by neetha Napew
“I’ll fetch some water, shall I?”
“Yes. And hurry. And don’t even think of running off, young man. This is all your doing, you know.”
I ran to the kitchens for a cup and filled it at the well on my way back. By the time I got there, Lacey was sitting up and Lady Patience was fanning her old servant, alternately scolding and sympathizing. “. . . and you know as well as I do how the eyes play tricks on us at our age. Why, only last week, I tried to shoo my wrap off the table, thinking it was the cat. It was the way it was curled, you know.”
“My lady, no. Look well. It is him or his ghost. He looks just as his father looked at that age. Look at him, do.”
I kept my eyes down as I knelt by her and offered her the cup. “A bit of water, ma’am, and I’m sure you’ll feel better. It was most likely the heat.” Then, as Lacey took the cup from me, Patience reached across her to seize my chin in her hand. “Look at me, young man! Look at me, I said!” And then, as she leaned closer and closer to me, she exclaimed, “My Chivalry never had a nose like that. But his eyes do . . . remind me. Oh. Oh, my son, my son. It cannot be. It cannot be.”
She let go of me and sat back. Lacey offered her the cup of water, and Patience took it absently. She drank from it and, turning to Lacey, said calmly, “He wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t have.”
Lacey still stared at me. “You heard the rumors, same as me, my lady. And that Witted minstrel sang us the song, about the dragons and how the Witted Bastard rose from the grave to serve his king.”
“He wouldn’t,” Patience repeated. She stared at me, and my tongue was frozen to the roof of my mouth. Then, “Help me up, young man. And Lacey, too. She has the fainting spells, these days. Eating too much fish, is what I think brings them on. And river fish at that. Makes her wobbly, so you’ll just see us back to our chambers, won’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be happy to.”
“I daresay you’ll be happy to. Until we get you behind closed doors. Take her arm, now, and help her along.” But that was easier said than done, for Patience clung to my other arm as if a river might sweep her away if she let go.
Lacey was, in truth, swaying as she walked, and I felt very bad indeed to have given her such a shock. Neither one of them said another word to me, though twice Patience pointed out caterpillars on the roses and said they were never tolerated in the old days. Once inside, we still had a long walk through the Great Hall, and then up the wide stairs. I was grateful that it was only one flight, for Patience muttered nasty words as she mastered each riser, and Lacey’s knees crackled alarmingly. We went down the hall and Patience waved at a door for me. It was one of the best chambers in Buckkeep, and it pleased me more than I could say that Queen Kettricken had accorded her this respect. Lady Patience’s traveling trunk was already open in the middle of the room, and a hat was already perched on the mantel. Kettricken had even recalled that Lady Patience preferred to dine in her chambers, for a small table and two chairs had been placed in the fall of sunlight from the deep-set window.
I saw each of them to a chair, and when they were seated, asked them if there was anything else I could bring them.
“Sixteen years,” Patience snapped. “You can fetch me sixteen years! Shut that door. I don’t suppose it would be wise for this to be gossip all over Buckkeep. Sixteen years, and not a peep, not a hint. Tom, Tom, whatever were you thinking?”
“More likely, not thinking at all,” Lacey suggested, looking at me with martyred eyes. That stung, for always when I had been a boy and in trouble with Patience, Lacey had taken my part. She seemed to have recovered well from her faint. There were spots of color on her cheeks. She ponderously rose from her chair and went into the adjoining room. In a few moments, she returned with three teacups and a bottle of brandy on a little tray. She set it down on the small table between them, and I winced at the sight of her lumpy knuckles and gnarled fingers. Age had crippled those nimble hands that once had tatted lace by the hour. “I suppose we could all do with a bit of this. Not that you deserve any,” she said coldly. “That was quite a fright you gave me in the garden. Not to mention years of grief.”
“Sixteen years,” Patience clarified, in case I had managed to forget in the last few moments. Then, turning to Lacey, she said, “I told you he wasn’t dead! When we prepared his body to bury him, even then, washing his cold legs, I told you he couldn’t be dead. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew it. And I was right!”
“He was dead,” Lacey insisted. “My lady, he had not breath to fog a bit of glass, nor a single thump of his heart. He was dead.” She pointed a finger at me. It shook slightly. “And now you are not. You had best have a good explanation for this, young man.”
