A Familiar Voice
What remains to him? Tall Time wonders. What thoughts and smells, what names? Or are there only sensations and a clutter of incompatible words?
Barbara Gowdy,
The White Bone
They had gone. Had left him alone with all the blue that clashed with the red of the fire. Blue as the evening sky, blue as cranesbill flowers, blue as the lips of drowned men and the heart of a blaze burning with too hot a flame. Yes, sometimes it was hot in this world too. Hot and cold, light and dark, terrible and beautiful, it was everything all at once. It wasn’t true that you felt nothing in the land of Death. You felt and heard and smelt and saw, but your heart remained strangely calm, as if it were resting before the dance began again.
Peace. Was that the word?
Did the guardians of this world feel it too, or did they long for something else? The pain they didn’t know, the flesh they didn’t dwell in. Perhaps. Or perhaps not. He couldn’t tell from their faces. He saw both there: peace and longing, joy and pain. As if they knew about everything in this world and the other, just as they themselves were made of every colour at once, all the colours of the rainbow merging into white light. They told him that the land of Death had other places too, darker than the one where they had brought him and where no one stayed for long – except for him. Because he called up fire for them.
The White Women both feared and loved fire. They warmed their pale hands at it, laughing like children when he made it dance for them. They were children, young and old at the same time, so old. They made him form trees and flowers of fire, a fiery sun and moon, but for himself he made the fire paint faces, the faces he saw when the White Women took him with them to the river where they washed the hearts of the dead. Look into it, they whispered to him. Look into it, then those who love you will see you in their dreams. And he leant over the clear blue water and looked at the boy and the woman and the girl whose names he had forgotten, and saw them smiling in their sleep.
Why don’t I know their names any more? he asked.
Because we’ve washed your heart, they said. Because we’ve washed it in the blue water that parts this world from the other one. It makes you forget.
Yes. He supposed it did. For whenever he tried to remember he saw nothing but the blue, cool and caressing. It was only when he called up fire and its red glow spread that the pictures came again, the same pictures that he saw in the water. But his longing for them fell asleep before it had woken fully.
What was my name? he sometimes asked, and then they laughed. Fire-Dancer, they whispered, that was your name and always will be, because you’ll stay with us for all eternity and never go away like all the others, away to another life …
Sometimes they brought him a girl, a little girl. She stroked his face and smiled like the woman he saw in the water and the flames. Who’s that? he asked. She’s been here and went away again, they said she was your daughter.
Daughter … the word sounded like pain, but his heart merely remembered and did not feel it. It felt only love, nothing but love. There was nothing else any more.
Where were they? They had never before left him alone, not once since he had come here … wherever here was.
He had grown so used to the pale faces, to their beauty and their soft voices.
But suddenly he heard another voice, very different from theirs. He knew it. And he knew the name it was calling.
Dustfinger.
He hated that voice … or did he love it? He didn’t know. He knew only one thing: it brought back everything he had forgotten – like a violent pain suddenly jolting his still heart into beating again. Hadn’t that voice caused him pain once before, so much pain that it almost broke his heart? Yes, he remembered! He pressed his hands to his ears, but in the world of the dead you don’t hear with your ears alone, and the voice made its way right inside him like fresh blood flowing into veins that had frozen long ago.
‘Wake up, Dustfinger!’ it said. ‘Come back. The story isn’t over yet.’
The story … he felt the blue pushing him away, he felt firm flesh surrounding him again, and a heart beating in a chest far too small for it.
Silvertongue, he thought. It’s Silvertongue’s voice. And suddenly all the names came back to him: Roxane, Brianna, Farid … and the pain was back again, and time, and longing too.
27
Lost and Back Again
For it so happens that I have never been able to convince myself that the dead are utterly dead.
Saul Bellow,
Henderson the Rain King
It was dark when Gwin woke Roxane. She still didn’t like the marten, but she couldn’t bring herself to chase him away. She had seen him sitting on Dustfinger’s shoulder too often. Sometimes she thought she still felt the warmth of his hands on Gwin’s brown coat. Since his master’s death the marten had allowed Roxane to stroke him. He never used to let her do that before. But he also used to kill her chickens before, and now he spared them, as if that were part of their unspoken agreement – his thanks for her letting him, and no other living creature, follow her when she went to his master. Only Gwin shared her secret and kept her company when she sat beside the dead man for an hour, sometimes two, losing herself in the sight of his still face.
He’s back! said Gwin’s bristling coat as he jumped up on her breast, but Roxane didn’t understand. She pushed the marten away when she saw how dark it still was outside, but he persisted, hissing at her and scratching at the door. Of course she thought at once of the patrols that the Milksop was only too likely to send to isolated farms at night. Heart thudding, she reached for the knife that lay under her pillow and threw on her dress, while the marten pawed more and more impatiently at the door. Luckily he hadn’t yet woken Jehan. Her son was fast asleep. Her goose wasn’t giving the alarm either … which was strange.
