Fool's Assassin - Страница 41

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“You are so kind to be concerned for me. It is so thoughtful of you, for of course I do tire easily. It is not easy to be a new mother at my age.” Molly smiled round at her guests. “Thank you kindly for understanding that my daughter will take up my duties as hostess, for I know you will understand my need to retire early. But please, do not feel you must emulate me. I know that my husband has longed for company, and seldom gets a chance to spend hours in conversation with old friends. I shall trouble him only to move Bee’s cradle for me, and then I shall send him right back to you.”

I hoped I covered my surprise. It was not just that she had made such a sudden decision, but the imperious way in which Molly informed all gathered that she had done so. I had a glimpse of Nettle’s face; she was already calculating how to repair the social damage. In the set of her mouth I saw two things: She shared her mother’s fear that Lady Solace might find something wrong with Bee, and shared her cold tide of certainty that the healer would be right.

But I had a cradle to lift. Again. And a long flight of stairs before me. I stitched a smile to my face and took up my load. Our guests treated us to a chorus of swift good nights. Molly preceded me and I came behind, my pride creaking as much as my back. As soon as the door closed behind us, Molly whispered, “She sleeps in our room tonight, by my bedside.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“I don’t like how that woman looked at Bee.”

“Lady Solace?”

Molly was silent, seething now. She knew I wanted to be assured that she had taken no offense at Kettricken’s comment, but she would not give me that. She had been offended by Lady Solace, and as Kettricken had brought her into our home, she extended her affront to the former Queen. She knew it divided my loyalty, but offered me no relief. She walked briskly down the hall and then up the wide steps to our bedchamber on the next floor. I followed her more slowly, the cradle weighing more with every step. By the time I set it down in our bedchamber, Molly had settled Bee in the center of our bed, and I knew she would sleep between us. Ah, just as well. I moved swiftly around the room, pretending to close the hangings tighter and build the fire higher, but actually checking alcoves and draperies for intruders. I kept my peace while she freed Bee of her finery and clothed her in a soft little nightshirt. It dwarfed her. As Molly folded the excess length around her feet, I asked her quietly, “You’ll be all right here if I go back down to our guests?”

“I’m latching the door behind you,” she told me.

I met her gaze. My mate’s stare assured me that our cub would be safe with her. “That would be wise,” I agreed. “I’ll knock and speak through the door when I come up to bed.”

“Well. That’s reassuring,” she said quietly, and then, despite ourselves, we both laughed.

“I’m sure I’m being silly to worry so,” I lied to her.

“I’m sure you’re being silly to think I’d believe you,” she responded, and followed me to the door. After it closed behind me, I heard Molly struggle a moment with a stiff, seldom-used bolt. Then I heard it slide home, metal against metal. It was a good sound.

Kettricken and her companions stayed only a night. We did not bring Bee in to breakfast the next morning, and no one asked to see her. The minstrel was never summoned to look on her, in public or in private. Kettricken never mentioned that Bee should be documented as the true child of FitzChivalry Farseer. She was never entered into the formal lineage of possible heirs to the throne. Her life would not be like her sister’s; that was clear enough. Kettricken had evaluated my child and found her wanting. I could not decide if I felt angered by her dismissal of Bee or deeply grateful.

For there was another side to that coin. If Kettricken had acknowledged my child, even privately, it would have been a veil of protection around her. That she had not claimed Bee as part of the Farseer dynasty put her outside the circle and left her as I had been left for so many years: a Farseer who was both an asset and a liability to the throne.

Kettricken announced that she must leave shortly after noon, and that her friends were also traveling on to their home. The looks she gave me were deeply sympathetic. I think she assumed Molly and I wished to be left in privacy with our dwindling baby, to have what time we could with her before she was gone. It would have been a kind gesture, if Bee were truly failing. As it was, it was hard to bid her a fond farewell, for her departure almost seemed as if she were wishing a swift death on my daughter.

