The Golden Fool ttm-2

by Robin Hobb

  ‘Doubtless, you are correct’ he replied levelly, without interest. He sat down in front of the fire again and stretched his legs out toward it. After a moment, he crossed his arms on his chest and sank his chin down. He stared into the flames.

  A flash of anger, cleansing as flame, washed through me. For an instant I wanted to seize him and shake him, to demand that he be the Fool again for me. Then the fury was gone and in its wake I stood trembling and sick. I felt then that I’d killed the Fool somehow, that I had destroyed him when I had demanded answers to the questions that had always floated unasked between us. I should have known that I could never understand him as I understood other people. Explanations had seldom worked between us. Trust had. But I had broken that, like a child who takes something apart to see how it works and ends up with a handful of pieces. Perhaps he could not be the Fool again, any more than I could go back to being Burrich’s stableboy. Perhaps our relationship had changed too profoundly for us to relate as Fitz and the Fool. Perhaps Tom Badgerlock and Lord Golden were all that was left to us.

  I felt suddenly weary and weak again. Without a word, I rolled the feathers up in the cloth again. Carrying them in my fist, I went back into my chamber and shut the door behind me. I opened the secret door, closed it behind me, and began the long climb back up to my workroom.

  I was shaking with weariness by the time I reached my bed. Without undressing, I crawled back under the covers. After a time, I fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke hours later, I was hungry and the fire had almost burned out. Waking up, eating and feeding the fire: none of it seemed worth the effort. I shouldered deeper into the bed and fled back into unconsciousness.

  The next time I awoke, it was because someone was bending over me. I came awake with a yell of alarm and had seized the Prince by the throat before I knew it was he. An instant later, I was sitting back on my bed, panting as my panic subsided. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I managed.

  The Prince stood well away from the bed, rubbing his throat and staring at me. ‘What is the matter with you?’ he croaked, caught between anger and alarm.

  I gulped air in a dry throat, feeling sweaty and shaky. My eyes and mouth were sticky. ‘Sorry,’ I managed again. ‘You woke me too suddenly. I was startled.’ I struggled free of my blankets and staggered out of bed. I could not catch my breath. My alarm seemed a continuation of a nightmare I could not recall. I felt bleary and disoriented as I looked about my chamber. Thick was sitting in Chade’s chair, his shoes stretched out towards the fire. His tunic and trousers were servant-blue, but they looked new and as if they had been cut to fit him. How long ago had I intended to get him shoes and better clothing? Chade must have done it. The fire burned merrily on the hearth and there was a tray of food on the table.

  ‘Did you do this? Thank you.’ I made my way to the table and poured wine into a glass,

  The Prince shook his head in confusion. ‘Do what?’

  I lowered the glass I had drained. My mouth still felt dry. I poured another glass of wine and drank it down, then drew a breath. ‘The food and the fire,’ I explained. ‘The wine.’

  ‘No. That was there when we came in.’

  My senses were gradually coming back to me and my heart was resuming its normal rhythm. Chade must have come and gone while I was asleep. Then, as it dawned on me, ‘How did you get here?’ I demanded of the Prince.

  ‘Thick brought me.’

  At his name, the simpleton turned his head. He and the Prince exchanged conspiratorial grins. I sensed something pass between them, too swift and controlled for me to follow. Thick chuckled and turned back to the fire with a sigh.

  ‘You are not supposed to be here,’ I said heavily. I sat down at the table and poured more wine. I put my hand on the covered pot of soup on the tray. It was barely warm. Eating it seemed like too much trouble anyway. I drank the wine.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be here? Why shouldn’t I know the secrets of the castle where I shall some day be King? Am I considered too young, too stupid or too untrustworthy?’

  That was a sorer point than I had expected to touch. I suddenly realized I had no good answer to his query. I said mildly, ‘I thought Chade didn’t want you up here.’

  ‘He probably doesn’t.’ He came to sit down beside me at the table as I poured more wine. ‘There are probably a lot more things that Chade would just as soon keep to himself. That man loves secrets. He has stuffed Buckkeep full of secrets like a magpie collecting shiny pebbles. And for the same reason, solely that he loves to have them.’ He regarded me critically. ‘The scars are back. Did the Skill-healing wear off, then?’

