words, because he was only making them new clothes.
‘You’re taking your time, Bluejay.’
The Piper’s voice brought him back to the Hall of a Thousand Windows.
Don’t let it happen, Mortimer, he told himself. Simply imagine that the silver-nosed man is still in his own book, is nothing but a voice coming out of the letters on the page. The Bluejay isn’t here. Orpheus’s words must look for him somewhere else.
‘You know you’re going to die when you’ve finished it. That’s what makes you so slow, am I correct?’ The Piper struck him so hard in the back with his gloved fist that Mo almost cut his own hands, and the Bluejay surfaced for a moment, thinking what it would be like to plunge the blade that cut the paper into the Piper’s breast.
Mo forced himself to put the knife aside and picked up another sheet of paper, seeking peace in gluing all that whiteness together.
The Piper was right. He was taking his time, not because he was afraid of dying but because this book must never be finished, and the only reason for every move he made was to bring back Mortimer Folchart, the bookbinder who could not be bound by Orpheus’s words. Mo hardly felt them any more. All the despair that had seeped into his heart in that dark cell, all the rage and hopelessness, had faded as if his hands had washed them out of his heart.
But what would happen if Dustfinger and Resa didn’t find the other White Book? Suppose the Night-Mare devoured Brianna and her father? Would he stand in this hall for ever then, binding blank pages? Not for ever, Mo. You’re not immortal. Luckily.
The Piper would kill him. He’d been waiting to do it ever since they first met in the Castle of Night. And, of course, the strolling players would sing about the death of the Bluejay, not Mortimer Folchart. But what would become of Resa and the unborn child? And what about Meggie? Don’t think, Mortimer, he told himself. Cut, fold, stitch, win yourself some time, even if you don’t yet know what for. When you’re dead Resa can fly away and find Meggie. Meggie …
Please, his heart pleaded with the White Women, let my daughter live! I will go with you, but leave Meggie here. Her life is only just beginning, though she may not know yet which world she wants to live it in.
Cutting, folding, stitching – he thought he saw Meggie’s face on the blank paper. He almost felt her beside him as he had in the Old Chamber in the Castle of Night, the room where Violante’s mother had lived. Violante … they’d thrown her into one of the cells. Mo knew exactly what would frighten her most down there: she would be afraid of the darkness taking what little vision she had from her. The Adder’s daughter still moved him, and he would gladly have helped her, but the Bluejay must sleep.
Four candles had been lit for him. They didn’t give much light, but they were better than nothing. The chains didn’t make working any easier either. Every time he moved, their clinking reminded him that he wasn’t in his workshop in Elinor’s garden.
The door opened.
‘There you are!’ Orpheus’s voice echoed through the empty hall. ‘This role suits you much better! What made that old fool Fenoglio think of turning a bookbinder into a robber?’
He stopped in front of Mo with a triumphant smile, just too far away for the knife to reach him. Yes, Orpheus would think of that kind of thing. As usual, his breath smelt sweetish.
‘You ought to have known Dustfinger would betray you some time. He betrays everyone – and believe me, I know what I’m talking about. It’s the part he plays best. But presumably you couldn’t pick and choose who’d help you.’
Mo picked up the leather intended for the cover. It was red, like the cover of the first book.
‘Ah, so you’re not talking to me any more! Well, I can understand that.’ Orpheus had never looked happier.
‘Leave him to work, Four-Eyes! Or do you want me telling the Adderhead that he has to live in his itching skin a little longer, just because you felt like a nice chat?’ The Piper’s voice sounded even more strained than usual. Orpheus wasn’t making himself many friends.
‘Don’t forget, your master will soon be rid of that skin, Piper, and he owes it all to me!’ he replied in a supercilious tone. ‘Your powers of persuasion haven’t impressed our bookbinding friend much, if I remember rightly.’
So the two of them were competing to see who could be closest to the Adder. At the moment Orpheus seemed to hold the better cards, but perhaps that could be changed.
‘What are you talking about, Orpheus?’ said Mo, without looking up from his work. He tasted sweet revenge on his tongue. ‘The Adderhead need feel grateful to no one but the Piper. I was careless. I ran straight into their arms. You had nothing at all to do with it.’
‘What?’ Piqued, Orpheus fiddled with his glasses.
‘That’s exactly how I’ll tell the tale to the Adderhead. As soon as he’s had a good sleep.’ Mo cut through the leather and imagined that he was cutting the web Orpheus had spun around him.
The Piper narrowed his eyes, as if that would help him to see more clearly what game the Bluejay was playing. The Bluejay isn’t here, Piper, thought Mo. But how could you understand that?
‘Careful, bookbinder!’ Orpheus took a clumsy step towards him. His voice was almost cracking. ‘Use your silver tongue to spread lies about me and I’ll have it cut out on the spot!’
‘Oh yes? Who by?’
Mo looked directly at the Piper.
‘I don’t want to see my daughter in this castle,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t want anyone looking for her after the Bluejay is dead.’
The Piper returned his glance – and smiled. ‘That’s a promise. The Bluejay has no daughter,’ he said. ‘And he’ll keep his tongue too. So long as it speaks the right words.’
