The Golden Fool ttm-2

by Robin Hobb

  But she only continued to weep. I approached her, and finally put my hand on her shoulder, expecting to encounter cold stone. Instead she turned to me with eyes that were grey as fog. Her eyes were made of tears. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please talk to me. Tell me why you weep?’

  And suddenly she was Nettle. She leaned her brow on my shoulder and wept on. Always before, when I had encountered her in dreams, I had had the feeling she was seeking for me. This time I sensed that I had come to her, drawn by her sorrow into some other place that was usually private to her. I think my coming surprised her. Yet I was not unwelcome, only unlocked for.

  What is it? Even in my sleep, I knew I Skilled to her.

  ‘They quarrel. Even when they do not speak, their quarrel hangs like cobwebs in the room. Every word anyone says gets tangled in the quarrel. They act as if I cannot love them both, as if I must choose between them. And I cannot.’

  Who quarrels?

  ‘My father and my brother. They came home safely, as you said they would. But as soon as they got down from the horse, I felt the storm hanging between them. I don’t know what it is about. My father refuses to speak of it, and he has forbidden my brother to tell me. It is something shameful and dark and horrid. Yet my brother wishes to do it. He desires it with all his heart. I cannot imagine why. Swift has always been such a good boy; quiet and meek and obedient. What can he have discovered that he longs to do and my father so abhors?’

  I could almost feel her mind groping towards dark suspicions. She longed to know what had so disgraced her gentle brother in her father's eyes. Her imagination could not conjure anything sufficiently evil that a boy of his years could possibly do. That led her towards the idea that her father was being irrational. Yet that concept, too, was untenable for her. And so her speculation wobbled between two unacceptable ideas. And all the while tension in the household grew heavier and heavier.

  'He does not allow my brother to go outside by himself. All day long, he must accompany my father as he goes about his chores. Yet he is not allowed to help him exercise or groom the horses. Instead, he must simply stand and watch. It makes no sense to me, or to my brothers. But if we ask about it, my father becomes very strict and silent. It is making all of us miserable and I do not know how much longer my brother can stand it. I fear he will do something desperate.

  What do you fear he might do?

  'I don't know. If I knew it, I could prevent it.

  I do not know of any way I can help you with this. I framed the thought very carefully, fencing it off from all I knew. What would she think of Swift if she knew he was Witted? How did Burrich and Molly speak of that magic in their home, if they spoke of it at all? She had not mentioned how her mother had reacted to the situation and I could not find the courage within me to ask.

  'I did not think you could, Shadow Wolf. That was why I did not come to you. But I am grateful you came to me, even if you cannot help me. A sigh. 'When you wall me out, I feel more isolated than I can explain, even to myself. For so long, you were always there, at the edges of my dreams, watching them through me. Then, you took yourself away. And I do not know why. Nor do I know who or what you truly are. Will not you explain yourself to me?

  I cannot. I heard the harshness of my own refusal and felt in a Skill-echo her hurt at my words. Against my will, I felt myself try. I cannot explain. In some ways, I am a danger to you, and so I seek to stay away from you. You do not truly need me. Yet, in all ways that I can, I will watch over you and protect you. And come to you when I think you need me.

  ‘You contradict yourself. You are a danger that will protect me? I do not need you, yet you will come to me when I need you? You make no sense!’

  No. I don’t, I admitted humbly. And hence I cannot explain myself to you, Nettle. All I can offer you is this. What is between your father and brother is between your father and brother. Do not let it stand between you and either of them, difficult as that might be. Do not lose faith in either of them. Or stop loving either of them.

  ‘As if I could.’ she said bitterly. ‘If I could stop loving them, I could stop grieving for what they do to each other.’

