by Robin Hobb
Buckkeep Town was relatively quiet compared to the festivity and crowds up in the keep. Neither of us had the sense or experience to know the waterfront town was not the best place for a six-year-old and a puppy to wander. Nosy and I explored eagerly, sniffing our way down Baker’s Street and through a near-deserted market and then along the warehouses and boat-sheds that were the lowest level of the town. Here the water was close, and we walked on wooden piers as often as we did on sand and stone. Business here was going on as usual with little allowance for the carnival atmosphere up in the keep. Ships must dock and unload as the rising and falling of the tides allow, and those who fish for a living must follow the schedules of the finned creatures, not those of men.
We soon encountered children, some busy at the lesser tasks of their parents’ crafts, but some idlers like ourselves. I fell in easily with them, with little need for introductions or any of the adult pleasantries. Most of them were older than I, but several were as young or younger. None of them seemed to think it odd I should be out and about on my own. I was introduced to all the important sights of the city, including the swollen body of a cow that had washed up at the last tide. We visited a new fishing boat under construction at a dock littered with curling shavings and strong-smelling pitch spills. A fish-smoking rack left carelessly untended furnished a mid-day repast for a half-dozen of us. If the children I was with were more ragged and boisterous than those who passed at their chores, I did not notice. And had anyone told me I was passing the day with a pack of beggar brats denied entrance to the keep because of their light-fingered ways, I would have been shocked. At the time, I knew only that it was suddenly a lively and pleasant day, full of places to go and things to do.
There were a few youngsters, larger and more rambunctious, who would have taken the opportunity to set the newcomer on his ear had Nosy not been with me and showing his teeth at the first aggressive shove. But as I did not show any signs of wanting to challenge their leadership, I was allowed to follow. I was suitably impressed by all their secrets, and I would venture that by the end of the long afternoon, I knew the poorer quarter of town better than many who had grown up above it.
I was not asked for a name, but simply was called Newboy. The others had names as simple as Dick or Kerry, or as descriptive as Netpicker and Nosebleed. The last might have been a pretty little thing in better circumstances. She was a year or two older than I, but very outspoken and quick-witted. She got into one dispute with a big boy of twelve, but she showed no fear of his fists, and her sharp-tongued taunts soon had everyone laughing at him. She took her victory calmly and left me awed by her toughness. But the bruises on her face and thin arms were layered in shades of purple, blue and yellow, while a crust of dried blood below one ear belied her name. Even so, Nosebleed was a lively one, her voice shriller than the gulls that wheeled above us. Late afternoon found Kerry, Nosebleed and me on a rocky shore beyond the net-menders’ racks, with Nosebleed teaching me to scour the rocks for tight-clinging sheels. These she levered off expertly with a sharpened stick. She was showing me how to use a nail to pry the chewy inmates out of their shells when another girl hailed us with a shout.
The neat blue cloak that blew around her and the leather shoes on her feet set her apart from my companions. Nor did she come to join our harvesting, but only came close enough to call, ‘Molly, Molly, he’s looking for you, high and low. He waked up near sober an hour ago, and took to calling you names as soon as he found you gone and the fire out.’
A look mixed of defiance and fear passed over Nosebleed’s face. ‘Run away, Kittne, but take my thanks with you. I’ll remember you next time the tides bare the kelpcrabs’ beds.’
Kittne ducked her head in a brief acknowledgement and immediately turned and hastened back the way she had come.
‘Are you in trouble?’ I asked Nosebleed when she did not go back to turning over stones for sheels.
‘Trouble?’ She gave a snort of disdain. ‘That depends. If my father can stay sober long enough to find me, I might be in for a bit of it. More than likely he’ll be drunk enough tonight that not a one of whatever he hurls at me will hit. More than likely!’ she repeated firmly when Kerry opened his mouth to object to this. And with that she turned back to the rocky beach and our search for sheel.