“It was Burrich’s idea,” I began, and before I could say another word, Patience threw up her hands in the air, crying, “Oh, I should have guessed that man would be at the bottom of this. That’s your girl he has been raising all these years, isn’t it? Three years after we’d buried you, we heard a rumor. That tinker, Cottlesby, that sells such nice needles, he told us he had seen Molly in, oh, some town, with a little girl at her side. I thought to myself then, how old? For I said to Lacey, when Molly left my service so abruptly she puked and slept like a woman with child. Then, she was gone, before I could even offer to help her with the babe. Your daughter, my grandchild! Then, later, I heard that Burrich had gone with her, and when I asked about, he was claiming all the children as his own. Well. I might have known. I might have known.”
I had not been prepared for Patience to be quite so well informed. I should have been. In the days after my death, she had run Buckkeep Castle, and developed a substantial network of folk who reported to her. “I think I could do with some brandy,” I said quietly. I reached for the decanter, but Patience slapped my hand away.
“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed crossly. “Do you think you can pretend to be dead and vanish from my life for sixteen years and then walk in and pour yourself some of my good brandy? Insolence!”
She got it open, but when she tried to pour, her hand shook so wildly that she threatened to deluge the table. I took it from her, as she began to gasp, and poured some into our cups. By the time I set the bottle down, she was sobbing. Her hair, never tidy for long, had half fallen down. When had so much gray come into it? I knelt down before her and forced myself to look up into her faded eyes. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed harder. Cautiously, I reached up and tugged her hands from her face. “Please believe me. It was never by my choice, Mother. If I could have come back to you without putting the people I loved at risk, I would have. You know that. And the way you prepared my body for burial may have saved my life. Thank you.”
“A fine time to call me ‘mother,’ after all these years,” she sniffed, and added, “And what would Burrich have known about anything, unless it had four legs and hooves.” But she put her tear-wet hands on my cheeks and drew me forward to kiss me on the brow. She sat back and looked down at me severely. The tip of her nose was very pink. “I’ll have to forgive you now. Eda knows, I may drop dead tomorrow, and angry as I am with you, I still would not wish you to walk about the rest of your life regretting that I had died before I forgave you. But that does not mean I’m going to stop being angry with you, or that Lacey has to stop being angry with you. You deserve it.” She sniffed loudly. Lacey passed her a kerchief. The old serving woman’s face rebuked me as she took her seat at the table. More clearly than ever, I saw how the years together had erased the lines between lady and maid.
“Yes. I do.”
“Well, get up. I’ve no desire to get a crick in my neck staring at you down there. Why on earth are you dressed as a guardsman? And why have you been so foolish as to come back to Buckkeep Castle? Don’t you know there are still people who would love to see you dead! You are not safe here, Tom. When I return to Tradeford, you shall come with me. Perhaps I can pass you off as a gardener or a wayward cousin’s son. Not that I shall allow you to touch my plants.
You know nothing about gardens and flowers.”
I came to my feet slowly and could not resist saying, “I could help with the weeding. I know what a marigold looks like, even when it isn’t in flower.”
“There! You see, Lacey! I forgive him and the next word out of his mouth is to mock me!” Then she covered her mouth suddenly, as if to suppress another sob. The tendons and blue veins stood out on the back of her hand. Behind it, she drew a sharp breath, and then said, “I think I’ll have my brandy now.” She lifted her cup and sipped from it. She glanced at me over the rim, and more tears suddenly spilled. She set the cup down hastily, shaking her head. “You’re here and alive. I don’t know what I’ve got to weep about. Except sixteen years and a grandchild, lost to me forever. How could you, you wretch! Account for them. Account for yourself and what you’ve been doing that was so very important you couldn’t come home to us.”
And suddenly, all the very good reasons I’d had for not going to her seemed trivial. I could have found a way. I heard myself say aloud, “If I hadn’t given my pain to the stone dragon, I think I would have found a way, however risky. Maybe you have to keep your pain and loss to know that you can survive whatever life deals you. Perhaps without putting your pain in its place in your life, you become something of a coward.”
