by Robin Hobb
Starling sat up in the blankets, letting in a draught of cold air. I tugged at them vainly as she asked, ‘A wife? You have a wife?’
‘And a child. A little girl.’ Despite the cold and the darkness, I grinned at those words. ‘My daughter,’ I said quietly, simply to hear how the words sounded. ‘I have a wife and a daughter at home.’
She flung herself down in the darkness beside me. ‘No you don’t!’ she denied it with an emphatic whisper. ‘I’m a minstrel, Fitz. If the Bastard had married, the word would have gone round. In fact, there were rumours you were for Celerity, Duke Brawndy’s daughter.’
‘It was done quietly,’ I told her.
‘Ah. I see. You’re not married at all. You’ve a woman, is what you’re trying to say.’
The words stung me. ‘Molly is my wife,’ I said firmly. ‘In every way that matters to me, she is my wife.’
‘And in the ways that might matter to her? And a child?’ Starling asked me quietly.
I took a deep breath. ‘When I go back, that will be the first thing we remedy. It was promised to me, by Verity himself, that when he was king, I should marry whomever I wished.’ Some part of me was aghast at how freely I was speaking to her. Another part asked, what harm could it do for her to know? And there was relief in being able to speak of it.
‘So you do go to find Verity?’
‘I go to serve my king. To lend whatever aid I may to Kettricken and Verity’s heir-child. And then to go on, to beyond the Mountains, to find and restore my king. So he may drive the Red Ships from the Six Duchies coast and we may know peace again.’
For a moment all was silence save for the slicing wind outside the canvas. Then she snorted softly. ‘Do even half of that, and I shall have my hero song.’
‘I have no desire to be a hero. Only to do what I must to be free to live my own life.’
‘Poor Fitz. None of us are ever free to do that.’
‘You seem very free to me.’
‘Do I? To me it seems as if every step I take carries me deeper into a mire, and the more I struggle, the more firmly I embed myself.’
‘How is that?’
She gave a choked laugh. ‘Look about you. Here I am, sleeping in straw and singing for my supper, gambling that there will eventually be a way to cross this river and go on to the Mountains. And if I get through all that, have I achieved my goal? No. I still must dangle after you until you do something songworthy.’
‘You really needn’t,’ I said in some dismay at the prospect. ‘You could go on your way, making your way as a minstrel. You seem to do well enough at it.’
‘Well enough. Well enough for a travelling minstrel. You’ve heard me sing, Fitz. I’ve a good enough voice, and nimble enough fingers. But I am not extraordinary, and that is what it takes to win a position as keep minstrel. That’s assuming there will be any more keeps in five years or so. I’ve no mind to sing to a Red Ship audience.’
For a moment we were both quiet, considering.
‘You see,’ she went on after a time, ‘I’ve no one any more. Parents and brother gone. My old master gone, Lord Bronze gone, who was partial to me mostly for my master’s sake. All gone when the keep burned. The Raiders left me for dead, you know, or I’d truly be dead.’ For the first time, I heard hints of an old fear in her voice. She was quiet for a time, thinking of all that she would not mention. I rolled to face her. ‘I’ve only myself to rely on. For now, for always. Only myself. And there’s a limit to how long a minstrel can wander about singing for coins in inns. If you wish to be comfortable when you’re old, you have to earn a place in a keep. Only a truly great song will do that for me, Fitz. And I’ve a limited amount of time in which to find one.’ Her voice grew softer, her breath warm as she said, ‘And so I shall follow you. For great events seem to happen in your wake.’
‘Great events?’ I scoffed.
