“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.