Barefoot, she went to the door, knife in hand, and listened, but there was nothing to be heard outside, and when she cautiously went out into the open air she felt as if she heard the night itself breathing deeply and regularly, like someone asleep. The stars shone down on her like flowers made of light, and their beauty hurt her weary heart.
‘Roxane …’
The marten shot past her.
It couldn’t be true. The dead did not come back, even when they had promised they would. But the figure emerging from the shadows near the stable was so very familiar.
Gwin hissed when he saw the other marten sitting on his master’s shoulder.
‘Roxane.’ He spoke her name as if he wanted to savour it on his tongue, like something he hadn’t tasted for a long time.
It was a dream, one of the dreams she had almost every night. Dreams in which she saw his face so clearly that she touched it in her sleep, and next day her fingers still remembered his skin. Even when he put his arms around her, carefully, as if he wasn’t sure whether he had forgotten how to hold her, she didn’t move – because her hands did not believe they would really feel him, her arms did not believe they could hold him again. But her eyes could see him. Her ears heard him breathing. Her skin felt his, as warm as if the fire were inside him, after he had been so terribly cold.
He had kept his promise. And even if he was coming to her only in a dream it was better than nothing … so much better.
‘Roxane! Look at me. Look at me.’ He took her face between his hands, caressed her cheek, wiped away the tears she so often felt on her skin when she woke. And only then did she draw him close to her, let her hands tell her that she wasn’t just embracing a ghost. It couldn’t be true. She wept as she pressed her face to his. She wanted to hit him for having left her for the boy’s sake, for all the pain she had already felt on his account, so much pain, but her heart gave her away, as it had the first time he came back. It always gave her away.
‘What is it?’ He kissed her once more.
The scars. They were gone, as if the White Women had washed them away before sending him back to life.
She took his hands and laid them against his cheeks.
‘Well, who’d have thought it!’ he said, stroking his own skin with his fingers as if it were a stranger’s. ‘They’ve really gone! Basta wouldn’t like that at all.’
Why had they let him go? Who had paid the price for him, as he had paid it for the boy?
Why did she ask? He was back. That was all that mattered, back from the place from which there was no return. Where all the others were. Her daughter, the father of her son, Cosimo … so many dead. But he had come back. Even if she saw in his eyes that, this time, he had been so far away that something of him was still left there.
‘How long will you stay this time?’ she whispered.
He did not answer at once. Gwin rubbed his head against his neck and looked at him, as if he too wanted to know the answer.
‘As long as Death allows,’ he replied at last, and placed her hand on his beating heart.
‘What does that mean?’ she whispered. But he closed her mouth with a kiss.
28
A New Song
Bright hope arises from the dark
And makes the mighty tremble.
Princes can’t fail to see his mark,
Nor can they now dissemble.
With hair like moleskin smooth and black,
And mask of bluejay feathers,
He vows wrongdoers to attack,
Strikes princes in all weathers.
Fenoglio,
The Bluejay Songs
‘The Bluejay’s come back from the dead!’ It was Doria who brought the Black Prince the news. The boy stumbled into his tent just before dawn, so breathless that he could hardly get the words out. ‘A moss-woman saw him. By the Hollow Trees where the healers bury their dead. She says he’s brought the Fire-Dancer back too. Please! May I tell Meggie?’
Incredible words. Far too wonderful to be true. All the same, the Black Prince set off at once for the place where the Hollow Trees grew – after making Doria promise not to tell anyone else what he had told him: neither Meggie nor her mother, neither Snapper nor any of the other robbers, not even his own brother, who was lying outside by the fire, fast asleep.
‘But they say the Piper’s heard about it too!’ the boy faltered.
‘That’s unfortunate,’ replied the Prince. ‘Let’s hope I find him before the Piper does.’
He rode fast, so fast that the bear was soon snorting with disapproval as he trotted along beside him. Why such haste? For a foolish hope? Why did his heart always insist on believing that there was a light in all the darkness? Where did he keep getting new hope from, after he had been disappointed countless times? You have the heart of a child, Prince. Hadn’t Dustfinger always told him so? And he’s brought the Fire-Dancer back too. It couldn’t be true. Such things happened only in songs, and in the stories that mothers told their children in the evening to drive away night-time fears.
Hope can make you careless, he should have known that too. The Black Prince didn’t see the soldiers until they emerged ahead of him through the trees. A good number of them. He counted ten. They had a moss-woman with them, her thin neck already rubbed sore by the rope on which they were pulling her along. Presumably they had caught her to make her lead them to the Hollow Trees, for hardly anyone knew the place where the healers buried their dead. They themselves, so rumour said, made sure that all the paths to it were hidden by undergrowth. But after helping Roxane to take Dustfinger there, the Black Prince knew the way.
