Fool's Quest - Страница 128

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So he walked me past mended hangings, empty places where tapestries had been removed for repair, reinforced doorjambs, and walls that no longer bore the scars of blades.

My bedchamber had been put to rights. The locked chest where I kept my personal items had withstood the raiders. Next was Bee’s room. Dixon spoke as softly as if he were in the presence of a dying man. “I allowed her maid to tidy it, sir, and put all back as it was kept before …” His voice trailed away. He opened the door and waited for me to enter. I looked at the smoothly spread bedding, at the little cloak on its hook and the paired slippers by the hearth. All tidy and neat. Everything there but the child. I reached past Dixon and closed the door. “The key, if you please,” I said to him, and he produced his large ring of keys and indicated it to me. I held out my hand and he stared for a moment before he fumbled it free of the others. I locked the door and pocketed the key.

“Proceed,” I told him and we moved on to Shine’s room. It was meticulously tidied as it never had been when she was in residence. “Pack it all up,” I told the luckless steward. “And send it on to her at Buckkeep.”

“As you wish, sir.” He sighed. He knew that he faced a monumental task.

I directed him to do the same for Lant’s belongings. Dixon inquired whether I would send a new scribe to be teacher and help to keep the accounts. In my grief I’d neglected to think of such things. The children of the manor deserved better from me. I promised I would.

I dismissed him at the doors of my personal study. The shattered lock had been artfully repaired. Inside, the Fool’s carving still rested on the mantel. The scroll racks had been repaired, and someone had attempted to tidy my desk. I had no heart for this yet. I closed and locked the doors and walked away.

Dixon had ordered a fine meal prepared to welcome us. Foxglove complimented him and the kitchen staff, and he glowed. I ate it and then retired to spend the night looking at the ceiling of the room I had shared with Molly. I have never been a man to pray, and if I were, El the heartless god of the sea would be more likely to listen to me than gentle Eda of the fields. But to someone or something or perhaps to Molly, that night I poured out my apologies and deep desire to somehow redeem myself. I promised to exact payment: pain for pain, blood for blood. It seemed to me that nothing and no one listened to me, but in the very darkest hours of the night, I felt Nettle’s touch on my thoughts.

Are you all right?

You know I am not.

Yes, I do. Set your walls, Da. You are singing your grief like one of Thick’s melodies.

The children of Withywoods need a new tutor. Someone very gentle and kind.

You are right. I will find one for them.

Does all go well with you and the babe?

It does. I have not vomited for two days. I can eat with pleasure once more.

I am so glad to hear it. Good night, then.

So I set my walls and felt my heart batter and break against them like a storm on the seawalls of a shuttered town. I wondered in that dark night if I would ever again feel something other than pain and guilt.

I rose before dawn and followed my old habits to the kitchen. Tavia and Mild were hard at work, as was a youngster named Lea. There was a new kitchen girl, Chestnut. When I commented on this, Tavia recounted that after Elm drank “the remembering tea” she had lost her mind. She was mortally afraid of men now, even her father and brothers. On her quiet days, they kept her in the inglenook, peeling potatoes or doing any undemanding chore. Today, knowing that I might walk into the kitchen, they’d sent her elsewhere, since the sight of grown men made her scream. Lea began to weep. I wished to hear no more.

But Nutmeg, our old cook, had come in to help with last night’s meal and she gossiped ruthlessly about the various servants. Shepherd Lin had shocked everyone when he tried to take his own life, but he’d been cut down just in time by one of his own sons. They watched him more closely now even though he claimed it had been a moment of despair and nothing he would attempt again. He had nightmares of throwing bodies into the burning stables. Slight, one of the orchard women, had drowned. Some were saying she’d walked on the thin ice on purpose and others that she was slightly daft after what she’d endured. Servants had quit, and others had been hired. Nutmeg was full of every dreadful detail and I forced myself to sit still and listen long after I longed to flee. These were things I deserved to hear. These things were the fuel that would fire me if my own resolve faltered.

