Fool's Assassin - Страница 48

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Molly made a small sound of exasperation. “Of course she does. Fitz, did you think I would neglect her education as mine was? She reads along with me. So she recognizes the letters. But this is the first time she has taken pen in hand and written.” Her smile trembled a little. “In truth, I am almost as surprised as you to see her do so. To know the shape of a letter on the page is so different from reproducing it on paper. Truly, I did not do as well as she has the first time I tried to write.”

Bee was now ignoring both of us as a twining vine of honeysuckle began to emerge from her pen.

I wrote no more that night. I ceded all my inks and my best quills to my little daughter, and allowed her to fill page after page of my best paper with illustrations of flowers, herbs, butterflies, and insects. I would have needed to study the live plant to capture it well; she drew it forth from her memory and captured it on the page.

I went to bed that night a grateful man. I was not at all convinced that Bee understood the concepts of letters or writing or reading. What I had seen was someone who could duplicate on paper what she had seen, even if she did not have the model before her. It was a rare enough talent that it gave me hope for her. It put me in mind of Thick, a man prodigiously strong in the Skill even if he could not fully grasp the concept of what he was doing when he used it.

That night, in bed with Molly warm beside me, I had the rare pleasure of reaching out with the Skill and rousing Chade from a sound sleep. What? he demanded of me in a tone of reproach.

Do you remember the herbal scrolls from that Spice Island trader that we set aside as beyond my skill to copy? The tattered ones that might be of Elderling origin?

Of course. What of them?

Send them to me. With a good supply of paper. Oh, and a set of rabbit-hair brushes. And have you any of that purple ink from the Spice Islands?

Do you know how much that costs, boy?

Yes. And I know that you can afford it, if it’s used well. Send me two bottles of that, as well.

I smiled as I closed my mind to his hailstorm of questions. They were still rattling against my walls as I sank into sleep.

Chapter Ten
My Own Voice

...

This is the dream I love the best. I had it once. I’ve tried to make it come back, but it does not.

Two wolves are running.

That is all. They run by moonlight across an open hillside and then into an oak forest. There is little underbrush and they do not slow. They are not even hunting. They are just running, taking joy in the stretch of their muscles and the cool air flowing into their open jaws. They owe nothing to no one. They have no decisions, no duties, and no king. They have the night and the running, and it is enough for them.

I long to be that complete.

I freed my tongue when I was eight years old. I remember the day very clearly.

My fostered brother Hap, more like an uncle to me, had paid us a brief visit the day before. His gift to me was not a little pipe or a string of beads or such simple things as he had brought me on previous visits. This time he had a soft packet wrapped in a rough brown fabric. He put it on my lap and when I sat looking at it, unsure of what to do next, my mother took out her small belt-knife, cut the string that bound it, and unfolded the wrappings.

Within were a pink blouse, a vest of lace, and a set of layered pink skirts! I had never seen such garments. They were from Bingtown, he told my mother as she gently touched the intricate lace. The sleeves were long and full, and the skirts rested on a pillow of petticoats and were overlaid with pink lace. My mother held them up to me and for a wonder, they seemed to be the right size.

The next morning she helped me put them on and caught her breath to see me when the final sash was tied. Then she made me stand still for a weary time while she worried my hair into reluctant order. When we went down to breakfast, she opened the door and ushered me in as if I were the Queen. My father lifted his brows in astonishment, and Hap gave a whoop of pleasure to see me. I ate breakfast so carefully, enduring the chafing of the lace and keeping the sleeves from dragging through my plate. I bore the weight of the garments bravely as we stood in front of the manor and wished Hap a pleasant journey. And mindful of my glory, I walked carefully through the kitchen gardens and seated myself on a bench there. I felt very grand. I arranged my pink skirts and tried to smooth my hair, and when Elm and Lea came out of the kitchens with buckets of vegetable parings to take down to the chicken house, I smiled at them both.

