this?’ she asked.
Silvertongue smiled. ‘Meggie and I have often sent secret messages in this writing – she’s much better at it than I am. Don’t you recognise it? It comes from a book. We’re not far away, it says. Don’t worry. We’ll soon get you out. Mo, Elinor and Farid. Meggie will be able to read the message, but no one else will.’
‘Aha!’ murmured Elinor, giving Farid the note back. ‘Yes, if it falls into the wrong hands it’s better that way. After all, perhaps some of those fire-raisers can read.’
Farid folded the note until it was about the size of a coin, then put it in his trouser pocket. ‘I’ll be back when the sun is above those hills at the latest,’ he said. ‘Or if I’m not—’
‘If you’re not, I’ll come and look for you,’ Silvertongue ended the sentence.
‘And so will I, of course,’ added Elinor, looking fierce.
Farid did not think that was a good idea, but he didn’t say so. He left, going the same way that Dustfinger had gone the night before, disappearing as if the ghosts who lurked in the darkness had eaten him alive.
42
A Furry Face on the Windowsill
It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
Lewis Carroll,
Through the Looking Glass
Flatnose brought Meggie and Fenoglio their breakfast, and this morning it was more than bread and a few olives. He put a basket of fruit on the table for them, and a plate of small, sweet cakes. But Meggie didn’t at all like the smile he served up at the same time.
‘All for you, princess!’ he grunted, pinching her cheek with his clumsy fingers. ‘To strengthen your little voice. There’s been a lot of excitement since Basta told us about the execution. Well, like I always said, there has to be more to life than hanging up a few dead roosters and shooting cats.’
Meggie exchanged a glance with Fenoglio. The old man was staring at Flatnose with an expression of disgust which suggested that he couldn’t believe such a creature had slipped from his pen.
‘Yes, to be sure, it’s a terribly long time since we had a nice execution!’ continued Flatnose, on his way back to the door. ‘It’d attract too much attention, they always said. And when someone really had to disappear – well, the word was to go carefully! Make it look like an accident. Is that any fun? You bet it isn’t. Not like it used to be, a good execution with eating and drinking and dancing and music, that’s the way to do it in style! And so we will this time – just like we did back in the good old days!’
Fenoglio took a sip of the black coffee that Flatnose had brought him, and choked.
‘Don’t you fancy that kind of thing, grandpa?’ Flatnose looked at him sneeringly. ‘Take my word for it, Capricorn’s executions are something to remember!’
‘Who do you think you’re telling?’ muttered Fenoglio unhappily.
At that moment someone knocked on the door. Flatnose had left it ajar, and Darius the reader put his head round it.
‘Sorry!’ he breathed, looking at Flatnose as anxiously as a bird obliged to get close to a hungry cat. ‘I – er – I’m to get the girl to read something aloud. Capricorn’s orders.’
‘Really? Well, let’s just hope she reads something useful out of a book this time. Basta showed me the fairy. She doesn’t even sprinkle any fairy dust, however hard you shake her.’ Flatnose looked at Meggie with a mixture of dislike and respect. Perhaps he thought she was some kind of a witch. ‘Knock when you want to come out again,’ he grunted, pushing past Darius.
Darius nodded and stood there for a moment before sitting down at the table with Meggie and Fenoglio, looking embarrassed. He stared greedily at the fruit until Fenoglio pushed the basket over to him. Tentatively, he took an apricot, and put it into his mouth as if he thought he would never in his life taste anything so delicious again.
‘Good heavens, it’s only an apricot!’ laughed Fenoglio. ‘Not exactly a rare fruit in these latitudes.’
Darius spat the apricot stone out into his hand, still looking awkward. ‘Whenever they shut me up in this room,’ he said timidly, ‘they gave me nothing but dry bread. And they took my books away too, but I managed to hide some of them, and when the hunger got too bad I looked at the pictures in them. The best was a picture of apricots. I sometimes sat for hours staring at the painted fruit with my mouth watering. Ever since then I just can’t control myself when I see apricots.’
Meggie took another apricot from the basket and put it into his hand. ‘Did they often shut you up?’ she asked.
The thin little man shrugged. ‘Yes, whenever I didn’t read something out of a book properly,’ he replied evasively. ‘Well, that meant all the time, really. Then they finally gave up because they realised that my reading didn’t exactly improve when they frightened me. On the contrary. Take Flatnose, for instance.’ He lowered his voice, casting a nervous glance at the door. ‘I read Flatnose out while Basta was standing beside me with his knife. Well …’ He raised his narrow shoulders regretfully.
