Nothing seemed to escape those salamander eyes, nothing at all: no child pressing his face into his mother’s apron in alarm, no beautiful woman, no man glaring up at him with hostility. Yet he reined in his horse in front of only one person in the crowd.

“Well, well, so here’s the king of the strolling players! Last time I saw you, your head was in the pillory in my castle courtyard. And when are you going to honor us with another visit?”

The Adderhead’s voice rang out through the silent courtyard. It sounded very deep, as if it came from the black interior of his stout body. Meggie instinctively moved closer to Fenoglio’s side.

But the Black Prince bowed, so deeply that the bow turned to mockery. “I’m sorry,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “but I’m afraid my bear didn’t care for your hospitality. He says the pillory was rather tight for his neck.”

Meggie saw the Adderhead’s mouth twist into an unpleasant smile. “Well, I could keep a rope ready for your next visit – a rope that will fit perfectly, and a gallows of oak strong enough even for such a fat old bear as yours,” he said.

The Black Prince turned to his bear and pretended to discuss it with him. “Sorry again,” he said, as the bear threw its paws around his neck, grunting, “the bear says he likes the south, but your shadow lies too dark over it. He won’t come until the Bluejay pays you the honor of a visit, too.”

A soft whisper ran through the crowd – and was silenced when the Adderhead turned in his saddle and let his lizard-like gaze move over those standing around him.

“And furthermore,” the Prince continued in a loud voice, “the bear would like to know why you don’t make the Piper trot along behind your horse on a silver chain, as such a good, tame minstrel should?”

The Piper wrenched his horse around, but before he could urge it toward the Black Prince the Adderhead raised a hand. “I will let you know just as soon as the Bluejay is my guest!” he said, while the silver-nosed man reluctantly rode back to his place. “And believe me, that will be before long. I’ve already ordered the gallows to be built.” Then he spurred his horse, and the men-at-arms rode on again. It seemed an eternity before the last of them had disappeared through the gateway.

“Yes, off you ride!” whispered Fenoglio, as the castle courtyard gradually filled with carefree noise again. “Viewing this place as if it would all soon be his, thinking he can spread his power through my world like a running sore and play a part I never wrote for him. . ”

The guard’s spear abruptly silenced him. “Very well, poet!” said Anselmo. “You can go in now. Off with you!”

“Off with you?” thundered Fenoglio. “Is that any way to speak to the prince’s poet? Listen,” he told the two children, “you’d better stay here. Don’t eat too much cake. And don’t go too close to the fire-eater, because he’s useless at his job, and leave the Black Prince’s bear alone.

Understand?”

The two of them nodded and ran straight to the nearest cake stall. But Fenoglio took Meggie’s hand and strode past the guards with her, his head held high.

“Fenoglio,” she asked in a low voice as the gate closed behind them and the noise of the Outer Courtyard died away, “who is the Bluejay?”

It was cool behind the great gate, as if winter had built itself a nest here. Trees shaded a wide courtyard, the air was fragrant with the scent of roses and other flowers whose names Meggie didn’t know, and a stone basin of water, round as the moon, reflected the part of the castle in which the Laughing Prince lived.

“Oh, he doesn’t exist!” was all Fenoglio would say, as he impatiently beckoned her on. “But I’ll explain all that later. Come along now. We must take the Laughing Prince my verses at last, or I won’t be his court poet anymore.”

Chapter 21 – The Prince of Sighs

The man couldn’t very well tell the king, “No, I won’t go,” for he had to earn his bread.

– Italo Calvino, “The King in the Basket,” Italian Folk Tales

The windows of the hall where the Prince of Sighs, once the Laughing Prince, received Fenoglio were hung with black draperies. The place smelled like a crypt, of dried flowers and soot from the candles. The candles were burning in front of statues that all had the same face, sometimes a good likeness, sometimes less good. Cosimo the Fair, thought Meggie. He stared down at her from countless pairs of marble eyes as she walked toward his father with Fenoglio.

The throne in which the Prince of Sighs sat enthroned stood between two other high-backed chairs. The dark green upholstery of the chair on his left was occupied only by a helmet with a plume of peacock feathers, its metal brightly polished as if it were waiting for its owner. A boy of about five or six sat in the chair on his right. He wore a black brocade doublet embroidered all over with pearls as if it were covered in tears. This must be the birthday boy: Jacopo, grandson of the Prince of Sighs, but the Adderhead’s grandson, too.

The child looked bored. He was swinging his short legs restlessly, as if he could hardly prevent himself from running outside to the entertainers, and the sweet cakes, and the armchair waiting for him on the platform adorned with prickly bindweed and roses. His grandfather, on the other hand, looked as if he never intended to rise from his chair again. He sat there as powerless as a puppet, in black robes that were too large for him now, as if hypnotized by the eyes of his dead son. Not particularly tall but fat enough for two men, that was how Resa had described him; seldom seen without something to eat in his greasy fingers, always rather breathless because of the weight his legs, which were not especially strong, had to carry, and yet always in the best of tempers.

The prince whom Meggie saw now, sitting in his dimly lit castle, was nothing like that. His face was pale and his skin hung in wrinkled folds, as if it had once belonged to a larger man. Grief had melted the fat from his limbs, and his expression was fixed, as if it had frozen on the day when they brought him the news of his son’s death. Only his eyes still showed his horror and bewilderment at what life had done to him.

Apart from his grandson and the guards standing silent in the background, there were only two women with him. One kept her head humbly bent like a maidservant, although she wore a dress fit for a princess. Her mistress stood between the Prince of Sighs and the empty chair on which the plumed helmet lay. Violante, thought Meggie. The Adderhead’s daughter and Cosimo’s widow.

Her Ugliness, as people called her. Fenoglio had told Meggie about her, emphasizing the fact that she was indeed one of his creations, but that he had never intended her to be more than a minor character: the unhappy child of an unhappy mother and a very bad father. “It’s absurd to marry her to Cosimo the Fair!” Fenoglio had said. “But as I told you, this story is getting out of hand!”

Violante wore black, like her son and her father-in-law. Her dress, too, was embroidered with pearly tears, but their precious luster didn’t suit her particularly well. Her face looked as if someone had drawn it on a stained piece of paper with a pencil too pale for the purpose, and the dark silk of her dress made her look even plainer. The only thing you noticed about her face was the purple birthmark, as big as a poppy, disfiguring her left cheek.