  And there we left it as I faded from her dream. There was no comfort for me in such contact with my daughter and very little comfort for her, I am sure. Her worry became mine. Burrich had always been strict, yet fair within his own sense of fairness. He had often been rough with me, but never harsh. An irritated cuff, an impatient shove, he might have given, but he had seldom beaten me. The few thrashings I had suffered at his hands had been intended to teach a lesson, never to harm me. The times he had physically punished me I now saw as justified. Yet I feared that Swift would defy him openly as I had not, and I did not know what effect that would have on the man. He believed that one boy entrusted to his care had died horribly because he had failed to beat the Wit out of him. Would he see it as his duty to protect his own son from a similar fate, no matter how harsh he must be to do it? I feared for them both, and had no outlet for that worry.

  At dawn of the fourth day, I awoke feeling stronger and restless. Today, I decided, I was well enough to get out and move around the keep a bit. It was time for me to resume my life. I took the feathers from beneath my pillow and went down to Tom Badgerlock’s chamber to get some fresh clothing. I had scarcely closed the door to the hidden staircase behind me before there was a tap on the connecting door. I reached it in two steps and opened it. Lord Golden took a startled step backwards. ‘Well, I suppose he is awake after all. And dressed, too, I see. So. Are you feeling more yourself, Tom Badgerlock?’

  ‘A bit,’ I replied, trying to look past him to discover for whom this mummery was played out. I barely had time to take in the shock on his face as he stared at my renewed scars before Hap almost shouldered him aside to get to me. My boy seized me by the shoulders and stared up at me in horror.

  ‘You look terrible. Go back to bed, Tom.’ Then, almost without drawing breath, he turned to Lord Golden. ‘Sir, I beg your pardon. You were right, I had thought that you were deceiving me as to how ill he was. But you were right to keep all visitors from his door. I see that now. I most humbly beg your pardon for my ill words.’

  Lord Golden gave a small harrumph. ‘Well. I scarcely expect court manners from a country boy, and I understand that you have been so worried about your father. So, little as I have enjoyed your rousing me at such ungodly hours, or your churlish manners when I forbade you access, I shall forgive your behaviour. And I’m sure that you will both excuse me while you enjoy your visit.’

  He turned away and left us alone in my small chamber. It did not take much urging from Hap to get me to sit down on the low bed. The long trek down Chade’s winding stairs had tired me. Hap kept one hand on my shoulder as he sat down beside me. His gaze wandered over my face, and he squinted in pity at my gauntness. ‘I’m so glad to see you,’ he said tightly. For a moment longer he stared at me, face taut with some emotion. Then his eyes brimmed suddenly and he buried his face in both his hands and rocked back and forth on my bed. ‘Tom, I thought you were going to die,’ he managed to say through his fingers. And then he sat panting, fighting the sobs that threatened to overtake him. I put my arm around his shoulders and hugged him close. Dry sobs broke from him. He was suddenly my boy again, and very frightened he had been. He spoke in gasps. ‘I’ve been here before dawn every day since they brought you here, and every day Lord Golden has told me that you were too weak for visitors. At first, I tried to be patient, but the last few days—’ He gulped suddenly. ‘I’ve been very rude to him, Tom. I was horrid. I hope he won’t take it out on you. It was just—’

  I spoke by his ear, calmly and reassuringly. ‘I’ve been very ill, and my recovery is still slow. But I’m not going to die, son. Not this time. I’ll be here for you for some time yet. And Lord Golden has already told you that he forgives you. So. Don’t worry about any of that.’

  He reached up to grip my hand tightly in both of his. After a moment, he straightened and tur
ned to face me. Tears tracked his face. ‘I thought you would die and I’d never get the chance to tell you I was s-s-sorry. For how I behaved. I knew you’d nearly given up on me, in that you hardly spoke to me nor came to see me any more. And then you were hurt, and I could not get to you in that jail. Nor afterwards, when they brought you up here. And all I could think was that you would die believing me both stupid and ungrateful for all you had done for me. You were right, you know. I should have listened to you. I wanted so badly to tell you that. You were right. And I’ve learned.’

  ‘About what?’ I asked, but my heart sank with the answer I already knew.

