"I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I’ll never be able to write again. It brings nothing but misfortune, and there’s enough of that here already."
What a coward he was. Too cowardly for the truth. Why didn’t he tell her that the words had abandoned him, that she was asking the wrong man? But Resa seemed to know it anyway. He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger, disappointment, fear — and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly. That was what it was doing to Minerva. . . .
"Very well." Resa was in control of her voice, although it shook. "Then I’ll go to Orpheus. He can write unicorns into this world; he brought us all here. Why shouldn’t he be able to send us home again, too?"
If you can pay him, thought Fenoglio, but he didn’t say it aloud. Orpheus would send her packing. He saved his words for the ladies and gentLimen in the castle who paid for his expensive clothes and his maids. No, she’d have to stay, and so would Mortimer and Meggie —and a good thing, too, because who else was going to read his words, supposing they did obey him again someday? And who was to kill the Adderhead if not the Bluejay?
Yes, they had to stay. It was better that way.
"Off you go to Orpheus, then," he said. "And I wish you luck with him." He turned his back to her, so that he wouldn’t have to see the despair in her eyes any longer.
Did he detect a trace of contempt there, too? "But you’d better not ride back in the dark" he added. "The roads are more dangerous every day."
Then he left her. Minerva would be waiting with supper. He didn’t turn back. He knew only too well how Resa would be gazing after him. Exactly like her daughter. .
. .
CHAPTER 17
THE WRONG FEAR
Mo had spent two whole days and nights with Battista and the Black Prince looking for a place where a hundred or more children could be hidden. With the bear’s help, they had finally found a cave. But it was a long way off. The mountainside where the cave lay concealed was steep and almost impassable, especially for children’s feet, and a pack of wolves roamed the ravine next to it, but there was some hope that neither the Milksop’s hounds nor the Piper would find them therc. Not a great deal of hope, but for the first time in many days Mo’s heart felt a little lighter.
Hope. Nothing is more intoxicating And hardly any hope Was Sweeter than the prospect of giving the Piper an unpleasant surprise and humiliating him in front of his immortal master.
They wouldn’t have to hide all the children, of course, but many, very many of them, must be hidden. If all went according to plan, Ombra would soon be not just without men but almost entirely without children, and the Piper would have to go from one remote farm to another if he wanted to steal any, hoping the Black Prince’s men hadn’t been there ahead of him helping the women to hide their little ones.
Yes, much would be gained if they succeeded in getting the children of Ombra to safety, and Mo was almost in high spirits as they returned to the camp. But when Meggie came to meet him with anxiety on her face, that mood was gone at once.
Obviously, there was more bad news.
Meggie’s voice shook as she told him about the deal the Piper had offered the women of Ombra. The Bluejay in exchange for your children. The Black Prince didn’t have to tell Mo what that meant. Instead of helping to hide the children, he himself would have to hide from every woman who had a child of the right age.
"You’d better take to living in the trees!" hiccupped Gecko. He was drunk, presumably on the wine they had stolen only last week from a couple of the Milksop’s friends out hunting. "After all, you can fly up there. Don’t folk say that’s how you escaped from Balbulus’s workshop?"