Inkspell (50 page)

Roxane. She wanted Roxane to come here.

“Why do you want to talk to her mother and not Brianna herself? She’s not a little girl anymore.”

“I tried! She won’t listen. She just looks at me in silence, murmurs excuses – and goes back to him. No, I have to speak to her mother.”

Fenoglio said nothing. From all he knew of Roxane, he wasn’t sure that she would come. After all, he himself had given her a proud nature and a dislike of royal blood. On the other hand hadn’t he promised Meggie to keep an eye on Dustfinger’s daughter? If he couldn’t keep any other promise, because his words had failed him so pitifully, perhaps he should at least try with this one. .
Heavens
, he thought.
I wouldn’t like to be anywhere near Dustfinger when he hears that his
daughter is spending her nights with Cosimo!

“Very well, I’ll send Roxane a messenger,” he said. “But don’t expect too much. I’ve heard that she isn’t particularly happy to have her daughter living at court.”

“I know!” Violante rose and glanced at the paper waiting on his desk. “Are you writing a new story? Is it about the Bluejay? You must show it to me first!” For a moment she was very much the Adderhead’s daughter.

“Of course, of course,” Fenoglio hastily assured her. “You’ll get it before even the strolling players. And I’ll write it the way you like a story best: dark, hopeless, sinister…” Cruel, too, he added silently. For Her Ugliness loved stories full of darkness. She didn’t want to be told tales of
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good fortune and beauty, she liked to hear about death, ugly things, secrets heavy with tears. She wanted her very own world, and it had never heard of beauty and good fortune.

She was still gazing at him, with the same arrogant look that her father turned on the world.

Fenoglio remembered the words he had once written about her kindred:
Noble blood –for
centuries the Adderhead’s kin firmly believed that the blood flowing in their veins made them
bolder, cleverer, stronger than all who were their subjects.
The same look in their eyes for hundreds and hundreds of years, even in those of Her Ugliness, whom her noble family would happily have drowned at birth in the castle moat, like a puppy born deformed.

“The servants say Brianna’s mother can sing even better than she does. They say her mother knew how to make stones weep and roses blossom with her voice.” Violante patted her face, just where the birthmark had been such a fiery red only a short time ago.

“Yes, I’ve heard much the same.” Fenoglio followed her to the door.

“They even say she sang in my father’s castle, but I don’t believe that. My father never let any strolling players though his gate. The nearest they came was to be hanged outside it.”
Yes,
because there was once a rumor that your mother betrayed him with a minstrel
, thought Fenoglio as he opened the door for her.

“Brianna says her mother doesn’t sing anymore because she believes her voice brings great misfortune to everyone she loves. It seems that happened to Brianna’s father.”

“I’ve heard that story, too.”

Violante went out into the corridor. Even at close quarters her birthmark was barely visible now. “You’ll send the messenger to her tomorrow morning?”

“If that’s what you want.”

She looked down the dark corridor. “Brianna will never talk about her father. One of the cooks says he was a fire-eater. The way that cook tells the story, Brianna’s mother was deeply in love with him, but then one of the fire-raisers fell in love with her himself and slashed the fire-eater’s face.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that one as well!” Fenoglio looked at her thoughtfully. Dustfinger’s bittersweet story was certainly very much to Violante’s taste.

“She took him to a physician, the cook says, and stayed with him until his face was healed.” How far away her voice sounded, as if she had lost herself among the words. Fenoglio’s words. “But he left her all the same.” Violante turned her face away. “Write that letter!” she said abruptly.

“Write it tonight.” Then she hurried away in her black dress, in such haste that it looked as if she were suddenly ashamed of coming to see him.

“Rosenquartz,” said Fenoglio, closing the door behind her. “Do you think I’m only any good at making up characters who are sad or bad?”

But the glass man was still asleep beside the quill, from which ink dripped onto the empty sheet of parchment.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her
head.

