came from the depths of his breast. ‘Well, in that case, no doubt I’d have to take your children with me in his place, for after all, I can’t go back to the Castle of Night empty-handed, can I?’
Oh, the confounded silver-nosed bastard.
Why didn’t you make him more stupid, Fenoglio? Because stupid villains are so boring, he answered himself, and was ashamed of it when he saw the despair on the women’s faces.
‘So you see, it’s entirely up to you!’ The strained voice still had something of the slushy sweetness for which Capricorn had loved it so much. ‘Help me to catch the bird that the Adderhead longs to hear singing in his castle, and you can keep your children. Otherwise …’ He wearily signed to the guards, and the Milksop, his face rigid with fury, rode towards the gates as they opened. ‘Otherwise, I am afraid I’ll have to remember that there is indeed always a need for small hands in our silver mines.’
The women were still staring at him with faces as empty of emotion as if there simply were no room in them for yet more despair.
‘What are you still standing there for?’ called the Piper as the servants carried the Milksop’s dead game through the gateway below. ‘Go away! Or I’ll have boiling water poured over you. Not a bad idea at all, since I’m sure you could all do with a bath.’
As if numbed, the women moved back, looking up at the battlements as though the cauldrons were already heating up.
The last time Fenoglio’s heart had raced like this was when the soldiers had appeared in Balbulus’s workshop to take Mortimer away with them. He examined the faces of the women, the beggars crouching beside the pillory outside the castle walls, the frightened children, and fear spread through him. All the rewards set on Mortimer’s head had not yet been able to buy the Silver Prince an informer in Ombra, but what now? What mother would not betray the Bluejay for her own child’s sake?
A beggar pushed his way through the crowd of women, and as he limped past Fenoglio recognized him as one of the Black Prince’s spies. Good, he thought. Mortimer will soon know about the deal the Piper has offered the women of Ombra. But then what?
The Milksop’s hunting party was moving on through the open castle gates, and the women set off for home, heads lowered, as if already ashamed of the act of betrayal the Piper had demanded of them.
‘Fenoglio?’ A woman stopped in front of him. He didn’t know who she was until she pushed back the scarf that she had tied over her pinned-up hair like a peasant woman.
‘Resa? What are you doing here?’ Fenoglio instinctively looked round in alarm, but Mortimer’s wife had obviously come without her husband.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’
Despina clung around Fenoglio’s neck and stared curiously at the strange woman. ‘That lady looks like Meggie,’ she whispered to him.
‘Yes, because she’s Meggie’s mother.’ Fenoglio put Despina down as Minerva came towards him. She was walking slowly, as if she felt dizzy, and Ivo ran to her and put his arm protectively around her.
‘Fenoglio!’ Resa took his arm. ‘I have to speak to you!’
What about? It couldn’t be anything good.
‘Minerva, you go ahead,’ he said. ‘It will be all right, wait and see,’ he added, but Minerva just looked at him as if he were one of her children. Then she took Despina’s hand and followed her son, who was running on ahead. She walked as unsteadily as if the Piper’s words were splinters of glass under her feet.
‘Tell me your husband is hidden deep, deep in the forest and not planning any more idiocy like that visit to Balbulus!’ Fenoglio whispered to Resa as he led her away with him into Bakers’ Alley. It still smelt of fresh bread and cake there, a tormenting aroma for most of the people of Ombra, who hadn’t been able to afford such delicacies for a long time.
Resa covered her hair with the scarf again, and looked round as if she were afraid the Piper had come down from the battlements and was following her, but only a thin cat slunk past. Once there had been a great many pigs in the streets too, but they had been eaten long ago, most of them up at the castle.
‘I need your help!’ Good God, how desperate she sounded! ‘You must write us home again. You owe us that! It’s your songs that have put Mo in danger, and it’s getting worse every day! You heard what the Piper said!’
‘Stop, stop, stop!’ He blamed himself often enough these days, but Fenoglio still didn’t like to be blamed by others. And this accusation really was surely unjust. ‘I never brought Mortimer here, Orpheus did. I really couldn’t foresee that my inspiration for the Bluejay would suddenly be walking around here in flesh and blood!’