We were crouched over a many-legged grey creature that we found stranded in a tide pool when the crunch of a heavy boot on the barnacled rocks brought all our heads up. With a shout Kerry fled down the beach, never pausing to look back. Nosy and I sprang back, Nosy crowding against me, teeth bared bravely as his tail tickled his cowardly little belly. Molly Nosebleed was either not so fast to react, or resigned to what was to come. A gangly man caught her a smack on the side of the head. He was a skinny man, red-nosed and raw-boned, so that his fist was like a knot at the end of his bony arm, but the blow was still enough to send Molly sprawling. Barnacles cut into her wind-reddened knees, and when she crabbed aside to avoid the clumsy kick he aimed at her, I winced at the salty sand that packed the new cuts.
‘Faithless little musk-cat! Didn’t I tell you to stay and tend to the dipping! And here I find you mucking about on the beach, with the tallow gone hard in the pot. They’ll be wanting more tapers up at the keep this night, and what am I to sell them?’
‘The three dozen I set this morning. That was all you left me wicking for, you drunken old sot!’ Molly got to her feet and stood bravely despite her brimming eyes. ‘What was I to do? Burn up all the fuel to keep the tallow soft so that when you finally gave me wicking we’d have no way to heat the kettle?’
The wind gusted and the man swayed shallowly against it. It brought us a whiff of him. Sweat and beer, Nosy informed me sagely. For a moment the man looked regretful, but then the pain of his sour belly and aching head hardened him. He stooped suddenly and seized a whitened branch of driftwood. ‘You won’t talk to me like that, you wild brat! Down here with the beggar boys, doing El knows what! Stealing from the smoke racks again, I’ll wager, and bringing more shame to me! Dare to run, and you’ll have it twice when I catch you.’
She must have believed him, for she only cowered as he advanced on her, putting up her thin arms to shield her head and then seeming to think better of it, and hiding only her face with her hands. I stood transfixed in horror while Nosy yelped with my terror and wet himself at my feet. I heard the swish of the driftwood knob as the club descended. My heart leaped sideways in my chest and I pushed at the man, the force jerking out oddly from my belly.
He fell, as had the keg-man the day before. But this man fell clutching at his chest, his driftwood weapon spinning harmlessly away. He dropped to the sand, gave a twitch that spasmed his whole body, and then was still.
An instant later Molly unscrewed her eyes, shrinking from the blow she still expected. She saw her father collapsed on the rocky beach, and amazement emptied her face. She leaped toward him crying, ‘Papa, Papa, are you all right? Please, don’t die, I’m sorry I’m such a wicked girl! Don’t die, I’ll be good, I promise I’ll be good.’ Heedless of her bleeding knees, she knelt beside him, turning his face so he wouldn’t breathe in sand, and then vainly trying to sit him up.
‘He was going to kill you,’ I told her, trying to make sense of the whole situation.
‘No. He hits me, a bit, when I am bad, but he’d never kill me. And when he is sober and not sick, he cries about it and begs me not to be bad and make him angry. I should take more care not to anger him. Oh, Newboy, I think he’s dead.’
I wasn’t sure myself, but in a moment he gave an awful groan and opened his eyes a bit. Whatever fit had felled him seemed to have passed. Dazedly he accepted Molly’s self-accusations and anxious help, and even my reluctant aid. He leaned on the two of us as we wove our way down the rocky beach over the uneven footing. Nosy followed us, by turns barking and racing in circles around us.
The few folk who saw us pass paid no attention to us. I guessed that the sight of Molly helping her papa home was not strange to any
of them. I helped them as far as the door of a small chandlery, Molly sniffling apologies every step of the way. I left them there, and Nosy and I found our way back up the winding streets and hilly road to the keep, wondering every step at the ways of folk.