She hitched herself closer to me. ‘Great events. The abdication of the throne by Prince Chivalry. The triumph against the Red Ships at Antler Island. Were not you the one who saved Queen Kettricken from Forged Ones the night she was attacked, right before the Vixen Queen’s Hunt? (Now there’s a song I wish I had written.) To say nothing of precipitating the riots the night of Prince Regal’s coronation. Let’s see. Rising from the dead, making an attempt on Regal’s life right inside Tradeford Hall and then escaping unscathed. Killing half a dozen of his guard single-handedly while manacled … I had a feeling I should have followed you that day. But I’d say I’d a good chance of witnessing something noteworthy if I but held onto your shirttail from now on.’
I’d never thought of those events as a list of things I’d caused. I wanted to protest that I had not caused any of them, that I had merely been caught up in the grinding wheels of history. Instead I just sighed. ‘All I want to do is go home to Molly and our little daughter.’
‘She probably longs for the same thing. It can’t be easy for her, wondering when you’ll come back, or if.’
‘She doesn’t wonder. She already believes me dead.’
After a time, Starling said hesitantly, ‘Fitz. She thinks you dead. How can you believe she will be there waiting when you return, that she won’t find someone else?’
I had played a dozen scenes in my head. That I might die before I returned home, or that when I returned, Molly would see me as a liar and a Witted one, that she would be repelled by my scars. I fully expected her to be angry at me for not letting her know I was alive. But I would explain that I had believed she had found another man and was happy with him. And then she’d understand and forgive me. After all, she was the one who had left me. Somehow I had never imagined returning home to find she had replaced me with someone else. Stupid. How could I not have foreseen that might happen, simply because it was the worst possible thing I could imagine? I spoke more to myself than Starling. ‘I suppose I’d better get word to her. Send her a message, somehow. But I don’t know exactly where she is. Nor who I’d entrust with such a message.’
‘How long have you been gone?’ she demanded to know.
‘From Molly? Almost a year.’
‘A year! Men,’ Starling muttered softly to herself. ‘They go off to fight or to travel and they expect their lives to be waiting for them when they get back. You expect the women who stay behind to keep the fields and raise the children and patch the roof and mind the cow, so that when you walk back in the door, you can find your chair still by the fire and hot bread on the table. Yes, and a warm, willing body in your bed, still waiting for you.’ She was beginning to sound angry. ‘How many days have you been gone from her? Well, that’s how many days she has had to cope without you. Time doesn’t stop for her just because you’re gone. How do you think of her? Rocking your baby beside a warm hearth? How about this? The baby is inside, crying and untended on the bed, while she’s out in the rain and wind trying to split wood for kindling because the fire went out while she was walking to and from the mill to get a bit of meal ground.’
I pushed the image away. No. Burrich wouldn’t let that happen. ‘In my mind, I see her in many ways. Not just in good times,’ I defended myself. ‘And she isn’t completely alone. A friend of mine is looking after her.’
‘Ah, a friend,’ Starling agreed smoothly. ‘And is he handsome, spirited and bold enough to steal any woman’s heart?’
I snorted. ‘No. He’s older. He’s stubborn, and cranky. But he’s also steady and reliable and thoughtful. He always treats women well. Politely and kindly. He’ll take good care of both her and the child.’ I smiled to myself, and knew the truth of it as I added, ‘He’ll kill any man that even
looks a threat at them.’
‘Steady, kind and thoughtful? Treats women well?’ Starling’s voice rose with feigned interest. ‘Do you know how rare a man like that is? Tell me who he is, I want him for myself. If your Molly will let him go.’
I confess I knew a moment’s unease. I remembered a day when Molly had teased me, saying I was the best thing to come out of the stables since Burrich. When I had been sceptical as to whether that was a compliment, she had told me he was well regarded among the ladies, for all his silences and aloof ways. Had she ever looked at Burrich and considered him? No. It was me she had made love with that day, clinging to me although we could not be wed. ‘No. She loves me. Only me.’
I had not intended to say the words aloud. Some note in my voice must have touched a kinder place in Starling’s nature. She gave over tormenting me. ‘Oh. Well, then. I still think you should send her word. So she has hope to keep her strong.’
