Fool's Quest - Страница 31

I wondered if I would have recognized my old lover without that call. Her body had changed with the years, her waist thickening and her curves growing. In the be-buttoned layers of lush fabrics that made up her gown, I did not recognize the tough and pragmatic wandering minstrel who had also followed Verity into the Mountain Kingdom to wake the Elderlings. She had let her hair grow long, and the streaks in it were silver, not gray. She wore jewels on her ears and wrists and fingers, but as she advanced, she was stripping the rings from her hands.

The look of disappointment on Kettricken’s face had been replaced with one of delight. “Well, here is a minstrel of yore who has let many years pass since we last heard her lift her voice. Our own Starling Birdsong, now Lord Fisher’s lady wife! Do you remember the song of which I spoke?”

Despite her years, Starling flourished a curtsy and then rose gracefully. Age had lowered the timbre of her voice, but the music had not left it. “Lady Kettricken, King Dutiful, and Queen Elliania, if it please you, I have heard the song sung but once. And do not think me a jealous minstrel when I say, while the threads of truth ran strong through it, the words rattled against one another as painfully as gravel in a boot, and the tune was stolen from an ancient ballad.” She shook her head, lips folded, and then said, “Even if I recalled every word and note, I would not think it a kindness to you if I sang it.”

She paused, head lowered respectfully. Despite all my misgivings, I almost smiled. Starling. So well she knew how to whet the appetite of an audience! She waited until precisely the moment when Kettricken drew breath to speak; then she raised her head and offered, “But I can sing you a better song, if you would, my lady and once my queen. If you with a nod allow me, if my king and my queen grant permission, my tongue can be freed from its long-imposed silence, and sing to you I shall, of all I know of the Witted Bastard. Of FitzChivalry Farseer, son to Chivalry, loyal to King Verity, and, to the last breath of his days, a truehearted Farseer, despite his ignoble birth!”

The music rose and fell in her words: she was tuning and preparing her voice. I saw her husband now, Lord Fisher, standing at the edge of the crowd, a proud smile on his face. His shoulders were as broad as ever; he wore his graying hair in a warrior’s tail. Ever he had gloried in the popularity of his wild minstrel wife. The look of enjoyment on his face was not feigned; he basked in her reflected glory. She had not come to the festival tonight as Starling the minstrel but as Lady Fisher. And yet this was the moment she had dreamed of, for all those years. She would not let it pass her by, and he would rejoice in it with her. She looked round at her audience as if to ask them, Shall I sing?

She could and she must. The lords and ladies of the Six Duchies already hung on her every word. How could King Dutiful forbid it, when his own queen had revealed the bastard daughter of the bastard Farseer, sheltered and then exalted as Skillmistress at Buckkeep Castle? Lady Kettricken exchanged a look with her son and his wife. And then she nodded, and the king spread his hands in permission.

“Does my harp come?” Starling turned to her husband, and he in turn gestured wide. The doors to the Great Hall opened and two healthy lads appeared, a grand harp supported between them. I had to smile. For it to appear so quickly, she must have ordered it the moment Kettricken asked if any recalled that song. And such a harp! This was no wandering minstrel’s harp! Sweat stood out on the boys’ faces, and I wondered how far and fast they had lugged the beast. She had timed her delaying perfectly for its arrival. They brought it forward and set it down: It stood as high as Starling’s shoulder. She glanced toward the minstrel gallery, but someone had already stepped forward, bearing his own stool. He placed it before the harp, and then I saw the only awkward moment in her performance. Her gown had never been cut for her to be seated behind a harp with the instrument leaned back on her shoulder. With a fine disregard for modesty, she lifted her skirts and bundled them out of the way, displaying legs still shapely and stockinged in bright green, and dainty blue slippers with silver buttons. She woke the harp, running her fingers lightly up and down the strings, letting them barely speak, as if they whispered to her that they were in tune and waiting for her.

Then she plucked three strings, one after another, as if she were dropping gold coins on a path and bidding us follow. The notes became a chord, and her other hand began to pluck a lilting melody. Then she lifted her voice.

