by Robin Hobb
‘Does Molly speak of it … of me? To you. I must know. Please.’ I battered at their silence and exchanged looks. ‘Does she truly wish me to leave her alone? Have I become so despised of her? Have I not done all you demanded of me? I have waited, Patience. I have avoided her, I have taken care not to cause talk. But when is an end to it? Or is this your plan? To keep us apart until we forget each other? It cannot work. I am not a babe, and this is not some bauble you hide from me, to distract me with other toys. This is Molly. And she is my heart and I will not let her go.’
‘I am afraid you must.’ Patience said the words heavily.
‘Why? Has she chosen another?’
Patience batted my words away as if they were flies. ‘No. She is not fickle, not that one. She is smart and diligent and full of wit and spirit. I can see how you lost your heart to her. But she also has pride. She has come to see what you refuse. That you come, each of you, from places so far apart that there can be no meeting in the middle. Even were Shrewd to consent to a marriage, which I very much doubt, how would you live? You cannot leave the keep, to go down to Buckkeep Town and work in a candle shop. You know you cannot. And what status would she enjoy if you kept her here? Despite her goodness, people who did not know her well would see only the differences in your rank. She would be seen as a low appetite you had indulged. “Oh, the Bastard, he had an eye for his step-mother’s maid. I fancy he caught her around the corner one time too many, and now he has to pay the piper.” You know the kind of talk I mean.’
I did. ‘I don’t care what folk would say.’
‘Perhaps you could endure it. But what of Molly? What of your children?’
I was silent. Patience looked down at her hands idle in her lap. ‘You are young, FitzChivalry.’ She spoke very quietly, very soothingly. ‘I know you do not believe it now. But, you may meet another. One closer to your station. And she may also. Maybe she deserves that chance of happiness. Perhaps you should draw back. Give yourself a year or so. And if your heart has not changed by then, well …’
‘My heart will not change.’
‘Nor will hers, I fear.’ Patience spoke bluntly. ‘She cared for you, Fitz. Not knowing who you really were, she gave her heart to you. She has said as much. I do not wish to betray her confidences to me, but if you do as she asks and leave her alone, she can never tell you herself. So I will speak, and hope you hold me harmless for the pain I must give you. She knows this can never be. She does not want to be a servant marrying a noble. She does not want her children to be the daughters and sons of a keep servant. So she saves the little I am able to pay her. She buys, her wax and her scents, and works still at her trade, as best as she is able. She means to save enough, somehow, to begin again, with her own chandlery. It will not be soon. But that is her goal.’ Patience paused. ‘She sees no place in that life for you.’
I sat a long time, thinking. Neither Lacey nor Patience spoke. Lacey moved slowly through our stillness, brewing tea. She pushed a cup of it into my hand. I lifted my eyes and tried to smile at her. I set the tea carefully aside. ‘Did you know, from the beginning, that it would come to this’ I asked.
‘I feared it,’ Patience said simply. ‘But I also knew there was nothing I could do about it. Nor can you.’
I sat still, not even thinking. Under the old hut, in a scratched out hollow, Nighteyes was dozing with his nose over a bone. I touched him softly, not even waking him. His calm breathing was an anchor. I steadied myself against him.
‘Fitz? What will you do?
Tears stung my eyes. I blinked, and it passed. ‘What I am told,’ I said heavily. ‘When have I ever done otherwise?’
Patience was silent as I got slowly to my feet. The wound on my neck was throbbing. I suddenly wanted only to sleep. She nodded to me as I excused myself. At the door I paused. ‘Why I came this evening. Besides to see you. Queen Kettricken will be restoring the Queen’s Garden. The one on top of the tower. She mentioned she would like to know how the garden was originally arranged. In Queen Constance’s time. I thought perhaps you could recall it for her.’
Patience hesitated. ‘I do recall it. Very well.’ She was quiet for a moment, then brightened. ‘I will draw it out for you, and explain it. Then you could go to the Queen.’
I met her eyes. ‘I think you should go to her. I think it would please her very much.’