She slapped the table in front of her, then exclaimed in pain at her stinging fingers. “I didn’t want a moral lecture, I wanted an accounting. With no excuses!”
“I’ve never forgotten the apples you threw to me through the bars of my cell. You and Lacey were incredibly brave to come to me in the dungeons, and to take my part when few others dared to.”
“Stop it!” she hissed indignantly as her eyes filled with tears again. “Is this how you get your pleasure these days? Making old ladies weep over you?”
“I don’t mean to.”
“Then tell me what happened to you. From the last time I saw you.”
“My lady, I would love to. And I will, I promise. But when I encountered you, I was on a pressing errand of my own. One that I should complete before I lose the daylight. Let me go, and I promise that I’ll be back tomorrow, to give a full accounting.”
“No. Of course not. What errand?”
“You recall my friend the Fool? He has fallen ill. I need to take him some herbs to ease him, and food and wine.”
“That pasty-faced lad? He was never a healthy child. Ate too much fish, if you ask me. That will do that to you.”
“I’ll tell him. But I need to go see him.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday.”
“Well, it has been sixteen long years since you’ve seen me. He can wait his turn.”
“But he is not well.”
She clashed her teacup as she set it down on the saucer. “Neither am I!” she exclaimed, and fresh tears began to well.
Lacey came to pat her shoulders. Over Patience’s head, she said to me, “She is not always rational. Especially when she is tired. We only arrived this morning. I told her that she should rest, but she wanted a bit of air in the gardens.”
“And what, pray, is irrational about that?” Patience demanded.
“Nothing,” I said hastily. “Nothing at all. Come. I’ve an idea. Lie down on your bed, and I shall sit beside you where you are comfortable, and begin my tale. And if you drowse off, I shall quietly take my leave, and come back to continue it tomorrow. For sixteen years cannot be told in an hour, or even in a day.”
“It will take sixteen years to tell sixteen years,” Patience told me sternly. “Help me up, then. I’m stiff from traveling, you know.”
I gave her my arm and she leaned on it as I escorted her to her bed. She groaned as she sat down on it, and as the feather bed gave beneath her, she muttered, “Much too soft. I’ll never be able to sleep on this. Do they think I’m a hen, setting in a nest?” Then, as she lay back and I helped her lift her feet onto the bed she said, “You’ve quite ruined my surprise, you know. Here I was, all set to summon a grandchild to me and reveal to her that she was well-born of noble blood, and pass on to her keepsakes of her father. Oh, help me take my shoes off. When did my feet get so far away from my hands?”
“You don’t have your shoes on. I think you left your slippers in the garden.”
“And whose fault is that? Startling us that way. It’s a wonder I didn’t forget my head down there.”
I nodded, noting but not commenting that her stockings didn’t match. Patience had never cared much for detail. “What sort of keepsakes?” I asked.
“It scarcely matters now. As you are alive, I intend to keep them.”
“What were they?” I asked, intensely curious.
“Oh. A painting you gave me, don’t you know? And, when you were dead, I took a lock of your hair. I’ve worn it in a locket ever since.” While I was speechless, she leaned up on an elbow. “Lacey, come have a lie-down for a bit. You know I don’t like you to be too far away if I need you. Your hearing isn’t what it used to be.” To me, she confided, “They’ve given her a narrow little bed in a closet of a room. Fine if your maid is a slip of a girl, but hardly appropriate for a mature woman. Lacey!”
“I’m right here, dearie. You needn’t shout.” The old serving woman came round to the other side of the bed. She looked a bit uncomfortable at the prospect of lying down in front of me, as if I might think it improper that she should share a lady’s bed. It made perfect sense to me. “I am tired,” she admitted as she sat down. She had brought a shawl, and she spread it over Patience’s legs.
I brought a chair to the edge of the bed and sat down backward on it. “Where should I begin?” I asked her.
“Begin by sitting on that chair properly!” And after I had corrected that, she said, “Don’t tell me what that vile pretender did to you to kill you. I saw enough of it on your body and I could not bear it then. Tell me, instead, how you survived.”
I thought briefly, considering. “You know I am Witted.”
“I thought you might be,” she conceded. She yawned. “And?”