Meggie looked at him sympathetically. Then she asked, hesitantly, ‘Did you ever read any women out of that story?’ Fenoglio looked at her uneasily.
‘Certainly,’ Darius replied. ‘I read Mortola out of the book! She says I made her older, and rickety as a chair cobbled together badly, but I really don’t think I got too much wrong with her. Luckily Capricorn agreed.’
‘Any younger women?’ Meggie was looking at neither Darius nor Fenoglio.
‘Oh yes,’ Darius sighed. ‘On the same day as I read Mortola out. I remember it very well. Capricorn was living up in the north then, at a lonely, half-ruined farm in the mountains, and there weren’t many local girls around. I myself was living not far away, in my sister’s house. I worked as a teacher, but in my free time I read aloud now and then in libraries and schools, or for children’s parties, and sometimes on warm summer evenings, I even read in a square or café. I loved reading aloud.’
His gaze wandered to the window, as if he could catch a glimpse there of those long-forgotten, happier days. ‘I think Basta noticed me when I was reading aloud at a party in the village – a passage from Dr Dolittle – and all of a sudden there was a bird flying around. I really didn’t know I had the gift – perhaps it was something to do with Basta being there. Anyway, when I went home Basta caught me as if I were a stray dog and took me to Capricorn. First he made me read gold out of books, like your father did,’ he said, smiling sadly at Meggie, ‘but then I had to read Mortola out for him, and after that he told me to read his maidservants out too. It was terrible.’ Darius pushed his glasses up on his nose with trembling fingers. ‘I was so scared. How can you read aloud well when you’re terrified? He made me try three times. Oh, I felt so sorry for them, I don’t want to talk about it!’ He buried his face in his hands, which were bony as an old man’s. Meggie thought she heard him sob, and for a moment she hesitated to ask her next question, but then she did.
‘The maid they call Resa,’ she said, her heart beating in her mouth. ‘Was she one of them?’
Darius took his hands away from his face. ‘Yes, she came out quite by chance,’ he said huskily. ‘Capricorn had really wanted another of them, but suddenly there was Resa, and at first I thought I’d got it right for once. She looked so beautiful, almost improbably beautiful with her golden hair and her sad eyes. But then we realised she couldn’t speak. Well, that didn’t bother Capricorn, in fact I think he liked it.’ He searched his trouser pocket and brought out a crumpled handkerchief. ‘I really could read better once,’ he said, sniffing. ‘But this constant fear … May I?’ With a sad smile he took another apricot and bit into it. Then he wiped the juice from his mouth with his sleeve, cleared his throat, and gazed straight at Meggie. His eyes looked curiously large behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
‘At the – er – festivities that Capricorn’s planning,’ he said, lowering his gaze and running his finger awkwardly along the edge of the table, ‘the idea, as you probably know, is for you to read from Inkheart. The book’s being kept in a secret place until that time comes. Only Capricorn knows where it is. So you won’t see it before the – er – occasion. Which means that we’re to use another book for the latest test Capricorn wants of your talents. Luckily, there are a few other books in this village, not many, but anyway I’ve been told to choose something suitable.’ He raised his head again and gave a small, slight smile. ‘Fortunately I didn’t have to look for gold and such treasures this time. All Capricorn wants is proof of your skill, and so,’ he said, pushing a small book over the table, ‘so I chose this one.’
Meggie bent over the cover. ‘Collected Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen,’ she read aloud. She looked at Darius. ‘They’re beautiful stories.’
‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘Sad, but very, very beautiful.’ Reaching over the table, he opened the book for Meggie at a place which he had marked with a couple of long blades of grass slipped between the yellowed pages. ‘First I thought of my favourite story, the one about the nightingale. Maybe you know it?’ Meggie nodded.
‘But the fairy you read out of the book yesterday isn’t happy in the jug where Basta has put her,’ Darius went on, ‘so I thought it might be better if you tried the tin soldier.’
The tin soldier. Meggie did not reply at once. The brave tin soldier in his little paper boat … she imagined him suddenly appearing beside the fruit basket. ‘No!’ she said. ‘No. I’ve told Capricorn already, I won’t read anything out of a book for him, not even as a test. Tell him I can’t do it any more. Just tell him I tried and nothing came out of the story!’