– William Shakespeare, Sonnets, No. 130

Fenoglio waited for Roxane in a room in the castle where petitioners were usually received, ordinary folk who came here to tell Cosimo’s administrators their troubles while a scribe recorded their words on paper (parchment being far too valuable for such purposes). Then they were sent away hoping that their prince would put his mind to their concerns sometime. But under the Laughing Prince that had not been very often, except at Violante’s persuasion, so his subjects had usually settled their quarrels among themselves, with or without violence, depending on their temperament and their influence in the community. It was hoped that Cosimo would change all that soon. .

“What am I doing here?” murmured Fenoglio, looking around the high-ceilinged, narrow room.

He had still been in bed (in much more comfort than at Minerva’s house) when Her Ugliness’s messenger had appeared. Violante sent her apologies, said the man, and since he was better with words than anyone else she knew, she asked him to talk to Roxane on her behalf. That was how the powerful acted – offloading the less pleasant tasks in life onto other people. But on the other hand .. he had always hoped to meet Dustfinger’s wife someday. Was she really as beautiful as his description of her?

With a sigh, he dropped into the armchair generally used by one of Cosimo’s administrators.

Since Cosimo’s return, so many petitioners had flocked to the castle that in the future they were going to be allowed to come and put their cases on only two days of the week. Their prince had weightier matters on his mind just now than the troubles of a farmer whose neighbor had stolen his pig, a cobbler who had bought poor quality leather from a dealer, or a seamstress whose husband beat her every night when he came home drunk. Of course, there was a judge in every town of any size to settle such quarrels, but most of them had a poor reputation. Folk said, on both sides of the Wayless Wood, that you’d get your rights only if you filled the judges’ pockets with gold. So those who had no gold went up to the castle to appeal to their angel-faced prince, without realizing that he had more than enough to do preparing for his war.

When Roxane entered the room she had two children with her: a girl of about five and an older boy, probably Brianna’s brother, Jehan – the lad who had the dubious honor of playing with Jacopo now and then. She frowned as she scrutinized the tapestries on the walls celebrating the Laughing Prince’s exploits in his youth. Unicorns, dragons, White Stags .. Clearly nothing had been safe from his royal spear.

“Why don’t we just go into the garden?” suggested Fenoglio, noticing her expression of disapproval and quickly rising from the princely chair. If anything, she was even more beautiful than his description of her. But after all, he had sought the most wonderful of words for her when he wrote the scene in Inkheart where Dustfinger saw her for the first time. Yet all at once, now that she so suddenly stood before him in the flesh, he felt as lovelorn as a silly boy.
Oh, for
goodness’ sake, Fenoglio!
he reproached himself.
You made her up, and now you’re staring at her
as if this was the first time in your life you’d ever seen a woman!
Worst of all, Roxane seemed to
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notice it.

“Yes, let’s go into the garden! I’ve heard a great deal about it, but I’ve never seen it,” she said with a smile that cast Fenoglio into total confusion. “But first, please tell me why you want to speak to me. Your letter said only that it was about Brianna.”

Why he wanted to speak to her? Huh! He cursed Violante’s jealousy, Cosimo’s faithless heart, and himself, too. “Let’s go into the garden first,” he said. Perhaps it would be easier to tell her what Her Ugliness had instructed him to say in the open air. But of course it was not.

The boy set off in search of Jacopo as soon as they were outside, but the girl stayed with Roxane, clinging to her hand as she went from plant to plant – and Fenoglio found he couldn’t utter a word.

“I know why I was summoned,” said Roxane, just as he was trying for the tenth time to find the right words. “Brianna didn’t tell me herself, she’d never do that. But the maid who takes Cosimo his breakfast every morning often comes to me for advice about her sick mother, and she’s told me that Brianna seldom leaves his room. Not even at night.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s it .. Violante is concerned. And she hopes that you .. ” Oh, damn it, how his voice was faltering! He didn’t know how to go on. This wretched confusion. His story clearly had too many characters in it. How was he to foresee everything they’d think of? It was downright impossible, particularly when a young girl’s heart was involved. No one could expect him to understand anything about that.

Roxane scrutinized his face as if she were still waiting for the end of his sentence.
You stupid old
fool, surely you’re not going to blush
, Fenoglio thought – and felt the blood shoot into his wrinkled face as if to drive age out of it.