‘But it happened!’ One of the night watchmen who lit the lanterns was coming down the street. Darkness fell fast in Ombra. Another banquet would soon be beginning in the castle, and Sootbird’s fire would stink to high heaven.
‘If you won’t do it for me,’ said Resa, doing her best to sound composed, but Fenoglio could see the tears in her eyes, ‘then do it for Meggie … and the brother or sister she’s soon going to have.’
Another child? Fenoglio instinctively glanced at Resa’s belly as if he could already see a new character in the story there. Was there no end to its complications?
‘Fenoglio, please!’
What was he to say in reply? Should he tell her about the sheet of paper still lying blank on his table – or even admit that he liked the way her husband played the part he had written for him, that the Bluejay was his sole comfort in these dark days, the only one of his ideas that worked really well? No, better not.
‘Did Mortimer send you?’
She avoided his eyes.
‘Resa, does he want to leave too?’ Leave this world of mine? he added in his thoughts. My world, still fabulous even if it’s in a certain amount of turmoil at the moment? For, yes, Fenoglio knew only too well that he himself still loved it, despite its darkness. Perhaps because of its darkness. No. No, that wasn’t why … or was it?
‘He must leave! Can’t you see that?’ The last of the daylight was fading from the streets. The buildings stood very close together, and it was cold, and as still as if all Ombra were thinking of the Piper’s threat. Shivering, Resa drew her cloak around her. ‘Your words … they’re changing him!’
‘Oh, come on. Words don’t change anyone!’ Fenoglio’s voice sounded louder than he had intended. ‘Maybe my words have taught your husband things about himself he never knew before, but they were there all the time, and if he likes them now you can hardly call it my fault! Ride back, tell him what the Piper offered, say he’d better avoid anything like that visit to Balbulus in the near future, and for God’s sake don’t worry. He’s playing his part very well! He plays it better than any of the other characters I made up, except maybe the Black Prince. Your husband is a hero in this world! What man wouldn’t wish for that?’
The way she was looking at him, as if he were an old fool who didn’t know what he was talking about! ‘You know very well how heroes end up,’ she said, carefully controlling her voice. ‘They don’t have wives or children, and they don’t grow old. Find yourself another man to play the hero in your story, but leave my husband out of it! You must write us all back! Tonight!’
He hardly knew where to look. Her gaze was so clear – just like her daughter’s. Meggie had always looked at him like that. A candle flared into life in the window above them. His world was sinking into darkness. Night was falling – close the curtains, tomorrow the story will go on …
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I’ll never be able to write again. It brings nothing but misfortune, and there’s enough of that here already.’
What a coward he was. Too cowardly for the truth. Why didn’t he tell her that the words had abandoned him, that she was asking the wrong man? But Resa seemed to know it anyway. He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger, disappointment, fear – and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about
it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly. That was what it was doing to Minerva …
‘Very well.’ Resa was in control of her voice, although it shook. ‘Then I’ll go to Orpheus. He can write unicorns into this world, he brought us all here. Why shouldn’t he be able to send us home again too?’
If you can pay him, thought Fenoglio, but he didn’t say it aloud. Orpheus would send her packing. He saved his words for the ladies and gentlemen in the castle who paid for his expensive clothes and his maids. No, she’d have to stay, and so would Mortimer and Meggie – and a good thing too, because who else was going to read his words, supposing they did obey him again some day. And who was to kill the Adderhead if not the Bluejay?
Yes, they had to stay. It was better that way.
‘Off you go to Orpheus, then,’ he said. ‘And I wish you luck with him.’ He turned his back to her, so that he wouldn’t have to see the despair in her eyes any longer. Did he detect a trace of contempt there too? ‘But you’d better not ride back in the dark,’ he added. ‘The roads are more dangerous every day.’
Then he left her. Minerva would be waiting with supper. He didn’t turn back. He knew only too well how Resa would be gazing after him. Exactly like her daughter …
17
The Wrong Fear
You wish for something you don’t really want, the dream says.
Bad dream. Punish him. Chase him from the house.