Darius gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Oh, I would,’ he said quietly. ‘Really I would. But it’s the Magpie—’ he said, quietly putting his hand to his mouth as if he had said too much. ‘Sorry, I mean the housekeeper, of course, Signora Mortola – it’s her you have to read aloud to. I’ve only chosen the story.’
The Magpie. An image of her flashed into Meggie’s mind, watching her with her birdlike eyes. Suppose I bite my tongue, she thought. Very hard. She had done that a few times by mistake, and once her tongue had swelled up so much she had to talk to Mo in sign language for two days. She looked at Fenoglio for help.
‘Do it!’ he said, to her surprise. ‘Read aloud to the old woman, but make it a condition that you can keep the tin soldier. Tell her anything you like – say you want to play with him because you’re bored to death – and then ask for something else: some sheets of paper and a pencil. Say you want to draw pictures, understand? If she agrees we’ll take it from there.’
Meggie didn’t understand a word of this, but before she could ask Fenoglio what he was planning the door opened, and there was the Magpie herself.
Darius leaped to his feet so quickly at the sight of her that he pushed Meggie’s plate off the table. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, so sorry!’ he stammered, picking up the broken pieces in his bony fingers. He cut his thumb so deeply on the last piece that blood dripped to the wooden floorboards.
‘Get up, you fool!’ snapped Mortola. ‘Have you shown her what she’s to read from?’
Darius nodded, and looked unhappily at his bleeding thumb.
‘Then get out. You can help the women in the kitchen. There are chickens to be plucked.’
Darius made a face, looking disgusted, but he bowed and disappeared into the corridor, but not without casting Meggie a last sympathetic glance.
‘Right!’ said the Magpie, waving to her impatiently. ‘Start reading – and put your mind to it.’
Meggie read the tin soldier out of the story. It was as if he simply fell from the ceiling. ‘He dropped down three storeys to the street and his bayonet stuck in the earth between two cobblestones.’ The Magpie reached for him before Meggie could, and stared at him as if he were just a painted toy, while he looked back at her with horror in his eyes. Then she put him in the pocket of her coarse-knit woollen jacket.
‘Please can I have him?’ stammered Meggie, just as the Magpie reached the doorway. Fenoglio placed himself behind her as if to cover her back, but the Magpie just looked at Meggie with her sharp-nosed gaze. ‘I – I mean, there’s nothing you’d want to do with him,’ Meggie went on uncertainly, ‘and I’m so bored. Please.’
The Magpie looked at her, unmoved. ‘You can have him back when Capricorn has seen him,’ she said, and then she was gone.
‘The paper!’ cried Fenoglio. ‘You forgot to ask for paper and pencil!’
‘I’m sorry,’ murmured Meggie. She hadn’t forgotten, it was just that she didn’t dare ask the Magpie for anything else.
‘Ah, well, I’ll just have to get it by other means,’ said Fenoglio. ‘The only question is, how?’
Meggie went over to the window, rested her forehead on the pane and looked down at the garden, where a couple of Capricorn’s maids were busy tying up tomato plants. What would Mo say, she wondered, if he knew I can do it too? ‘Who did you read out, Meggie? Poor Tinker Bell and the Steadfast Tin Soldier?’ … ‘Yes,’ murmured Meggie, tracing an invisible ‘M’ on the pane with her finger. Poor fairy, poor tin soldier, poor Dustfinger and – she thought again of the woman with the dark blonde hair. ‘Resa,’ she whispered. TeResa. Teresa was her mother’s name.
She was about to turn away from the window when out of the corner of her eye she saw something appearing above the sill outside – a small furry face. Meggie retreated in alarm.
Do rats climb walls? Yes, but that wasn’t a rat, the animal’s muzzle wasn’t pointed enough. She quickly ran back to the windowpane.
Gwin.
The marten was sitting on the narrow sill, looking in at her with sleepy eyes.
‘Basta!’ muttered Fenoglio behind her. ‘Yes, Basta will get me the paper. That’s a good idea.’
Meggie opened the window very slowly, so that Gwin wouldn’t take fright and perhaps fall off the sill. Even a marten would break all his bones if he fell into the paved yard from this height. She put out her hand, still very slowly. Her fingers trembled as she stroked Gwin’s back. Then she grabbed him before his little teeth could snap at her, and quickly lifted him into the room. She looked anxiously down, but none of the maids had noticed anything. They were all bending over the vegetable patch, their clothes drenched with perspiration from the heat of the sun burning down on their backs.
There was a note under Gwin’s collar. It was dirty, and had been folded very small and tied in place with a piece of tape.