  He sniffed, looking aside from me. ‘About Svanja.’ His voice grew deeper and thicker. ‘She’s cast me off, Tom. Just like that. And I’ve already heard that there is someone else for her—or maybe always was. A sailor on one of those big trading ships.’ He looked down at the floor between his feet. He swallowed. ‘I suppose they had been… close, before his ship last sailed, in the spring. Now he’s back, with silver earrings for her, and fancy cloth and a spice perfume from far away. Gifts for her parents, too. They like him.’ His voice grew softer and softer as he spoke, so that his last words were barely audible. ‘If I’d known,’ he said, and then his voice trailed away.

  It was a very good time for me to be silent.

  ‘I waited for her one night, and she just didn’t come. And I got very worried, frightened for her. I was scared that something bad had happened to her on her way to meet me. And finally I got up the courage and went to her house. Just as I was going to knock on her door, I heard her laughing inside. I didn’t dare to knock because her father hates me so much. Her mother didn’t used to hate me, but then you got into that fight with her father and— Well. Anyway. I thought it was just that she hadn’t been able to get out, well, sneak out to meet me. Because her father had started to be very watchful, you know.’ He halted, face flushing. ‘It’s strange. Looking back at it now it seems shameful and childish. Us sneaking about, hiding from her father, her lying to her mother to get time to spend with me. It didn’t seem like that at the time, not at all. It seemed romantic and, well, fated. That was Svanja always said. That we were fated to be together, and should let nothing stand between us. That lies and deceit didn't matter, because together we were a truth that no one could deny. He rubbed his brow with the heels of his hands. 'And I believed it. I believed it all.

  I sighed, yet admitted, 'If you had not believed it, Hap… well, then it would have been worse than foolish to do as you did. And then I halted, wondering if I had just made it worse.

  'I feel such a fool, he admitted after a time. 'And the worst part is, I'd take her back in a breath if she came to me. Faithless as I know she is, first to him and now to me, I'd still take her back. Even if I had to wonder ever after if I could hold her. After a time, he asked quietly, 'Is this how you felt when I told you Starling was married?

  A hard question, but mainly because I didn't want to tell him that I had never truly loved Starling. So I just said, 'I don't think any two pains are ever exactly the same, Hap. But the part about feeling a fool, oh, yes.

  'I thought I would die from it, he declared passionately. 'The next day I was out on an errand for Master Gindast. He's come to trust me with making his purchases about town, because I am very exact with what he wants and what he will pay for it. So, I was hurrying, and then I saw a couple coming towards me. And I thought, "she looks so much like Svanja, she could be her sister." And then I saw it was Svanja, but wearing silver earrings and a shawl dyed such a violet as I had never seen. And the man beside her held her arm and she was looking up at him exactly as she looked up at me. I could not believe it. I stood gawking, and as they went by, she glanced at me. Tom, she blushed red, but pretended not to know me. I… I didn't know what to do. We have had to sneak about so much that I thought, well, perhaps this is her uncle or a man her father knows, and she must pretend not to know me. But even then, I knew it was not so. And when I went into the Stuck Pig two days later, in the hope of seeing her, the men in tavern mocked me, asking how it felt to be small fry now that the big fish was biting again. I did not know what they meant, but they soon explained it to me. In detail. Tom, I have never been so humiliated. I all but fled, and I’ve been too ashamed to go back, lest I encounter them. A part of me wants to, a part of me yearns to tell her sailor how faithless she is, and to tell her that I’ve discovered how worthless she is. Yet another part of me longs to fight and best him, to see if that would bring her back to my side. I feel both a fool and a coward.’

  ‘You are neither,’ I told him, knowing he could not believe me. ‘Walking away from it is the wisest thing to do. Fight him and win her back, and what do you have? A woman no better than a bitch in season that goes with the strongest dog. Confront her and have her disdain you, and you will only have added to your humiliation. Think of it this way, if it comforts you at all. She will always wonder at how easily you seemed to let her go.’

  ‘A sour comfort. Tom, is there any such thing as a true woman?’ He asked this so wearily that it twisted my heart to see him so soon disillusioned.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ I asserted. ‘And you are young yet, with as good a chance as any of finding one.’