Having found the town and the beggar children once, I was drawn like a magnet to them every day afterwards. Burrich’s days were taken up with his duties, and his evenings with the drink and merriment of the Springfest. He paid little mind to my comings and goings, as long as each evening found me on my pallet before his hearth. In truth, I think he had little idea of what to do with me, other than to see that I was fed well enough to grow heartily and that I slept safe within doors at night. It could not have been a good time for him. He had been Chivalry’s man, and now that Chivalry had cast himself down, what was to become of him? That must have been much on his mind. And there was the matter of his leg. Despite his knowledge of poultices and bandaging, he could not seem to work the healing on himself that he so routinely served to his beasts. Once or twice I saw the injury unwrapped and winced at the ragged tear that refused to heal smoothly but remained swollen and oozing. Burrich cursed it roundly at first, and set his teeth grimly each night as he cleaned and re-dressed it, but as the days passed he regarded it with more of a sick despair than anything else. Eventually he did get it to close, but the ropy scar twisted his leg and disfigured his walk. Small wonder he had little mind to give to a young bastard deposited in his care.
So I ran free in the way that only small children can, unnoticed for the most part. By the time Springfest was over, the guards at the keep’s gate had become accustomed to my daily wanderings. They probably thought me an errand boy, for the keep had many of those, only slightly older than I. I learned to pilfer early from the keep’s kitchen enough for both Nosy and myself to breakfast heartily. Scavenging other food – burnt crusts from the baker’s, sheel and seaweed from the beach, smoked fish from untended racks – was a regular part of my day’s activities. Molly Nosebleed was my most frequent companion. I seldom saw her father strike her after that day; for the most part he was too drunk to find her, or to make good his threats when he did. To what I had done that day, I gave little thought, other than to be grateful that Molly had not realized I was responsible.
The town became the world to me, with the keep a place I went to sleep. It was summer, a wonderful time in a port town. No matter where I went, Buckkeep Town was alive with comings and goings. Goods came down the Buck River from the Inland Duchies, on flat river barges manned by sweating bargemen. They spoke learnedly about shoals and bars and landmarks and the rising and falling of the river waters. Their freight was hauled up into the town shops or warehouses, and then down again to the docks and into the holds of the sea ships. Those were manned by swearing sailors who sneered at the rivermen and their inland ways. They spoke of tides and storms and nights when not even the stars would show their faces to guide them. And fishermen tied up to Buckkeep docks as well, and were the most genial of the group. At least, so they were when the fish were running well.
Kerry taught me the docks and the taverns, and how a quick-footed boy might earn three or even five pence a day, running messages up the steep streets of the town. We thought ourselves sharp and daring, to thus undercut the bigger boys who asked two pence or even more for just one errand. I don’t think I have ever been as brave since as I was then. If I close my eyes, I can smell those glorious days. Oakum and tar and fresh wood shavings from the dry-docks where the shipwrights wielded their drawknives and mallets. The sweet smell of very fresh fish, and the poisonous odour of a catch held too long on a hot day. Bales of wool in the sun added their own note to the scent of oak kegs of mellow Sandsedge brandy. Sheaves of fevergone hay waiting to sweeten a forepeak mingled scents with crates of hard melons. And all of these smells were swirled by a wind off the bay, seasoned with salt and iodine. Nosy brought all he scented to my attention as his keener senses overrode my duller ones.
Kerry and I would be sent to fetch a navigator gone to say goodbye to his wife, or to bear a sampling of spices to a buyer at a shop. The harbourmaster might send us running to let a crew know some fool had tied the lines wrong and the tide was about to abandon their ship. But I liked best the errands that took us into the taverns. There the storytellers and gossips plied their trades. The storytellers told the classic tales, of voyages of discovery and crews who braved terrible storms and of foolish captains who took down their ships with all hands. I learned many of the traditional ones by heart, but the tales I loved best came not from the professional storytellers but from the sailors themselves. These were not the tales told at the hearths for all to hear, but the warnings and tidings passed from crew to crew as the men shared a bottle of brandy or a loaf of yellow pollen-bread.
