“You are the poet Fenoglio, also known as the Inkweaver, is that so?” Fenoglio had imagined that the voice would be rather fuller. Cosimo looked at the statues, letting his eyes wander from one to another. “Someone recommended me to summon you. I believe it was my wife. She says you have the cleverest mind to be found between this castle and the Adderhead’s, and she thinks I shall need clever minds. But that’s not why I called for you.”
Violante? Violante had recommended him? Fenoglio tried to hide his surprise. “No? Why then, Your Grace?” he asked.
Cosimo’s eyes rested on him as abstractedly as if he were looking straight through him. Then he glanced down at himself, plucked at the magnificent tunic he wore, and adjusted his belt. “My clothes don’t fit anymore,” he observed. “They’re all a little too long or too wide, as if they’d been made for those statues and not for me.”
He smiled at Fenoglio rather helplessly. It was the smile of an angel.
“You .. er . . you’ve been through a difficult time, Your Grace,” said Fenoglio.
“Yes. Yes, so I’m told. You see, I don’t remember. There’s very little I can remember at all. My head feels strangely empty.” He passed a hand over his brow and looked at the statues again.
“That’s why I summoned you,” he said. “They say you’re a master of words, and I want you to help me remember. I’m giving you the task of writing down everything there is to say about Cosimo. Get my soldiers to tell you, my servants, my old nurse, my .. wife.” He hesitated for a moment before saying that last word. “Balbulus will write your stories out and illuminate them, and then I’ll have them read to me, to fill the empty space in my head and heart with words and images again. Do you think you can do it?”
Fenoglio hastily nodded. “Oh yes, of course, Your Grace. I’ll write it all down. Stories of your childhood, when your worthy father was still alive, tales of your first rides through the Wayless Wood, everything about the day your wife came to this castle, and the day your son was born.”
Cosimo nodded. “Yes, yes!” he said, and there was relief in his voice. “I see you understand. And don’t forget my victory over the fire-raisers and the time I spent with the White Women.”
“I certainly will not.” Fenoglio examined the handsome face as unobtrusively as possible. How could this have happened? He had been meant not just to believe that he was the real Cosimo, but to share all the dead man’s memories, too. .
Cosimo rose from the throne occupied by his father not so long ago and began pacing up and down. “I’ve already been told several stories myself. By my wife.”
Her Ugliness again. Fenoglio looked around for her. “Where is your wife?”
“Looking for my son. He ran away because I wouldn’t receive his grandfather.”
“If I may make so bold, Your Grace – why wouldn’t you receive him?”
The heavy door opened behind Fenoglio’s back, and Tullio scurried in. He was no longer holding the dead bird as he crouched on the steps at Cosimo’s feet, but fear still lingered on his face.
“I do not intend ever to receive him again.” Cosimo stopped in front of the throne and patted the emblem of his house. “I have told the guards at the gate not to let my father-in-law into this castle another time, or any who serve him.”
Tullio looked up at him in alarm and incredulity, as if he already felt the Adder head’s arrow in his own furry breast.
But Cosimo, unmoved, was continuing. “I have had myself informed of what went on in my realm while I” – and he hesitated for a moment again before going on – “while I was away.
Yes, let’s call it that: away. I have listened to my administrators, head foresters, merchants and peasants, my soldiers, and my wife. In the process I have learned some very interesting things.
Alarming things. And just imagine, poet: My father-in-law had something to do with almost every bad tale that I hear. Tell me, since I believe you go in and out of the strolling players’ tents: What do the Motley Folk say about the Adderhead?”
“The Motley Folk?” Fenoglio cleared his throat. “Well, what everyone says. They say he’s very powerful, perhaps rather too powerful.”
Cosimo uttered a mirthless laugh. “Oh yes. He is indeed. And?”
What was he getting at? You should know, Fenoglio, he told himself uneasily. If you don’t know what’s going on in his head, then who does? “Well, they say the Adderhead rules with an iron fist,”
he went on hesitantly. “There’s no law in Argenta but his own word and his seal. He is vengeful and vain, he extorts so much from his peasants that they go hungry, he sends rebellious subjects to his silver mines, even children, until they’re spitting blood down in the depths. Poachers caught in his part of the forest are blinded, thieves have their right hands cut off– I am glad to say your father abolished that custom some time ago and the only minstrel who can safely approach the Castle of Night is the Piper – when he’s not plundering villages with Firefox.” Good heavens, did I write all this? thought Fenoglio. I suppose I did.
“Yes, I’ve heard all that, too. What else?” Cosimo folded his arms over his chest and began pacing up and down, up and down. He really was as beautiful as an angel. Perhaps I ought to have made him a little less beautiful, thought Fenoglio. He looks almost unreal.
“What else?” Fenoglio frowned. “The Adderhead was always afraid of death, but as he gets older they say it’s become almost an obsession. He is said to spend the night on his knees, sobbing and cursing, shaking with fear that the White Women will come for him. They also say that he washes several times a day, for fear of sickness and infection, and he sends envoys to distant lands, with chests full of silver to buy him miracle cures for old age. And the women he marries are younger and younger. He hopes that a son will be born to him at long last.”
Cosimo had stopped pacing. “Yes!” he said softly. “Yes, I have heard all that, too. But there are even worse stories. When are you coming to those – or must I tell them myself?” And before Fenoglio could answer he went on. “They say the Adderhead sends Firefox over the border by night to extort goods from my peasants. They say he claims the whole Wayless Wood for himself, he has my merchants plundered when they come ashore in his harbors, demands high tolls from them for the use of his streets and bridges, and pays footpads to make my roads unsafe. They say he has the timber for his ships chopped down in my part of the forest and keeps his informers in this castle and in every street in Ombra. They say he even paid my own son to tell him everything my father discussed with his councillors in this hall. And finally” – Cosimo paused for effect before he went on – “I am assured that the messenger who warned the fire-raisers of my forthcoming attack on them was sent by my father-in-law. I’m told he ate quails covered in silver leaf to celebrate my death, and sent my father a letter of sympathy on parchment so cleverly painted with poison that every character on it was deadly as snake’s venom. So do you still wonder why I wouldn’t receive him?”
Poisoned parchment? Good heavens, who’d think up something like that? thought Fenoglio. Not I, for one!