Nettle stayed on for a week. She saw Bee daily, and I think she slowly realized that although Bee was not thriving and growing, neither was she dwindling. She stayed as she was, eating and drinking, her blue eyes taking in everything, her Wit-spark strong in my awareness. At last, Nettle announced she must return to Buckkeep and her duties there. Before she left, she found a quiet moment to berate me for not telling her sooner of Bee’s birth, and to plead that if there was any change in the health of child or Molly, I Skill to her immediately. I promised her that without difficulty.

I did not Skill to Chade about his failed spy. I needed time to think. Bee was safe. Jest or test or threat, whatever it was, it was over. I had seen little of young Lant during Kettricken’s stay, but I did stand outside to be sure he was with her when she rode away. In the days that followed, I heard nothing from Chade about him.

In the weeks that followed, Molly’s sons came and went in ones and twos, some with wife and children, others alone. They inspected Bee with the fond and accepting equanimity of much older siblings. There she was, another baby, very small, but their mother seemed happy and Tom Badgerlock seemed content with his lot, so there was nothing for them to fret about here, and a great deal to worry about at their respective homes. The house seemed to grow quieter after the company had left, as if winter had truly settled into the bones of the land.

I enjoyed my lady wife and my child.

And I pondered my next move.

Chapter Eight
The Spider’s Lair

...

And so, as I always have, I turn to you for counsel. Fool that you are, you always gave me the wisest advice. Even as I know how impossible it is, I yearn once more to sit down and take thought with you. You always had the mind to look at the tangled knot of court politics and tell me where each thread was wound and trapped, to trace each strand in the hangman’s noose back to its instigator. I miss your insights sorely, as much as I miss your companionship. No warrior you, and yet, with you at my back, I felt guarded as with no other.

But I will also admit that you have wounded me as few others could. You wrote to Jofron? But not to me? If there had been but one note from you, in all these years, at least I would have a place to send these useless musings. By messenger or bird, I could send them on their way to you and imagine that in some distant time or place, they reached you, and you spared a thought for me. You know my nature. I take the bits and clues and puzzle them into an image in which you deliberately do not write to me, so that I cannot reach out to you in any way. Why? What can I think except that you fear I will somehow undo your work? From that foundation, I must wonder if that was always what I was to you. Only the Catalyst? The weapon that must be wielded without mercy, and then set aside, lest somehow it do an injury to you or your work?

I need a friend, and I have none to whom I can admit my weakness, my fear, my errors. I have Molly’s love and Bee’s need for my strength. I dare not admit to either of them that my heart breaks to see Bee remain a passive infant. As my dreams for her evaporate and I fear a future in which she remains forever infantile and stunted, to whom can I confide my pain? To Molly, who dotes on her and fiercely insists that time will give her what she lacks? She does not seem to recognize that our child appears less intelligent than a two-day-old chick. Fool, my child will not meet my eyes. When I touch her, she draws away from me as much as she can. Which is not far, for she does not roll herself over, nor lift her head at all. She makes not a sound, save when she wails. Even that is not often. She does not reach for her mother’s finger. She is passive, Fool, more plant than child, and my heart breaks daily over her. I want to love her, and instead I find I have lost my heart to the child that is not here, the child I imagined she would be. And so I look at my Bee and long for her to be that which she is not. Which, perhaps, she never shall be.

Ah, I do not know what comfort anyone could offer me, save to let me say these things aloud and not recoil in horror from my heartlessness.

Instead I write these words and consign them to the flames or the litter of other useless musings that nightly I obsessively write.

I waited four months before I went to Buckkeep Castle to confront Chade and Lady Rosemary.

During those days the household was quiet, but busy in the routine way that life was always busy. My baby daughter nursed well and slept as little as any newborn did, according to Molly, which seemed an impossibly small amount to me. Yet she did not disturb our nights with crying. Instead she lay still and silent, eyes open and staring into the corner of the darkened room. She slept still sheltered between Molly and me, and all hours of the day she was in her mother’s care.

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