“Where did you get that from?” She answered her question herself, but unfortunately a little too late. Suddenly, very suddenly, the memory of the boy’s story came back to her. “Orpheus!” she whispered – and she wanted to shout, loud enough for Mortimer to hear her in his workshop, but before a sound could come out of her mouth someone slipped out of the cover of the rhododendron bushes by the front door, quick as a lizard, and put his hand over her mouth.
“Well, my lady bookworm,” a man’s voice purred in her ear. Elinor had so often heard that voice in her dreams, and every time she found herself fighting for breath at the sound of it! Even in broad daylight the effect was just as bad. Basta pushed her roughly back into the house. Of course, he had a knife in his hand; Elinor could as easily imagine Basta without a nose as without a knife. Orpheus turned and waved to the strange car. A man built like a wardrobe got out, strolled around the car at a leisurely pace, and opened the back door. An old woman stuck out her legs and reached for his arm.
Mortola. The Magpie.
Another regular visitor to Elinor’s nightmares.
The old woman’s legs were thickly bandaged under her dark stockings, and she leaned on a stick as she walked toward Elinor’s house on the wardrobe-man’s arm. She hobbled into the hall with a grimly determined expression, as if she were taking possession of the whole house, and the look she gave Elinor was so openly hostile that its recipient felt weak at the knees, hard as she tried to hide her fear. A thousand dreadful memories came back to her – memories of a cage stinking of raw meat, a square lit by the beams of glaring car headlights, and fear, dreadful fear…
Basta closed the door of the house behind Mortola. He hadn’t changed: the same thin face, the same way of narrowing his eyes, and there was an amulet dangling around his neck to ward off the bad luck that Basta thought lurked under every ladder, behind every bush.
“Where are the others?” Mortola demanded while the wardrobe-man looked around him with a foolish expression. The sight of all those books seemed to fill him with boundless astonishment.
He was probably wondering what on earth anyone would do with so many.
“The others? I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Elinor thought her voice sounded remarkably steady for a woman half dead with terror.
Mortola’s small, round chin jutted aggressively. “You know perfectly well. I’m talking about Silvertongue and his witch of a daughter, and that maidservant, the one he calls his wife. Shall I get Basta to set fire to a few of your books, or will you call the three of them for us of your own accord?”
Basta? Basta’s afraid of fire, Elinor wanted to reply, but she refrained. It wasn’t difficult to hold a lighted match to a book. Even Basta, who feared fire so much, would probably be capable of that small action, and the wardrobe-man didn’t look bright enough to be afraid of anything. I just have to keep stalling, thought Elinor. After all, they don’t know about the workshop in the garden, or about Darius, either.
“Elinor?” she heard Darius call at that very moment. Before she could reply, Basta’s hand was over her mouth again. She heard Darius come down the corridor with his usual rapid tread.
“Elinor?” he called again. Then the footsteps stopped as abruptly as his voice.
“Surprise, surprise!” purred Basta. “Aren’t you glad to see us, Stumbletongue? A couple of old friends come to pay you a visit!” Basta’s left hand was bandaged, Elinor noticed when he took his fingers away from her mouth, and she remembered the hissing creature that Farid said had slipped through the words in Dustfinger’s place. What a pity it didn’t eat more of our knife happy friend, she thought.
“Basta!” Darius’s voice was little more than a whisper.
“That’s right, Basta! I’d have been here much sooner, believe you me, but they put me in jail for a while on account of something that happened years ago. No sooner was Capricorn gone than all the people who’d been too scared to open their mouths suddenly felt very brave. Well, never mind. You could say they did me a favor, because who do you think they put in my cell one fine day? I never could get him to tell me his real name, so let’s call him by the name he’s given himself: Orpheus!” He slapped the man so hard on the back that he stumbled forward. “Yes, our good friend Orpheus!” Basta put an arm around his shoulders. “The Devil did me a real favor when he made Orpheus, of all people, my cellmate – or perhaps our story is so keen to have us back that it sent him? Well, one way or another, we had a good time, didn’t we?”
Orpheus did not look at him. He straightened his jacket in embarrassment and inspected Elinor’s bookshelves.
“Hey, just look at him!” Basta dug his elbow roughly into Orpheus’s ribs. “You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve told him there’s nothing to be ashamed of in going to jail, particularly when your prisons here are so much more comfortable than our dungeons at home. Come on, tell them how I found out about your invaluable gifts. How I caught you one night reading yourself that stupid dog out of the book! Reading himself a dog! Lord knows, I could think of better ideas.”
Basta laughed nastily, and Orpheus straightened his tie with nervous fingers. “Cerberus is still in the car,” he told Mortola. “He doesn’t like it there at all. We ought to bring him in!” The wardrobe-man turned to the door. He obviously had a soft spot for animals, but Mortola stopped him with an impatient gesture.
“The dog stays where it is. I can’t stand that creature!” Frowning, she looked around Elinor’s hall. “Well, I expected your house to be bigger than this,” she said, with assumed disappointment. “I thought you were rich.”
“So she is!” Basta flung his arm so roughly around Orpheus’s neck that his glasses slipped down his nose. “But she spends all her money on books. What would she pay us for the book we took from Dustfinger, do you think?” He pinched Orpheus’s round cheeks. “Yes, our friend here made good juicy bait for the fire-eater. He may look like a bullfrog, but even Silvertongue can’t make the words obey him so well, let alone Darius. Ask Dustfinger – Orpheus sent him home as if nothing could be easier! Not that the fire-eater will –”
“Hold your tongue, Basta!” Mortola interrupted him abruptly. “You’ve always liked the sound of your own voice. Well?” She impatiently tapped her stick on the marble tiles that were Elinor’s pride and joy. “Where are they? Where are the others? I shan’t ask again!”
Come on, Elinor told herself, lie to them. Lie yourself blue in the face! Quick! But she hadn’t even opened her mouth when she heard the key in the lock. Oh no! No, Mortimer! she prayed silently.
Stay where you are! Go back to the workshop with Resa, shut yourselves up there, but please, please don’t come in just now!
Of course her prayers made not the slightest difference. Mortimer opened the door, came in with his arm around Resa’s shoulders – and stopped abruptly at the sight of Orpheus. Before he had entirely grasped what was going on, the man built like a wardrobe had closed the door behind him in obedience to a signal from Mortola.
“Hello there, Silvertongue!” said Basta in a menacingly soft voice, as he snapped his knife open in front of Mortimer’s face. “And isn’t this our lovely mute Resa? Excellent! Two birds with one stone. All we need now is the little witch.”