"Didn't you say we must hurry?"
The boy turned red under his shiny polished helmet. "Yes… yes, of course."
A stone lion kept watch in front of a niche behind the coffins, the emblem of Ombra on its breast – presumably the only example of the old coat of arms that the Milksop hadn't had smashed. The soldier put his sword between the lion's bared teeth, and the wall of the vault opened just far enough for a grown man to squeeze through it. Hadn't Fenoglio described this entrance? Words that Mo had read long ago came back to his mind, about one of Cosimo's ancestors who had escaped his enemies several times along the passage beyond. And words will save the Bluejay again, he thought. Well, why not? He's made of them. All the same, his fingers passed over the stone as if they needed to reassure themselves that the walls of the vault weren't just made of paper.
"The passage comes out above the castle," the boy whispered to him. "Violante couldn't get your horse from the stables. It would have attracted too much attention, but there'll be another waiting there. The forest will be swarming with soldiers, so be careful! And I'm to give you these."
Mo put his hand into the saddlebags that the boy handed him.
Books.
"Violante says I'm to tell you they're a present for you, made in the hope that you will accept the alliance she offers you."
The passage was endless, almost as oppressively narrow as the sarcophagus, and Mo was glad when at last he saw the light of day again. The way out was little more than a crack between a couple of rocks. The horse was waiting under the trees, and he saw Ombra Castle, the guards on the walls, the soldiers pouring out of the gates like a swarm of locusts. Yes, lie would have to be very careful. All the same, he undid the saddlebags, hid among the rocks – and opened one of the books.
10. AS IF NOTHING HAD HAPPENED
How cruel the earth, the willows shimmering,
The birches bending and sighing.
How cruel, how profoundly tender.
Louise Gluck, "Lament"
Farid was holding Meggie's hand. He let her bury her face in his shirt while he kept whispering that everything would be all right. But the Black Prince still wasn't back, and the crow sent out by Gecko brought the same news as Doria, the Strong Man's younger brother, who had been spying for the robbers ever since Snapper had saved him and his friend from hanging. The alarm had been raised at the castle. The portcullis was lowered, and the guards at the gate were boasting that the Bluejay's head would soon be looking down on Ombra from the castle battlements.
The Strong Man had taken Meggie and Resa to the robbers' camp, although they would both have preferred to go back to Ombra. "That's what the Bluejay would want" was all he had said, and the Black Prince set off with Battista to the farm they'd called home for the last few weeks – such happy weeks, so deceptively peaceful in the turmoil of Fenoglio's world. "We'll bring you your things" was all the Prince had said when Resa asked him what he was going there for. "You can't go back." Neither Resa nor Meggie asked why. They both knew the answer – because the Milksop would have the Bluejay questioned, and no one could be sure that a time wouldn't come when Mo might reveal where he had been hiding during those recent weeks.
The robbers themselves moved camp only a few hours after hearing of Mo's arrest. "The Milksop has some very talented torturers," Snapper remarked, and Resa sank down under the trees away from the others and buried her face in her arms.
Fenoglio had stayed in Ombra. "Perhaps they'll let me see Violante. And Minerva's working in the castle kitchen tonight; maybe she'll find out something there. I'll do everything I can, Meggie!" he had promised as he said good-bye.
"Like getting into bed and drinking two jugs of wine!" was all Farid said to that, but he kept remorsefully silent when Meggie began to cry.
Why had she let Mo ride to Ombra? If only she'd at least gone to the castle with him, but she'd wanted to be with Farid so much. She saw the same accusation in her mother's eyes: You could have stopped him, Meggie; no one else but you could have done it.
