Pippo's sobs died away, and Fenoglio's face turned even whiter than Basta's shirt.
"Right, old man, what do you think I'm going to do with them?" asked Basta scornfully. "You say you know all about me. "
Fenoglio couldn't utter a word. Every cruel deed with which he had ever credited Basta was probably going through his head. Basta relished the fear on his face for a few delicious minutes, then he turned to Flatnose. "The other children stay behind, " he said. "Our little madam here will do. "
With difficulty, Fenoglio recovered his powers of speech. "Paula, go home!" he said as Flatnose forced him down the hall. "Do you hear? Go home at once. Tell your mother I've gone away for a few days, all right?"
"We'll just look in at that apartment again, " Basta said as they were standing in the street outside. "I forgot to leave a message for your father. I mean, he ought to know where you are, don't you think?"
What kind of message will it be, thought Meggie, when you can scarcely write two letters together? But of course she didn't say so out loud. She was terrified the whole time that Mo might come to meet them. But when they reached the front door of the apartment there was only an old lady walking down the street.
"One word out of you and I'll go back and wring both children's necks!" Basta whispered to Fenoglio as the old lady slowed down.
"Hello, Rosalia, " said Fenoglio huskily. "Guess what – I have new tenants for my apartment. How about that, then?"
The suspicion vanished from Rosalia's face, and a moment later she had disappeared around a corner of the street. Meggie opened the door, and for the second time let Basta and Flatnose into the apartment where she and Mo had felt so safe.
In the hall she remembered the gray cat and looked around anxiously, but it was nowhere to be seen. "The cat has to go out, " she said when they were in the bedroom. "Or it'll starve to death. That's unlucky. "
Basta opened the window. "Right, it can get out now, " he said.
Flatnose snorted scornfully, but this time he made no comment on Basta's superstitious nature.
"Can l take some clothes?" asked Meggie.
Flatnose just grunted, and Fenoglio looked unhappily down at himself. "I could do with a change of clothes, too, " he said, but no one took any notice. Basta was busy with his message. Carefully, with the tip of his tongue between his teeth, he was gouging his name in the wood of the dresser with his knife. BASTA. Mo would understand that only too well.
Meggie hastily stuffed a few things in her backpack. She kept on Mo's sweater. She was about to put Elinor's two books in with the clothes but Basta knocked them out of her hand.
"Those stay here, " he said.
Mo did not return in time to meet them as they walked to Basta's car. All that long, endless way, he didn't appear.
31. IN THE HILLS
"Let him alone, " said Merlin. "Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come and easy-go. "
T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone
Dustfinger looked across to Capricorn's village. It seemed close enough to touch. Some of the windows reflected the sky, and one of the Black Jackets was repairing a couple of broken tiles on a roof. Dustfinger saw him wipe the sweat from his brow. The fools never took off their jackets even in this heat – as if they were afraid of falling apart without that black uniform. Not that crows take off their feathers in the sun either, and these men were just a flock of crows: robbers, carrion-eaters who liked to plunge their sharp beaks into dead flesh.
The boy had been uneasy when he saw how close Dustfinger's chosen hiding place was to the village, but Dustfinger had explained why there couldn't be anywhere safer to lie low among the surrounding hills. The charred walls were hardly visible, camouflaged as they were by the spurge, brambles, and wild thyme that had taken root among the soot-blackened stones. Capricorn's men had set fire to the house soon after taking over the deserted village. The old woman who had lived there had refused to leave, but Capricorn wouldn't tolerate prying eyes so close to his new hideout and gave his followers free rein. His crows, his black vultures, had set fire to the homemade chicken run and the one-room cottage. They had trampled over the carefully tended beds in the garden and shot the donkey that was almost as old as its mistress. They came under cover of darkness as usual, and the moon, so one of Capricorn's maidservants had told Dustfinger, shone particularly brightly that night. The old woman had tottered out of the house, weeping and screaming. Then she'd cursed them. She cursed them all, but her eyes were turned on only one of them: Basta, who was standing a little way from the others because he feared the fire, his shirt very white in the moon light. Perhaps she had thought that shirt might conceal something like innocence or a kind heart. At Basta's orders, Flatnose had put his hand over her mouth to shut her up. The others had laughed until, unexpectedly, she fell down dead and lay there lifeless among her trampled garden beds. Ever since that day, Basta had feared this place more than anywhere else in the hills. No, there could be nowhere better to keep watch on Capricorn's village.
Dustfinger spent most of the time perched in one of the oaks that had once given the old woman a shady place to sit outside her cottage. Its branches hid him from the curious eyes of anyone who might stray up the hillside. He perched there motionless for hour upon hour, watching the parking lot and the houses through his binoculars. He had told Farid to stay farther away, in the hollow behind the house. The boy had reluctantly obeyed. He was sticking close to Dustfinger, close as a burr, and he didn't like the gutted cottage. "Her ghost is still here, for sure, " he kept saying. "That old woman's ghost. Suppose she was a witch?" But Dustfinger just laughed at him. There were no ghosts in this world, or if there were they never showed themselves. The hollow was so well sheltered that he had even risked lighting a fire the previous night. The boy had snared a rabbit; he was good at setting traps and more ruthless than Dustfinger. When Dustfinger caught a rabbit he didn't take it out of the trap until he was quite sure the poor thing had stopped wriggling. Farid had no such scruples. Perhaps he had gone hungry too often.
Above all he loved to watch with wonder and admiration whenever Dustfinger took a few little sticks and lit a fire. The boy had already burnt his fingers playing games with matches. The flames had bitten his nose and his lips, yet Dustfinger kept finding him making torches of cotton wool and thin twigs. Once he set light to the dry grass, and Dustfinger grabbed him and shook him like a disobedient dog until tears came into his eyes. "Listen hard, because I'm not telling you again! Fire is a dangerous creature!" he had shouted at Farid. "Fire is not your friend. It will kill you if you don't respect it. And its smoke will give you away to your enemies!"
"But it's your friend!" the boy had stammered defiantly.
"Nonsense! I'm not careless, that's all. I take note of the wind! You let it play with the fire. I've told you a hundred times: Never light a fire when it's windy. Now go and look for Gwin. "
"It is your friend, though!" the boy had muttered before running off. "Or anyway, it obeys you better than the marten does. "
He was right there, though that didn't mean much, for a marten obeys only itself, and even fire didn't obey Dustfinger in this world as well as in his own, where the flames turned to flower shapes whenever he told them to. They had forked up in the air for him, like trees branching in the night, and rained down sparks. They had roared and whispered with their crack ling voices, they had danced when he said the word. The flames here were both tame and mutinous, strange, silent beasts that sometimes bit the hand that fed them. Only occasionally, on cold nights when there was nothing but the flames to stave off his loneliness, did he think he heard them calling to him, but they whispered words he didn't understand.