‘Why are you opening the window? The air outside is even hotter than in here. We—’ Fenoglio broke off and stared in amazement at the animal in Meggie’s arms. She quickly put a warning finger to her lips. Then, holding the struggling Gwin tight, she removed the note from under his collar. The marten chattered crossly and snapped at her fingers again. He didn’t like being held too long, and would even bite Dustfinger if he tried it.
‘What have you got there – a rat?’ Fenoglio came closer. Meggie let go of the marten, and Gwin immediately leaped back to the windowsill.
‘A marten!’ cried the astonished Fenoglio. ‘Where did that come from?’ Meggie looked anxiously at the door, but obviously the guard outside had heard nothing. Fenoglio pressed his hand to his mouth, and looked again at Gwin in such amazement that Meggie almost laughed. ‘He’s got horns!’ he whispered.
‘Of course! That’s the way you wrote him!’ she whispered back.
Gwin was still sitting on the windowsill, blinking uncomfortably at the sun. He didn’t like bright light and preferred to sleep through the day. So how had he got here?
Meggie put her head out of the window, but there were still only the maids down in the yard. Hastily, she moved back into the room and unfolded the note.
‘A message?’ Fenoglio leaned over her shoulder. ‘Is it from your father?’
Meggie nodded. She had recognised the writing at once, although it wasn’t as steady as usual. Her heart began dancing inside her. She traced the letters with her eyes as longingly as if they were a path with Mo waiting for her at the end of it.
‘What on earth does it say? I can’t make out a word of it!’ whispered Fenoglio.
Meggie smiled. ‘It’s elvish writing!’ she whispered. ‘Mo and I have been using it as our secret writing ever since I read The Lord of the Rings, but he’s probably rather out of practice. He’s made quite a lot of mistakes.’
‘Well, what does it say?’
Meggie read it to him.
‘Farid – who’s he?’
‘A boy. Mo read him out of The Thousand and One Nights, but that’s another story. You saw him – when Dustfinger ran away from you Farid was with him.’ Meggie folded the note up again and looked out of the window once more. One of the maids had straightened up. She was brushing the earth off her hands and looking up at the high wall as if she dreamed of flying away over it. Who had brought Gwin here? Mo? Or had the marten found his way by himself? That was most unlikely. He certainly wouldn’t be wandering round in broad daylight unless someone else had a hand in it.
Meggie hid the note in the sleeve of her dress. Gwin was still sitting on the windowsill. Sleepily, he stretched his neck and sniffed at the wall outside. Perhaps he could smell the pigeons who sometimes settled outside the window. ‘Feed him some bread so he won’t run away!’ Meggie whispered to Fenoglio, and then went over to the bed and got her rucksack down. Where was that pencil? She was sure she had a pencil. Yes, there it was, although it was only a small stump. Now, what about paper? She took one of Darius’s books out from under the mattress and carefully tore out one of the endpapers. She had never done such a thing before – fancy tearing a page out of a book! – but now she had to. Kneeling on the floor, she began to write in the same curly script that Mo had used for his message. She knew the letters off by heart: We’re all right and I can do it too, Mo! I read Tinker Bell out of her book, and when it gets dark tomorrow Capricorn wants me to bring the Shadow out of ‘Inkheart’ to come and kill Dustfinger. She didn’t mention Resa. Not a word to show that she thought she had seen her mother, and if Capricorn had his way that she too had only two days to live. A message like that wouldn’t fit on a piece of paper no matter how large it was.
Gwin was greedily nibbling the bread Fenoglio had given him. Meggie folded up the endpaper and tied it to his collar. ‘Take care!’ she whispered to Gwin, and then threw the rest of the bread down into Capricorn’s yard. The marten scurried down the wall of the house as if it was the easiest thing in the world. One of the maids screamed as he scampered between her legs, and called out to the others. She was probably alarmed for Capricorn’s chickens, but Gwin had already disappeared over the wall.
‘Good. Excellent. So your father’s here,’ Fenoglio whispered to Meggie, standing beside her by the open window. ‘Somewhere out there. Very good indeed. And you’ll get the tin soldier back. Who was it said that all’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds?’ He rubbed the tip of his nose and blinked out at the dazzling sunlight. ‘So the next thing to do,’ he murmured, ‘is to play on Basta’s superstitions. What a good thing I gave him that little weakness. It was a clever move.’
Meggie had no idea what he was talking about, but that didn’t matter to her. She had only one thought in her head: Mo was here.