Inkspell (57 page)

– Margaret Atwood, “Down,”
Eating Fire

Mina was crying again. Resa took the other woman in her arms as if she were still a child, hummed a tune, and rocked her as she sometimes rocked Meggie, although by now her daughter was almost as tall as Resa herself.

A girl came twice a day, a thin, nervous little thing, younger than Meggie, to bring them bread and water. Sometimes there was porridge, too, cold and sticky, but it filled the stomach and reminded Resa of the days when Mortola had locked her up for something she had or hadn’t done. The porridge had tasted just like this. When she asked the girl about the Bluejay, the child just ducked her head in fright and left Resa in fear – the fear that Mo was dead by now, that they had hanged him, up there in the huge courtyard, and the last thing he had seen in this world was not her face but the silver vipers’ heads with their tongues licking down from the walls.

Sometimes she saw it all so clearly in her mind’s eye that she put her hands over her eyes, but the pictures were still there. And the darkness around her made her think it could all have been a dream: that moment at Capricorn’s festivities when she had suddenly seen Mo standing beside Meggie, the year in Elinor’s house, all that happiness –just a dream.

At least she was not alone. Even if the glances of the others were often hostile, their voices brought her out of her dark thoughts for a brief while. Now and then someone told a story, to keep them from hearing the weeping from the other cells, the scurrying of rats, the screams, the stammering voices that had long since ceased to make sense. Usually, it was the women who told stories. Stories of love and death, betrayal and friendship, but they all ended happily, lights in the darkness, like the candles in Resa’s pocket with wicks that had now become damp. Resa
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told fairy tales that Mo had read aloud to her long, long ago, when Meggie’s fingers were still soft and tiny, and the written word held no terrors for any of them yet. As for the strolling players, they told tales of the world around them: of Cosimo the Fair and his battle with the fire-raisers, of the Black Prince and how he found his bear, and his friend the fire-dancer, the man who made sparks rain down and fiery flowers blossom in the darkest night. Benedicta sang a song about him in a soft voice, a beautiful song, and in the end even Twofingers joined in, until the warder banged his stick against the bars and told them to keep quiet.

“I saw him once,” whispered Benedicta when the warder had gone away again. “Many years ago, when I was a little girl. It was wonderful. The fire was so bright that even my eyes could see it.

They say he’s dead.”

“No, he isn’t,” said Resa quietly. “Who do you think made the tree across the road burn?” They looked at her so incredulously! But she was too tired to tell them any more. She was too tired to explain anything. Let me go to my husband, that was all she wanted to say. Let me go to my child.

Don’t tell me any more stories; tell me how they are. Please.

Someone did at last give her news of Meggie and Mo, but Resa would rather have heard it from any other mouth.

The others were asleep when Mortola came. She had two soldiers with her. Resa was awake, because she was seeing those pictures again, pictures of Mo being brought into the courtyard, having the rope put around his neck . .
He’s dead, and she has come to tell me!
That was her first thought when the Magpie stood before her with a triumphant smile.

“Well, well, here’s our faithless maid!” said Mortola as Resa got to her feet with difficulty. “You seem to be as much of a witch as your daughter. How have you kept him alive? Perhaps I took aim a little too hastily. Never mind. A few more weeks and he’ll be strong enough for his execution!”

Alive.

Resa turned her head away so that Mortola wouldn’t see the smile that stole over her lips, but the Magpie was not looking at her face. She was enjoying the sight of her torn dress and bleeding, bare feet.

“The Bluejay!” Mortola lowered her voice. “Of course, I haven’t told the Adderhead that he’s going to execute the wrong man – why should I? It’s all working out just as I wanted. And I shall get my hands on your daughter, too.”

Meggie. The sense of happiness that had briefly warmed Resa’s heart disappeared as suddenly as it had come. Beside her, Mina sat up, woken by Mortola’s hoarse voice.

“Oh yes, I have powerful friends in this world,” continued the Magpie, with a self-satisfied smile.