Tie him to the horses, let him run with them.
Hang him. He deserves it.
Feed him mushrooms. Poisonous ones.
Paavo Haavikko,
The Trees Breathe Gently
Mo had spent two whole days and nights with Battista and the Black Prince looking for a place where a hundred or more children could be hidden. With the bear’s help, they had finally found a cave. But it was a long way off. The mountainside where the cave lay concealed was steep and almost impassable, especially for children’s feet, and a pack of wolves roamed the ravine next to it, but there was some hope that neither the Milksop’s hounds nor the Piper would find them there. Not a great deal of hope, but for the first time in many days Mo’s heart felt a little lighter.
Hope. Nothing is more intoxicating. And hardly any hope was sweeter than the prospect of giving the Piper an unpleasant surprise and humiliating him in front of his immortal master.
They wouldn’t have to hide all the children, of course, but many, very many of them must be hidden. If all went according to plan, Ombra would soon be not just without men but almost entirely without children, and the Piper would have to go from one remote farm to another if he wanted to steal any, hoping the Black Prince’s men hadn’t been there ahead of him helping the women to hide their little ones.
Yes, much would be gained if they succeeded in getting the children of Ombra to safety, and Mo was almost in high spirits as they returned to the camp. But when Meggie came to meet him with anxiety on her face, that mood was gone at once. Obviously there was more bad news.
Meggie’s voice shook as she told him about the deal the Piper had offered the women of Ombra. The Bluejay in exchange for your children. The Black Prince didn’t have to tell Mo what that meant. Instead of helping to hide the children, he himself would have to hide from every woman who had a child of the right age.
‘You’d better take to living in the trees!’ hiccupped Gecko. He was drunk, presumably on the wine they had stolen only last week from a couple of the Milksop’s friends out hunting. ‘After all, you can fly up there. Don’t folk say that’s how you escaped from Balbulus’s workshop?’
Mo would happily have punched his drunken mouth, but Meggie reached for his hand, and the anger that sprang up in him so quickly these days ebbed away when he saw the fear on his daughter’s face.
‘What will you do now, Mo?’ she whispered.
What indeed? He didn’t know the answer. All he knew was that he would rather ride to the Castle of Night and surrender than hide. He quickly turned away so that Meggie wouldn’t read his thoughts on his face, but she knew him so well. Too well.
‘Perhaps Resa’s right after all!’ she whispered to him, while Gecko stared at them with bloodshot eyes, and even the Black Prince couldn’t conceal his anxiety. ‘Perhaps,’ she added, almost inaudibly, ‘we really ought to go back home to Elinor, Mo!’
She’d heard him and Resa quarrelling.
Involuntarily, he looked round for Resa, but he couldn’t see her anywhere.
What will you do now, Mo?
Yes, what indeed? How was the last song about the Bluejay to go? But they never caught the Jay, however hard they looked for him. He disappeared without trace, as if he had never been. However, he left the Book behind, the White Book that he had bound for the Adderhead, and with it the Adder’s immortal tyranny. No, that must not be the last song. No? What, then? But one day a mother, fearing for her children, gave the Bluejay away. And he died the worst of all deaths ever suffered by any man in the Castle of Night. Was that a better end to the story? Was there any better end at all?
‘Come along!’ Battista put an arm around his shoulders. ‘I suggest we get drunk to drown this news. If the others have left any of the Milksop’s wine, that is. Forget the Piper, forget the Adderhead, drown them all in good red wine.’
But Mo didn’t feel like drinking, even if the wine silenced the voice he kept hearing inside himself since his quarrel with Resa. I don’t want to go back, it said. No, not yet …
Gecko staggered back to the fire and pushed in between Snapper and Elfbane. They’d soon start fighting again; they always did when they were drunk.
‘I’m going to get some sleep. That clears the head better than wine,’ said the Black Prince. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’
The bear lay down outside his master’s tent and looked at Mo.
Tomorrow.
What now, Mortimer?