“The boy has told me about you,” said Roxane. “Farid. He’s in love with the girl who’s staying with you – Meggie, isn’t that right? When he speaks her name he looks as if he had a pearl in his mouth.”

“Yes, I’m beginning to think that Meggie likes him, too.”

What exactly
, wondered Fenoglio uneasily,
has the boy been saying about me? Telling her I made
her up, and the man she loves, too – only to kill him off again?

The little girl was still clutching Roxane’s hand. With a smile, she put a flower in the child’s long, dark hair.
You know something, Fenoglio?
he thought.
All this is nonsense! What makes you think
you invented her? She must always have been here, long before you wrote your story. A woman like
her can’t possibly be made of nothing but words! You’ve been wrong all this time! They were here
already, all of them: Dustfinger and Capricorn, Basta and Roxane, Minerva, Violante, the
Adderhead . . you merely wrote their story, but they didn’t like it, and now they’re writing it for
themselves.

The little girl felt the flower with her fingers and smiled.

“Is she Dustfinger’s daughter?” asked Fenoglio.

Roxane looked at him in surprise. “No,” she said. “Our second daughter died long ago. But how do you come to know Dustfinger? He’s never mentioned you to me.” You fool, Fenoglio, you
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stupid fool.

“Oh, I certainly know Dustfinger!” he stammered. “In fact, I know him very well. I often visit the strolling players, you see, when they pitch their tents here outside the city wall. That’s where –

er – where I met him.”

“Really?” Roxane ran her fingers over a plant with feathery leaves. “I didn’t know he’d been back there already.” Her face thoughtful, she moved on to another flower bed. “Wild mallow. I grow it in my own fields. Isn’t it beautiful? So useful, too. . ” She did not look at Fenoglio as she went on.

“Dustfinger has gone. Yet again. All I had was a message to say he’s following men of the Adderhead’s troops who have kidnapped some of the strolling players. Her mother,” she added, putting her arm around the girl, “is one of them. And the Black Prince, a good friend of his.”

They’d captured the Prince, too? Fenoglio tried to hide his alarm. Obviously, matters were even worse than he’d thought and what he was writing down on parchment was still no use.

Roxane felt the seed heads of a lavender bush. Their sweet scent immediately filled the air. “I’m told that you were there when CloudDancer was killed. Did you know his murderer? I heard that it was Basta, one of the fire-raisers from the forest.”

“I’m afraid what you heard was right.” Not a night passed when Fenoglio did not see Basta’s knife flying through the air. It pursued him into all his dreams.

“The boy told Dustfinger that Basta was back. But I hoped he wasn’t telling the truth. I’m anxious” – she spoke so softly that Fenoglio could hardly make out her words – “so anxious that I keep finding myself just standing and staring at the forest, as if he might appear among the trees again at any moment, the way he did on the morning he came back.” She picked a dried lavender head and shook some of the tiny seeds into her hand. “May I take these with me?”

“You can take anything you want,” replied Fenoglio. “Seeds, runners, cuttings, so Violante told me to tell you – anything, if you’ll persuade your daughter to keep Violante herself company in the future and not her husband.”

Roxane looked at the seeds in her hand and then let a few of them fall lightly to the flower bed.

“It won’t work. My daughter hasn’t listened to me for years. She loves the life up here, although she knows that I don’t, and she’s loved Cosimo ever since she first saw him ride out of the castle gate on his wedding day. She was barely seven then, and after that her heart was set on coming here to the castle, even if it meant working as a maid. If Violante hadn’t once heard her singing down in the kitchen she’d probably still be emptying chamber pots, feeding kitchen scraps to the pigs, and sometimes stealing upstairs in secret to feast her eyes on the statues of Cosimo.

Instead, she became like Violante’s little sister . . wore her clothes, looked after her son, sang and danced for her like one of the strolling players, like her own mother. Not with Motley skirts and dirty feet, not sleeping by the roadside and carrying a knife to defend herself against vagrants trying to creep in under her blanket by night, but in silken clothes and with a soft bed to sleep in.