Fool’s Assassin

I held my breath for him. His hiding place was not perfect. Spring was young, and he was a black shadow behind the slender branches and unfurling green leaves of the espaliered rose. A smile bent my mouth as I wondered who would win this game. Other children were spilling into the garden, half a dozen of them. Two girls and four boys, all probably within three years of my own age. Their dress revealed them as the children of servants. Two of the older boys were already clad in Buckkeep blue tunics and hose, and probably were truant from lesser tasks about the keep.

‘Did he come in here?’ one of the girls cried in a shrill voice.

‘He had to!’ a boy shouted, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice. The pursuers spread out quickly, each competing to see who should first spot their quarry. I stood very still, heart beating fast, wondering if they might see me and suddenly include me in their game. Even knowing where the boy hid, I could only just make out his silhouette. His pale fingers gripped the trellis. I could see the very slight rise and fall of his chest that betrayed how long he had been running.

‘He went past the gate! Come on!’ one of the elder boys decided, and like a pack of dogs whipped off a fox the children surged back, milling about him as he led the way back to the gate. Behind them, their prey had turned and was already seeking handholds in the sun-warmed stone wall behind the trellis. I saw him take a step up it, and then a shout from one of the seekers betrayed that someone had glanced back and caught that motion.

‘He’s there!’ A girl shouted, and the pack raced back into the garden. As the black-clad boy spidered up the tall wall, the children hastily stooped. In an instant, the air was full of flung earth clods and rocks. They hit the rosebush, the trellis, the wall, and I heard the hollow thuds as they hammered against the slim youth’s back. I heard his hoarse gasp of pain, but he kept his grip on the wall and climbed.

The game was suddenly not a game at all, but a cruel hunt. Splayed on the wall, he could not seek cover, and as he climbed the hunters stooped for more rocks and clods. I could have cried out to them to stop. But I knew that if I did, it would not save him. I would simply become an extra target for them.

One of the stones hit the back of his head hard enough to snap his head forward against the wall. I heard the slap of flesh on stone, and saw how he halted, half-stunned, fingers slipping. But he did not cry out again. He shuddered, and then began to move again, more swiftly. His feet slipped, gained purchase, slipped and then he had a hand on the top of the wall. As if gaining that goal had changed the game, the other children surged forward. He reached the top of the wall, clung there for the bare instant that it took his eyes to meet mine, and then he tipped over onto the other side. The blood running down his chin had been shockingly red against his pasty face.

‘Go round, go round!’ one of the girls was shrieking, and yelping like hounds, the other children turned and poured back out of the garden. I heard the harsh clang of the gate as they flung it closed behind them, and the wild pattering of their feet on the path. They were laughing wildly as they ran. A moment later, I heard a shrill and desperate scream.

I awoke. I was breathing as harshly as if I’d just fought a bout. My nightshirt was sweated to my chest and twisted about me. Disoriented, I sat up and fought free of the blanket.

‘Fitz!’ Molly rebuked me as she flung a sheltering arm over our child. ‘What are you thinking?’

Abruptly I was myself again, a grown man, not a horrified child. I crouched in our bed, next to Molly, next to our tiny baby that I might have crushed in my thrashing. ‘Did I hurt her?’ I cried out in horror, and in response the baby began a thin wailing.

Molly reached across and seized my wrist. ‘Fitz. It’s all right. You just woke her, that’s all. Lie down. It was just a dream.’

After all our years together she was familiar with my nightmares. She knew, to my chagrin, that it could be hazardous to wake me from one. Now I felt shamed as a whipped dog. Did she think me a danger to our child? ‘I think I’d best sleep somewhere else,’ I offered.

Molly did not let go of my wrist. She rolled onto her side, snugging the baby closer to her. In response, the infant gave a small hiccup and immediately began to root for a nipple. ‘You will sleep right here beside us,’ Molly declared. Before I could say anything else, she laughed softly and said, ‘She thinks she’s hungry again.’ She released her grip on me to free her breast for the child. I lay very still as she arranged herself and then listened to the small, contented sounds of a young creature filling her belly. They both smelled so good, the baby with her infant smell and Molly’s femaleness. I suddenly felt large and brutal and male, an intruder in the safety and peace of domesticity.

