Fenoglio rose from his chair. “Come in!” he said. “Where’s your shadow?”
“I bought a litter of puppies and told him to train them, as a surprise for Cosimo. Since then he disappears on occasion.”
She was clever, oh yes, in fact very clever. Had he known that? No, he hardly even remembered making her up.
“Sit down!” He gave her his own chair – there was no other and sat on the chest under the window where he kept his clothes. Not his old, moth-eaten garments but the new ones that Cosimo had given him, magnificent clothes made for a court poet.
“Can’t you talk to her?” Violante passed nervous hands over her black dress. “Brianna loves your songs, she might listen to you! I need her. I have no one else in this castle except for Balbulus, and all he wants is for me to give him gold to buy more pigments.”
“What about your son?”
“He doesn’t like me.”
Fenoglio did not reply, for she was right. Jacopo didn’t like anyone except his sinister grandfather, and no one liked Jacopo, either. He wasn’t easy to like.
Night came in from outside, and the hammering of the smiths. “Cosimo is planning to reinforce the city walls,” Violante went on. “He’s going to fell every tree from here to the river. They say Nettle cursed him for it. They say she said she’d go to the White Women and tell them to fetch him back again.”
“Don’t worry. The White Women don’t do as Nettle says.”
“Are you sure?” She rubbed her sore eyes. “Brianna is supposed to read to me! He has no right to take her away. I want you to write to her mother. Cosimo has all my letters read, but you can ask her to come. He trusts you. Write and tell Brianna’s mother that Jacopo wants to play with her son, and say she’s to bring him to the castle about midday. I know she used to be a minstrel woman, but I’m told she grows herbs now; all the physicians in the city go to her. I have some very rare plants in my garden. Write and tell her she can take anything from the garden that she likes: seeds, root runners, cuttings, anything at all if only she will come.”
Roxane. She wanted Roxane to come here.
“Why do you want to talk to her mother and not Brianna herself? She’s not a little girl anymore.”
“I tried! She won’t listen. She just looks at me in silence, murmurs excuses – and goes back to him. No, I have to speak to her mother.”
Fenoglio said nothing. From all he knew of Roxane, he wasn’t sure that she would come. After all, he himself had given her a proud nature and a dislike of royal blood. On the other hand hadn’t he promised Meggie to keep an eye on Dustfinger’s daughter? If he couldn’t keep any other promise, because his words had failed him so pitifully, perhaps he should at least try with this one. . Heavens, he thought. I wouldn’t like to be anywhere near Dustfinger when he hears that his daughter is spending her nights with Cosimo!
“Very well, I’ll send Roxane a messenger,” he said. “But don’t expect too much. I’ve heard that she isn’t particularly happy to have her daughter living at court.”
“I know!” Violante rose and glanced at the paper waiting on his desk. “Are you writing a new story? Is it about the Bluejay? You must show it to me first!” For a moment she was very much the Adderhead’s daughter.
“Of course, of course,” Fenoglio hastily assured her. “You’ll get it before even the strolling players. And I’ll write it the way you like a story best: dark, hopeless, sinister…” Cruel, too, he added silently. For Her Ugliness loved stories full of darkness. She didn’t want to be told tales of good fortune and beauty, she liked to hear about death, ugly things, secrets heavy with tears. She wanted her very own world, and it had never heard of beauty and good fortune.
She was still gazing at him, with the same arrogant look that her father turned on the world.
Fenoglio remembered the words he had once written about her kindred: Noble blood –for centuries the Adderhead’s kin firmly believed that the blood flowing in their veins made them bolder, cleverer, stronger than all who were their subjects. The same look in their eyes for hundreds and hundreds of years, even in those of Her Ugliness, whom her noble family would happily have drowned at birth in the castle moat, like a puppy born deformed.
“The servants say Brianna’s mother can sing even better than she does. They say her mother knew how to make stones weep and roses blossom with her voice.” Violante patted her face, just where the birthmark had been such a fiery red only a short time ago.
“Yes, I’ve heard much the same.” Fenoglio followed her to the door.
“They even say she sang in my father’s castle, but I don’t believe that. My father never let any strolling players though his gate. The nearest they came was to be hanged outside it.” Yes, because there was once a rumor that your mother betrayed him with a minstrel, thought Fenoglio as he opened the door for her.
“Brianna says her mother doesn’t sing anymore because she believes her voice brings great misfortune to everyone she loves. It seems that happened to Brianna’s father.”
“I’ve heard that story, too.”
Violante went out into the corridor. Even at close quarters her birthmark was barely visible now. “You’ll send the messenger to her tomorrow morning?”
“If that’s what you want.”
She looked down the dark corridor. “Brianna will never talk about her father. One of the cooks says he was a fire-eater. The way that cook tells the story, Brianna’s mother was deeply in love with him, but then one of the fire-raisers fell in love with her himself and slashed the fire-eater’s face.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that one as well!” Fenoglio looked at her thoughtfully. Dustfinger’s bittersweet story was certainly very much to Violante’s taste.
“She took him to a physician, the cook says, and stayed with him until his face was healed.” How far away her voice sounded, as if she had lost herself among the words. Fenoglio’s words. “But he left her all the same.” Violante turned her face away. “Write that letter!” she said abruptly.
“Write it tonight.” Then she hurried away in her black dress, in such haste that it looked as if she were suddenly ashamed of coming to see him.
“Rosenquartz,” said Fenoglio, closing the door behind her. “Do you think I’m only any good at making up characters who are sad or bad?”
But the glass man was still asleep beside the quill, from which ink dripped onto the empty sheet of parchment.
Chapter 47 - Roxane
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
– William Shakespeare, Sonnets, No. Fenoglio waited for Roxane in a room in the castle where petitioners were usually received, ordinary folk who came here to tell Cosimo’s administrators their troubles while a scribe recorded their words on paper (parchment being far too valuable for such purposes). Then they were sent away hoping that their prince would put his mind to their concerns sometime. But under the Laughing Prince that had not been very often, except at Violante’s persuasion, so his subjects had usually settled their quarrels among themselves, with or without violence, depending on their temperament and their influence in the community. It was hoped that Cosimo would change all that soon. .