Lea looked away uneasily and Elm stuck her tongue out. My heart sank. I had supposed, foolishly, that such extravagant garments might win me their regard. Several times I had heard, as Elm intended I should, that I was “dressed like a butcher’s boy” when I wore my usual tunic and leggings. After they had passed me by I sat a time longer, trying to think it through. Then the sun went behind a bank of low clouds and I suddenly could not stand any more chafing from the high lace collar.

I sought out my mother and found her straining wax. I stood before her, lifting my pink skirts and petticoats. “Too heavy.” She understood my garbled words as she always did. She took me to my room and helped me change into leggings of dark green, a tunic of lighter green, and my soft boots. I had reached a decision. I had come to understand what I must do.

I had always been aware there were other children at Withywoods. For the first five years of my life, I was so bonded to my mother, and so small, that I had very little to do with them. I saw them, in passing, as my mother carried me through the kitchens or as I trotted at her heels through the corridors. They were the sons and daughters of the servants, born to be part of Withywoods and growing up alongside me, even if they sprouted up taller much more swiftly than I did. Some were old enough to have tasks of their own, such as the scullery girls Elm and Lea and the kitchen lad Taffy. I knew there were children who helped with the poultry and sheep and the stables, but those I seldom saw. There were also little ones, infants and small children who were both too small to be given work and too young to be separated from their mothers. Some of them were of a size with me, but far too babyish to hold my interest. Elm was a year older than I was, and Lea a year younger, but both of them were taller than I was by a head. Both had grown up in the pantries and kitchens of Withywoods, and shared their mothers’ opinions of me. When I was five, they had shown a pitying tolerance for me.

But both pity and tolerance were gone by the time I was seven. Smaller in stature than they were, I was still more competent at the tasks my mother entrusted to me. Yet because I did not speak, they considered me stupid. I had learned to keep my silence with everyone except my mother. Not only the children, but even the grown servants would mock my gabbling and pointing when they thought I was not near. I was certain it was from their parents that the children learned their dislike of me. As young as I was then, I still understood instinctively that they feared that if their children were near me, somehow they would become tainted with my oddness.

Unlike their elders, the children avoided me without bothering to pretend it was anything but dislike for me. I would watch their play from a distance, longing to join in, but the moment I approached they would gather their simple dolls, scatter the acorn-and-flower picnic they’d been sharing, and race off. Even if I gave chase, they easily outran me. They could climb trees whose lower branches I could not reach. If I dogged their steps too much, they simply retreated to the kitchen. I was often shooed out of that room with a kindly voiced, “Now, Mistress Bee, run along and play where it’s safe. Here you’ll be trodden upon, or scalded. Off you go.” And all the while Elm and Lea would make simpering faces and shooing motions from behind their mothers’ skirts.

Taffy I feared. He was nine, bigger and heavier than Elm and Lea. He was the meat boy for the kitchen, bringing a freshly slaughtered chicken or lugging a butchered and skinned lamb. To me, he seemed massive. He was boyishly blunt and direct in his dislike of me. Once, when I followed the kitchen children down to the creek where they intended to sail some walnut-shell boats, Taffy turned on me and pelted me with pebbles until I fled. He had a way of saying “Bee-ee” that made my name an insult and a synonym for “stupid.” The two girls did not dare join in his mockery of me, but oh, how they enjoyed it.

If I had told my mother, she would have told my father, and I am certain that all the children would have been banned from Withywoods. So I did not. As much as they disliked and scorned me, all the more I longed for their company. It was true I could not play with them, but I could watch them and learn how to play. Climbing trees, setting walnut boats with leaf sails afloat, contests of jumping and skipping and tumbling, little mocking songs, how to catch a frog … all of these things children learn from other children. I watched Taffy walk on his hands, and in the privacy of my bedroom bruised myself in a hundred places until I could cross the room without falling. I did not know to beg for a spinning top from the market until I had spied Taffy’s red one. From a distance, I learned to whistle with my lips or with a blade of grass between my thumbs. I hid and waited until they had departed before I tried to swing on a rope tied to a tree branch or venture into a secret bower built from fallen branches.

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