Despina.
She was staring at him in astonishment. He laid his finger on his lips, crawled on, forced his way past a couple of planks, and squeezed into the place where Minerva’s children had their hideout.
He only just fitted in – the place wasn’t meant for old men who were beginning to put on weight around the hips. The two children came here when they didn’t want to go to bed or weren’t keen to work. They hadn’t shown their hiding place to anyone but Fenoglio, as proof of friendship –
and in return for a good ghost story.
He heard CloudDancer scream, he heard Basta roaring something, and Minerva weeping. He almost crawled back to them, but fear paralyzed him. And what could he do against Basta’s knife and the sword that hung from Slasher’s belt? He leaned against the wooden wall of the shed, heard the pigs grunting and rooting about in the ground. Meggie’s message swam before his eyes; the sheet of paper was dirty with the mud he’d crawled through, but he could still decipher what she had written.
“I don’t know!” he heard CloudDancer scream. “I don’t know what she wrote on it. I can’t read!”
Brave CloudDancer. He probably did know, all the same. He usually had people tell him what their messages said.
“But you can tell me where she is, can’t you?” That was Basta’s voice. “Out with it. Is she with Dustfinger? You whispered his name to the old man!”
“I don’t know!” He screamed again, and Minerva wept louder than ever and shouted for help, her voice echoing back from the narrow houses.
“The Adderhead’s men have taken them all away, my parents and the strolling players, ”
Fenoglio read. “D ustfinger is following .. the Spelt-Mill .. ” The letters blurred as he looked at them. Yet again he heard screaming out there. He bit his knuckles so hard that they began to bleed. ” Write something, Fenoglio. Save them. Write .. “It was as if he could hear Meggie’s voice.
Another scream. No. No, he couldn’t just sit here. He crawled out, on and on, until he could rise to his feet.
Basta was still holding CloudDancer in a firm grip, pressing him back against the wall of the house. The old tightropewalker’s shirt was slit and bloody, and Slasher was standing in front of him with a knife in his hand. Where was Minerva? She was nowhere to be seen, but Despina and Ivo were there, in hiding near the sheds, watching what one man can do to another. With a smile on his lips.
“Basta!” Fenoglio took a step forward. He put all his rage and all his fear into his voice and held Meggie’s close-written sheet of paper up in the air.
Basta turned with assumed surprise. “Oh, there you are!” he called. “With the pigs. I might have known it. You’d better bring us that letter before Slasher finishes slicing up your friend here.”
“You’ll have to fetch it yourselves.”
“Why?” Slasher laughed. “You can read it to us, can’t you?” Yes. He could. Fenoglio stood there at his wits’ end. Where were all the lies, the clever lies that usually sprang to his lips so easily?
CloudDancer was staring at him, his face twisted with pain and fear – and suddenly, as if he couldn’t stand the fear a moment longer, he tore himself away from Basta and ran toward Fenoglio. He ran fast in spite of his stiff knee, but Basta’s knife was faster – so much faster. It went straight into CloudDancer’s back, just as the Adderhead’s arrow had pierced the gold-mocker’s breast. The tightropewalker fell in the mud, and Fenoglio, standing there, began to tremble. He was trembling so much that Meggie’s letter slipped out of his hand and fluttered to the ground. But CloudDancer lay there unmoving, his face in the dirt. Despina came out of hiding, hard as Ivo tried to haul her back, and stared wide-eyed at the motionless figure lying before Fenoglio’s feet. It was quiet in the yard, very quiet. “Read it out, scribbler!”
Fenoglio raised his head. Basta stood there in front of him, holding the knife that had been sticking into CloudDancer’s back just now. Fenoglio stared at the blood on the bright blade and at Meggie’s message. In Basta’s hand. Without thinking, he clenched his fists. He struck Basta in the chest as if neither the knife nor Slasher existed. Basta staggered back, anger and astonishment on his face. He fell over a bucket full of weeds that Minerva had been pulling out of her vegetable plots. Cursing, he got to his feet. “Don’t do that again, old man!” he spat. “I’m telling you for the last time, read that out!”
But Fenoglio had snatched Minerva’s pitchfork from the dirty straw piled up outside the pigsty.
“Murderer!” he whispered, pointing the crudely forged prongs at Basta. What had happened to his voice? “Murderer, murderer!” he repeated, louder and louder, and he thrust the pitchfork at the place in Basta’s breast where his black heart beat.
Basta retreated, his face distorted with rage.
“Slasher!” he roared. “Slasher, come here and get that damn fork away from him!”
But Slasher had gone beyond the houses, sword in hand, and was listening. Horses’ hooves were clattering along the alley outside. “We must go, Basta!” he called. “Cosimo’s guards are on their way!”
Basta stared at Fenoglio, his narrowed eyes full of hate. “We’ll meet again, old man!” he whispered. “And next time you’ll be lying in the dirt in front of me, like him.” He stepped heedlessly over the motionless CloudDancer. “As for this,” he said, tucking Meggie’s letter under his belt, “Mortola will read it to me. Who’d have thought that the third little bird would write telling us where to find her in her own fair hand? And we’ll pick up the fire-eater for free into the bargain!”
“Come on, quickly, Basta!” Slasher beckoned impatiently.
“What are you bothered about? You think they’ll string us up because there’s one less strolling player in the world?” replied Basta calmly, but he turned away from Fenoglio. He waved to him one last time before disappearing among the houses.
Fenoglio thought he heard voices, the clink of weapons, but perhaps it was something else. He kneeled down beside CloudDancer, turned him gently on his back, and put his ear to his chest –
as if he hadn’t seen death in his face some moments ago. He sensed the two children coming up beside him. Despina put her hand on his shoulder. It was slim and light as a leaf.
“Is he dead?” she whispered.
“You can see he is,” said her brother.
“Will the White Women come to fetch him now?”
Fenoglio shook his head. “No, he’s going to them of his own accord,” he answered quietly.
“You can see that. He’s gone already. But they’ll welcome him to their White Castle. It’s built of bones but very beautiful. There’s a courtyard in that castle, full of fragrant flowers, with a tightrope made of moonlight stretched across it just for CloudDancer… ” The words came easily: beautiful, comforting words, but were they really true? Fenoglio didn’t know. He had never taken any interest in what came after death, either in this world or the other one.
Probably just silence, silence without a single word of comfort.
Minerva came stumbling back from the alley, a cut on her forehead. The physician who lived on the corner was with her, and two other women, their faces pale with fear. Despina ran to her mother, but Ivo stayed beside Fenoglio.