It was a sacred place, but in her fear the moss-woman had indeed led the men-at-arms the right way. The crowns of the dead trees could already be seen in the distance. They rose, as grey as if morning had stripped them bare, among the oaks, which were still autumnal gold, and the Prince prayed the Bluejay wasn’t there. Better to be with the White Women than in the Piper’s hands.
Three men-at-arms came up on him from behind, swords in their hands. The moss-woman sank to her knees as her captors drew their own swords and turned to their new quarry. The bear reared up on his hind legs and bared his teeth. The horses shied, and two of the soldiers retreated, but there were still a great many of them – too many for a knife and a pair of claws.
‘Well, guess what! Obviously the Piper’s not the only one stupid enough to believe moss-women’s gossip!’ Their leader was almost as pale as the White Women, and his face was sprinkled with freckles. ‘The Black Prince, none other! There was I cursing my luck, sent riding into this damn forest to catch a ghost, and who should stumble into my path but his black brother! The price on your head isn’t as high as the price for the Bluejay, but it’ll make us all rich men!’
‘You’re wrong there. Touch him and you’ll be dead men instead.’
And his voice wakens the dead from sleep and makes the wolf lie down with the lamb … The Bluejay stepped out from behind a beech tree as naturally as if he had been waiting for the soldiers there. Don’t call me Bluejay – it’s only a name from the songs! He had said that to the Prince so often, but what else was he to call him?
Bluejay. They were whispering his name, their voices hoarse with terror. Who was he? The Prince had often wondered. Did he really come from the land where Dustfinger had spent so many years? And what kind of country was it? A land where songs came true?
Bluejay.
The bear roared him a welcome that made the horses rear, and the Jay drew his sword very slowly, as he always did, the sword that had once belonged to Firefox and had killed so many of the Black Prince’s men. The face beneath the dark hair seemed paler than usual, but the Prince could see no fear in it. Presumably you forgot what fear was once you visited Death.
‘Yes, as you see, I’m really back from the dead. Even if I still feel Death’s claws in me.’ He spoke dreamily, as if a part of him were still with the White Women. ‘I’m willing to show you the way if you want. It’s entirely up to you. But if you do prefer to live a little longer,’ he added, flourishing his sword in the air as if he were writing their names, ‘then let him go. Him and the bear.’
They just stared at him, and their hands, resting on their swords, trembled as if they were reaching out for their own deaths. Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness, and the Black Prince went to the Bluejay’s side and felt that the words were like a shield for them, the words sung quietly up and down the country … all about the White Hand and the Black Hand of Justice.
There’ll be a new song now, thought the Prince as he drew his sword, and his heart felt so foolishly young that he could have fought a thousand men. As for the Piper’s soldiers, they wrenched their horses’ heads round and fled – from just two men. And the words.
When they had gone the Bluejay went over to the moss-woman, who was still kneeling in the grass with her hands pressed to her bark-brown face, and undid the rope from her neck.
‘A few months ago one of you tended a bad wound I had,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’
The moss-woman let him help her up, but she looked at him suspiciously. ‘What do you mean by that? That we all look the same to human eyes?’ she snapped. ‘Well, we feel the same about you. So how am I supposed to know if I ever set eyes on you before?’
And she limped away without another look at her rescuer, who stood there watching her go as if he had forgotten where he was.
‘How long have I been away?’ he asked when the Black Prince joined him.
‘Over three days.’
‘As long as that?’ Yes, he had been far away, very far away. ‘Of course. Time runs differently when you meet Death, isn’t that what they say?’
‘You know more about it than I do now,’ replied the Prince.
The Bluejay made no comment on that.
‘Have you heard who I brought with me?’ he asked at last.
‘It’s difficult for me to believe such good news,’ said the Black Prince huskily, but the Bluejay smiled and ran a hand over the Prince’s short hair.
‘You can let it grow again,’ he said. ‘The man you sha
ved it for is breathing again. He’s left his scars with the dead, that’s all.’
It couldn’t be true.
‘Where is he?’ His heart still ached from the night when he had kept watch with Roxane at Dustfinger’s side.
‘No doubt with Roxane. I didn’t ask him where he was going. We were neither of us particularly talkative. The White Women leave silence behind them, Prince, not words.’
‘Silence?’ the Black Prince laughed, and embraced him. ‘What are you talking about? They’ve left joy behind, pure joy! And hope, hope again at last! I feel younger than I’ve felt for years! As if I could tear up trees by the roots – well, maybe not that beech, but many others. By this evening, everyone will be singing that the Bluejay fears Death so little that he seeks it out, and the Piper will tear the silver nose off his face in a rage …’
The Bluejay smiled again, but his look was still grave – very grave for a man who has just come back from the dead unscathed. And the Black Prince realized that there was bad news behind the good news, a shadow