  ‘No. Chade and I put them back. We judged it the most sensible thing to do. Fewer questions, you know.’

  He nodded, but continued to stare at me. ‘You look both better and worse than you did. You shouldn’t be drinking all that wine before you’ve eaten.’

  ‘The food’s cold.’

  ‘Well, it’s simple enough to heat it.’ He spoke with impatience for my stupidity. I thought he would put Thick to the task. Instead, he took up the pot himself, gave it a stir and covered it again. As if well practiced at such things, he attached it to the hook and swung it over the fire again. He tore the small loaf of bread in half, and set it on a plate near the flames to warm. ‘Do you want water for tea? It would do you more good than all that wine you’re slogging down.’

  I set my empty glass down on the table but did not fill it again. ‘You amaze me sometimes. The things you know, for a prince, are surprising.’

  ‘Well, you know how my mother is. Servant of the people. When I was younger, she wished me educated in the way her people educate their Sacrifice, that is, that I should know how to do the most common tasks as well as any peasant boy would. When she had a hard time teaching me all she wished to know at Buckkeep, she decided to foster me out, away from servants who leapt to my every desire. She wished to send me to the Mountains for a time, but Chade urged her to keep me in the Six Duchies. That left her only one choice, she decided. And so when I was eight, she sent me to Lady Patience, to page for her for a year and a half. Needless to say, I was not treated like a coddled princeling there. For the first two months, she kept forgetting my name. Yet Lady Patience taught me a wonderful array of things.’

  ‘You didn’t learn cooking skills from Lady Patience,’ I observed before I could guard my tongue.

  ‘Ah, but I did,’ he replied with a grin. ‘It was by necessity. She would want something heated, late at night in her room, and if left to herself, she burned it and filled the apartments with smoke. I learned a great deal from her, actually, but you are right. Cooking was not her strongest talent. Lacey taught me how to warm a meal at a hearth. And other things, as well. I can crochet better than half the ladies of the court.’

  ‘Can you?’ I asked in a voice of neutrally friendly interest. His back was to me as he stirred the pot. It suddenly smelled good. My small lapse had passed unnoticed.

  ‘Yes, I can. I’ll teach you some day, if you like.’ He fished the soup back from the flames, stirred it again, and brought it back to the table with the bread. As he set it before me as if he were my page, he observed, ‘Lacey said that you never learned as a boy. That you were too impatient to sit still that long.’

  I had taken up my spoon. I set it down again. He went back to the hearth and checked the teakettle. ‘Not quite hot enough yet,’ he said, and then added, ‘Lacey always told me that the steam should stand out a full handspan from the spout if the tea is to be brewed well. But I’m sure she said as much to you. Both Lady Patience and Lacey told many tales about you. I’d heard little about you here at Buckkeep. You were mentioned as often with a curse here as with regrets. But when I got there, it was as if they couldn’t help themselves, even though it often made Patience break down and weep. That’s the one thing I don’t understand about all this. She thinks you are dead and she mourns you. Every single day. How can you let her do that? Your own mother.’

  ‘Lady Patience is not
my mother,’ I said weakly.

  ‘She says she is. Was,’ he corrected himself sourly. ‘She was always telling me what I actually wanted to eat or do or wear. And if I protested that my true preference was different, she would declare, “Don’t be ridiculous. I know what you want. I know about boys! I had a son of my own, once.” She meant you,’ he added heavily in case the inference had escaped me.

  I sat there, silent. I told myself that I was not a well man yet, that the cold, painful days in the prison and the Skill-healing and the remaking of my scars, and yes, even the Fool’s rejection of my overtures of peace had weakened and drained me. Thus I trembled and my throat closed and I could not think what to do when a secret so well and truly kept was suddenly spoken aloud. A terrible darkness engulfed me, worse than anything elfbark had ever produced. Tears welled in my eyes. Perhaps, I thought, if I do not blink, they will not spill. Perhaps if I sat very still long enough, somehow my eyes would re-absorb the tears.

