“What about the informer the Piper mentioned? Will the Prince look for him?” he asked Dustfinger, as they set out again.

“He won’t have to look for long,” Dustfinger said. “He just has to wait until one of the strolling players suddenly has his pockets full of silver.”

Silver. Farid had to admit that he was curious to see the silver towers of the Castle of Night. Even the battlements were said to be lined with silver. But they would not choose the same route as Firefox. “We know where they’re going,” said Dustfinger, “and there are shorter and safer ways to the Castle of Night than the road.”

“What about the Spelt-Mill?” asked Meggie. “The mill in the forest that you mentioned? Aren’t we going there first?”

“Not necessarily. Why?”

Meggie didn’t answer at once. Obviously, she guessed that the reply would not please Dustfinger.

“I gave CloudDancer a letter for Fenoglio,” she said at last, reluctantly. “I asked him to write something to save my parents and to send it to the mill.”

“A letter?” Dustfinger’s voice was so cutting that Farid instinctively put his arm around Meggie’s shoulders. “Oh, wonderful! And suppose the wrong eyes read it?”

Farid ducked his head, but Meggie did not. Instead, she returned Dustfinger’s glance. “Nobody but Fenoglio can help them now,” she said. “You know that. You know it perfectly well.”

Chapter 46 – A Knock on the Door

Lancelot considered his cup.

“He is inhuman,” he said at last. “But why should he be human? Are angels supposed to be human?”

– T. H. White, The Ill-Made Knight

The horseman Fenoglio had sent after Meggie had been gone for days now. “You must ride like the wind,” he had told the man, saying that the life or death of a young and, of course, beautiful girl was at stake. (After all, he wanted to be sure that the man would really do his best.) “But I’m afraid you won’t be able to persuade her to come back with you. She’s very obstinate,” he had added, “so decide on a new meeting place with her – a safe one this time – and tell her you’ll be back as soon as possible with a letter from me. Can you remember that?”

The soldier, a fresh-faced youth, had repeated his instructions without any trouble and galloped away, saying he would be back in three days’ time at the latest. Three days. If the lad kept his word, he’d soon be back – but Fenoglio would have no letter for him to take to Meggie. For the words that were to put the whole story right again – save the good, punish the bad simply would not come.

Fenoglio sat day and night in the room that Cosimo had given him, staring at the sheets of parchment that Minerva had brought him, in the company of the terrified Rosenquartz. But there seemed to be a jinx on it: Whatever he began to write seeped out of his head like ink running on damp paper. Where were the words he wanted? Why did they stay as dead as dry leaves? He argued with Rosenquartz, told him to send for wine, roast meat, sweetmeats, different ink, a new pen – while the smiths were hammering and forging metal out in the castle courtyards, the castle gates were reinforced, the pans for pitch were cleaned and spears sharpened. Preparing for war was a noisy business. Particularly when you were in a hurry.

And Cosimo was in a great hurry. The words for him had almost written themselves: words full of righteous anger. Cosimo’s criers had already gone out proclaiming them in. every marketplace and every village. Ever since then volunteers had been flocking to Ombra, soldiers recruited for the fight against the Adderhead. But where were the words with which Cosimo’s war would be won and Meggie’s father saved from the gallows at the same time?

How he racked his old brains! But nothing occurred to him. The days went by, and despair entered Fenoglio’s heart. Suppose the Adderhead had hanged Mortimer long ago? Would Meggie still read what he had written then? If her father was dead, wouldn’t what happened to Cosimo and this world itself be a matter of indifference to her? “Nonsense, Fenoglio,” he muttered, as he crossed out sentence after sentence after hours of work. “And I tell you what: If you can’t think of any words, they’ll have to do without them for once. Cosimo will just have to rescue Mortimer!”

” Oh yes? Suppose they storm the Adderhead’s castle, and everyone in the dungeons dies as the building burns? ” a voice inside him whispered. ” Or suppose Cosimo s troops are dashed to pieces on the steep and towering walls of the Castle of Night? ”

Fenoglio put down his pen and buried his face in his hands. It was dark again outside, and his head was as empty as the parchment in front of him. Cosimo had sent Fenoglio an invitation, brought by Tullio, to dine at his table – but he had no appetite, although he liked to watch Cosimo listening with shining eyes to the songs he had written about him. Her Ugliness claimed that their words bored her husband, but this version of Cosimo loved what Fenoglio wrote for him: wonderful fairy tales about his heroic deeds in the past, the time he had spent with the White Women, and the battle at Capricorn’s fortress.

Yes, he was in high favor with the handsome prince, just as he himself had written – while Her Ugliness was more and more often refused admittance to her husband’s presence. So Violante spent even more time in the library than she had before Cosimo’s return. Since her father-in-law’s death, she no longer had to steal into it secretly or bribe Balbulus with her jewels, for Cosimo didn’t mind whether or not she read books. All that interested him was whether she was writing letters to her father or trying to make contact with the Adderhead in some other way. As if she ever had!

Fenoglio felt sorry for Violante, lonely as she was, but he consoled himself by remembering that she had always been solitary by nature. Even her son hadn’t changed that. And yet she had probably never before wanted any human being’s company as much as she wanted Cosimo’s.

The mark on her face had faded, but something else burned there now – love, just as pointless as the birthmark, for Cosimo did not return her love. On the contrary, he was having his wife watched. For some time Violante had been followed by a sturdy, bald-headed man who used to train the Laughing Prince’s hounds. Now he shadowed Her Ugliness as if he had turned himself into a dog, a sniffer dog trying to pick up the scent of all her thoughts. Apparently, Violante asked Balbulus to write letters to Cosimo, pleading letters assuring him of her loyalty and devotion, but people said he didn’t read them. One of his courtiers even claimed that Cosimo had forgotten how to read.

Fenoglio took his hands away from his face and looked enviously at the sleeping Rosenquartz, lying beside the inkwell and snoring peacefully. He was just picking up his pen again when there was a knock at the door.

Who could it be so late at night? Cosimo usually went out riding at this hour.

It was his wife standing at the door. Violante was wearing one of the black dresses she had put away when Cosimo returned. Her eyes were reddened, as if sore with weeping, but perhaps she was just using the beryl too often.

“Cosimo has taken Brianna with him again!” she said in a broken voice. “She’s allowed to ride with him, eat with him, she even spends the nights with him. She tells him stories now instead of me, she reads to him, sings for him, dances for him the way she once did for me. And I’m left alone.”