And so I launched into my tale. I told her of seeking refuge in my wolf, and how Burrich and Chade had called me back to my body. I told her of my slow recovery, and of Chade’s visit. I thought she had drowsed off then, but when I tried to rise, her eyes flew open. “Sit down!” she commanded me, and when I had done so, she took my hand, is if to keep me from creeping away. “I’m listening. Go on.”
I told her of Burrich leaving, and of the Forged Ones. I explained to her how Burrich had come to believe I had died there, and returned to Molly to protect her and the child she carried. I told her of my long journey from Buck to Tradeford, and of Regal’s King’s Circle there. She opened one eye. “It’s all a garden, now. I’ve plants and trees and flowers from all over the Six Duchies and beyond. Monkey-tail vine from Jamaillia, and blue-needle bush from the Spice Isles. And a lovely herb-knot in the very middle of where it used to be. You’d like it, Tom. You will like it, when you come to live with me.”
“I’m sure I’ll like it,” I said, scrupulously avoiding the topic of where I might or might not live. “Shall I go on, or do you want to nap now?” A gentle snore buzzed from Lacey’s side of the bed.
“Go on. I’m not the least bit sleepy. Go on.”
But in the midst of my telling her how I had attempted to kill Regal, she dozed off. I sat still a time longer, waiting until her grip slackened on my hand and I could slip clear of her.
I walked silently to the door. As I lifted the latch, Lacey raised up on one elbow. There was nothing wrong with her hearing, and I suspected that despite her crooked fingers, one would still find a blade up her sleeve. So I nodded to her and left Patience sleeping as I slipped from the room.
I went down to the guardroom and ate heartily. There is nothing like a steady diet of salt fish to make one appreciate bread and butter and cold roast fowl. My enjoyment of the meal was somewhat dampened by the knowledge that evening was drawing on. Guardsmen se
emed always hungry, and no one made any comment when I carried off half a loaf of bread and a goodly wedge of cheese with me. From my meal, I went immediately to a storeroom where I helped myself to a carry basket and two sausages. I added the loaf and cheese to the basket. I took my trove up to Chade’s tower room. Thick had been there. He had done a cursory dusting of the table and mantel and set out a bowl of fruit. A little fire burned on the hearth. There was a small supply of firewood in the hod, a bundle of tapers on the table, and water in the barrel. I shook my head in wonder at the man. After all he had been through, he was home for one day and still remembered his old duties. I put half a dozen yellow and purple plums into my carry basket and nested a bottle of Chade’s wine between the bread and cheese. I was folding feverfew and dried willow bark into a twist of paper when I felt Chade nudge at my mind.
What?
I need to speak to the Queen, Fitz.
Cannot you use Thick instead? I was just on my way to the Skill-pillars.
This will not take long.
I will have to find a way to arrange quiet time with Queen Kettricken.
I have already contacted her, through Thick. The message she sent back was, yes, immediately. If you go to her private sitting room, she will come to you shortly.
Very well.
You seem cross.
I am worried about the Fool. I have some things here I’d like to take back to him. Fresh fruit and herbs for fever.
I understand, Fitz. But this should not take long. Then, you can sleep the night through, and go in the morning.
Very well.I released our contact. Very well. And what else could I have said? He was right. Many of the thoughts Dutiful had conveyed to his mother would have been difficult for Thick to grasp, let alone pass on. I tried not to resent the time it stole from me. The Fool would be fine, I told myself. He had been through the changes before, and who better than the Black Man to tend him? He had even told me that he needed time apart from me, time to think. Time to think without watching the face of someone who had witnessed what had befallen you. Besides, it was better that I serve this duty than Nettle, I told myself sternly. She needed to be home, with her family, and doubtless her family needed her there. I found a clean piece of cloth and covered the bread. I went down the long dim stairs to wait upon the Queen. It did not take a short time. Chade and Dutiful were quarreling, and Chade had attempted to steal a march upon the Prince by contacting the Queen first. He and the Prince were to board the ship to sail home tomorrow afternoon. The Narcheska was to have come with them, but earlier in the day, she had gone to Dutiful and begged that she might have three more months in the company of her family before she left them to come to Buckkeep. The Prince had granted it to her, privately, without consulting Chade.