When darkness began to fall, Woodenfoot brought them something to eat. His stiff leg had earned him his name. Although not the fastest of the robbers, he was a good cook, but neither Meggie nor Resa could swallow a morsel. It was bitterly cold, and Farid tried to persuade Meggie to sit by the fire with him, but she just shook her head. She wanted to be alone with herself in the dark. The Strong Man brought her a blanket. His brother was with him, Doria. "Not much good at poaching, but he's a first-class spy," the Strong Man had whispered to her when he introduced them. The two brothers were not very much alike, although they had the same thick brown hair and Doria was already strong for his age (something that filled Farid with envy). He wasn't very tall. Doria only just came up to his elder brother's shoulder, and his eyes were as blue as the skin of Fenoglio's fairies, while the Strong Man's eyes were acorn-brown. "We have different fathers," the Strong Man had explained when Meggie expressed her surprise at the difference between them. "Not that either of them's worth a lot."
"You mustn't worry." Doria's voice sounded very grown-up.
Meggie raised her head.
He put the blanket around her shoulders and stepped shyly back when she looked up at him, but he did not avoid her eyes. Doria looked everyone in the face, even Snapper – and most people looked away from Snapper.
"Your father will be all right, believe me. He'll outwit them all: the Milksop, the Adderhead, the Piper…"
"After they've hanged him?" asked Meggie. She sounded as bitter as she felt, but Doria just shrugged his shoulders.
"Nonsense. They were going to hang me, too," he said. "He's the Bluejay! He and the Black Prince will save us all, you wait and see." He made it sound as if it couldn't turn out any other way. As if he, Doria, were the only one who had read to the end of Fenoglio's story.
But Snapper, sitting under the trees with Gecko only a little way off, laughed hoarsely. "Your brother's as big a fool as you!" he called over to the Strong Man. "It's his bad luck he doesn't have your muscles, so I guess he won't live to be very old. The Bluejay is finished! And what does he leave behind as his legacy? The immortal Adderhead!"
The Strong Man clenched his fists and was about to go for Snapper, but Doria pulled him back when Gecko drew his knife and rose to his feet. The two of them often quarreled, but suddenly they both raised their heads and listened. A jay was calling in the oak above them.
"He's back! Meggie, he's back!" Farid climbed down from his lookout post so fast that he almost lost his balance.
The fire had burned low, only the stars shone down into the dark ravine where the robbers had pitched their new camp, and Meggie didn't see Mo until Woodenfoot limped over to him with a torch. Battista and the Black Prince were with him. They all seemed unharmed. Doria turned to her. Well, Bluejay's daughter, his smile seemed to be saying, what did I tell you?
Resa jumped up in such haste that she stumbled over her blanket. She made her way through the crowd of robbers standing around Mo and the Prince. As if in a dream, Meggie followed her. It was too good not to be a dream.
Mo was still wearing the black clothes that Battista had made him. He looked tired, but he did indeed seem to be uninjured.
"It's all right. Everything's all right," Meggie heard him say as he kissed the tears from her mother's face, and when Meggie was there in front of him he smiled at her as if this were their old life, and he had only been on a short journey to cure a few sick books, not come from a castle where people wanted to kill him.
"I've brought you something," he whispered to her, and only the way he hugged her so tight and for so long told her that he had been as frightened as she was.
"Leave him alone, will you?" the Black Prince told his men as they crowded around Mo, wanting to know how the Bluejay had escaped from Ombra Castle as well as the Castle of Night. "You'll hear the story soon enough. And now, double the guard."
They reluctantly obeyed, sat around the dying fire grumbling, or disappeared into the te
nts that had been patched together out of pieces of fabric and old clothes, offering only scant shelter from nights that were growing colder all the time. But Mo beckoned Meggie and Resa over to his horse and delved into the saddlebags. He brought out two books, handling them as carefully as if they were living creatures. He gave one to Resa and one to Meggie – and laughed when Meggie snatched hers so quickly that she almost dropped it.
"It's a long time since the two of us had a book in our hands, right?" he whispered to her with an almost conspiratorial smile. "Open it. I promise you, you never saw a more beautiful book."
Resa had taken her book, too, but she didn't even look at it. "Fenoglio said that illuminator was the bait for you," she said in an expressionless voice. "He told us they arrested you in his workshop."
"It wasn't exactly what it seemed. As you can see, no harm came of it. Or I wouldn't be here, would I?"