“The Adderhead has caught me your husband, why wouldn’t he catch me your witch of a daughter, too? Do you know how I’ve convinced him that she’s a witch? By showing him a photograph of her. Yes, Resa, I let Basta take the photos of your little darling with him, all those pretty silver-framed photographs standing around the bookworm woman’s house. Of course the Adderhead thinks they’re magic pictures, mirror images captured on paper. His soldiers are afraid to touch them, but they’re showing them around all over the place. A pity we can’t duplicate them as we could in your world! But fortunately your daughter has joined forces with
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Dustfinger, and there’s no need for any magic picture of him. Every peasant has heard of him –

him and his scars.”

“He’ll protect her!” said Resa. She had to say something.

“Oh yes? The way he protected
you
?”

Resa dug her fingers into the fabric of her dirty dress. There was no one, in either this or the other world, whom she hated as much as the Magpie. Not even Basta. It was Mortola who had taught her how to hate. “Everything is different here,” she managed to say. “Fire obeys him here, and he’s not alone as he was in the other world. He has friends.”

“Friends! Ah, I suppose you mean the other mountebanks: the Black Prince, as he calls himself, and the rest of that rabble!” Contemptuously, the Magpie scanned the other prisoners. They had almost all woken up. “Look at them, Resa!” said Mortola spitefully. “How are they going to help you out of here? With a few brightly colored balls or a couple of sentimental songs? One of them gave you away, did you know that? And as for Dustfinger, what could he do? Unleash fire to save you? It would burn you, too, and he certainly won’t risk that, besotted with you as he always was.” She leaned forward with a smile. “Did you ever tell your husband what good friends you two were?”

Resa did not reply. She knew Mortola’s games. She knew them very well.

“What do you think? Shall I tell him?” Mortola whispered, ready to pounce, like a cat waiting by a mouse hole.

“Do that,” Resa whispered back. “Tell him. You can’t tell him anything he doesn’t know already.

I’ve given him back the years you stole from us, word for word, day after day. And Mo knows, too, that your own son made you live in his cellar and let everyone think you were only his housekeeper.”

Mortola tried to hit her in the face, as she had so often done before, as she had done to all her maids – right in the middle of the face – but Resa caught her hand before it landed.

“He’s alive, Mortola!” she whispered to the Magpie. “This story isn’t over yet, and his death isn’t written anywhere in it but my daughter will whisper yours in your ear when she hears what you did to her father. You’ll see one day. And then I shall watch you die.”

This time she didn’t manage to catch Mortola’s hand, and her cheek was still burning long after the Magpie had gone away. She felt the eyes of the other prisoners like fingers feeling her face when she was sitting on the cold ground again. Mina was the first to say something. “Where did you meet the old woman? She mixed poisons for Capricorn.”

“I know,” said Resa tonelessly. “I belonged to her. For many long years.”

Chapter 55 – A Letter from Fenoglio

Where I rule absolutely on fate?

A time I bind with chains of signs?

An existence become endless at my bidding?

– Wislawa Szymborska, “The Joy of Writing”,
View with a Grain of Sand

Dustfinger was asleep when Roxane arrived. It was already growing dark outside. Farid and Meggie had gone out to the beach, but he was lying down because his leg was hurting. When he saw Roxane standing in the doorway he thought at first his imagination was playing tricks on him, as it so often did by night. After all, he had once been here with her, very long ago. The room they had then had looked almost the same, and he had been lying on a straw mattress just like this, his face slashed and sticky with his own blood.

Roxane was wearing her hair loose. Perhaps that was why she woke the memory of that other night. His heart always seemed to miss a beat at the mere thought of it. He had been mad with pain and fear, had crawled away like a wounded animal, until Roxane found him and brought him here. At first the Barn Owl had hardly recognized him. He had given him something to drink that made him sleep, and when he woke again Roxane had been standing in the doorway, just as she was standing now. When the cuts would not heal, for all the physician’s skill, she had gone into the forest with him, deeper and deeper into the forest to find the fairies – and she had stayed with him until his face was healed well enough for him to venture among other people again. There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.

But what was his greeting when she suddenly appeared? “What are you doing here?” he asked.

Then he could have bitten off his tongue. Why didn’t he say how much he had missed her, so much that he had almost turned back a dozen times?

“Yes, indeed, what am I doing here?” Roxane asked back. Once she would have turned her back on him for such a question, but now she just smiled, so mockingly that he felt as awkward as a boy.

