His hand was still on the door handle.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, no doubt you’re right. But do you know what? Sometimes I’d like to put a padlock on all the books in this world. And as for that very special book . . I’d be glad, now, if Capricorn really had burned the last copy back there in his village. That book brings bad luck, Meggie, nothing but bad luck, even if you won’t believe me.”
Then he closed the library door after him.
Meggie stood there motionless until his footsteps had died away. She went over to one of the windows looking out on to the garden, but when Mo finally came down the path leading to his workshop he didn’t look back at the house. Resa was with him. She had put her arm around his shoulders, and her other hand was tracing words, but Meggie couldn’t make them out. Were they talking about her?
It was sometimes an odd feeling suddenly to have not just a father but two parents who talked to each other when she wasn’t with them. Mo went into his workshop alone, and Resa strolled back to the house. She waved to Meggie when she saw her standing at the window, and Meggie waved back. An odd feeling ..
Meggie sat among Elinor’s books for some time longer, looking first at one, then at another, searching for passages to drown out her own thoughts. But the letters on the pages remained just letters, forming neither pictures nor words, and finally Meggie went out into the garden, lay down on the grass, and looked at the workshop. She could see Mo at work through its windows.
I can’t do it, she thought, as the wind blew leaves off the trees and whirled them away like brightly painted toys. No. I can’t! They’ll all be so worried, and Mo will never, ever say a word to me again.
Meggie thought all those things, she thought them over and over again. And at the same time she knew, deep down inside her, that she had made up her mind long ago.
Chapter 8 – The Minstrel Woman
The minstrel must go on his way,
As he has done so long,
And so a note of sad farewell
Lingers around his song.
Ah, will I e’er come back again?
My dear, alas, who knows?
The heavy hand of death is laid
On many a budding rose.
– E. von Monsterberg, quoted from Musikanten, Gaukler und Vaganten
It was just getting light when Dustfinger reached the farm that CloudDancer had described to him. It lay on a south-facing slope, surrounded by olive trees. The soil, said CloudDancer, was poor and stony there, but it suited the herbs that Roxane grew. The house stood alone, with no village nearby to protect it. There was only a wall, hardly chest-high, and a wooden gate. You could see the rooftops of Ombra in the distance, the castle towers rising high above the houses, and the road winding toward the city gate – so near, and yet too far to be a refuge if highwaymen or soldiers coming home from war thought it a good idea to loot this lonely farm, where only a woman and two children lived.
Perhaps at least she has a farmhand, thought Dustfinger as he stood behind some bushes of broom. Their branches hid him, but he had a good view of the house.
It was small, like most farmhouses – not as poor as many of them but not much better, either.
The whole house would have fitted a dozen times over and more into one of the great halls where Roxane had once danced. Even the Adderhead used to invite her to his castle, poorly as he thought of the Motley Folk, for in those days everyone had wanted to hear her sing. Rich traders, the miller down by the river, the spice merchant who had sent her presents for more than a year
. . so many men had wanted to marry her, had given her jewelry and costly dresses, offered her fine apartments in their houses, and every one of those apartments was certainly larger than the little house where she lived now. But Roxane had stayed with the Motley Folk.
She had never been one of those women among the strolling players who would sell their voices and their bodies to a lord and master for a little security, a settled home. .
However, the day had come when she, too, had tired of traveling and had wanted a home for herself and her children. For no law protected those who lived on the road, and that meant the Motley Folk as well as robbers and highwaymen. If you stole from a player you need not fear any punishment, if you did violence to one of their women you could safely go back to your comfortable home, and even if you killed a traveler you need not fear the hangman. All his widow could do in revenge was strike the killer’s shadow as the sun cast it on the city wall, only his shadow, and she had to pay for her husband’s funeral, too. The Motley Folk were fair game.
People called them the Devil’s decoys, they liked to be entertained by them, listened to their songs and stories, watched their clever tricks – and barred their doors and gates to them when evening came. The players had to camp outside towns and villages, outside the protection of the walls, always on the move, envied for their freedom, yet despised because they served many masters for money and bread. Not many strolling players ever left the road – the road and the lonely paths. But that was obviously what Roxane had done. There was a stable beside the house, a barn, and a bakehouse, and between them a yard with a well in the middle of it. There was a garden, fenced off to keep chickens and goats from uprooting the young plants, and a dozen narrow fields on the slope beyond. Some had been harvested, while in others the herbs stood high, bushy, and heavy with their own seed. The fragrance borne across to Dustfinger on the wind made the morning air both sweet and bitter.
Roxane was kneeling in the farthest field, among plants of flax, comfrey, and wild mallow. She seemed to have been at work for a long time already, although the morning mist still hung in the nearby trees. A boy of perhaps seven or eight kneeled beside her. Roxane was talking to him and laughing. How often Dustfinger had summoned up her face in his memory, every part of it: her mouth, her eyes, her high forehead. It had been more difficult with every passing year, and with every year the picture had dimmed, desperately as he had tried to remember more clearly. Time had blurred her face and covered it with dust.
Dustfinger took a step forward – and two steps back. He had thought of turning back three times already, of stealing away again as silently as he had come, but he had stayed. A wind blew through the broom bushes, catching him in the back as if to give him fresh heart, and Dustfinger plucked up his courage, pushed the branches aside, and walked toward the house and the fields.
The boy saw him first, and a goose rose from the tall grass by the stable and came toward him, cackling and beating her wings. Peasants were not allowed to keep dogs, that was a privilege reserved for princes, but a goose was a reliable guard, too – and just as alarming. But Dustfinger knew how to avoid the gaping beak and stroked the excited bird’s white neck until she folded her wings like a freshly ironed dress and waddled peacefully away, back to her place in the grass.
Roxane had risen to her feet. She wiped the earth off her hands onto her dress and looked at him, just looked. She had indeed pinned up her hair like a farmer’s wife, but it was obviously as long as ever and still as black, apart from a few gray strands. Her dress was as brown as the earth where she had been kneeling, no longer brightly colored like the skirts she used to wear.
But her face was still as familiar to Dustfinger as the sight of the sky, more familiar than his own reflection.
The boy picked up the rake lying on the ground beside him. He clutched it with a grimly determined air, as if he were used to protecting his mother from strangers. Clever lad, thought Dustfinger, never trust anyone, certainly not a scar-faced man like me suddenly emerging from the bushes.