Mo shooed away the fairies whirring in the air above the well, then let the wooden bucket down. "Nonsense. They recognize you, too."
The water in the depths below shone as if the moon were hiding there from morning. Like the well outside Merlin's cottage, thought Mo as he cooled his face with the clear water and cleaned the cut that a soldier had given him on his forearm. All we need now is for Archimedes to fly up on my shoulder, while Wart comes stumbling out of the wood…
"What are you smiling at?" The Black Prince leaned on the edge of the well beside Mo, while his bear lumbered around, snuffling, on ground that was wet with dew.
"A story I once read." Mo put the bucket of water down for the bear. "I'll tell it to you sometime. It's a good story, even though it has a sad ending."
But the Prince shook his head and passed his hand over his tired face. "If it ends sadly I don't want to hear it."
Gecko wasn't the only man who had been guarding the sleeping farm. Mo smiled when Battista stepped out of the tumbledown barn. Battista had no great opinion of fighting, but Mo liked him and the Strong Man best of all the robbers, and he found it easier to go out at night if one of them was watching over Resa and Meggie. Battista still did his clown act at fairs, even when his audience had hardly a penny to spare. "We don't want them forgetting how to laugh altogether!" he said when Snapper mocked him for it. He liked to hide his pockmarked face behind the masks he made for himself: laughing masks, weeping masks, whatever he felt like at the time. But when he joined Mo at the well he handed him not a mask but a bundle of black clothes.
"A very good morning to you, Bluejay," he said, with the same deep bow that he made to his audience. "Sorry I took rather a long time with your order, but I ran out of thread. Like everything else, it's hard to get in Ombra. But luckily Gecko here," he added, bowing in the man's direction, "sent one of his black-feathered friends off to steal me a few reels from one of the market traders. Thanks to our new governor, they're still rich."
"Black clothes?" The Prince looked inquiringly at Mo. "What for?"
"A bookbinder's garments. Binding books is still my trade, or have you forgotten? What's more, black is good camouflage by night. As for this," said Mo, stripping off his bloodstained shirt, "I'd better dye it black, too, or I can't very well wear it again."
The Prince looked at him thoughtfully. "I'll say it again, even though you don't want to listen. Lie low here for a few days. Forget the outside world, just as the world has forgotten this farm."
The anxiety in his dark face touched Mo, and for a moment he was almost tempted to give the bundle back to Battista. But only almost.
When the Prince had gone, Mo hid the shirt and his bloodstained trousers in the former bakehouse, now converted into his workshop, and put on the black clothes. They fit perfectly, and he was wearing them as he slipped back into the house just as the morning made its way in through the unglazed windows.
Meggie and Resa were still asleep. A fairy had lost her way in the gloom of Meggie's room. Mo lured her to his hand with a few quiet words. "Will you look at that?" Snapper always used to say. "Even the damn fairies love his voice. Looks like I'm the only person not to fall under its spell."
Mo carried the fairy over to the window and let her flutter out. He pulled Meggie's blanket up over her shoulders, the way he used to on all those nights when he and she had only each other, and he glanced at her face. How young she still looked when she was asleep. Awake, she seemed so much more grown-up. She whispered a name in her sleep. "Farid." Was it when you fell in love for the first time that you grew up?
"Where have you been?"
Mo spun around. Resa was standing in the open doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
"Watching the fairies' morning dance. The nights are getting colder now. Soon they'll hardly leave their nests at all."
It wasn't exactly a lie. And the sleeves of the black tunic were long enough to hide the cut on his forearm. "Come with me, or we'll wake this big daughter of ours."
He drew her with him into the bedroom where they slept.
"What kind of clothes are those?"
"A bookbinder's outfit. Battista made it for me. Black as ink. Suitable, don't you think? I've asked him to make you and Meggie something, too. You'll be needing another dress soon."
He put his hand on her belly. You couldn't see it yet. A new child brought with them from the old world, although they had found out only in this one. It was barely a week since Resa had told him. "Which would you like," she'd asked, "a daughter or a son?" "Can I choose?" he had replied, trying to imagine what it would be like to hold tiny fingers in his hand again, so tiny that they could scarcely grasp his thumb. It was just the right time – before Meggie was so grown-up that he could hardly call her a child at all.
"The sickness is getting worse. I'll ride over to see Roxane later. She's sure to know what to do for it."
"Yes, she's sure to know." Mo took her in his arms.
Peaceful days. Nights of blood.
3. WRITTEN SILVER
To what was somber he was most disposed
When, in his bare room with its shutters closed,
High-ceilinged, blue, he read his story, thinking,
And in his mind's eye picturing forests sinking
Under the water, seeing ochre skies,
Fleshy flowers in woods of stars before his eyes…
Arthur Rimbaud, "Seven-year-old Poets"
Of course Orpheus did none of the digging himself. He stood there in his fine clothes watching Farid sweat. He had made him dig in two places already, and the hole Farid was excavating now was already deep enough to come up to his chest. The dirt was moist and heavy. It had rained a great deal these last few days, and the shovel was useless. In addition, there was a hanged man dangling right above Farid's head. The cold wind swung the body back and forth on its rotting rope. Suppose it fell, and buried him under its decaying bones?
Three more somber figures swung from the gallows on Farid's right. Milksop, the new governor, liked hanging people. Folk said that he had his wigs made from the hair of executed men and women – and the widows in Ombra whispered that this was the reason why so many women had been condemned to hang.
"How much longer are you going to take? It's getting light! Hurry up, dig faster!" Orpheus snapped, kicking a skull down into the pit. Skulls lay beneath the gallows like terrible fruits.
It was true that day was beginning to dawn. Damn that Cheeseface! He'd had Farid digging almost all night long. If only he could wring the man's pale neck!
"Faster? Get your fine bodyguard to do some digging for a change!" Farid shouted up to him. "Then his muscles would at least be some use!"
The Chunk folded his bulky arms and smiled down with derision. Orpheus had found the giant working for a physician in the marketplace, holding down the man's customers while he pulled out their rotten teeth. "What on earth are you going on about now?" was all Orpheus had said, condescendingly, when Farid asked why he needed another servant. "Even the rag-and-bone men in Ombra have bodyguards to protect them from the riffraff roaming the streets. And I'm a good deal richer than they are!" In this he was certainly right – and as Orpheus offered better pay than the physician, and the Chunk's ears hurt from listening to all those screams of agony, he went with them without a word. He called himself Oss, a very short name for such a large fellow, but it suited a man who spoke so seldom that at first Farid could have sworn he had no tongue in his ugly mouth. However, that mouth worked overtime at eating, and more and more frequently the Chunk would devour what Orpheus's maids put in front of Farid, too. At first he had complained, but after Oss lay in wait for him on the cellar steps one night, Farid preferred to sleep on an empty stomach or steal something from the marketplace. The Chunk had made life in Orpheus's service even worse. A handful of pieces of broken glass inside Farid's straw mattress, a leg stuck out to trip him up at the bottom of a staircase, a sudden rough hand grasping his hair… he had to be on his guard against Oss all the time. There was no peace from him except at night, when the man slept outside Orpheus's bedroom, docile as a dog.