It was getting colder every day. His breath was white vapour hanging in the air as he looked around for Resa again. Where was she? He’d picked her a flower with a shallow cup, pale blue, a species she hadn’t yet drawn. Fairyglass, people called it, because it collected so much morning dew in its soft petals that the fairies used it as a mirror.
‘Meggie, have you seen your mother?’ he asked.
But Meggie didn’t reply. Doria had brought her some of the wild boar that was roasting over the fire. It looked like a particularly good piece of meat. The boy whispered something to her. Was it his imagination, or had a rosy flush just risen to his daughter’s face? In any case, she hadn’t heard his question.
‘Meggie, do you know where Resa is?’ Mo repeated, taking great care not to smile when Doria cast him a quick and rather anxious glance. He was a good-looking lad, a little smaller than Farid, but stronger. Presumably he was wondering whether the songs about the Bluejay told the truth when they said he guarded his daughter like the apple of his eye. No, more like the finest of all books, thought Mo, and I sincerely hope you’re not going to give her as much grief as Farid, because if you do the Bluejay will feed you to the Prince’s bear without the slightest hesitation!
Luckily Meggie hadn’t read his thoughts this time. ‘Resa?’ She tasted the roast meat and thanked Doria with a smile. ‘She rode over to see Roxane.’
‘Roxane? But Roxane is here.’ Mo glanced at the tent used as an infirmary for the sick. One of the robbers was in there, curled up in pain – probably from eating poisonous fungi – and Roxane stood outside the tent talking to two women who were nursing him.
Meggie looked at her, bewildered. ‘But Resa said she’d arranged to meet Roxane.’
Mo pinned the flower that had been meant for her mother to Meggie’s dress. ‘How long has she been gone?’ He did his best to sound casual, but Meggie was not to be deceived. Not by him.
‘She set out around midday! If she’s not with Roxane, then where is she?’
She was looking at him in bewilderment. No,
she really had no idea. He kept forgetting that she didn’t know Resa nearly as well as she knew him. A year was not a particularly long time to get acquainted with your own mother.
Have you forgotten our quarrel? he wanted to reply. She’s gone to see Fenoglio. But he bit back the words. Fear made his chest feel tight, and he’d only too gladly have believed it was fear for Resa. But he was as bad at lying to himself as to anyone else. He was not afraid for his wife, although he had reason to be. He feared that, somewhere in Ombra, the words were already being read aloud that would take him back to his old world, like a fish caught in a river and flung back into the pond it came from … Don’t be stupid, Mortimer, he thought angrily. Who is going to read the words, even if Fenoglio really did write them for Resa? Well, a voice inside him whispered, who do you think?
Orpheus.
Meggie was still looking at him in concern, while Doria stood beside her hesitantly, unable to take his eyes off her face.
Mo turned. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said.
‘Where are you going? Mo!’
Meggie hurried after him when she saw him go over to the horses, but he did not turn again.
Why in such a hurry, Mortimer? the voice inside him mocked. Do you think you can ride faster than Orpheus can speak the words with his oily tongue? Darkness was falling from the sky like a scarf, a dark scarf smothering everything, the colours, the birdsong … Resa. Where was she? Still in Ombra, or on her way back already? And suddenly he felt the other fear – as bad as the fear of those words. The fear of footpads and nocturnal spirits, the memory of women they had found dead in the bushes. Had she at least taken the Strong Man with her? Mo uttered a quiet curse. No, of course not. He was sitting there with Battista and Wayfarer by the fire, and he had already drunk so much that he was beginning to sing.
He ought to have known. Resa had been very quiet since their quarrel. Had he forgotten what that meant? He knew that silence of hers. But he had gone off with the Black Prince instead of talking to her again about what made her so silent – almost as silent as in the days when she had lost her voice.
‘Mo, what are you doing?’ Meggie’s voice sounded faint with fear. Doria had followed them. Meggie whispered something to him, and he set off towards the Prince’s tent.
‘Damn it, Meggie, what’s the idea of that?’ Mo tightened the horse’s girth. He wished his fingers weren’t shaking so much.
‘Where are you going to look for her? You can’t leave this camp! Have you forgotten the Piper?’
She clung to him. Then Doria came back with the Prince. Mo cursed and