Mo said no more, and Resa asked no further questions. She didn't say a word when Mo sat down on the short grass in front of the horses and drew Meggie down beside him.
"Farid?" he said, and Farid left Battista, whom he was obviously trying to question about events in Ombra, and went over to Mo with the same awe on his face that Meggie had seen on Doria's.
"Can you make some light for us?" Mo asked, and Farid kneeled down between them and made fire dance on his hands, although Meggie could clearly see that he didn't understand how the Bluejay could sit there right after his narrow escape from the Milksop's soldiers, showing his daughter a book before he did anything else.
"Did you ever see anything so beautiful, Meggie?" Mo whispered as she caressed one of the gilded pictures with her finger. "Apart from the fairies, of course," he added with a smile as one of them, pale blue like the sky Balbulus painted, settled drowsily on the pages.
Mo shooed away the fairy as Dustfinger had always done, by blowing gently between her shimmering wings, and Meggie, beside him, bent her head over the pages and forgot her fears for him. She forgot Snapper, she even forgot Farid, who didn't so much as glance at what she couldn't tear her own eyes away from: lettering in sepia brown, as airy as if Balbulus had breathed it onto the parchment, dragons, birds stretching their long necks at the heads of the pages, initials heavy with gold leaf like shining buttons among the lines. The words danced with the pictures and the pictures sang for the words, singing their colorful song.
"Is that Her Ugliness?" Meggie laid a finger on the finely drawn figure of a woman. There she stood, slender beside the written lines, her face barely half the size of Meggie's little fingernail, yet you could see the pale birthmark on her cheek.
"Yes. And Balbulus made sure she'll still be recognized many hundreds of years from now." Mo pointed to the name that the illuminator had written in dark-blue ink, clearly visible above the tiny head: Violante. The V had gold edging as fine as a hair. "I met her today. I don't think she deserves her nickname," Mo went on. "She's rather too pale, and I think she could bear a grudge for a long time, but she fears nothing."
A leaf landed on the open book. Mo flicked it away, but it clung to his finger with thin, spidery arms. "Well, how about this!" he said, holding it up to his eyes. "Is it one of Orpheus's leaf-men? His creations obviously spread fast."
"And they're seldom very nice," said Farid. "Watch out. Those creatures spit."
"Really?" Mo laughed softly and let the leaf-man fly away just as it was pursing its lips.
Resa watched the strange creature go and abruptly straightened up. "It's all lies," she said. Her voice shook on every word. "This beauty is only a lie. It's just meant to take our minds off the darkness, all the misfortune – and all the death."
Mo put the book on Meggie's lap and got to his feet, but Resa stepped back.
"This isn't our story!" she said, in a voice loud enough for some of the robbers to turn and look at her. "It's draining our hearts with all its magic. I want to go home. I want to forget all these horrors and not remember them until I'm back on Elinor's sofa!"
Gecko had turned, too. He stared curiously at them while one of his crows tried to snatch a piece of meat from his hand. Snapper was listening as well.
"We can't go back, Resa," said Mo, lowering his voice. "Fenoglio isn't writing anymore, remember? And we can't trust Orpheus."
"Fenoglio will try to write us back if you ask. He owes it to you. Please, Mo! There can't be any happy ending here!"
Mo looked at Meggie, who was still kneeling beside Farid with Balbulus's book on her lap. What was he hoping for? Did he want her to contradict her mother?
Farid glared at Resa and let the fire between his fingers go out. "Silvertongue?"
Mo looked at him. Yes, he had many names now. What had it been like when he was only Mo? Probably Meggie couldn't remember, either.
"I must go back to Ombra. What am I to say to Orpheus?" Farid looked at him almost pleadingly. "Will you tell him about the White Women?" There it was again, like fire burning on his face – his foolish hope.
"There's nothing to tell. I've said so before," replied Mo, and Farid bowed his head and looked at his sooty hands as if Mo had snatched hope itself from his fingers.
