Fenoglio undid the bag at his belt and tipped a domed red stone out into his hand. “Isn’t it magnificent?” he asked. “I went to get it this morning while you were still asleep. It’s a beryl, a reading stone. You can use it like spectacles.”
“I know. What about it?” Meggie stroked the smooth stone with her fingertips. Mo had several like it, lying on the windowsill of his workshop.
“What about it? Don’t be so impatient! Violante is almost as blind as a bat, and her delightful son has hidden her old reading stone. So I bought her another, even though it was a ruinous price. I hope she’ll be so grateful that in return she’ll tell us a few things about her late husband! Yes, yes, I know I made up Cosimo myself, but it was long ago that I wrote about him. To be honest, I don’t remember that part particularly well, and what’s more .. who knows how he may have changed, once this story took it into its head to go on telling itself?”
A horrible foreboding came into Meggie’s mind. No, he couldn’t be planning to do that. Not even Fenoglio would think up such an idea. Or would he?
“Listen, Meggie!” He lowered his voice, as if the women doing their washing upstream could hear him. “The two of us are going to bring Cosimo back!”
Meggie sat up straight, so abruptly that she almost slipped and fell into the river. “You’re crazy.
Totally crazy! Cosimo’s dead!”
“Can anyone prove it?” She didn’t like Fenoglio’s smile one little bit. “I told you – his body was burned beyond recognition. Even his father wasn’t sure it was really Cosimo! He waited six months before he would have the dead man buried in the coffin intended for his son.”
“But it was Cosimo, wasn’t it?”
“Who’s going to say so? It was a terrible massacre. They say the fire-raisers had been storing some kind of alchemical powder in their fortress, and Firefox set it alight to help him get away.
The flames enveloped Cosimo and most of his men, and later no one could identify the dead bodies found among the ruins.” Meggie shuddered. Fenoglio, on the other hand, seemed greatly pleased by this idea. She couldn’t believe how satisfied he looked.
“But it was him, you know it was!” Meggie’s voice sank to a whisper. “Fenoglio, we can’t bring back the dead!”
“I know, I know, probably not.” There was deep regret in his voice. “Although didn’t some of the dead come back to life when you summoned the Shadow?”
“No! They all fell to dust and ashes again only a few days later. Elinor cried her eyes out – she went to Capricorn’s village, even though Mo tried to persuade her not to, and there wasn’t anyone there, either. They’d all gone. Forever.”
“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!