This, I knew, was the song she had waited a lifetime to sing. Always, always, she had wanted to leave a song that would linger in Six Duchies memory and be sung over and over. When first I had met her, she had spoken with hungry ambition of how she would follow me and record my deeds and fate so that she might be witness to a turning point in Six Duchies history. And witness she had, but her lips had been stilled and her song unsung, by royal decree that what had happened in the Mountains must ever after be kept secret. I was dead and must remain so until the Farseer throne was returned to stability.

Now I stood and I listened to my own tale. How long had she honed those words, how many times had she practiced the music that flowed effortlessly and faultlessly from her fingers? This was her highest achievement. I knew that before she was two verses into the song. I had heard her sing other minstrels’ work, and I had heard her sing songs and play music of her own composing. Starling was good. No one could ever deny that.

But this was better than good. Even the minstrel who had earlier scowled seemed bespelled by her words and notes. This was the music she had saved, and these were the words she had turned and shaped as if she were a wood carver. I knew the story of my own life, and most of the court would know at least some of it. But she sang me from an abandoned bastard child to a hero, to a shameful death in a dungeon and a crawl out of a forgotten grave, until I stood before a stone dragon, one that had drunk the life from King Verity, and looked up at her as she and Queen Kettricken departed.

For a time she plucked strings and wove chords, letting that part of the tale sink in. It was not how it had been sung before, and many a face was puzzled. Then, with a sudden sweep of her fingers, she struck up a martial air and finished the tale. I myself had told her what happened after they had departed astride a single dragon with the heart of a king bearing them back to Buckkeep. Verity-as-Dragon had set out to pit himself against the whole of the Outislander fleet, to save his queen, his unborn child, and his entire beloved kingdom from the ravages of the Red Ships. Tears rolled down Kettricken’s cheeks as she listened, and King Dutiful was rapt, his mouth slightly ajar.

And so it was me and my Wit-companion—my wolf Nighteyes—who had woken the other sleeping dragons. We had battled Regal’s corrupt Skill-coterie and their hapless apprentices, and in shedding blood we had woken the stone dragons to a semblance of life and sent them winging after Verity, a veritable army at his back. She gave three verses to how the dragons had followed the king, describing half a dozen of their varied shapes, and then recounted how swiftly the Red Ships had been driven from our shores. Verity-as-Dragon had led and the other dragons had followed, taking the battle to their islands. Queen Elliania, of Outislander blood, listened with her face grave and nodded as if to confirm all that Starling told of those bloody days.

Again, an interlude of only music. Gradually, the tempo slowed and the chords deepened. She sang then of how the Bastard and his wolf, knowing they were dead to all, knowing that the name of FitzChivalry Farseer would ever be tarnished with shame and accusations of treachery and cowardice, walked away into the depths of the Mountain forests. Never again, she sang, would they hunt the green hills of Buck. Never could they come home. Never would their deeds be known. Never. Never. The tale and the song slowed, and became a trickle of wistful notes. They dwindled. Silence.

I do not know how long the song lasted. I came back to the Great Hall and the gathered nobles of the Six Duchies as if I had been on a long journey. Starling sat before her tall harp, her head bent forward and her brow resting on its dark wood. Her face glowed with perspiration. She breathed as if she had run over nine hills. I stared at her. She had been a stranger, a lover, a nemesis, and a betrayer to me. And now she was my historian.

When the applause came, it began as a whisper and rose to a roar. Starling lifted her head slowly and I followed her gaze as she looked around at the faces of her audience. Tears tracked down the faces of many, and anger sat on some. I saw a stony-faced woman sneer at the emotion of the lady next to her. Another noble shook his head and leaned close to whisper to his companion. Two young women were embracing each other, overcome with the romance of the story. The Duchess of Bearns hugged herself tight, her clasped hands under her chin, her head bent over her hands. The Duke of Rippon appeared to be telling the people around him, “I knew it. I always knew it,” as his big hands beat against each other.

And I? How to describe that vindication? I stood among them, unknown and unseen, but feeling as if we had finally come home, my wolf and I. I felt a sharp pang that the Fool had not been here to hear this, and realized I was trembling, as if I had come in from somewhere very cold and was shaking as the warmth finally came back into my body. I was not weeping, and yet the water ran from my eyes until I could scarcely see.