  ‘Not really.’ he declared. He stood up abruptly. A tired smile twisted his mouth. ‘For I’ve no time to look for one. Tom, I’m so sorry to come and visit so briefly, but I must run now to be back at the woodshop on time. Old Gindast is a taskmaster. Since I discovered you were hurt, he’s given me time each dawn to come and try to see you, but he insists I make up the work in the evening.’

  ‘He’s wise. Work is the best cure for worry. And for heartbreak. Throw yourself into your tasks, Hap, and don’t berate yourself for foolishness. Every man makes his share of mistakes in that area.’

  He stood looking at me for a time longer. Then he shook his head. ‘Every time I think I’ve grown up a bit more, I look around and see myself acting like a child again. I came here to see you, sick with worry, and the instant that I saw you could stand, all I did was bend your ear with my woes. You’ve told me nothing of all you went through.’

  I managed a smile. ‘And that is how I’d like to leave it, son. Nothing there that I care to remember. Let’s put it behind us.’

  ‘For now, then. I’ll come back and see you again tomorrow.’

  ‘No, no, don’t do that. If you’ve been coming every day, as I know you have, then I know you must be wearied of it. I’m mending nicely, as you can see. Soon enough I’ll be down to visit with you, and then I’ll ask Gindast to give you an afternoon off and we can sit and talk together.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ he said, and the sincerity in his voice gave me heart. He hugged me before he left and I feared his youthful strength would snap my weakened bones. Then he left me and I sat staring after him. For the first time in months, I felt I had my Hap back again, I thought as I laboriously took out clean clothing and clambered into them. My relief at regaining him was tinged with guilt. I couldn’t keep him a boy. I shouldn’t expect him to be ‘my Hap’ any more than Chade should hope me to be his ‘boy’. To be relieved that his heartbreak and disappointment had brought him back to me and convinced him of my wisdom was a sort of betrayal on my part. Next time I saw him, I’d have to admit to him that I hadn’t known that Svanja would be false to him, only that she distracted him from his apprenticeship. I didn’t relish the idea.

  Dressed, I left my room and went out into Lord Golden’s chamber. I was no longer tottering about, but it was more comfortable to move slowly and carefully. His serving-boy hadn’t brought breakfast up yet. The table was bare. He sat before the fire, looking weary. I nodded to him, and then set the cloth-wrapped feathers on the table. ‘I think these were meant for you,’ I said. I put no inflection in my voice. As I unrolled the cloth, he rose from his chair and came to see what I was doing. He watched, not saying a word as I nudged the feathers into a row.

  ‘They are extraordinary. How ca
me you by these, Badgerlock?’ he asked at last, and I felt my silence had dragged the question from him. It burned me that he still spoke with Golden’s Jamaillian accent.

  ‘When Dutiful and I went through the Skill-pillar, it took us to a beach. I picked these up along the tideline there. They were lying amongst the driftwood and seaweed like flotsam. As I walked the beach I found them, one after the other.’

  ‘Indeed. Never have I heard such a tale.’

  There was an unspoken question in his neutral comment. Had I concealed these from him deliberately or dismissed them as unimportant? I answered as best I could. ‘The time spent on that beach still seems strange to me. Disconnected from all else. When I did get back, so much happened all at once: the fight to regain Dutiful, and Nighteyes’ death and then our journey back here, with no privacy to speak to one another. Then, once we got to Buckkeep, there was the betrothal and all.’ Even as I made my excuses, they seemed weak. Why hadn’t I told him about the feathers? ‘I put them away up in Chade’s workroom. And the time never seemed right.’

  He was just staring at them. I looked at them again. Set out in a row on the rough cloth, their flat greyness made them even more unremarkable. Yet at the same time they seemed profoundly strange, artefacts too perfect to have been shaped by men’s hands and yet obviously manufactured. I felt oddly reluctant to touch them.

  ‘I see,’ Lord Golden said at last. ‘Well. Thank you for showing them to me.’ He turned and walked back towards the hearth.

  I couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. I tried again. ‘Fool. I think they belong in the Rooster Crown.’