  The kettle began to puff clouds of steam and Dutiful got up to tend to it. Hastily, I blotted my eyes on my sleeve. He brought the grumbling kettle to the table and poured hot water over the herbs in the teapot. As he carried it back to the fire, he spoke over his shoulder. Something in his subdued voice told me that my stillness had not deceived him. I think he sensed how close he had come to breaking me and it distressed him. ‘My mother told me,’ he said, almost defensively. ‘She and Chade were both frantic over you being hurt and in prison. They were angry at one another and could not agree on anything. I was in the room when they had an argument. She told him that she was simply going to go down and take you out of there. He said she must not, that it would only put you and me into greater danger. So then she said she was going to tell me who was dying for me down there; he tried to forbid that. She said it was time I knew what it was to be Sacrifice for one’s people. Then they sent me out of the room while they argued about it.’ He set the kettle back by the hearth and came back to sit at the table with me. I didn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘Do you know what it means when she names you Sacrifice like that? Do you know how my mother thinks of you?’ He pushed the bread toward me. ‘You should eat. You look awful.’ He took a breath. ‘When she names you Sacrifice, it means that she thinks of you as the rightful king of the Six Duchies. She probably has since my father died. Or went into his dragon.’

  That jerked my eyes to him. Truly, she had told him all, and it shocked me to my spine. I glanced over at Thick dozing before the fire. The Prince’s eyes followed mine. He said nothing, but Thick suddenly opened his eyes and turned to face him. ‘This is terrible food,’ the Prince observed to him. ‘Do you think you could get us better in the kitchens? Something sweet, perhaps?’

  A wide grin spread over Thick’s face. ‘I can get that. I know what they got down there. Dried berry and apple pie.’ He licked his lips. When he stood, I saw with surprise the Farseer Buck sigil on the breast of his tunic.

  ‘Go the way we came, and come back the same way, please. It’s important to remember that.’

  Thick nodded ponderously. ‘Important. I remember. I know that a long time now. Go through the pretty door, come back through the pretty door. And only when no one else can see.’

  ‘Good man, Thick. I don’t know how I ever got along without you.’ There was satisfaction in the Prince’s voice, and something else. Not condescension, but… ah. I grasped it. Pride in possession. He spoke to Thick as a man might speak to a prized wolfhound.

  As the halfwit left, I asked him, ‘You’ve made Thick your man? Openly?’

  ‘If my grandfather could have a skinny albino boy as a jester and companion, why should I not have a half-wit as mine?’

  I winced. ‘You do not let folk mock him, do you?

  ‘Of course not. Did you know he could sing? His voice gives the music an odd tone, but the notes are true. I do not keep him by me always, but often enough that no one remarks him any longer. And it helps that he and I can speak privately, so that he knows when I wish him by me and when I wish him to go.’ He nodded, well pleased with himself. ‘I think he is happier now. He has discovered the pleasures of a hot bath and clean clothes. And I give him simple toys that please him. Only one thing worries me. The woman who helps him take care of himself told me that she has known two others like him in her life. She says they do not live as long as an ordinary man does, that Thick might already be close to the end of his days. Do you know if that is true?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, my prince.’

  I offered the honorific without thinking. It made him grin. ‘And what shall I call you, if you call me that? Honoured cousin? Lord FitzChivalry?’

  ‘Tom Badgerlock,’ I reminded him flatly.

  ‘Of course. And Lord Golden. I confess, it is much easier for me to accept you as Lord FitzChivalry than for me to imagine Lord Golden as a jester in motley.’

  ‘He has travelled a far journey from those days,’ I said, and tried to keep regret from my voice. ‘When did the Queen decide to tell you all the family secrets?’

  ‘The night after we healed you. She brought me back later through the secret corridors to your chamber, and we spent all night sitting by your bed. After a time, she just started talking. She told me that, with your scars erased, you looked very like my father. That sometimes, when she looked at you, she saw him in your eyes. And then she told me all of it. Not in one evening. I think it was three nights before the tale was told out. And all the while she sat by your bed on a cushion and held your hand. She made me sit on the floor. She allowed no one else in the room.’

  ‘I did not even know you had been there. Nor she.’

  He lifted one shoulder. ‘Your body was healed, but the rest of you was as close to dead as makes no difference. I could not reach you with the Skill, and to my Wit you were like the spark at the end of a candlewick. At any moment, you could have winked out. But while she held your hand and spoke, you seemed to burn brighter. I think she sensed that as well. It was as if she tried to anchor you to life.’