Tavia was white-faced and silent as Nutmeg spoke on. Lea continued to stir something bubbling in a kettle. I did not know if her face was red from the heat of the fire or suppressed emotion. One of the gardeners had been raped by the raiders. He had taken to drink and was almost completely useless now. “Buggered him bloody,” Nutmeg reported darkly. “Man stopped eating for fear he’d have to shit. But he drinks. Oh, does that man drink! The town men, they don’t understand. His own brother said to him, he said, ‘I’d have died fighting before they did that to me.’ But they weren’t here. We’re the only ones who can understand.” She was kneading bread dough and she suddenly surprised me with the force with which she slammed it down on the board. She turned her gaze to me, and her old eyes were full of tears.

“We know you’ll make them pay, sir. We heard what you done to that Ellik, him on his high horse, looking down on us all. And that pretty boy, with his yellow hair braided like a bride, raping the girls like he couldn’t get enough of it. You done them both good, so we heard, and they deserved every bit of it, and more!”

Her voice seemed to be coming from very far away. Who … of course. He had been with me. He’d seen the bodies. And the boy would talk, here at home, among his friends. And my guard would embellish, as all guardsmen did.

“We’re proud of you, that we are, and we know you’ll go after the rest of them. Track them back to their lair and smoke them out and kill them. Young Per might have finished that Ellik but he told us that you made him pay before he put a blade in him.”

Proud of me. I felt queasy.

Tavia took mercy on me, I think, reminding me that Foxglove would expect me to join her for breakfast. She shooed me out of the kitchen and I went gratefully. In the hall I encountered Perseverance. He looked pallid and his eyes were red-rimmed. I told him he would eat with us and took him to the table to wait for Foxglove. I didn’t ask him what tales he had told the Withywoods folk. Instead I asked him how his mother was.

He took a slow breath. “Well, she’s not living at Withywoods, sir. Not anymore. She told Shepherd Lin there’s nothing left here for her except nightmares and loss. She moved to town, to live with her sister and her husband. Her sister has six children, so they’re crowded but she says it’s all right. Her sister welcomes the help, for her youngest is colicky and my mother is patient. She takes in sewing and mending. I went to see her, but the moment she opened the door to me, she started weeping. She hugged me and she said she loved me, but then she went to bed very early. My aunt said that seeing me was hard for her, that I remind her of all she has lost. And that she can’t forgive herself for how she turned me away from her door and didn’t know me.” He suddenly squared his shoulders. “If I may, sir, I’ll return to Buckkeep with you when you go. I gave my aunt my pay to give to my mother, and she said it will help her a great deal. Her husband’s a good man, but six children and then taking in my mother … I need to step up to my duty. I think the coin I earn is the best way I can help her.”

That did not sound right to me and yet something in his face convinced me it should be so. Lea brought us tea and looked very wide-eyed to see Perseverance seated at the table beside me, in his fine livery with my charging buck on his breast. She smiled at him shyly. He straightened his jerkin casually and I suddenly saw him with new eyes. He’d gone away a stable boy and returned a young man in service to a prince. A young man who had killed their nemesis and come home with coin in his pockets for his mother.

When Foxglove joined us, her face was grave. She kept silent while Lea brought her fresh tea and set out bread, butter, and jam for us. When the girl left the room, she spoke. “I had no idea what had happened here, Fitz. Small wonder you seemed so dazed when you returned to Buckkeep. The girl who tended to my things used to be Lady Shine’s maid. And helped with your little girl, she said. Oh, Fitz! I didn’t understand the half of what had befallen you. Please forgive me.”

I stared uncomprehending at her. Lea came back with porridge and left again. “Forgive what?”

“I was distant with you after … I saw your handiwork, Fitz, on those two men. Now I understand. That’s all I wanted to say.”

I nodded as if I agreed. I just wanted everyone to stop talking. I ate food I had no appetite for.

The rest of the day dragged by. I did the things I had come to do. I inspected the rebuilding of the stables and requested a few changes. I found a man in the village who knew about training dogs and asked him to help the stable girl turn the bulldog into a useful animal. I reviewed which horses and stock had been burned to death and which needed to be replaced. I asked the resident Skill-user to relay my decisions to Lady Nettle. I told Cinch that his position as stablemaster was now permanent. The other hands seemed relieved to have someone properly in charge of things. I arranged for our accounts in Withy and Oaksbywater to be settled and thanked the merchants for allowing us to trade on credit for so long.

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