"Hmm." Fenoglio stared at his hands. They looked like the hands of a farmer or a craftsman, not hands that wielded only a pen. "So we can't. Very well!" he murmured. "Perhaps it's all for the best. How would a story ever work if anyone could just come back from the dead at any time? It would lead to hopeless confusion; it would wreck the suspense! No, you're right: The dead stay dead. So we won't bring Cosimo back, just – well, someone who looks like him!"
"Looks like him? You are crazy!" whispered Meggie. "You're a total lunatic!"
But her opinion did not impress Fenoglio in the slightest. "So what? All writers are lunatics! I promise you, I'll choose my words very carefully, so carefully that our brand-new Cosimo will be firmly convinced he is the old one. Do you see, Meggie? Even if he's only a double, he mustn't know it. On no account is he to know it! What do you think?"
Meggie just shook her head. She hadn't come here to change this world. She'd only wanted to see it!
"Meggie!" Fenoglio placed his hand on her shoulder. "You saw the Laughing Prince! He could die any day, and then what? It's not just strolling players that the Adderhead strings up! He has his peasants' eyes put out if they catch a rabbit in the forest. He forces children to work in his silver mines until they're blind and crippled, and he's made Firefox, who is a murderer and arsonist, his own herald!"
"Oh yes? And who made him that way? You did!" Meggie angrily pushed away his hand. "You always did like your villains best."
"Well, yes, maybe." Fenoglio shrugged, as if he were powerless to do anything about it. "But what was I to do? Who wants to read a story about two benevolent princes ruling a merry band of happy, contented subjects? What kind of a story would that be?"
Meggie leaned over the water and fished out one of the red flowers. "You like making them up!" she said quietly. "All these monsters."
Even Fenoglio had no reply to that. So they sat in silence while the women upstream spread their washing on the rocks to dry. It was still warm in the sun, in spite of the faded flowers that the river kept bringing in to the bank.
Fenoglio broke the silence at last. "Please, Meggie!" he said. "Just this once. If you help me to get back in control of this story I'll write you the most wonderful words to take you home again – whenever you like! Or if you change your mind because you like my world better, then I'll bring your father here for you, and your mother… and even that bookworm woman, though from all you tell me she sounds like a frightful person!"
That made Meggie laugh. Yes, Elinor would like it here, she thought, and she was sure Resa would like to see the place again. But not Mo. No, never.
She suddenly stood up and smoothed down her dress. Looking up at the castle, she imagined what it would be like if the Adderhead with his salamander gaze ruled up there. She hadn't even liked the Laughing Prince much.
"Meggie, believe me," said Fenoglio, "you'd be doing something truly good. You'd be giving a son back to his father, a husband back to his wife, a father back to his child – yes, I know he's not a particularly nice child, but all the same! And you'd be helping to thwart the Adderhead's plans. Surely that's an honorable thing to do? Please, Meggie!" He looked at her almost imploringly. "Help me. It's my story, after all! Believe me, I know what's best for it! Lend me your voice just once more!"
Lend me your voice… Meggie was still looking up at the castle, but she no longer saw the towers and the black banners. She was seeing the Shadow, and Capricorn lying dead in the dust.
"All right, I'll think about it," she said. "But now Farid is waiting for me."
Fenoglio looked at her with as much surprise as if she had suddenly sprouted wings. "Oh, is he indeed?" There was no mistaking the disapproval in his voice. "But I was going to go up to the castle with you to take Her Ugliness the beryl. I wanted you to hear what she has to say about Cosimo…"
"I promised him!" They had agreed to meet outside the city gates so that Farid wouldn't have to pass the guards.
"You promised? Well, never mind. You wouldn't be the first girl to keep a suitor waiting."
"He is not my suitor!"
"Glad to hear it! Since your father isn't here, it's up to me to keep an eye on you, after all." Fenoglio looked at her gloomily. "You really have grown! The girls here marry at your age. Oh, don't look at me like that! Minerva's second daughter has been married for five months, and she was just fourteen. How old is that boy? Fifteen? Sixteen?"
Meggie did not reply, but simply turned her back on him.
27. VIOLANTE
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any courser like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson
Fenoglio simply persuaded Farid to go up to the castle with them. "This will work out very well," he whispered to Meggie. "He can entertain the prince's spoiled brat of a grandson and give us a chance to get Violante to talk in peace."
The Outer Courtyard lay as if deserted that morning. Only a few dry twigs and squashed cakes showed that there had been festivities here. Grooms, blacksmiths, stable lads were all going about their work again, but an oppressive silence seemed to weigh down on everyone within the walls. On recognizing Fenoglio, the guards of the Inner Castle let them pass without a word, and a group of men in gray robes, grave-faced, came toward them beneath the trees of the Inner Courtyard. "Physicians!" muttered Fenoglio, uneasily watching them go. "More than enough of them to cure a dozen men to death. This bodes no good."
The servant whom Fenoglio buttonholed outside the throne room looked pale and tired. The Prince of Sighs, he told Fenoglio in a whisper, had taken to his bed during his grandson's celebrations and hadn't left it since. He would not eat or drink, and he had sent a messenger to the stonemason carving his sarcophagus telling him to hurry up with it.
But they were allowed in to visit Violante. The prince would see neither his daughter-in-law nor his grandson. He had sent away even the physicians. He would have no one near him but his furry-faced page, Tullio.
"She's where she ought not to be, again!" The servant was whispering, as if he could be heard by the sick prince in his apartments as he led them through the castle. A carved likeness of Cosimo looked down on them in every corridor. Now that Meggie knew about Fenoglio's plans, the stony eyes made her even more uncomfortable. "They all have the same face!" Farid whispered to her, but before Meggie could explain why, the servant was beckoning them silently up a spiral staircase.
"Does Balbulus still ask such a high price for letting Violante into the library?" asked Fenoglio quietly as their guide stopped at his door, which was adorned with brass letters.
"Poor thing, she's given him almost all her jewelry," the servant whispered back. "But there you are, he used to live in the Castle of Night, didn't he? Everyone knows that those who live on the other side of the forest are greedy folk. With the exception of my mistress."
"Come in!" called a bad-tempered voice when the servant knocked. The room they entered was so bright that it made Meggie blink after walking through all those dark passages and up the dark stairs. Daylight fell through high windows onto several intricately carved desks. The man standing at the largest of them was neither young nor old, and he had black hair and brown eyes that looked at them without any cordiality as he turned to them.