I began to ease away from them. ‘I should—’

‘You should stay right where you are.’ She caught my wrist again, and tugged on it, pulling me nearer to both of them. She was not content until I was close enough that she could reach up and run her fingers through my hair. Her touch was light, lulling, as she lifted the sweaty curls from my brow. I closed my eyes to her touch, and after a few moments, my awareness drifted.

The dream that had faded into obscurity when I awoke painted itself into my mind again. I had to force myself to breathe gently and slowly despite how my chest constricted. A dream, I told myself. Not a memory. I had never hidden and watched as the other children of the keep tormented the Fool. Never.

But I might have, my conscience insisted. If I had been in such a place and time, I might have. Any child would. As one does at such an hour and after such a dream, I sieved my memories for connections, trying to discover why such an unsettling dream had invaded my sleep. There were none.

None except the memories of how the children of the keep had spoken of King Shrewd’s pale jester. The Fool was there, in my childhood memories, as far back as the first day I had arrived at Buckkeep. He had been there before I was, and if he were to be believed, he had been waiting for me, all that time. Yet it had been years before our encounters in Buckkeep Castle had progressed beyond a rude gesture from him in the hallway or unflattering imitations of me as he followed me down a corridor. I had avoided him as assiduously as the other children had. I had not, I thought as I granted myself an exemption from guilt, treated him with cruelty. I had never mocked him or even expressed abhorrence of him in any way. No. I had merely avoided him. I had believed him a nimble, silly fellow, a tumbler who delighted the king with his antics, but was, for all that, rather simple-minded. If anything, I had pitied him, I told myself. Because he was so different.

Just as my daughter would be so different from all her playmates.

Not all children in Buck were dark-eyed and dark-haired and warm-skinned, but the preponderance of playmates she would find would be so. And if she did not grow quickly to match them in size, if she remained tiny and pale, what then? What sort of a childhood would she have?

Cold began in my belly and radiated up to my heart. I moved even closer to Molly and my child. They both slept now, but I did not. Vigilant as a watching wolf, I put my arm lightly across both of them. I would protect her, I promised myself and Molly. No one would mock her or torment her in any way. Even if I had to keep her secret from the entire outside world, I would keep her safe.

SEVEN (#ulink_6ad7c610-3423-5b4a-bc80-d9b1af9f8249)

The Presentation (#ulink_6ad7c610-3423-5b4a-bc80-d9b1af9f8249)

Once upon a time there was a good man and his wife. They had both worked hard all their lives, and slowly fortune had favoured them with everything that they could desire save one. They had no child.

One day as the wife was walking in her garden and weeping that she had no child, a pecksie came out of the lavender bush and said to her, ‘Woman, why do you weep?’

‘I weep that I have no babe of my own,’ the woman said.

‘Oh, as to that, how foolish you are,’ said the pecksie. ‘If you but say the word, I can tell you how a babe can be in your arms before the year is out.’

‘Tell me then!’ the woman implored.

The pecksie smiled. ‘As to that, it is easily done. Tonight, just as the sun kisses the horizon, set out on the ground a square of silk, taking care that it rests flat on the ground with never a wrinkle in it. And tomorrow, whatever is under the silk is yours.’

The woman hastened to do as she was bid. As the sun touched the horizon, she set the silk flat to the ground, with never a wrinkle. But as the garden darkened and she hurried back to her house, a curious mouse came to the silk, sniffed it, and scampered across it, leaving a tiny wrinkle at the edge.

In the earliest light of dawn, the woman hastened to the garden. She heard small sounds and saw the silk moving. And when she lifted the square of silk, she found a perfect child with bright black eyes. But the babe was no bigger than the palm on her hand …

Old Buckkeep Tale

Ten days after our baby’s birth, I finally resolved that I must make confession to Molly. I dreaded it, but there was no avoiding it, and delaying it any longer was not going to make it easier.

