When Meggie and Fenoglio came across the dark hall, Violante was just bending down to her father-in-law, speaking to him quietly. The prince’s expression did not change but finally he nodded, and the boy slipped down from his chair in relief. Fenoglio signaled to Meggie to stay where she was. His head respectfully bent, he stepped aside, and unobtrusively signaled to Meggie to do the same. Violante nodded to Fenoglio as she passed him, her head held high, but she didn’t even look at Meggie. She ignored the stone statues of her dead husband, too.

Her Ugliness seemed to be in a hurry to escape this dark hall in almost as much of a hurry as her son. The maid who followed her passed so close to Meggie that the servant girl’s dress almost touched her. She didn’t seem much older than Meggie herself. Her hair had a reddish tinge, as if firelight were falling on it, and she wore it loose, as only the women among the strolling players usually did in this world. Meggie had never seen lovelier hair.

“You’re late, Fenoglio!” said the Prince of Sighs as soon as the doors had closed behind the women and his grandson. His voice still came out of his mouth with an effort, like a very fat man’s. “Did you run short of words?”

“I won’t run short of words until my last breath, My Prince,” replied Fenoglio, with a bow.

Meggie wasn’t sure whether to copy him. In the end she decided on a clumsy curtsy.

At close quarters the Prince of Sighs looked even more fragile. His skin resembled withered leaves, the whites of his eyes like yellowed paper. “Who’s the girl?” he asked, bending his weary gaze on her. “Your maid? Too young to be your lover, isn’t she?” Meggie felt the blood rise to her face.

“Your Grace, what an idea!” said Fenoglio, dismissing it and putting an arm around her shoulders. “This is my granddaughter who’s come to visit me. My son hopes I shall find her a husband, and what better place for her to look for one than at the wonderful festivities you’re holding today?”

Meggie blushed more than ever, but she forced herself to smile.

“You have a son, do you?” The voice of the Prince of Sighs sounded envious, as if he begrudged any of his subjects the luck of having a living son. “It’s not wise to let your children go too far away,” he murmured, without taking his eyes off Meggie. “Only too likely that they may never come back!”

Meggie didn’t know where to look. “I’ll be going home soon,” she said. “My father knows that.” I hope, she added in her mind.

“Yes. Yes, of course. She’ll be going back. When the time comes.” Fenoglio’s voice sounded impatient. “But now we come to the reason for my visit.” He took the roll of parchment so carefully sealed by Rosenquartz from his belt and climbed the steps to the princely chair with his head respectfully bent. The Prince of Sighs seemed to be in pain. He tightened his lips as he leaned forward to take the parchment, and cool though it was in the hall, sweat stood out on his forehead. Meggie remembered what Minerva had said: This prince of ours will sigh and lament himself to death. Fenoglio seemed to think so, too.

“Aren’t you feeling well, My Prince?” he asked with concern. “No, I am not!” snapped the prince, annoyed. “Unfortunately, the Adderhead noticed it today, too.” He leaned back, sighing, and struck the side of his chair with his hand. “Tullio!” A servant clad in black, like the prince, shot out from behind the chair. He would have looked like a rather short human being but for the fine fur on his face and hands. Tullio reminded Meggie of the brownies in Elinor’s garden who had turned to ashes, although he clearly had more of the human being about him.

“Go and get me a minstrel – one who can read!” ordered the prince. “He can sing me Fenoglio’s song.” And Tullio scurried off, as willing as a puppy.

“Did you send for Nettle, as I advised?” Fenoglio’s voice sounded urgent, but the prince just waved away the idea angrily.

“Nettle? What for? She wouldn’t come, or if she did it would probably just be to poison me, because I had a couple of oaks felled for my son’s coffin. How can I help it if she’d rather talk to trees than human beings? None of them can help me, not Nettle nor any of the physicians, stonecutters, and bone-knitters whose evil-smelling potions I’ve swallowed. No herb grows that can cure grief.” His fingers trembled as he broke Fenoglio’s seal, and all was so still in the darkened hall as he read that Meggie heard the candle flames hiss as the wicks burned down.

Almost soundlessly, the prince moved his lips as his clouded eyes followed Fenoglio’s words. ” He will awake no more, oh nevermore.” Meggie heard him whisper. She looked sideways at Fenoglio, who flushed guiltily when he noticed her glance. Yes, he had stolen the lines, and certainly not from any poet of this world.

The Laughing Prince raised his head and wiped a tear from his clouded eyes. “Fair words, Fenoglio,” he said bitterly, “yes, you know all about those. But when will any of you poets find the words to open the door through which Death takes us?”

Fenoglio looked around at the statues. He stared at them, lost in thought, as if he were seeing them for the first time. “I am sorry, but there are no such words, My Prince,” he said. “Death is all silence. Even poets have no words once they have passed the door Death closes behind us. If I may, then, I would humbly beg your leave to go. My landlady’s children are waiting outside, and if I don’t catch them again soon they may well run off with the strolling players, for like all children they dream of taming bears and dancing between heaven and hell on a tightrope.”

“Yes, yes, go away!” said the Prince of Sighs, wearily waving his beringed hand. “I’ll send to let you know when I want words again. They are sweet-tasting poison, but still, they’re the only way to make even pain taste bittersweet for a few moments.”

He will awake no more, oh nevermore .. Elinor would certainly have known who wrote those lines, thought Meggie as she walked back down the dark hall with Fenoglio. The herbs scattered on the floor rustled under her boots. Their fragrance hung in the cool air as if to remind the sad prince of the world waiting for him out there. But perhaps it reminded him only of the flowers in the crypt where Cosimo lay.

At the door, Tullio came to meet them with the minstrel, hopping and leaping in front of the man like a trained, shaggy animal. The minstrel wore bells at his waist and had a lute on his back. He was a tall, thin fellow with a sullen set to his mouth and so garishly clothed that he would have put a peacock’s tail to shame.

“That fellow can actually read, can he?” Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he pushed her through the door. “I don’t believe it! What’s more, his singing sounds as sweet as the cawing of a crow.

Let’s be off before he gets his great horsey teeth into my poor lines of verse!”

Chapter 22 – Ten Years

Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse/Without a rider on a road at night. The mind sits listening and hears it pass.

– Wallace Stevens, “The Pure Good of Theory”

Dustfinger was leaning against the castle wall, behind the stalls where people were crowding.

The aroma of honey and hot chestnuts rose to his nostrils, and high above him went the tightrope-walker whose blue figure, from a distance, reminded him so much of CloudDancer.