  I lifted my hands and let them fall helplessly back to the table. ‘I don’t know how to deal with this,’ I confessed abruptly. ‘I don’t know how to react to your knowing all these things.’

  ‘I should think you’d feel relieved. Even if we must still maintain the charade of Tom Badgerlock about the keep for some time yet. At least here, in private, you can be who you are and not worry so much about guarding your tongue. Which you don’t do very well in any case. Eat your soup. I don’t want to have to warm it again.’

  It seemed a good suggestion and bought me time to think without having to speak. Yet he sat watching me so intently that I felt like a mouse under a cat’s eye. When I scowled at him, he laughed aloud and shook his head. ‘You cannot imagine how it feels. I look at you, and wonder, will I be that tall when I am grown? Did my father scowl like that? I wish you had not put the scars back. It makes it harder for me to see myself in your face. You sitting there and me knowing who and what you are… it is as if my father has walked into my life for the first time.’ The lad bounced and wiggled in his chair as he spoke, as if he were a puppy that longed to jump up on me. It was hard to meet his eyes. Something burned there which I was not prepared for. I did not deserve the Prince’s adulation.

  ‘Your father was a far better man than I am,’ I told him.

  He took a deep breath. Tell me something about him,’ he begged. ‘Something that only you and he would know.’

  I sensed the importance of this request and could not refuse him. I cast about in my mind. Should I tell him that Verity had not loved Kettricken at first sight, but rather had grown to love her? It sounded too much like a comparison to his lack of feelings for Elliania. Verity had not been a man for secrets, but I didn’t think Dutiful was asking for a secret. ‘He loved good ink and paper,’ I told him. ‘And cutting his pens himself. He was very particular about his pens. And… he was kind to me when I was small. For no reason at all. He gave me toys. A little wooden cart, an
d some carved soldiers and horses.’

  ‘He did? That surprises me. I thought that he had to keep his distance from you. I knew he watched over you, but in his letters to your father, he complains that he scarce sees the little Tom-cat save when he is trotting at Burrich’s heels.’

  I sat very still. It took a moment for me to recall how to breathe and then I asked, ‘Verity wrote about me? In letters to Chivalry?’

  ‘Not directly, of course. Patience had to explain to me what it meant. She showed the letters to me when I complained that I knew little of my father. They were very disappointing. Only four of them, and they were short and boring for the most part. He is fine, he hopes Chivalry and Lady Patience are well. Usually he is asking his brother to have a word with one duke or another, to smooth over some political difference. Once he asks him to send him an accounting of how the taxes were apportioned in a previous year. Then there would be a few lines about the harvest or how the hunting has been. But there was always a word or two about you at the end. “The Tom-cat that Burrich adopted seems to be making himself at home.” “Near stepped on Burrich’s Tom-cat as he ran through the courtyard yesterday. He seems to get bigger every day.” That’s how they named you in the letters, against spies and even, at first, against Patience reading them. In the last one, you are just “Tom”. “Tom had crossed Burrich and been walloped for it. He seemed remarkably unrepentant. In truth, Burrich is the one I pitied.” And at the end of each letter, a few lines about looking forward to the new moon or hoping that the full moon tides will be good for clamming. Patience explained that was how they set up a time to Skill to one another, when they could go apart from other people and be undisturbed. Our fathers were very close, you know. It was very difficult for them to be separated when Chivalry moved to Withywoods. They missed one another deeply.’

  Tom. And Patience had, I thought, so carelessly hung that name on me. And I had kept it and little known its history. The Prince was right. Buckkeep Castle was stuffed full of secrets, and half of them were not secrets at all. They were only the things we dared not ask one another for fear the answers would be unbearably painful. I had never asked Patience to tell me about my father; never asked her or Verity what Chivalry had thought of me. Reluctance to ask metamorphosed into secrets. Silence had let me assume the worst of my father. He had never come to see me. Had he watched me through his brother’s eyes? Should I blame them for not telling me what they, perhaps, had assumed I knew? Or should I blame myself for never demanding to know?