Someone did at last give her news of Meggie and Mo, but Resa would rather have heard it from any other mouth.
The others were asleep when Mortola came. She had two soldiers with her. Resa was awake, because she was seeing those pictures again, pictures of Mo being brought into the courtyard, having the rope put around his neck… He's dead, and she has come to tell me! That was her first thought when the Magpie stood before her with a triumphant smile.
"Well, well, here's our faithless maid!" said Mortola as Resa got to her feet with difficulty. "You seem to be as much of a witch as your daughter. How have you kept him alive? Perhaps I took aim a little too hastily. Never mind. A few more weeks and he'll be strong enough for his execution!"
Alive.
Resa turned her head away so that Mortola wouldn't see the smile that stole over her lips, but the Magpie was not looking at her face. She was enjoying the sight of her torn dress and bleeding, bare feet.
"The Bluejay!" Mortola lowered her voice. "Of course, I haven't told the Adderhead that he's going to execute the wrong man – why should I? It's all working out just as I wanted. And I shall get my hands on your daughter, too."
Meggie. The sense of happiness that had briefly warmed Resa's heart disappeared as suddenly as it had come. Beside her, Mina sat up, woken by Mortola's hoarse voice.
"Oh yes, I have powerful friends in this world," continued the Magpie, with a self-satisfied smile. "The Adderhead has caught me your husband, why wouldn't he catch me your witch of a daughter, too? Do you know how I've convinced him that she's a witch? By showing him a photograph of her. Yes, Resa, I let Basta take the photos of your little darling with him, all those pretty silver-framed photographs standing around the bookworm woman's house. Of course the Adderhead thinks they're magic pictures, mirror images captured on paper. His soldiers are afraid to touch them, but they're showing them around all over the place. A pity we can't duplicate them as we could in your world! But fortunately your daughter has joined forces with Dustfinger, and there's no need for any magic picture of him. Every peasant has heard of him – him and his scars."
"He'll protect her!" said Resa. She had to say something.
"Oh yes? The way he protected you?"
Resa dug her fingers into the fabric of her dirty dress. There was no one, in either this or the other world, whom she hated as much as the Magpie. Not even Basta. It was Mortola who had taught her how to hate. "Everything is different here," she managed to say. "Fire obeys him here, and he's not alone as he was in the other world. He has friends."
"Friends! Ah, I suppose you mean the other mountebanks: the Black Prince, as he calls himself, and the rest of that rabble!" Contemptuously, the Magpie scanned the other prisoners. They had almost all woken up. "Look at them, Resa!" said Mortola spitefully. "How are they going to help you out of here? With a few brightly colored balls or a couple of sentimental songs? One of them gave you away, did you know that? And as forDustfinger, what could he do? Unleash fire to save you? It would burn you, too, and he certainly won't risk that, besotted with you as he always was." She leaned forward with a smile. "Did you ever tell your husband what good friends you two were?"
Resa did not reply. She knew Mortola's games. She knew them very well.
"What do you think? Shall I tell him?" Mortola whispered, ready to pounce, like a cat waiting by a mouse hole.
"Do that," Resa whispered back. "Tell him. You can't tell him anything he doesn't know already. I've given him back the years you stole from us, word for word, day after day. And Mo knows, too, that your own son made you live in his cellar and let everyone think you were only his housekeeper."
Mortola tried to hit her in the face, as she had so often done before, as she had done to all her maids – right in the middle of the face – but Resa caught her hand before it landed.
"He's alive, Mortola!" she whispered to the Magpie. "This story isn't over yet, and his death isn't written anywhere in it – but my daughter will whisper yours in your ear when she hears what you did to her father. You'll see one day. And then I shall watch you die."
This time she didn't manage to catch Mortola's hand, and her cheek was still burning long after the Magpie had gone away. She felt the eyes of the other prisoners like fingers feeling her face when she was sitting on the cold ground again. Mina was the first to say something. "Where did you meet the old woman? She mixed poisons for Capricorn."
"I know," said Resa tonelessly. "I belonged to her. For many long years."
55. A LETTER FROM FENOGLIO
Is there then a world
Where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?
Wislawa Szymborska, "The Joy of Writing," View with a Grain of Sand
Dustfinger was asleep when Roxane arrived. It was already growing dark outside. Farid and Meggie had gone out to the beach, but he was lying down because his leg was hurting. When he saw Roxane standing in the doorway he thought at first his imagination was playing tricks on him, as it so often did by night. After all, he had once been here with her, very long ago. The room they had then had looked almost the same, and he had been lying on a straw mattress just like this, his face slashed and sticky with his own blood.
Roxane was wearing her hair loose. Perhaps that was why she woke the memory of that other night. His heart always seemed to miss a beat at the mere thought of it. He had been mad with pain and fear, had crawled away like a wounded animal, until Roxane found him and brought him here. At first the Barn Owl had hardly recognized him. He had given him something to drink that made him sleep, and when he woke again Roxane had been standing in the doorway, just as she was standing now. When the cuts would not heal, for all the physician's skill, she had gone into the forest with him, deeper and deeper into the forest to find the fairies – and she had stayed with him until his face was healed well enough for him to venture among other people again. There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.
But what was his greeting when she suddenly appeared? "What are you doing here?" he asked. Then he could have bitten off his tongue. Why didn't he say how much he had missed her, so much that he had almost turned back a dozen times?
"Yes, indeed, what am I doing here?" Roxane asked back. Once she would have turned her back on him for such a question, but now she just smiled, so mockingly that he felt as awkward as a boy.
"Where have you left Jehan?"
"With a friend." She kissed him. "What's the matter with your leg? Fenoglio told me you were wounded."
"It's getting better. What do you have to do with Fenoglio?"
"You don't like him. Why not?" Roxane stroked his face. How beautiful she looked. So very beautiful.
"Let's just say he had plans for me that I didn't care for in the least. Has the old man by any chance given you something for Meggie? A letter, for instance?"
Without a word, she brought it out from under her cloak. There the words were – words that wanted to come true. Roxane offered him the sealed parchment, but Dustfinger shook his head. "You'd better give that to Meggie," he said. "She's down on the beach."
Roxane glanced at him in surprise. "You look almost as if you were afraid of a piece of parchment."
"Yes," said Dustfinger, reaching for her hand. "Yes, I am. Particularly when Fenoglio's been writing on it. Come on, let's go and look for Meggie."
Meggie smiled awkwardly at Roxane when she gave her the parchment and for a moment looked curiously from her to Dustfinger, but then she had eyes only for Fenoglio's letter. She broke the seal so hastily that she almost tore the parchment. There were three closely written sheets. The first was a letter to her. When she had read it Meggie put it away under her belt, paying it no further attention. The words she had been so eagerly waiting for filled the other two sheets. Meggie’s eyes traveled over the lines so fast that Dustfinger could hardly believe she was really reading them. Finally, she raised her head, looked up at the Castle of Night – and smiled.