They would not let him go.
Three children barred his way, two boys and a girl. They reached for his reins and wouldn't let him pass into the place they had just left, to be lost behind its walls like them. More and more of them crowded around him, held him, shielding him from the spears of the guards while their mothers called for them.
"Bluejay!"
The Piper's voice made the children turn. "Through those gates with you now, or we'll take them all back, and hang a dozen in cages over the gateway where the ravens can eat them!"
The children didn't move. They just stared at the silver-nosed man and the boy beside him who was younger than they were. But Mo picked up his reins again and made his way through them as carefully as if each child were his own, and the children stood there while their mothers called them, watching him ride through the huge gateway. All alone.
Mo looked over his shoulder once more before he rode past the guards, as if he knew that Resa and Meggie had followed him after all, and Resa saw the fear on his face. She was sure that Meggie had seen it, too. As he rode on again the gates were already beginning to close.
"Disarm him!" Resa heard the Milksop shout, and the last thing she saw was soldiers, dozens of soldiers, dragging Mo off his horse.
36. A SURPRISING VISITOR
God took a deep breath. Another complaint! When would Man come to him without a complaint? But he shot up his eyebrows, smiled with delight and cried: "Man! How are the carrots coming on?"
Ted Hughes, "The Secret of Man's Wife,"
from The Dreamfighter
Oh, how good it was to see Despina's little face again! Even if she looked tired and sad, scared as a bird that had fallen out of its nest. And Ivo – had he been so tall before that wretched Sootbird took to stealing children? How thin he was… and was that blood on his tunic? "The rats bit us," he said, acting grownup and fearless as he had so often since his father's death, but Fenoglio saw the fear in his childish eyes. Rats!
He just couldn't stop hugging and kissing them, he was so relieved. And so lie should be. He forgave himself much, lie forgave himself easily, but if his story had killed Minerva's children – he wasn't sure how he would have come to terms with that. But they were alive, and lie himself had called into being the man who saved them.
"What will they do to him now?" Despina freed herself from his arms, her big eyes dark with worry. Damn it, that was the trouble with children – they were always asking the very questions you so carefully avoided yourself. And then they gave the very answers you didn't want to hear!
"They'll kill him," said Ivo, and his little sister's eyes filled with tears.
How could she be crying for a stranger? She'd seen Mortimer for the first time today. It's because your songs have taught her to love him, Fenoglio, that's how. They all love him, and today will write that love in their hearts forever. Whatever the Piper did to him, from now on the Bluejay was as immortal as the Adderhead. Indeed, he was far more reliably immortal, since the Adderhead could always be killed by three words. But words would keep Mortimer alive even if he died behind the castle walls – all the words now being whispered and sung down there in the streets would keep him alive.
Despina wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at Fenoglio in the hope that he would contradict her brother, and of course he did, for her sake and his own. "Ivo!" he said sternly. "What nonsense are you talking? Do you think the Bluejay didn't have a plan when he gave himself up? Do you think he's just going to the Piper like a rabbit falling into a trap?"
A smile of relief came to Despina's lips, and the shadow of a doubt appeared on Ivo's face.
"No, of course he isn't!" said Minerva, who still hadn't spoken a word since she had brought the children up to his room. "He's a cunning fox, not a rabbit! He'll outwit them all!" And Fenoglio heard the seed that his songs had sown begin to grow in her voice, too. Hope – the Bluejay still stood for hope in the midst of all the darkness.
Minerva took the children away with her. Of course. She would be going to feed them up with everything she could still find in the house, and Fenoglio was left alone with Rosenquartz, who had been stirring the ink without a word while Fenoglio lavished kisses on Despina and Ivo.
"Outwit them all, will he?" he said in his reedy little voice as soon as Minerva closed the door behind her. "How? Do you know what I think? I think it's all up with your fabulous robber! And he'll have a particularly nasty execution, that's what! I can only hope it will be in the Castle of Night. No one ever stops to think what all those screams of agony do to a glass man's poor head."
Heartless glassy little fellow! Fenoglio threw a cork at him, but Rosenquartz was used to such missiles and dodged it. Why had he taken on such a pessimistic glass man? Rosenquartz had his left arm in a sling. After Sootbird's performance, Fenoglio had persuaded him to go and spy on Orpheus one more time, and Orpheus's horrible glass man really had pushed the poor creature out of the window. Luckily, Rosenquartz had landed in the gutter, but Fenoglio still didn't know if the child-catching scene had been Orpheus's idea. No! He couldn't possibly have written it! Orpheus could write nothing without the book, and it seemed – for Rosenquartz had discovered this much – that Dustfinger had actually stolen it from him. Anyway, the scene was much too good for that Calf's-Head to have written, wasn't it?
He'll outwit them all…
Fenoglio went to the window, while the glass man adjusted his sling with a reproachful sigh. Did Mortimer really have a plan? Damn it, how was he to know? Mortimer wasn't really one of his characters, even if he was playing the part of one. Which is extremely annoying, Fenoglio thought. Because if he had been one of them, presumably I'd know what's really going on behind those thrice-damned walls.
He stared darkly over the rooftops to the castle. Poor Meggie. And no doubt she'd blame him for everything again. Her mother certainly did. Fenoglio remembered Resa's pleading look only too well. You must write us back again. You owe us that! Yes, perhaps he really should have tried. Suppose they killed Mortimer? Wouldn't it be better for them all to go back to their world then? What would he want to do here once the Bluejay was dead? Watch the immortal Adder and the Piper tell his story?
"Of course he's here! Didn't you hear what she said? Up the stairs. Do you see any other stairs around here? For heaven's sake, Darius!"
Rosenquartz forgot his broken arm and looked at the door.
What woman's voice was that?
There was a knock, but before Fenoglio could call, "Come in," the door opened and a rather powerful female form entered his room so impetuously that he instinctively took a step back, knocking his head against the sloping roof. The dress she wore looked as if it had come straight from some cheap theatrical production.
"There we are! This is him, the author!" she announced, looking him up and down with such contempt that Fenoglio was aware of every hole in his tunic. I've seen this woman before, he thought.
"And what's going on here, may I ask?" She jabbed her finger into his chest as hard as if to stab him straight to his old heart. And he'd seen the thin fellow behind her as well. Of course… wait…
"Why is the Adderhead's flag hoisted in Ombra? Who is that frightful fellow with the silver nose? Why were they threatening Mortimer with spears, and since when, for goodness' sake, has he gone about wearing a sword?"
The bookworm. Of course! That's who she was. Elinor Loredan. Meggie had told him about her often enough. Fenoglio had last seen her through bars, stuck in one of the dog pens in the arena where Capricorn's festivities were held. And the timid man with the owlish look was Capricorn's stammering reader! Though, with the best will in the world, Fenoglio couldn't remember his name. What were these two doing here? Were tourist visas for his story being handed out these days?