“Where have you left Jehan?”

“With a friend.” She kissed him. “What’s the matter with your leg? Fenoglio told me you were wounded.”

“It’s getting better. What do you have to do with Fenoglio?”

“You don’t like him. Why not?” Roxane stroked his face. How beautiful she looked. So very beautiful.

“Let’s just say he had plans for me that I didn’t care for in the least. Has the old man by any chance given you something for Meggie? A letter, for instance?”

Without a word, she brought it out from under her cloak. There the words were – words that wanted to come true. Roxane offered him the sealed parchment, but Dustfinger shook his head.

“You’d better give that to Meggie,” he said. “She’s down on the beach.”

Roxane glanced at him in surprise. “You look almost as if you were afraid of a piece of parchment.”

“Yes,” said Dustfinger, reaching for her hand. “Yes, I am. Particularly when Fenoglio’s been writing on it. Come on, let’s go and look for Meggie.”

Meggie smiled awkwardly at Roxane when she gave her the parchment and for a moment looked curiously from her to Dustfinger, but then she had eyes only for Fenoglio’s letter. She broke the seal so hastily that she almost tore the parchment. There were three closely written sheets. The first was a letter to her. When she had read it Meggie put it away under her belt, paying it no further attention. The words she had been so eagerly waiting for filled the other two sheets.

Meggie’s eyes traveled over the lines so fast that Dustfinger could hardly believe she was really reading them. Finally, she raised her head, looked up at the Castle of Night – and smiled.

“Well, what does the old devil say?” asked Dustfinger.

Meggie offered him the two sheets. “It’s different from what I expected. Quite different, but it’s good. Here, read it for yourself.”

Gingerly, he took the parchment in his fingertips, as if he might burn himself on it more easily than on a flame. “When did you learn to read?” Roxane’s voice sounded so surprised that he had to smile.

“Meggie’s mother taught me.” Fool; why was he telling her that? Roxane gave Meggie a long look as he labored to decipher Fenoglio’s handwriting. Resa had usually written in capital letters, to make it easier for him.

“It could work, couldn’t it?” Meggie was looking over his shoulder.

The sea roared as if to agree with her. Yes, perhaps it really would work. . Dustfinger followed the written words like a dangerous path. But it was a path, and it led right into the middle of the Adderhead’s heart. However, Dustfinger didn’t like the part the old man intended Meggie to play. After all, her mother had asked him to take care of her.

Farid looked unhappily at the letters. He still couldn’t read. Sometimes Dustfinger felt that he suspected those tiny black signs of witchcraft. What else would he think of them, indeed, after all his experiences? “Come on!” Farid shifted impatiently from foot to foot. “What’s he written?”

“Meggie will have to go to the castle. Straight into the Adder’s nest.”

“What?” Horrified, the boy looked first at him and then at the girl. “But that’s impossible!” He took Meggie by the shoulders and turned her roughly around to face him. “You can’t go there. It’s much too dangerous!”

Poor boy. Of course she would go. “That’s the way Fenoglio has written it,” she said, removing Farid’s hands from her shoulders.

“Leave her alone,” said Dustfinger, giving Meggie the sheets of parchment back. “When are you going to read it aloud?”

“Now.”

Of course. She didn’t want to lose any time, and why should she? The sooner the story took a
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new turn, the better. It could hardly get worse. Or could it?

“What’s all this about?” Roxane looked from one to another of them, baffled. She scrutinized Farid without much friendliness; she still didn’t like him. Dustfinger thought that wouldn’t change until something convinced her that Farid was not his son. “Explain!” she said. “Fenoglio said this letter could save her parents. But what can a letter do for someone in a dungeon in the Castle of Night?”

Dustfinger stroked her hair back. He liked to see her wearing it loose again. “Listen,” he said. “I know it’s difficult to believe, but if anything can open the dungeon doors in the Castle of Night, it’s this letter – and Meggie’s voice. She can make ink live and breathe, Roxane, just as you can bring a song to life. Her father has the same gift. If the Adder head knew that, then I imagine he’d have hanged him long ago. The words that Meggie’s father used to kill Capricorn looked just as harmless as these.”