‘I will,’ I promised myself. As soon as I reached Jhaampe. Kettricken would know some way by which I could get word back to Burrich. I could send back just a brief written message, not too plainly worded in case it was intercepted. I could ask him to tell her I was alive and I would return to her. But how would I get the message to him?
I lay silently musing in the dark. I did not know where Molly was living. Lacey would possibly know. But I could not send word via Lacey without Patience finding out. No. Neither of them must know. There had to be someone we both knew, someone I could trust. Not Chade. I could trust him, but no one would know how to find Chade, even if they knew him by that name.
Somewhere in the barn, a horse thudded a hoof against a stall wall. ‘You’re very quiet,’ Starling whispered.
‘I’m thinking.’
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘You didn’t. You just made me think.’
‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘I am so cold.’
‘Me, too. But it’s colder outside.’
‘That doesn’t make me the least bit warmer. Hold me.’
It was not a request. She burrowed into my chest, tucking her head under my chin. She smelled nice. How did women always manage to smell nice? Awkwardly I put my arms around her, grateful for the added warmth but uneasy at the closeness. ‘That’s better,’ she sighed. I felt her body relax against mine. She added, ‘I hope we get a chance to bathe soon.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Not that you smell that bad.’
‘Thank you,’ I said a bit sourly. ‘Mind if I go back to sleep now?’
‘Go ahead.’ She put a hand on my hip and added, ‘If that’s all you can think of to do.’
I managed to draw a breath. Molly, I told myself. Starling was so warm and near, smelling so sweet. Her minstrel’s ways made nothing of what she suggested. To her. But what was Molly, truly, to me? ‘I told you. I’m married.’ It was hard to speak.
‘Um. And she loves you, and you obviously love her. But we are the ones who are here, and cold. If she loves you that much would she begrudge you an added bit of warmth and comfort on such a cold night?’
It was difficult, but I forced myself to think about it a bit, then smiled to myself in the darkness. ‘She wouldn’t just begrudge me. She’d knock my head off my shoulders.’
‘Ah.’ Starling laughed softly into my chest. ‘I see.’ Gently she drew her body away from mine. I longed to reach out and pull her back to me. ‘Perhaps we’d better just go to sleep, then. Sleep well, Fitz.’
So I did, but not right away and not without regrets.
The night brought us rising winds, and when the barn doors were unbolted in the morning, a fresh layer of snow greeted us. I worried that if it got much deeper, we’d have serious problems with the wagons. But Nik seemed confident and genial as he loaded us up. He bid a fond farewell to his lady and we set forth again. He led us away from the place by a different trail from the one we had followed to get there. This one was rougher, and in a few places the snow had drifted deep enough that the wagon bodies gouged a path through it. Starling rode beside us for part of the morning, until Nik sent a man back to ask her if she’d come ride with them. She thanked him cheerily for the invitation and promptly went to join him.
In the early afternoon, we came back to the road. It seemed to me that we had gained little by avoiding the road for so long, but doubtless Nik had had his reasons. Perhaps he simply did not want to create a beaten track to his hiding place. That evening our shelter was crude, some tumbledown huts by the riverbank. The thatched roofs were giving way, so there were fingers of snow on the floors in places and a great plume of snow that had blown in under the door. The horses had no shelter at all other than the lee of the cabin. We watered them at the river and they each got a portion of grain, but no hay awaited them here.
Nighteyes went with me to gather firewood, for while there was enough by the hearths to start a fire for a meal, there was not enough to last the night. As we walked down to the river to look for driftwood I mused on how things had changed between us. We spoke less than we once had, but I felt that I was more aware of him than I had ever been before. Perhaps there was less need to speak. But we had also both changed in our time apart. When I looked at him now, I sometimes saw the wolf first and then my companion.
I think you have finally begun to respect me as I deserve. There was teasing but also truth in that statement. He appeared suddenly in a patch of brush on the riverbank to my left, loped easily across the snowswept trail, and somehow managed to vanish in little more than snow dunes and leafless, scrubby bushes.