Orpheus bit his lips so hard that they turned as pale as his skin. Then he moved close to Mo’s side.
‘I’ll write new words!’ he hissed in his ear. ‘Words that will make you writhe like a worm on the hook!’
‘Write what you like,’ replied Mo, cutting through the leather again.
The bookbinder wouldn’t feel the words.
72
So Many Tears
… from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.
Louise Glück,
Ararat
She was crying! Jacopo had never heard his mother cry before. Not even when they brought his father back from the forest, dead. He hadn’t cried then either, but that was different.
Should he call down to her? He knelt on the edge of the shaft and stared into the darkness. He couldn’t see her, only hear her. The weeping sounded terrible. It scared him. His mother didn’t cry. His mother was always strong, always proud. She didn’t take him in her arms, like Brianna. Brianna hugged him even when he’d been cruel to her. ‘It’s because you look like your father!’ the maids in the kitchen said. ‘Brianna was in love with your father!’ She was still in love with him. She had a coin with his picture on it in the bag at her belt; she sometimes kissed it in secret, and she wrote his name on the walls. She wrote it in the air and in the dust. She was so stupid.
The sobbing down below grew even more violent, and Jacopo put his hands over his ears. It sounded as if his mother were breaking into small pieces, such tiny pieces that no one would ever be able to put her together again. But he wanted to keep her!
‘Your grandfather will take you with him,’ said the servants. ‘Back to the Castle of Night, so that you can play with his son.’ But Jacopo didn’t want to go to the Castle of Night. He wanted to go back to Ombra. That was his castle. And he was frightened of his grandfather, who stank and gasped for air, and had skin so spongy you were scared you might dig holes in it with your fingers.
It must be all wet with her tears down there. She sounded as if she’d soon be drowning in them! No wonder she was so sad. She couldn’t read any books in the darkness, and his mother wasn’t happy without books.
She loved nothing so much. She loved them far more than him, but never mind that. He didn’t want her marrying Four-Eyes all the same. Jacopo hated Four-Eyes. His voice was like melted sugar on your skin.
He liked the Bluejay. And the Fire-Dancer. But soon they’d both be dead. Orpheus was going to feed the Fire-Dancer to the Night-Mare, and as soon as the Bluejay had finished the new Book they’d flay him. His grandfather had once made him watch a man being flayed alive. Jacopo had hidden away from the victim’s screams in the furthest corner of his heart, but he had still heard them there.
It was quiet. His mother had stopped crying. Had she cried herself to death?
The guards took no notice of him as he bent far over the edge of the black shaft. ‘Mother?’
The word didn’t pass his lips easily. He never called her Mother. It was as Her Ugliness that he thought of her. But now she had been crying.
‘Jacopo?’
She was still alive.
‘Is the Bluejay dead?’
‘Not yet. He’s binding the book.’
‘Where is Brianna?’
‘In one of the cages.’ He was jealous of Brianna. Violante liked Brianna better than him. She was allowed to sleep with his mother, who talked to her much more often than she talked to him, her son. But Brianna comforted him too when he’d hurt himself, or when the Milksop’s men taunted him about his dead father. And she was very beautiful.
‘Orpheus—’ he began, but one of the guards grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet.
‘That’s enough chatter!’ he said. ‘Get out.’
Jacopo tried to wriggle free, but it was no good.
‘Let her out!’ he shouted, beating his fists against the man’s armed chest. ‘Let her out this minute!’
But the soldier only laughed.
‘Hark at him, will you!’ he said to the other guard. ‘Mind you don’t end up in that cell yourself, midget. Your grandfather has a son now. So his grandson doesn’t count for much, specially when he’s Cosimo’s brat and his mother is thick as thieves with the Bluejay.’
He pushed Jacopo away so roughly that he fell over and Jacopo wished he could make flames come out of his hands, like the Fire-Dancer, or kill them all with a sword, the way the Bluejay had killed so many men.
‘Jacopo?’ he heard his mother call from down below, but when he turned back to the edge of the shaft the soldiers barred his way.
‘Get out, I tell you!’ one of them snapped. ‘Or I’ll tell Four-Eyes to feed you to the Night-Mare. I bet you’re not half as tough as the illuminator they’re keeping in reserve for it.’
Jacopo kicked the man’s knee as hard as he could, and escaped before the other guard could grab hold of him.
The passages down which he stumbled were so dark that he saw a thousand monsters in the shadows. It had been better when there was fire burning on all the walls, much better. Where was he to go? Back to the room where they’d locked him in with his mother? No, there were beetles there that crawled into your nose and ears. Orpheus had sent them. He’d told the boy so himself, laughing. Jacopo had changed his clothes three times already to get rid of the beetles, but he could still feel them everywhere.
