"Hmm!" Fenoglio wrinkled his lined brow as if he had to think hard about it.
The mouth below the mask drooped in disappointment. "The Bluejay! I'm the Bluejay, of course!"
"Of course!" Fenoglio pinched the child's red little nose.
"Will you tell us another story about him today? Please!"
"Maybe! I must admit, I imagine his mask as rather more impressive than yours. What do you think? Shouldn't you look for a few more feathers?"
The boy took off his mask and looked at it crossly. "They're not very easy to find."
"Take a look down by the river. Even blue jays aren't safe from the cats that go hunting there." He was about to move away, but the boy held on tight. Thin as the children of the strolling players might be, they had strong little hands.
"Just one story. Please, Inkweaver!"
Two other children joined him, a girl and a boy. They looked expectantly at Fenoglio. Ah, yes, the Bluejay stories. He'd always told good robber tales – his own grandchildren had liked them, too, back in the other world. But the stories he thought up here were much better. You heard them everywhere these days: The Incredible Deeds of the Bravest of Robbers, The Noble and Fearless Bluejay. Fenoglio still remembered the night he had made up the Bluejay. His hand had been trembling with rage as he wrote. "The Adderhead's caught another of the strolling players," the Black Prince had told him that night. "It was Crookback this time. They hanged him at noon yesterday."
Crookback – one of his own characters! A harmless fellow who could stand on his head longer than anyone else. "Who does this prince think he is?" Fenoglio had cried out into the night, as if the Adderhead could hear him. "I am lord of life and death in this world, I, Fenoglio, no one else!" And the words had gone down on paper, wild and angry as the robber he created that night. The Bluejay was all that Fenoglio would have liked to be in the world he had made: free as a bird, subject to no lord, fearless, noble (sometimes witty, too), a man who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, and protected the weak from the tyranny of the strong in a world where there was no law to do it…
Fenoglio felt another tug at his sleeve. "Please, Inkweaver! Just one story!" The boy was really persistent. He loved listening to stories and would very likely make a famous minstrel someday. "They say the Bluejay stole the Adderhead's lucky charm!"
whispered the little boy. "The hanged man's finger bone to protect him from the White Women. They say the Bluejay wears it around his own neck now."
"Do they indeed?" Fenoglio raised his eyebrows, always a very effective move, thick and bushy as they were. "Well, I've heard of an even more daring deed, but I must have a word with the Black Prince first."
"Oh, please, Inkweaver!" They were clinging to his sleeves, almost tearing off the expensive braid he'd had sewn on the coarse fabric for a few coins, so as not to look as poverty-stricken as the scribes who wrote wills and letters in the marketplace.
"No!" he said sternly, freeing his sleeve. "Later, maybe. Now go away!"
The boy with the runny nose looked at him so sadly that, for a moment, Fenoglio was reminded of his grandson. Pippo always used to look like that when he brought Fenoglio a book and put it on his lap with a hopeful expression…
Ah, children! thought Fenoglio, as he walked toward the fire where he had seen the Black Prince. Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world – any world. The very best of all.
14. THE BLACK PRINCE
"So bears can make their own souls…," she said. There was a great deal in the world to know.
Philip Pullman, Northern Lights
The Black Prince was not alone. Of course not; his bear was with him, as usual. He was crouching by the fire behind his master, like a shaggy shadow. Fenoglio still remembered the words he had used when he first created the Prince at the very beginning of Inkheart. He recited them quietly to himself as he approached him: "An orphan boy with skin almost as black as his curly hair, as quick with his knife as his tongue, always ready to protect those he loved – his two younger sisters, a maltreated bear, or his best friend, his very best friend, Dustfinger…
"… who would have died an extremely dramatic death if it had been left to me, all the same!" added Fenoglio quietly as he waved to the Prince. "But luckily my black friend doesn't know that, or I don't suppose I'd be very welcome at his fireside!"
The Prince returned his greeting. He probably thought he was called the Black Prince because of the color of his skin, but
Fenoglio knew better. He had stolen the name from a history book in his old world. A famous knight once bore it, a king's son who was a great robber, too. Would he have been pleased to think that his name had been given to a knife-thrower, king of the strolling players? If not, there's nothing he can do about it, thought Fenoglio, for his own story came to its end long ago.
On the Prince's left sat the hopelessly incompetent physician who had almost broken Fenoglio's jaw pulling out a tooth, and to the right of him crouched Sootbird, a lousy fire-eater who knew as little of his trade as the physician knew of drawing teeth. Fenoglio was not quite sure about the physician, but there was no way he had invented Sootbird. Heaven knew where he had come from! All who saw him inefficiently breathing fire, in terror of the blaze, instantly found another name springing to mind: the name of Dustfinger the fire-dancer, tamer of the flames…
The bear grunted as Fenoglio sat down by the fire with his master and scrutinized him with little yellow eyes, as if to work out how much meat there was left to gnaw on such old bones. Your own fault, Fenoglio told himself: Why did you have to make the Prince's companion a tame bear? A dog would have done just as well. The market traders told anyone who would listen that the bear was a man under a spell, bewitched by fairies or brownies (they couldn't decide which), but Fenoglio knew better. The bear was just a bear, a real bear who loved the Black Prince for freeing him, years ago, from the ring through his nose and from his former master, who beat him with a thorny stick to make him dance in marketplaces.
Six more men were sitting beside the fire with the Black Prince. Fenoglio knew only two of them. One was an actor whose name Fenoglio kept forgetting. The other was a professional strong man who earned his living performing in marketplaces: tearing apart chains, lifting grown men into the air, bending iron bars. They all fell silent as Fenoglio joined them. They tolerated his company, but he was not by any means one of them. Only the Prince smiled at him.
"Ah, the Inkweaver!" he said, "Do you have a new song about the Bluejay for us?"
Fenoglio accepted the goblet of hot wine and honey that one of the men gave him at a sign from the Prince and sat down on the stony ground. His old bones didn't really like hunkering down there, even on a night as mild as this, but the strolling players did not care for chairs or other forms of seating.
"I really came to give you this," he said, putting his hand into the breast of his doublet. He looked around before handing the Prince the sealed letter, but in this milling throng it was difficult to see if anyone who didn't belong to the Motley Folk was watching them.
The Prince took the letter with a nod and tucked it into his belt. "Thank you," he said.
"You're welcome!" replied Fenoglio, trying to ignore the bear's bad breath. The Prince couldn't write, any more than most of his Motley subjects could, but Fenoglio was happy to do it for him, particularly when it was something like this he wanted. The letter was for one of the Laughing Prince's head foresters. His men had attacked the strolling players' women and children on the road three times. No one else seemed to mind, neither the Laughing Prince in his grief nor the men who were supposed to do justice in his place, for the victims were only strolling players. So the king of the players himself was going to do something about it: The forester would find Fenoglio's letter on his doorstep that very night. Its contents would prevent him from sleeping in peace and with luck would keep him away from women wearing the brightly colored skirts of the Motley Folk in the future. Fenoglio was rather proud of his threatening letters, almost as proud as he was of his robber songs.