After Sootbird had lured the children into the trap on the Piper’s orders, Violante had praised the silver-nosed man for his wiliness and was sick in her bedchamber later.
Nor did she let him see that these days she couldn’t sleep because she thought she heard the children crying in the dungeons by night. She wasn’t letting him know that.
She had been just four herself when her father had her and her mother shut up in the Old Chamber in the Castle of Night, but her mother had taught her to hold her head high all the same. "You’ve a man’s heart, Violante," her father-in-law had once told her. Sad, stupid old man. To this day she didn’t know if he had been paying her a compliment or expressing disapproval. She knew only that all the things she most wanted belonged to men: freedom, knowledge, strength, cleverness. Power. . . Was the thirst for revenge masculine, too, or a wish to rule, or impatience with others?
She’d inherited all those from her father.
Her Ugliness. . .
Her disfiguring birthmark had faded, but the name stuck. It was part of her, like her very pale face and ridiculously slight body. "Her Slyness, that’s what they ought to call you," Balbulus sometimes said. No one knew her better than Balbulus. No one saw through her more clearly, and Violante knew that whenever Balbulus hid a fox in one of his pictures he meant her. Her Slyness. She was certainly crafty. The sight of the Piper made her physically ill, but she smiled at him as she had learned to do from watching her father: with condescension mingled with a touch of cruelty. She wore shoes that made her look taller (Violante had always hated being so short), but she did nothing to make her face prettier, since it was her opinion that beautiful women might be desired but were never respected, certainly not feared. Anyway, she would have felt ridiculous with her lips painted red or her brows plucked to a narrow arch.
Some of the child prisoners were injured. The Piper had allowed Violante to send the Barn Owl to tend them, but there was no persuading him to let them go. "Not until we’ve caught our bird," he had replied to her request. "They’re here as bait for him!"
And Violante had seen it in her mind’s eye—she saw them dragging the Bluejay to the castle once the mothers weeping down there outside the gates had given him away. He was bleeding like the unicorn that the Milksop had killed in the forest. That image remained with her, even clearer than the pictures that Balbu]us painted, but in her dreams she saw another. In that one the Bluejay killed her father and set a crown on her head, on her mouse-brown hair.
"The Bluejay will soon be a dead man," Balbulus had said to her only yesterday. "I hope he’ll at least ensure that his death makes a good picture."
Violante could have struck him in the face, but her anger had never yet impressed him. "Take care, Your Ugliness," he had murmured to her. "You’re always giving your love to the wrong men. But at least the last one had blue blood."
She should have had his tongue cut out for such impertinence her father would have done it on the spot —but then who would tell her the truth, much as it might hurt?
Brianna used to. But Brianna had gone.
Outside, the second night was falling on the children in the dungeons, and Violante had just asked one of her maids to bring her hot wine, hoping that for a few hours it would at least make her forget those little faces, the small hands clutching her skirt, when Vito entered her room.
"Your Highness!" The boy was just fifteen, and the oldest of her soldiers, the son of a smith. A dead smith, of course. "Your former maidservant is at the gate. Brianna, that woman healer’s daughter."
Tullio cast Violante a doubtful glance. He had wept when she had turned Brianna out. For that she wouldn’t allow him to come to her room for more than two days.
Brianna. Had Violante’s own thoughts summoned her? The name still sounded so comforting. She’d probably spoken it more often than her son’s. Why was her silly heart beating faster? Had it already forgotten how much pain the girl had caused it?
Her father was right: The heart was a weak, changeable thing, bent on nothing but love, and there could be no more fatal mistake than to make it your master. Reason must be in charge. It comforted you for the heart’s foolishness, it sang mocking songs about love, derided it as a whim of nature, transient as flowers. So why did she still keep following her heart?
It was her heart that leaped up at the sound of Brianna’s name, while her reason asked: What does she want here? Does she miss her comfortable life? Is she tired of being a maid scrubbing floors for Four-Eyes, who bows so low to the Milksop that his chin almost collides with his plump knees? Or is she going to beg me to let her go down into the vault to kiss my dead husband’s mouth?
"Brianna says she’s bringing herbs from her mother for the children in the dungeon.
But she’ll give them only to you in person.
Tullio looked pleadingly at her. He had no pride, but a loyal heart. Too loyal.
Yesterday a few of the Milksop’s friends had shut him in the dog pens with the hounds again. Her own son had been with them.
"Good. Go and bring her in, Tullio!" Your voice can give you away, but Violante knew how to make hers sound indifferent. Only once had she shown what she really felt, when Cosimo had come back — and then she felt all the more ashamed to find that he preferred her maidservant to her.
Brianna.
Tullio shot eagerly off, and Violante patted her hair, which was severely pinned back, and looked dubiously at her dress and the jewels she was wearing. Brianna had that effect on people. She was so beautiful that everyone felt clumsy and colorless in her presence. Violante had once liked that. She had hidden behind Brianna’s beauty, relishing the fact that her maid made others feel as she herself always did ugly. It had pleased her that so much beauty served her, admired her, perhaps even loved her.
Tullio was smiling foolishly all over his furry face as he came back with Brianna.
She hesitated ‘as she entered the room where she had spent so many hours. It was said that she wore a coin with Cosimo’s picture around her neck and kissed it so often that by now the face could hardly be made out. But grief had only made her more beautiful. How could that be? How could there be any justice in the world if even beauty wasn’t granted to all?
Brianna sank down in a low curtsy no one could do it more charmingly — and handed Violante a basket full of herbs. "My mother has heard from the Barn Owl that some of the children are hurt and many won’t eat. These herbs may help. She has written to tell you how they work and how they must be given." Brianna took a sealed letter out from under the leaves, handing it to Violante with another curtsy.
A seal, for a healer’s instructions?
Violante sent away the maid who was busy turning back her bed she didn’t trust the girl—and picked up her new reading glasses. The same glazier who had made a new frame for the glasses worn by Four-Eyes — a gold frame, of course had made hers.
She had paid him with her last ring. The glasses did not reveal lies to her, as it was said those that Four-Eyes wore did. Balbulus’s lettering was not much clearer than when seen through the beryl she normally used, but at least the world wasn’t red anymore, and she could see better with both eyes at once, even though she couldn’t wear the glasses for too long without straining her eyes. "You read too much!"