‘Fitz, I have never been good with people.’ Her voice faltered. ‘I am sure she would find me odd. Boring. I could not –’ Her voice stuttered to a halt.
‘Queen Kettricken is very alone,’ I said quietly. ‘There are ladies around her, but I do not think she has real friends. Once, you were Queen-in-Waiting. Cannot you recall what it was like?’
‘Very different for her than it was for me, I should think.’
‘Probably,’ I agreed. I turned to go. ‘For one thing, you had an attentive and loving husband.’ Behind me Patience made a small shocked sound. ‘And I do not think Prince Regal was as … clever then as he is now. And you had Lacey to support you. Yes, Lady Patience. I am sure it is very different for her. Much harder.’
‘FitzChivalry!’
‘I paused at the door. ‘Yes, my lady?’
‘Turn about when I speak to you!’
I turned slowly and she actually stamped the floor at me. ‘This ill becomes you. You seek to shame me! Think you that I do not do my duty? That I do not know my duty?
‘My lady?’
‘I shall go to her, tomorrow. And she will think me odd and awkward and flighty. She will be bored with me and wish I had never come. And then you shall apologize to me for making me do it.’
‘I am sure you know best, my lady.’
‘Take your courtier’s manners and go. Insufferable boy.’ She stamped her foot again, then whirled and fled back into her bedchamber. Lacey held the door for me as I left. Her lips were folded in a flat line, her demeanour subdued.
‘Well?’ I asked her as I left, knowing she had words left to say to me.
‘I was thinking that you are very like your father,’ Lacey observed tartly. ‘Except not quite as stubborn. He did not give up as easily as you have.’ She shut the door firmly behind me.
I looked at the closed door for a while, then headed back to my room. I knew I had to change the dressing on my neck wound. I climbed the flight of stairs, my arm throbbing at every step. I halted on the landing. For a time I watched the candles burning in their holders. I climbed the next flight of stairs.
I knocked steadily for several minutes. A yellow candle light had been coming out the crack under her door, but as I knocked, it suddenly winked out. I took out my knife and experimented, loudly, with the latch on her door. She’d changed it. There seemed to be a bar as well, a heavier one than the tip of my blade would lift. I gave it up and left.
Down is always easier than up. In fact, it can be too much easier, when one arm is already injured. I looked down at the waves breaking like white lace on the rocks far away. Nighteyes had been right. The moon had managed to come out for a bit. The rope slipped a bit through my gloved hand and I grunted as my injured arm had to take my weight. Only a little more, I promised myself. I let myself down another two steps.
The ledge of Molly’s window was narrower than I had hoped it would be. I kept the rope in a wrap around my arm as I perched there. My knife blade slipped easily into the crack between the shutters; they were very poorly fitted. The upper catch had yielded and I was working on the lower one when I heard her voice from inside.
‘If you come in, I shall scream. The guards will come.’
‘Then you’d best put on tea for them,’ I replied grimly and went back
to wriggling at the lower catch.
In a moment, Molly snatched the shutters open. She stood framed in the window, the dancing light of the fire on the hearth illuminating her from behind. She was in her nightdress, but she hadn’t braided her hair back yet. It was loose and gleaming from brushing. She had thrown a shawl over her shoulders.
‘Go away,’ she told me fiercely. ‘Get out of here.’
‘I can’t,’ I panted. ‘I haven’t strength to climb back up, and the rope isn’t long enough to reach to the base of the wall.’
‘You can’t come in,’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘Very well.’ I seated myself on the windowsill, one leg inside the room, the other dangling out of the window. Wind gusted past me, stirring her night robe and fanning the flames of the fire. I said nothing. After a moment, she began to shiver.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded angrily.
‘You. I wanted to tell you that tomorrow I am going to the King to ask permission to marry you.’ The words came out of my mouth with no planning. I was suddenly giddily aware that I could say and do anything. Anything at all.
Molly stared a moment. Her voice was low as she said, ‘I do not wish to marry you.’
‘I wasn’t going to tell him that part.’ I found myself grinning at her.
