Balbulus had listened to him without any expression on his face. “What an unusual opinion, Inkweaver!” he said. “For my part, I think highly of the immortality of my work and very poorly of minstrels. But why don’t you go in to Violante? She’ll probably have to leave soon, to hear some peasant’s woes or listen to a merchant complaining of the highwaymen who make the roads unsafe. It’s almost impossible to get hold of acceptable parchment these days. Robbers steal it and offer it for sale in the markets at outrageous prices! Have you any idea how many goats must be slaughtered for me to write down one of your stories?”
“About one for each double spread,” said Meggie, earning another icy look from Balbulus.
“Clever girl,” he said, in a tone that made his words sound more like blame than praise. “And why? Because those fools the goat herders drive them through thorns and prickly bushes, without stopping to think that their skins will be needed for parchment!”
“Oh, come, I keep telling you!” said Fenoglio, steering Meggie and Farid toward the library door.
“Paper, Balbulus. Paper is the material of the future.”
“Paper!” she heard Balbulus mutter scornfully. “Good heavens, Inkweaver, you’re even crazier than I thought.”
Meggie had visited more libraries with Mo than she could count. Many had been larger than the Laughing Prince’s, but few were more beautiful. You could still see that it had once been its owner’s favorite place. The only trace of Cosimo here was a white stone bust; someone had laid roses in front of it. The tapestries on the high walls were finer than those in the throne room, the sconces heavier, the colors warmer, and Meggie had seen enough in Balbulus’s workshop to guess what treasures surrounded her here. They stood chained to the shelves, not spine beside spine like the books in Elinor’s library, but with the cut edge facing forward, because that was where the title was. In front of the shelves were rows of desks, presumably reserved for the latest precious acquisitions. Books lay on them, chained like sisters in the shelves, and closed so that no harmful ray of light could fall on Balbulus’s pictures. In addition all the library windows were hung with heavy fabric; obviously the Prince of Sighs knew what damage sunlight did to books. Only two windows let in the light that might harm them. Her Ugliness stood in front of one window, bending so low over a book that her nose almost touched the pages.
“Balbulus is getting better and better, Brianna,” she said.
“He’s greedy! A pearl, just for letting you into your father-in-law’s library!” Her maidservant was standing at the other window looking out, while Violante’s son tugged at her hand.
“Brianna!” he whined. “Come on! This is boring. Come on out into the courtyard. You promised.”
“He uses the money from the pearls to buy new pigments! How else would he get them, when no one in this castle will pay gold for anything but statues of a dead man?” Violante jumped when Fenoglio closed the door behind him, guiltily hiding the book behind her back. Only when she saw who it was did her face relax. “Fenoglio!” she said, pushing her mousy brown hair back from her forehead. “Must you scare me like that?” The mark on her face was like a paw-print.
Fenoglio smiled and put his hand to the bag at his belt. “I’ve brought you something.”
Violante’s fingers closed greedily on the red stone. Her hands were small and rounded like a child’s. She quickly reopened the book she had hidden behind her back and held the beryl up to one of her eyes.
“Come on, Brianna, or I’ll tell them to cut off your hair!” Jacopo took a handful of the maid’s hair and pulled it so hard that she screamed. “That’s what my grandfather does. He shaves them bald, the minstrel girls and the women who live in the forest. He says they turn into owls by night and screech outside your windows till you’re dead in your bed.”
“Don’t look at me like that!” Fenoglio whispered to Meggie. “I didn’t invent this little horror.
Here, Jacopo!” He dug his elbow imperatively into Farid’s ribs as Brianna went on trying to free her hair from the child’s small fingers. “Look, I’ve brought someone to see you.”
Jacopo let go of Brianna’s hair and examined Farid with little enthusiasm. “He doesn’t have a sword,” he pointed out.
“A sword! Who needs a sword?” Fenoglio wrinkled his nose. “Farid is a fire-eater.” Brianna raised her head and looked at Farid. But Jacopo was still inspecting him as unenthusiastically as ever.
“Oh, this stone is wonderful!” his mother murmured. “My old one wasn’t half so good. I can make them all out, Brianna, every character. Did I ever tell you how my mother taught me to read by making up a little song for each letter?” She began to chant quietly: ” A brown bear bites off a big bit of B . . I didn’t see particularly well even then, but she traced them on the floor very large for me, laying them out with flower petals or little stones. A, B, C, the minstrel plays for me. ”
“No,” said Brianna. “No, you never told me.”
Jacopo was still staring at Farid. “He was at my party!” he said. “He threw torches.”
“That was nothing, just a children’s game.” Farid was looking patronizingly at the boy, as if he himself and not Jacopo were the prince’s son. “I can do other tricks, too, but I don’t think you’re old enough for them.”
Meggie saw Brianna hide a smile as she took the comb out of her pale red hair and pinned it up again. She did it very prettily. Farid was watching her, and for the first time in her life Meggie wished that she had such lovely hair, although she wasn’t sure that she could manage to put a comb in it so gracefully. Luckily, Jacopo attracted Farid’s attention again by clearing his throat and folding his arms. He had probably copied the mannerism from his grandfather.
“Show me or I’ll have you whipped.” The threat sounded ridiculous, uttered in such a shrill voice
– yet at the same time it was more terrible than if it had come from an adult mouth.
“Oh, will you?” Farid’s face gave nothing away. He had obviously learned a thing or two from Dustfinger. “And what do you think I’d do to you then?”
This left Jacopo speechless, but just as he was about to appeal to his mother for support Farid reached out his hand to the boy. “Very well, come along, then.”
Jacopo hesitated, and for a moment Meggie was tempted to take Farid’s hand herself and follow him into the courtyard, instead of listening to Fenoglio trying to follow a dead man’s trail, but Jacopo moved faster. His pale, stubby fingers gripped Farid’s brown hand tightly, and when he turned in the doorway his face was that of a happy, perfectly ordinary little boy. “He’s going to show me tricks, did you hear?” he said proudly, but his mother didn’t even look up.
“Oh, what a wonderful stone,” was all she whispered. “If only it wasn’t red, if only I had one for each eye –”
“Well, I’m working on a way around that, but I’m afraid I haven’t found the right glassmaker yet.” With a sigh, Fenoglio dropped into one of the chairs invitingly arranged among the reading desks. They all bore the old coat of arms on their leather upholstery, the one where the lion was not shedding tears, and the leather of some was so worn that you could clearly tell how many hours the Laughing Prince had once spent here – until grief sapped his pleasure in books.