You’re no longer a puppy, that’s true.
Neither of us are cubs any more. We’ve both discovered that on this journey. You no longer think of yourself as a boy at all.
I trudged wordlessly through the snow and pondered that. I did not know quite when I had finally decided I was a man and not a boy any longer, but Nighteyes was right. Oddly, I felt a moment of loss for that vanished lad with the smooth face and easy courage.
I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf.
Why not wait until you’ve been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.
The track we followed was barely a cart wide and visible only as a swatch where no brush poked up above the snow. The wind was busy sculpting the snow into dunes and banks. I walked into the wind, and my forehead and nose soon burned with its rough kiss. The terrain was little different from what we had passed for the last few days, but the experience of moving through it with only the wolf, silently, made it seem a different world. Then we came to the river.
I stood on top of the bank and looked across. Ice frosted the edges in places, and occasional knots of driftwood washing down the river sometimes carried a burden of dirty ice and clinging snow. The current was strong, as the swiftly bobbing driftwood showed. I tried to imagine it frozen over and could not. On the far side of that rushing flood were foothills dense with evergreens that gave onto a plain of oaks and willows that came right down to the water’s edge. I suppose the water had stopped the fire’s spread those years ago. I wondered if this side of the river had ever been as thickly treed as that.
Look, Nighteyes growled wistfully. I could feel the heat of his hunger as we eyed a tall buck that had come down to the river to water. He lifted his antlered head, sensing us, but regarded us calmly, knowing he was safe. I found my mouth watering with Nighteyes’ thoughts of fresh meat. Hunting will be much better on the other side.
I hope so. He leaped from the bank to the snow-swathed gravel and rock of the river edge, and padded off upriver. I followed him less gracefully, finding dry stic
ks as I went. The walking was rougher down here, and the wind crueller, laden as it was with the river’s cold. But it was also more interesting walking, somehow laden with more possibility. I watched Nighteyes range ahead of me. He moved differently now. He had lost a lot of his puppyish curiosity. The deer skull that once would have required a careful sniffing now got no more than a swift flipping over to be sure it was truly bare bones before he moved on. He was purposeful as he checked tangles of driftwood to see if game might be sheltering underneath it. He watched the undercut banks of the river as well, sniffing for game sign. He sprang upon and devoured a small rodent of some kind that had ventured out of a den under the bank. He dug briefly at the den’s entrance, then thrust his muzzle in to snuff thoroughly. Satisfied there were no other inhabitants to dig out, he trotted on.
I found myself watching the river as I followed him. It became more daunting, not less, the more I saw of it. The depth of it and the strength of its current were attested to by the immense snaggle-rooted logs that swung and turned as the waters rushed them along. I wondered if the windstorm had been worse upriver to tear loose such giants, or if the river had slowly eaten away their foundations until the trees had tottered into the water.
Nighteyes continued to range ahead of me. Twice more I saw him leap and pin a rodent to the earth with his teeth and paws. I was not sure exactly what they were; they did not look like rats exactly, and the sleekness of their coats seemed to indicate they’d be at home in the water.
Meat doesn’t really need a name, Nighteyes observed wryly, and I was forced to agree with him. He flipped his prey gleefully into the air and caught it again as it somersaulted down. He worried the dead thing fiercely and then launched it once more, dancing after it on his hind legs. For a moment his simple pleasure was contagious. He had the satisfaction of a successful hunt, meat to fill his belly and time to eat it unmolested. This time it went winging over my head, and I leaped up to catch the limp body and then fling it up higher still. He sprang high after it, all four legs leaving the ground. He seized it cleanly, then crouched, showing it to me, daring me to chase him. I dropped my armload of wood and sprang after him. He evaded me easily, then looped back to me, daring me, rushing past me just out of arm’s reach as I flung myself at him.