‘You are intolerable!’
‘Yes. And very cold. Please, at least let me come in out of the cold.’
She did not give me permission. But she did stand back from the window. I jumped lightly in, ignoring the jolt to my arm. I closed and fastened the shutters. I walked across the room. I knelt by her hearth and built up the fire well with logs to chase the chill from the room. Then I stood, thawing my hands at it. Molly said not a word. She stood sword straight, her arms crossed on her chest. I glanced over at her and smiled.
She didn’t smile. ‘You should go.’
I felt my own smile fade. ‘Molly, please, just talk to me. I thought, the last time we spoke, that we understood each other. Now you don’t speak to me, you turn away … I don’t know what changed, I don’t understand what is happening between us.’
‘Nothing.’ She suddenly looked very fragile. ‘Nothing is happening between us. Nothing can happen between us. FitzChivalry’ (and that name sounded so strange on her lips), ‘I’ve had time to think. If you had come to me, like this, a week ago, or a month ago, impetuous and smiling, I know I would have been won over.’ She permitted herself the ghost of a sad smile, as if she were remembering the way a dead child had skipped on some long ago summer day. ‘But you didn’t. You were correct and practical, and did all the right things, and, foolish as it may sound, that hurt me. I told myself that if you loved me as deeply as you had declared you did, nothing, not walls, not manners or reputation or protocol, would get in the way of your seeing me. That night, when you came, when we … but it changed nothing. You did not come back.’
‘But it was for your sake, for your reputation …’ I began desperately.
‘Hush. I told you it was foolish. But feelings do not have to be wise. Feelings just are. Your loving me was not wise. Nor my caring for you. I’ve come to see that. And I’ve come to see that wisdom must overrule feelings.’ She sighed. ‘I was so angry when your uncle first spoke to me. So outraged. He made me defiant, he gave me a steel resolve to stay in spite of everything that stood between us. But I am not a stone. Even if I were, even a stone can be worn away by the constant cold drip of common sense.’
‘My uncle? The prince?’ I was incredulous at the betrayal.
She nodded slowly. ‘He wished me to keep his visit to myself. Nothing, he said, could be gained by your knowing of it. He needed to act in his family’s best interests. He said I should understand that. I did, but it made me angry. It was only over time that he made me see that it was in my own best interests as well.’ She paused and brushed a hand over her cheek. She was crying. Silently, just the tears running as she spoke.
I walked across the room to her. Tentatively, I took her into my arms. She didn’t resist me, and that surprised me. I held her carefully, as if she were a butterfly that might be crushed too easily. She leaned her head forward, so that her forehead barely rested on my shoulder, and spoke into my chest. ‘In a few more months, I will have saved enough that I can start out on my own again. Not open a business, but rent a room somewhere, and find work to sustain me. And begin to start saving for a shop. That’s what I intend to do. Lady Patience is kind, and Lacey has become a real friend to me. But I do not like being a servant. And I will do it no longer than I have to.’ She stopped speaking and stood still in my arms. She was trembling lightly, as if from exhaustion. She seemed to have run out of words.
‘What did my uncle say to you?’ I asked carefully.
‘Oh.’ She swallowed, and moved her face lightly against me. I think she wiped tears on my shirt. ‘Only what I should have expected him to say. When first he came to me, he was cold and aloof. He thought me a … street whore, I suppose. He warned me sternly that the King would tolerate no more scandals. He demanded to know if I was with child. Of course, I was angry. I told him it was impossible that I should be. That we had never …’ Molly paused and I could feel how shamed she had been that anyone could even ask such a question. ‘So then he told me that if that was so, it was good. He asked what I thought I deserved, as reparation for your deceptions.’
The word was like a little knife twisted in my guts. The fury I felt was building, but I forced myself to keep silent that she might speak it all out.
‘I told him I expected nothing. That I had deceived myself as much as you had deceived me. So then, he offered me money. To go away. And never speak of you. Or what had happened between us.’
