“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.
She wears her hair loose, all the same, just as I did, and she loves too much, exactly as I did. No,”
she said, placing the seeds in Fenoglio’s hand. “Tell Violante that much as I would like to help her, I can’t.”
The little girl looked at Fenoglio. Where was her mother now? “Listen,” he told Roxane. Her beauty took his breath away. “Take as many seeds as you like. They’ll grow and thrive in your fields much better than within these gray walls. Dustfinger has gone off with Meggie. I sent her a messenger. As soon as the man is back you’ll hear everything he has to tell: where they are now, how long they’ll stay away, everything!”
Roxane took the lavender from him again, picked a handful more, and carefully put them in the bag hanging from her belt. “Thank you,” she said. “But if I don’t hear from Dustfinger soon I shall set off in search of him myself. I’ve stayed here too often just waiting for him to come back safe and sound, and I can’t get it out of my mind that Basta is back!”
“But how will you find him? The last news I heard from Meggie was that they were making for a mill known as the Spelt-Mill. It’s on the far side of the forest in Argenta. That’s dangerous country!”
Roxane smiled at him, like a woman explaining the way of the world to her child. “It will soon be dangerous here, too,” she said. “Do you think the Adderhead won’t have heard by now that Cosimo is having swords forged day and night? Perhaps you should look around for some other place to do your writing, before the fiery arrows come raining down on your desk.”
Roxane’s mount was waiting in the Outer Courtyard of the castle. It was an old black horse, thin and going gray around the muzzle. “I know the Spelt-Mill,” she said, lifting the little girl up on the horse’s back. “I’ll ride past it, and if I don’t find them there I’ll try the Barn Owl’s place. He’s the best physician I know on either side of the forest, and he looked after Dustfinger as a boy.
Perhaps he may have heard news of him.”
Of course, the Barn Owl! How could Fenoglio have forgotten him? If Dustfinger ever had anything like a father, it was this man. He had been one of the physicians who went around with the strolling players from place to place, from market to market. Unfortunately, Fenoglio didn’t know much more about him.
Damn it all, he thought, how can you forget your own stories? And don’t try making your age an excuse.
“If you see Jehan, send him home,” said Roxane, as she swung herself up behind the girl on the horse. “He knows the way.”
“Are you planning to ride through the Way less Wood on that old nag?”
“This old nag will still carry me as far as I want,” she said.
The girl leaned back against Roxane’s breast as she gathered up the reins. “Good-bye,” she said, but Fenoglio held the horse back by the bridle. An idea had come to him, an idea born of desperation, but what else could he do? Wait for the mounted messenger he had sent, until it was too late?
“Roxane,” he said, low-voiced, as he looked up at her, “I have to get a letter to Meggie. I’ve sent a horseman after her to tell me where she is and whether she’s well, but he isn’t back yet, and by the time I’ve sent him off again with the letter . . ( Don’t tell her anything about Basta and Slasher, Fenoglio, it would only upset her unnecessarily! ) .. well, what I’m getting at is .. ( For heaven’s sake, Fenoglio, don’t stare at her like that, stammering like an old dotard! ) .. what I mean is, if you really do ride after Dustfinger, would you take my letter to Meggie with you? You’d probably find her sooner than any messenger I could send now.”
” What kind of a letter? ” an inner voice mocked him. ” A letter telling her that nothing has occurred to you? ”
But as usual, he ignored the voice. “It’s a very important letter!” If he could have spoken even more softly he would have done so.
Roxane wrinkled her brow. Even that was a beautiful sight. “The last time you had anything to do with a letter, it cost CloudDancer his life. Still, very well, bring it to me if you like. As I said, I’m not going to wait much longer.”
The castle courtyard seemed strangely empty to Fenoglio when she had gone. Rosenquartz was waiting in his room beside the parchment, which was still blank, looking reproachful. “You know something, Rosenquartz?” Fenoglio said to the glass man, sitting down on his chair again with a sigh. “I think Dustfinger would wring my old neck if he knew how I gazed at his wife. But what does that matter – he’d like to wring my neck, anyway, one reason more or less makes no difference. He doesn’t deserve Roxane, anyway, leaving her alone so often!”
“Someone’s in a truly princely temper again!” remarked Rosenquartz.
“Be quiet!” growled Fenoglio. “This parchment is about to be covered with words. And I just hope you’ve stirred the ink properly!”
“The ink’s not to blame if the parchment is still blank!” retorted the glass man.
Fenoglio didn’t throw the pen at him, although his fingers itched to do so. The words that had passed Rosenquartz’s pale lips were only the truth. How could the glass man help it if the truth was unpleasant?
Chapter 48 – The Castle by the Sea
It was a page he had
Found in the handbook
Of heartbreak.
– Wallace Stevens, “Madame la Fleurie”, Collected Poems
It was exactly as Mo had imagined the Castle of Night: mighty towers, round and heavily built, crenellations like black teeth below the silver rooftops. Mo thought he was seeing Fenoglio’s words before his eyes when the exhausted captives staggered through the castle gateway ahead of him. Black words on paper white as milk: The Castle of Night, a dark growth by the sea, every stone of it polished with screams, its walls slippery with tears and blood. Yes, Fenoglio was a good storyteller. Silver rimmed the battlements and gateways and wound over the walls like snail trails. The Adderhead loved that metal; his subjects called it moonspit, perhaps because an alchemist had once spun him a tale that it could keep away the White Women, who hated it because it reflected their pale faces. Or so Fenoglio had written, anyway. Of all places in the Inkworld, this was the last where Mo would have chosen to be. But he wasn’t choosing his own way through this story, that much was certain. It had even given him a new name – the Bluejay.