He stood up. He still went barefoot, even though there was sometimes frost at night now. "Good luck, Meggie," he murmured, giving her a quick kiss. Then he turned without another word. Meggie was already missing him as he swung himself up onto his donkey.
Yes. Perhaps they really ought to go back…
She jumped when Mo put his hand on her shoulder.
"Keep the book wrapped in a cloth when you're not looking at it," he said. "The nights are damp." Then he made his way past her mother and went over to the robbers, who were sitting around the embers of their dying fire as silently as if they were waiting for him.
But Resa stood there, staring at the book in her hands as if it were another book, the one that had swallowed her up entirely over ten years ago. Then she looked at Meggie.
"What about you?" she asked. "Do you want to stay here, like your father? Don't you miss your friends, and Elinor and Darius? And your warm bed without any lice in it, the cafe down by the lake, the peaceful roads?"
Meggie wished so much she could give the answer that Resa wanted to hear, but she couldn't.
"I don't know," she said quietly.
And that was the truth.
11. SICK WITH LONGING
I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You'll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.
A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh, find it, sir, for me!
Emily Dickinson, Number 181, Collected Poems
Elinor had read countless stories in which the main characters fell sick at some point because they were so unhappy. She had always thought that a very romantic idea, but she'd dismissed it as a pure invention of the world of books. All those wilting heroes and heroines who suddenly gave up the ghost just because of unrequited love or longing for something they'd lost! Elinor had always enjoyed their sufferings – as a reader will. After all, that was what you wanted from books: great emotions you'd never felt yourself, pain you could leave behind by closing the book if it got too bad. Death and destruction felt deliciously real conjured up with the right words, and you could leave them behind between the pages as you pleased, at no cost or risk to yourself.
Elinor had wallowed in misery on the printed page, but she'd never thought that in real life, gray and uneventful as hers had been for many years, such pain could enter her own heart. You're paying the price now, Elinor, she often told herself these days. Paying the price for the happiness of those last months. Didn't books say that, too: that there's always a price to pay for happiness? How could she ever have thought she would simply find it and be allowed to keep it? Stupid. Stupid Elinor.
When she didn't feel like getting up in the morning, when her heart faltered more and mo
re frequently for no apparent reason, as if it were too tired to beat steadily, when she had no appetite even at breakfast time (although she had always preached that breakfast was the most important meal of the day), when Darius, with that anxious, owlish expression on his face, kept asking how she was, she began wondering whether becoming ill with longing was more than just a literary invention after all. Didn't she feel, deep down inside, that her longing was sapping her strength and her appetite, even her pleasure in her books? Longing.
Darius suggested going away to auctions of rare books, or famous bookshops that she hadn't visited for a long time. He drew up lists of volumes not yet in her library, lists that would have filled Elinor with delighted excitement only a year ago. But now her eyes passed over the titles with as little interest as if she were reading a shopping list for cleaning products. What had become of her love for printed pages and precious bindings, words on parchment and paper? She missed the tug at her heart that she used to feel at the sight of her books, the need to stroke their spines tenderly, open them, lose herself in them. But it seemed as if all of a sudden her heart couldn't enjoy or feel anything, as if the pain had numbed it to everything but her longing for Meggie and her parents. Because by now Elinor had understood this, too; A longing for books was nothing compared with what you could feel for human beings. The books told you about that feeling. The books spoke of love, and it was wonderful to listen to them, but they were no substitute for love itself. They couldn't kiss her like Meggie, they couldn't hug her like Resa, they couldn't laugh like Mortimer. Poor books, poor Elinor.
She began spending days on end in bed. She ate too little and then too much. Her stomach hurt, her head ached, her heart fluttered inside her. She was cross and absentminded and began crying like a crocodile over the most sentimental stories – because of course she went on reading. What else was there for her to do? She read and read and read, but she was stuffing herself with the letters on the page like an unhappy child stuffing itself with chocolate. They didn't taste bad, but she was still unhappy. And Orpheus's ugly dog lay beside her bed, slobbering on her carpet and staring at her with his sad eyes as if he were the only creature in the world who understood her sorrows.
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