“In the realm of the dead? No.” Dustfinger shook his head with a sad smile. “No, I didn’t go quite so far. But believe me, if I had, then even from there I’d have sought some way to get back to you. . ”
How long she looked at him! No one else had ever looked at him like that. And once again he tried to find words, the words that could explain where he had been, but there were none.
“When Rosanna died,” Roxane’s tongue seemed to shrink from the word, as if it could kill her daughter a second time, “when she died and I held her in my arms, I swore something to myself: I swore that never, never again would I be so helpless when death tried to take away someone I love. I’ve learned a great deal since then. Perhaps today I could cure her. Or perhaps not.” She looked at him again, and when he returned her glance he did not try to hide his pain, as he usually would. “Where did you bury her?”
“Behind the house, where she always used to play.”
He turned to the open door, wanting at least to see the earth under which she lay, but Roxane held him back. “Where have you been?” she whispered, laying her forehead against his chest.
He stroked her hair, stroked the fine gray strands like silken cobwebs running through the sooty black, and buried his face in it. She still mixed a little bitter orange into the water when she washed her hair. Its perfume brought back so many memories that he felt dizzy. “Far away,” he said. “I’ve been very, very far away.” Then he just stood there holding her tightly, unable to believe that she was really there again, not just a figment of his dreams, not just a memory, blurred and vague, but a woman of flesh and blood with fragrant hair . . and she was not sending him away.
How long they simply stood there like that, he didn’t know. “What about our older girl? How is Brianna?” he asked at last. “She’s been living up at the castle for four years now. She serves Violante, the prince’s daughter-in-law, known to everyone as Her Ugliness.” She came out of his arms, smoothed her pinned-up hair, and reached for his hands. “Brianna sings for Violante, looks after her spoiled little son, and reads to her,” she said. “Violante adores books, but her eyesight is bad, so she can’t easily read them for herself – let alone that she must do it in secret because the prince thinks poorly of women who read.” “But Brianna can read?”
“Yes, and I’ve taught my son to read, too.” “What’s his name?”
“Jehan. After his father.” Roxane went over to the table and touched the flowers standing on it.
“Did I know him?”
“No. He left me this farm – and a son. The fire-raisers set light to our barn, he ran in to save the livestock, and the fire consumed him. Isn’t it strange – that you can love two men and fire protects one of them but kills the other?” She was silent for some time before she spoke again.
“Firefox was leader of the arsonists then. They were almost worse than under Capricorn. Basta and Capricorn disappeared at the same time as you, did you know?” “Yes, so I’ve heard,” he murmured, unable to take his eyes off her. How lovely she was. How beautiful. It almost hurt to look at her. When she came toward him again every movement reminded him of the day he had first seen her dance.
“The fairies did very well,” she said quietly, stroking his face.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone had simply painted those scars on your face with a silver pencil.”
“A lie, but a kind one,” he said just as softly. No one knew better than Roxane where the scars came from. They would neither of them forget the day when the Adderhead had commanded her to dance and sing before him. Capricorn had been there, too, with Basta and all the other fire-raisers, and Basta had stared at Roxane like a tomcat eyeing a tasty bird. He had pursued her day after day, promising her gold and jewels, threatening and flattering her, and when she rejected him again and again, alone and in company, Basta made inquiries to discover the identity of the man she preferred to him. He lay in wait for Dustfinger on his way to Roxane, with two other men, who held him down while Basta cut his face.
“You didn’t marry again after your husband died?” You fool, he thought, are you jealous of a dead man?
“No, the only man on this farm is Jehan.”
The boy appeared in the doorway as suddenly as if he had been listening behind it, just waiting for his name to be spoken. Without a word he made his way past Dustfinger and sat down on the bench.
“The flowers are even bigger now,” he said.
“Did you burn your fingers on them?”
“Only a little.”
Roxane pushed a jug of cold water over to him. “Here, dip them in that. And if it doesn’t help I’ll break an egg for you. There’s nothing better for burns than a little egg white.”
Jehan obediently put his fingers in the jug, still looking at Dustfinger. “Doesn’t he ever burn himself?” he asked his mother. Roxane had to smile. “No, never. Fire loves him. It licks his fingers, it kisses him.”
Jehan looked at Dustfinger as if his mother had said that fairy and not human blood ran in his veins.
“Careful, she’s teasing you!” said Dustfinger. “Of course it bites me, too.”
“Those scars on your face – they weren’t made by fire?”
“No.” Dustfinger helped himself to more bread. “This woman, Violante,” he said. “Cloud Dancer told me the Adderhead is her father. Does she hate the strolling players as much as he does?”
“No.” Roxane ran her fingers through Jehan’s black hair. “If Violante hates anyone, it’s her father himself. She was seven when he sent her here. She was married to Cosimo when she was twelve, and six years later she was a widow. Now there she sits in her father-in-law’s castle, trying to care for his subjects, as he has long neglected to do in his mourning for his son.
Violante feels for the weak. Beggars, cripples, widows with hungry children, peasants who can’t pay their taxes – they all go to her, but Violante is a woman. Any power she has is only because everyone’s afraid of her father, even on this side of the forest.”
“Brianna likes it at the castle.” Jehan wiped his wet fingers on his trousers and looked at their reddened tips with concern. Roxane dipped his fingers back in the cold water. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” she said. “Our daughter likes to wear Violante’s castoff clothes, sleep in a soft four-poster bed, and have the fine folk at court pay her compliments. But I don’t care for it, and she knows I don’t.”
“The Ugly Lady sends for me, too, sometimes!” There was no mistaking the pride in Jehan’s voice. “To play with her son. Jacopo pesters her and Brianna when they’re reading, and no one else will play with him because he always starts screaming when you have a fight with him ..
and when he loses he shouts that he’s going to have your head chopped off!”
“You let him play with a prince’s brat?” Dustfinger cast Roxane an anxious glance. “Whatever their age, princes are never friends to anyone. Have you forgotten that? And the same is true of their daughters, especially if the Adderhead is their father.” Roxane made her way past him in silence. “You don’t have to remind me what princes are like,” she said. “Your daughter is fifteen years old now; it’s a long time since she took any advice from me. But who knows, maybe she’ll listen to her father, even if she hasn’t seen him for ten years. Next Sunday the Laughing Prince is holding festivities to celebrate his grandson’s birthday. A good fire-eater is sure to be welcome at the castle, since Sootbird is the only one they’ve had to entertain them all these years.” She stopped in the open doorway. “Come along, Jehan,” she said, “your fingers don’t look too bad, and there’s plenty of work still to do.” The boy obeyed without protest. At the door he cast a last, curious look at Dustfinger, then ran off– and Dustfinger was left alone in the little house. He looked at the pots and pans near the fire, the wooden bowls, the spinning wheel in the corner, and the chest that spoke of Roxane’s past. Yes, it was a simple house, not much bigger than a charcoal-burner’s hut, but it was a home – something that Roxane had always wanted. She had never liked to have only the sky above her by night. . even if he made the fire grow flowers for her, flowers to watch over her sleep.