They spoke of catches they’d made, nets full to sinking the boat, or of marvellous fish and beasts glimpsed only in the path of a full moon as it cut a ship’s wake. There were stories of villages raided by Outislanders, both on the coast and on the outlying islands of our duchy, the tales of pirates and battles at sea and ships taken by treachery from within. Most gripping were the tales of the Red Ship Raiders, Outislanders who both raided and pirated, and attacked not only our ships and towns but even other Outislander ships. Some scoffed at the notion of the red-keeled ships, and mocked those who told of Outislander pirates turning against others like themselves.
But Kerry and I and Nosy would sit under the tables with our backs braced against the legs, nibbling penny sweet-loaves, and listen wide-eyed to tales of red-keeled ships with a dozen bodies swinging from their yardarms, not dead, no, but bound men who jerked and shrieked when the gulls came down to peck at them. We would listen to deliciously scary tales until even the stuffy taverns seemed chilling cold, and then we would race down to the docks again, to earn another penny.
Once Kerry, Molly and I built a raft of driftwood logs and poled it about under the docks. We left it tied up there, and when the tide came up, it battered loose a whole section of dock and damaged two skiffs. For days we dreaded that someone would discover we were the culprits. And one time a tavern-keeper boxed Kerry’s ears and accused us both of stealing. Our revenge was the stinking herring we wedged up under the supports of his table-tops. It rotted and stank and made flies for days before he found it.
I learned a smattering of trades in my travels: fish-buying, net-mending, boat-building and idling. I learned even more of human nature. I became a quick judge of who would actually pay the promised penny for a message delivered, and who would just laugh at me when I came to collect. I knew which baker could be begged from, and which shops were easiest to thieve from. And through it all, Nosy was at my side, so bonded to me now that I seldom separated my mind completely from his. I used his nose, his eyes and his jaws as freely as my own, and never thought it the least bit strange.
So the better part of the summer passed. But one fine day, with the sun riding a sky bluer than the sea, my good fortune came at last to an end. Molly, Kerry and I had pilfered a fine string of liver sausages from a smoke-house and were fleeing down the street with the rightful owner in pursuit. Nosy was with us, as always. The other children had come to accept him as a part of me. I don’t think it ever occurred to them to wonder at our singleness of mind. Newboy and Nosy we were, and they probably thought it but a clever trick that Nosy would know before I threw where to be to catch our shared bounty. Thus there were actually four of us, racing down the cluttered street, passing the sausages from grubby hand to damp jaws and back to hand again while behind us the owner bellowed and chased us in vain.
Then Burrich stepped out of a shop.
I was running toward him. We recognized one another in a moment of mutual dismay. The blackness of the look that appeared on his face left me no doubts about my conduct. Flee, I decided in a breath, and dodged away from his reaching hands, only to discover in sudden befuddlement that I had somehow run right into him.
I do not like to dwell on what happen
ed next. I was soundly cuffed, not only by Burrich but by the enraged owner of the sausages. All my fellow culprits save Nosy evaporated into the nooks and crannies of the street. Nosy came bellying up to Burrich, to be cuffed and scolded. I watched in agony as Burrich took coins from his pouch to pay the sausage man. He kept a grip on the back of my shirt that nearly lifted me off my feet. When the sausage man had departed and the little crowd who had gathered to watch my discomfiture were dispersing, he finally released me. I wondered at the look of disgust he gave me. With one more backhanded cuff on the back of my head, he commanded, ‘Get home. Now.’
We did, more speedily than ever we had before. We found our pallet before the hearth, and waited in trepidation. And waited, and waited, through the long afternoon and into early evening. Both of us got hungry, but knew better than to leave. There had been something in Burrich’s face more frightening than even the anger of Molly’s papa.
When Burrich did come, full night was in place. We heard his step on the stair, and I did not need Nosy’s keener senses to know that Burrich had been drinking. We shrank in on ourselves as he let himself into the dimmed room. His breathing was heavy, and it took him longer than usual to kindle several tapers from the single one I had set out. That done, he dropped onto a bench and regarded the two of us. Nosy whined, and then fell over on his side in puppy supplication. I longed to do the same, but contented myself with looking up at him fearfully. After a moment, he spoke.