Only a few paces still separated them when Roxane stopped. She put her arm around the boy's shoulder, but he pushed it away. Of course. He didn't want his mother's arm reminding him how young he still was. How proudly she thrust out her chin. That was the first thing he had noticed about Roxane – her pride. He couldn't help smiling, but he bowed his head so that she couldn't see the smile.

"Obviously, no living creature can withstand you to this day. My goose has always driven everyone else off." When Roxane spoke there was nothing special about her voice, none of the strength and beauty it had when she sang.

"Well, nothing's changed there," he said. "In all these years." And suddenly, as he looked at her, he finally, truly knew that he had come home. It was so strong a sensation that he felt weak at the knees. How happy he was to see her again, how dreadfully, terribly happy! Ask me, he thought. Ask me where I've been. Although he didn't know how he would explain.

But she only said, "You seem to have been well off, wherever you've been."

"It only looks like that," he replied. "I didn't stay there of my own free will."

Roxane examined his face as if she had forgotten what it looked like and stroked the boy's hair. It was as black as hers, but his eyes were the eyes of another. They looked at him coldly. Dustfinger rubbed his hands together and whispered fire-words to his fingers until sparks fell from them like rain. Where they landed on the stony ground flowers sprang up, red flowers, each petal a tongue of flame. The boy stared at them with mingled delight and fear. In the end he crouched down beside them and put his hand out to the fiery flowers.

"Careful!" warned Dustfinger, but it was already too late. The boy, taken by surprise, put his burned fingertips in his mouth.

"So the fire still obeys you," said Roxane, and for the first time he detected something like a smile in her eyes. "You look hungry. Come with me." And without another word she walked toward the house. The boy was still staring at the fiery flowers.

"I've heard you grow herbs for the healers." Dustfinger stood indecisively in the doorway.

"Yes, even Nettle buys from me."

Nettle, small as a moss-woman, always surly, sparing of her words as a beggar with his tongue cut out. But there wasn't a better healer in this world.

"Does she still live in the old bear's cave on the outskirts of the forest?" Hesitantly, Dustfinger walked through the doorway. It was so low that he had to duck his head. The smell of freshly baked bread rose to his nostrils. Roxane placed a loaf on the table, brought cheese, oil, olives.

"Yes, but she isn't often there. She's getting more eccentric all the time, she roams the forest talking to the trees and to herself, looking for plants still unknown to her. Sometimes you don't see her for weeks, so people come to me more and more often these days. Nettle has taught me things these last few years." She didn't look at him as she said that. "She's shown me how to grow herbs in my fields that usually thrive only in the forest. Butterfly clover, jinglebell leaf, and the red anemones where the fire-elves get their honey."

"I didn't know those anemones could be used for healing, too."

"They can't. I planted them because they reminded me of someone." This time she did look at him.

Dustfinger put out his hand to one of the bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling and rubbed the dry flowers between his fingers: lavender, where vipers hide, and helpful if they bite you. "I expect they grow here only because you sing for them," he said. "Didn't folk always say: When Roxane sings, the stones burst into flower?"

Roxane cut some bread, poured oil into a bowl. "I sing only for the stones these days," she said. "And for my son." She handed him the bread. "Here, eat this. I baked it only yesterday." Then, turning her back to him, she went over to the fire. Dustfinger watched her surreptitiously as he dipped a piece of bread into the oil. Two sacks of straw and a couple of blankets on the bed, a bench, a chair, a table, pitchers, baskets, bottles and bowls, bundles of dried herbs under the ceiling, crammed close together the way they used to hang in Nettle's cave, and a chest that looked strangely fine in this otherwise sparsely furnished room. Dustfinger still remembered the cloth merchant who had given it to Roxane. It was a heavy load for his servants to carry, and it had been full to the brim with silken dresses embroidered with pearls, the sleeves edged with lace. Were they still there in the chest? Unworn, useless for working in the fields?