She was having trouble speaking. Her voice kept getting higher and tighter on each phrase. She fought for a semblance of calm I knew she didn’t feel. ‘He offered me enough to open a chandlery. I was angry. I told him I could not be paid to stop loving someone. That if the offer of money could make me love, or not love, then I was truly a whore. He grew very angry, but he left.’ She gave a sudden shuddering sob, then held herself still. I moved my hands lightly over her shoulders, feeling the tension there. I stroked her hair, softer than any horse’s mane, and sleeker. She had fallen silent.
‘Regal makes mischief,’ I heard myself say. ‘He seeks to injure me by driving you away. To shame me by hurting you.’ I shook my head to myself, wondering at my stupidity. ‘I should have foreseen this. All I thought was that he might whisper against you, or arrange for physical harm to befall you. But Burrich is right. The man has no morals, is bound by no rules.’
‘He was cold, at first. But never coarsely rude. He came only as the King’s messenger, he said, and came himself to save scandal, that no more should know of it than needed to. He sought to avoid talk, not make it. Later, after we had talked a few times, he said he regretted to see me cornered so, and that he would tell the King it was not of my devising. He even bought candles of me, and arranged for others to know what I had to sell. I believe he is trying to help, FitzChivalry. Or so he sees it.’
To hear her defend Regal cut me deeper than any insult or rebuke she could level at me. My fingers tangled in her soft hair and I unwound them carefully. Regal. All the weeks I had gone alone, avoiding her, not speaking to her lest it cause scandal. Leaving her alone, so that Regal could come in my stead. Not courting her, no, but winning her with his practised charm and studied words. Chopping away at her image of me while I was not there to contradict anything he said. Making himself out to be her ally, while I was lef
t voiceless to become the unthinking callow youth, the thoughtless villain. I bit my tongue before I spoke any more ill of him to her. It would only sound like a shallow angry boy striking back at one who sought to deny his will.
‘Have you ever spoken of Regal’s visits to Patience or Lacey? What did they say of him?’
She shook her head, and the movement loosed the fragrance of her hair. ‘He cautioned me not to speak of it. “Women talk” he said, and I know that is true. I should not even have spoken of it to you. He said that Patience and Lacey would respect me more if it seemed I had reached this decision on my own. He said, also … that you would not let me go … if you thought the decision came from him. That you must believe that I turned away from you on my own.’
‘He knows me that well,’ I conceded to her.
‘I should not have told you,’ she murmured. She pushed a little away from me, to look up into my eyes. ‘I don’t know why I did.’
Her eyes and her hair were the colours of a forest. ‘Perhaps you did not want me to let you go?’ I ventured.
‘You must,’ she said. ‘We both know there is no future for us.’
For an instant, all was stillness. The fire crackled softly to itself. Neither of us moved. But somehow, I stepped to another place, where I was achingly aware of every scent and touch of her. Her eyes and the herb scents of her skin and hair were one with the warmth and suppleness of her body under the soft woollen night robe. I experienced her as if she were a new hue suddenly revealed to my eyes. All concerns, even all thoughts, were suspended in that sudden awareness. I know I trembled, for she put her hands on my shoulders and clasped them, to steady me. Warmth flowed through me from her hands. I looked down into her eyes and wondered at what I saw there.
She kissed me.
That simple act, of offering up her mouth to mine, was like the opening of a floodgate. What followed was a seamless continuation of her kiss. We did not pause to consider wisdom or morality, we did not hesitate at all. The permission we gave each other was absolute. We ventured together into that newness, and I cannot imagine a deeper joining than our shared amazement brought us. We both came whole to that night, unfettered by expectations or memories of others. I had no more right to her than she had to me. But I gave and I took and I swear I shall never regret it. The memory of that night’s sweet awkwardness is the truest possession of my soul. My trembling fingers jumbled the ribbon at the neck closure of her nightgown into a hopeless knot. Molly seemed wise and sure as she touched me, only to betray her surprise with her sharply in-drawn breath when I responded. It did not matter. Our ignorance yielded to a knowing older than both of us. I strove to be both gentle and strong, but found myself amazed at her strength and gentleness.