Since both Nettle and I had doubted Molly’s pregnancy, we had not shared the news with anyone outside our immediate family. Nettle had informed her brothers, but only in the context that their mother was ageing and her mind had begun to wander. The lads all had busy lives of their own, and in Chivalry’s case, that meant three youngsters as well as a wife and a holding to tend to. They were far too caught up in their own lives and wives and children to give more than a passing worry that their mother might be losing her mind. Nettle and Tom, they were sure, would handle any crisis in that area, and in any case, what could any of them do about their mother’s increasing senility? It is the way of the young to accept the debilitations of old age very gracefully on behalf of their elderly parents. And now there was a baby to explain to them. And not just to them, but to the whole rest of the world.

I had confronted this difficulty by ignoring it. No one beyond Withywoods had been told. Not even to Nettle had I passed the news.

But now I had to admit that to Molly.

I armed myself for the task. I had requested from the kitchen a tray of the little sweet biscuits Molly loved, along with a dish of thick, sweetened cream and raspberry preserves. A large pot of freshly-brewed black tea joined it on my tray. I assured Tavia that I was perfectly capable of carrying a tray, and set out for Molly’s nursery. On the way, I arrayed my reasons as if I were facing a battle and setting my weapons to hand. First, Molly had been weary and I had not wanted any guests to trouble her. Second, there was the baby herself, so tiny and possibly frail. Molly herself had told me she might not survive, and surely keeping her undisturbed had been for the best. Third, I never wanted anyone to put any obligations on our baby beyond her need to be herself … No. That was not a reason to share with Molly. Not right now, at least.

I managed to open the door of the room without dropping the tray. I set it down carefully on a low table and then managed to move the small table with the tray on it so that it was next to Molly’s seat without oversetting anything. She had the baby on her shoulder and was humming as she patted her back. The soft gown hung far past our daughter’s feet and her arms and hands were lost in the sleeves.

Molly had a honeysuckle candle burning; it lent a sharp sweet scent to the room. There was an apple-wood fire burning in the small hearth, and no other light: it made the room as cosy as a cottage. She enjoyed the luxury of not worrying constantly about money, but she had never become completely comfortable with the life of a noble lady. ‘I like to do for myself,’ she had told me more than once when I had suggested that a personal maid was entirely appropriate to her new station. The larger work of the manor, the scrubbing and dusting, cooking and laundering, that the servants might do. But Molly was the one who dusted and swept our bedchamber, who spread fresh sun-dried linens on our bed or warmed the feather bed before the hearth on a cold night. In that chamber, at least, we remained Molly and Fitz.

The pansy screens had been moved to catch and hold the warmth of the fire. The burning logs crackled softly and shadows danced in the room. The baby was close to sleep in her mother’s arms when I set down the table and the tray.

‘What’s this?’ Molly asked with a startled smile.

‘I just thought we might have some quiet time, and perhaps a bite of something sweet.’

Her smile widened. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like better!’

‘And true for me as well.’ I sat down beside them, careful not to jostle her. I leaned around her to look into my daughter’s tiny face. She was red, her pale brows drawn together in concentration. Her hair was only wisps, her fingernails smaller than a fish’s scale and as delicate. For a time, I just looked at her.

Molly had taken a biscuit and dipped it in the raspberry preserves and then scooped a small amount of cream onto it. ‘It smells and tastes like summer,’ she said after a moment. I poured tea for both of us, and the fragrance of it mingled with the scent from the raspberries. I took a biscuit for myself, and was more generous with both jam and cream than she had been.

‘It does,’ I agreed. For a short time, we simply shared food and tea and the warmth of the fire. Outside a light snow was falling. We were here, inside, safe and warm as a den. Perhaps tomorrow would be a better time to tell her.

‘What is it?’

I turned startled eyes to her. She shook her head at me. ‘You’ve sighed twice and shifted about as if you have fleas but aren’t allowed to scratch. Out with it.’

It was like ripping a bandage off a wound. Do it quickly. ‘I didn’t tell Nettle the baby was born. Or send your letters to the boys.’