"I went to Nettle when Rosanna first fell ill." Roxane did not turn to him as she spoke. "I didn't know anything, not even how to draw the fever out of her. Nettle showed me all she knew, but nothing helped our daughter. So I rode to see the Barn Owl with her, while her fever rose higher and higher. I took her into the forest, to the fairies, but they didn't help me, either. They might have done it for you – but you weren't there."

Dustfinger saw her pass the back of her hand over her eyes. "Cloud-Dancer told me." He knew these were not the right words, but he could find no better.

Roxane just nodded and passed her hand over her eyes again. "Some say that you can see the people you love even after death," she said quietly. "They say the dead visit you by night, or at least in your dreams; your longing for them calls them back, if only for a little while… Rosanna didn't come. I went to women who said they could speak to the dead. I burned herbs whose fragrance was supposed to summon her, and I lay awake long nights hoping that she would come back, at least once. But it was all lies. There's no way back. Or have you been there? Did you find one?"

"In the realm of the dead? No." Dustfinger shook his head with a sad smile. "No, I didn't go quite so far. But believe me, if I had, then even from there I'd have sought some way to get back to you…"

How long she looked at him! No one else had ever looked at him like that. And once again he tried to find words, the words that could explain where he had been, but there were none.

"When Rosanna died," Roxane's tongue seemed to shrink from the word, as if it could kill her daughter a second time, "when she died and I held her in my arms, I swore something to myself: I swore that never, never again would I be so helpless when death tried to take away someone I love. I've learned a great deal since then. Perhaps today I could cure her. Or perhaps not."

She looked at him again, and when he returned her glance he did not try to hide his pain, as he usually would.

"Where did you bury her?"

"Behind the house, where she always used to play."

He turned to the open door, wanting at least to see the earth under which she lay, but Roxane held him back. "Where have you been?" she whispered, laying her forehead against his chest.

He stroked her hair, stroked the fine gray strands like silken cobwebs running through the sooty black, and buried his face in it. She still mixed a little bitter orange into the water when she washed her hair. Its perfume brought back so many memories that he felt dizzy. "Far away," he said. "I've been very, very far away." Then he just stood there holding her tightly, unable to believe that she was really there again, not just a figment of his dreams, not just a memory, blurred and vague, but a woman of flesh and blood with fragrant hair… and she was not sending him away.

How long they simply stood there like that, he didn't know.

"What about our older girl? How is Brianna?" he asked at last.

"She's been living up at the castle for four years now. She serves Violante, the prince's daughter-in-law, known to everyone as Her Ugliness." She came out of his arms, smoothed her pinned-up hair, and reached for his hands. "Brianna sings for Violante, looks after her spoiled little son, and reads to her," she said. "Violante adores books, but her eyesight is bad, so she can't easily read them for herself – let alone that she must do it in secret because the prince thinks poorly of women who read."

"But Brianna can read?"

"Yes, and I've taught my son to read, too."

"What's his name?"

"Jehan. After his father." Roxane went over to the table and touched the flowers standing on it.

"Did I know him?"

"No. He left me this farm – and a son. The fire-raisers set light to our barn, he ran in to save the livestock, and the fire consumed him. Isn't it strange – that you can love two men and fire protects one of them but kills the other?" She was silent for some time before she spoke again. "Firefox was leader of the arsonists then. They were almost worse than under Capricorn. Basta and Capricorn disappeared at the same time as you, did you know?"

"Yes, so I've heard," he murmured, unable to take his eyes off her. How lovely she was. How beautiful. It almost hurt to look at her. When she came toward him again every movement reminded him of the day he had first seen her dance.

"The fairies did very well," she said quietly, stroking his face.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think someone had simply painted those scars on your face with a silver pencil."