Perhaps he ought to go to the cage where Brianna was? No, the Night-Mare was outside it. Jacopo crouched on the stone floor and buried his face in his hands. He wished them all to hell, Orpheus and the Piper and his grandfather. He wanted to be like the Bluejay and the Black Prince – and then he’d kill them all. Every last one of them. That’d soon stop them laughing. And then he’d sit on the throne of Ombra and attack the Castle of Night, just like his father. But he would conquer it and take all its silver to Ombra, and the strolling players would sing songs about him, and he’d make them put on a show at the castle every day, just for him, and the Fire-Dancer would write his name in the sky, and his mother would curtsey to him, and he’d marry a girl as beautiful as Brianna …
He saw it all so clearly in his mind’s eye as he sat there, in the darkness that protected his grandfather’s eyes. He saw it as clearly as the pictures that Balbulus had painted for him.
There would be a book about him. Jacopo. A book as magnificent as the one about the Bluejay. Not empty and mouldy like …
Jacopo raised his head
… the White Book.
Yes. Why not? That’d certainly make them laugh on the other side of their faces!
Jacopo stood up. It would be easy. He must just make sure his grandfather didn’t notice that it was gone at once. He’d better leave another book in its place. But which?
He rested his hands on his trembling knees.
Orpheus had had his books taken away, and his mother’s were all gone too. But there were other books in this castle, sick books, as sick as his grandfather’s. They were in the room where the Bluejay had been caught.
It was a long way there, and Jacopo got lost a couple of times, but finally the smell of decay guided him – the same smell that surrounded his grandfather – and so did the sooty trail, barely visible in the light of his torch, laid by the Fire-Dancer to give the Bluejay away. Why had he done it? For silver, like Sootbird? What would he buy with the silver? A castle? A woman? A horse?
‘Trust your friends even less than your enemies, Jacopo.’ That was what his grandfather had taught him. ‘There are no such things as friends. Not for a prince.’ At one time his grandfather often used to talk to him, but that was long ago. He has a son now, Jacopo.
He chose a book that wasn’t too big – the White Book was not very big either – and put it under his tunic.
There were two guards outside his grandfather’s bedchamber. So he was back from seeing the Bluejay? Perhaps he’d killed him already? No, the new Book couldn’t be finished yet. Such things took a long time, Balbulus had told him so. But when it was finished his grandfather was going to make the Bluejay scream, and either marry off his mother to Four-Eyes or leave her in that cell until she broke into tiny little pieces. And they would take Jacopo to the Castle of Night with them.
Jacopo straightened his clothes and wiped the tears from his eyes. He hadn’t even noticed them. They blurred everything, the guards and the light of their torches. Stupid. Crying was stupid.
‘I want to see my grandfather!’
How they grinned at each other! The Bluejay would kill them all. Every man of them.
‘He’s asleep. Get out.’
‘He can’t sleep, you idiot!’ Jacopo’s shrill voice rose. Only a few months ago he would have stamped his foot, but he’d learnt that that didn’t work particularly well. ‘Thumbling sent me. I’m to take him his sleeping medicine.’
The guards exchanged uncertain glances. Luckily he was cleverer than any of them. Much cleverer.
‘Very well, in you go!’ growled one of them. ‘But mind you don’t start carrying on about your mother to him, because if you do I’ll chuck you into that cell with my own hands, understand?’
You’re a dead man, thought Jacopo as he walked past the guard. Dead. Dead. Dead. Don’t you know that yet? Oh, how good this felt!
‘What do you want?’ His grandfather was sitting on the bed with two servants beside him, wiping the fairy blood off his legs. His eyelids were heavy from the poppy-juice he took when he wanted to sleep. And why shouldn’t he sleep now? The Bluejay was caught, and was binding Death in another book for him.
‘What are you going to do to the Bluejay when he’s finished?’ Jacopo knew exactly what kinds of stories his grandfather liked to tell.
The Adderhead laughed and impatiently waved the servants away. Bowing and scraping, they made their way to the door.
‘Maybe you do take after me, even if you look like your father.’ The Adderhead let himself drop on his side, groaning. ‘What would you do to him first?’ His tongue was already as heavy as his eyelids.
‘I don’t know. Pull out his fingernails?’
Jacopo went over to the bed. There it was, the cushion that the Adderhead always had with
him. To prop up his sick flesh, they said. But Jacopo knew better. He’d often seen his grandfather put his hand under the heavy fabric to feel the leather binding with his fingers. Once he had even caught a glimpse of the blood-soaked covers. No one paid any attention to what a child saw. Not even the Adderhead, who trusted no one but himself.
‘His fingernails? Hm. Painful, yes. I hope my son will get ideas like that once he’s your age. Although why does a man need a son when he’s immortal? I ask myself that question more and more frequently. Why does a man need a wife? Or daughters …’
The last words were barely audible. The Adderhead opened his mouth, and a snore came out. The lizard-like eyelids closed, and his left hand clutched the cushion in which his death was hidden. But Jacopo had small, slender hands, not at all like his grandfather’s. Very carefully, he undid the ribbons tying the fabric, put his fingers inside the cushion and took out the Book, the White Book – although it really should be called the Red Book now. His grandfather turned his head, and his breath rattled in his sleep. Jacopo reached under his tunic for the volume he had taken from the Lost Library, and exchanged it for its red twin.
‘My grandfather’s asleep,’ he told the guards when he came out of the room. ‘And you’d better not wake him or he’ll pull your fingernails out.’
73
The Night-Mare