"A lie, but a kind one," he said just as softly. No one knew better than Roxane where the scars came from. They would neither of them forget the day when the Adderhead had commanded her to dance and sing before him. Capricorn had been there, too, with Basta and all the other fire-raisers, and Basta had stared at Roxane like a tomcat eyeing a tasty bird. He had pursued her day after day, promising her gold and jewels, threatening and flattering her, and when she rejected him again and again, alone and in company, Basta made inquiries to discover the identity of the man she preferred to him. He lay in wait for Dustfinger on his way to Roxane, with two other men, who held him down while Basta cut his face.

"You didn't marry again after your husband died?" You fool, he thought, are you jealous of a dead man?

"No, the only man on this farm is Jehan."

The boy appeared in the doorway as suddenly as if he had been listening behind it, just waiting for his name to be spoken. Without a word he made his way past Dustfinger and sat down on the bench.

"The flowers are even bigger now," he said.

"Did you burn your fingers on them?"

"Only a little."

Roxane pushed a jug of cold water over to him. "Here, dip them in that. And if it doesn't help I'll break an egg for you. There's nothing better for burns than a little egg white."

Jehan obediently put his fingers in the jug, still looking at Dustfinger. "Doesn't he ever burn himself?" he asked his mother.

Roxane had to smile. "No, never. Fire loves him. It licks his fingers, it kisses him."

Jehan looked at Dustfinger as if his mother had said that fairy and not human blood ran in his veins.

"Careful, she's teasing you!" said Dustfinger. "Of course it bites me, too."

"Those scars on your face – they weren't made by fire?"

"No." Dustfinger helped himself to more bread. "This woman, Violante," he said. "Cloud-Dancer told me the Adderhead is her father. Does she hate the strolling players as much as he does?"

"No." Roxane ran her fingers through Jehan's black hair. "If Violante hates anyone, it's her father himself. She was seven when he sent her here. She was married to Cosimo when she was twelve, and six years later she was a widow Now there she sits in her father-in-law's castle, trying to care for his subjects, as he has long neglected to do in his mourning for his son. Violante feels for the weak. Beggars, cripples, widows with hungry children, peasants who can't pay their taxes – they all go to her, but Violante is a woman. Any power she has is only because everyone's afraid of her father, even on this side of the forest."

"Brianna likes it at the castle." Jehan wiped his wet fingers on his trousers and looked at their reddened tips with concern.

Roxane dipped his fingers back in the cold water. "Yes, I'm afraid so," she said. "Our daughter likes to wear Violante's cast-off clothes, sleep in a soft four-poster bed, and have the fine folk at court pay her compliments. But I don't care for it, and she knows I don't."

"The Ugly Lady sends for me, too, sometimes!" There was no mistaking the pride in Jehan's voice, "To play with her son, Jacopo pesters her and Brianna when they're reading, and no one else will play with him because he always starts screaming when you have a fight with him… and when he loses he shouts that he's going to have your head chopped off!"

"You let him play with a prince's brat?" Dustfinger cast Roxane an anxious glance. "Whatever their age, princes are never friends to anyone. Have you forgotten that? And the same is true of their daughters, especially if the Adderhead is their father."

Roxane made her way past him in silence. "You don't have to remind me what princes are like," she said. "Your daughter is fifteen years old now; it's a long time since she took any advice from me. But who knows, maybe she'll listen to her father, even if she hasn't seen him for ten years. Next Sunday the Laughing Prince is holding festivities to celebrate his grandson's birthday. A good fire-eater is sure to be welcome at the castle, since Sootbird is the only one they've had to entertain them all these years." She stopped in the open doorway. "Come along, Jehan," she said, "your fingers don't look too bad, and there's plenty of work still to do."

The boy obeyed without protest. At the door he cast a last, curious look at Dustfinger, then ran off – and Dustfinger was left alone in the little house. He looked at the pots and pans near the fire, the wooden bowls, the spinning wheel in the corner, and the chest that spoke of Roxane's past. Yes, it was a simple house, not much bigger than a charcoal-burner's hut, but it was a home – something that Roxane had always wanted. She had never liked to have only the sky above her by night… even if he made the fire grow flowers for her, flowers to watch over her sleep.