Fool's Assassin - Страница 94

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His gaze briefly kissed mine, and tears stung my eyes. I had been so jealous, so sure that he was favoring Shun. But that swift look offered me something that went beyond even being my father. He was my ally. When he set down the cup, he nodded to me pleasantly and added, “For a number of years, Lord Chade has especially prepared FitzVigilant to be your tutor, Bee.” He tipped me a wink that no one else saw. “Try him.”

“I shall,” I promised. I owed my father that. I focused and summoned a smile to my face. “It will be so exciting to learn new things.”

“I am very pleased to hear you say that,” he replied, and I almost felt the warmth of the thoughts he sent me.

Shun spoke over my words. “The messenger announcing his coming arrived last night? From Lord Chade? But I heard nothing, and I assure you I was not asleep. I found not the least bit of rest last night. Did the messenger say anything of me? Was there word for me from him?”

“The message came quietly, and was only about the tutor,” my father said. His words said one thing while his tone pointed out that it was not her business. For myself, I understood that Lord Chade had Skilled the information to him. Truly, my father had had a very busy night and had every excuse to look haggard. I kept the smile on my face from becoming smug as I realized that I obviously knew something that Shun did not, and that was that my father and Lord Chade shared the Skill-magic.

That satisfied me, and I resolved that for now I would ask no more questions. I put my attention on my food and listened to Riddle and my father speak, and Shun interrupt with questions that related only to herself. The workmen would return by noon and resume the renovations of Withywoods Manor. Shun hoped they would not begin work too early; she disliked being wakened by noise. My father had informed Revel that he must prepare chambers for Scribe FitzVigilant. Shun wondered which chambers he would be given. The subject of the imaginary bedbugs came up, and Shun expressed horror and demanded that she be given entirely new bedding. My father assured her that new bedding would be part of the renovation of the Yellow Suite. She asked if the Yellow Suite must remain yellow, as she much preferred mauve or lavender.

That made me lift my eyes. I watched my father and Riddle exchange looks of consternation. My father’s brow wrinkled. “But the Yellow Suite has always been the Yellow Suite,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“There is a Purple Suite, at the other end of that wing, if I recall correctly,” Riddle offered.

“You would be quite a distance from the rest of the household, but if you wish it,” my father began.

I tried not to smile. I ate the last of the cooling porridge as Shun objected, “But I do like the view from those windows. Cannot you simply paint the walls of my chambers and change the hangings to a more restful color? Just because it has always been the Yellow Suite does not mean it must remain so.”

“But … it’s the Yellow Suite …”

My father remained baffled by Shun’s failure to understand this while she hammered at him to make him see that yellow might be painted mauve. While they were distracted, I slipped away from the table. My father and Riddle were, I think, peripherally aware that I had vanished. But neither of them stopped me.

My bedchamber was bare enough that I could have painted it any color and not worried about furniture or tapestries or rugs. Something meant to kill bed vermin smoldered on the hearth, giving off a thick smoke. The wooden skeletons of the beds remained. My clothing chests had been removed to the corridor. I retreated there and rummaged again for warmer clothing before I ventured outside.

The rain had paused and a wind, warm for this time of year, was moving over the land. I went first to where my father and I had made our bone fire the night before. It had burned hot: There was only white ash in the center of a ring of partially burned sticks and branches. I took up one of the sticks and stirred the white ash. Beneath it, black coals opened red spark eyes at me as I woke them. I saw no bits of bones, not even the round of a skull I had expected to find. I wondered if my father had been here before me, at the very edge of dawn. I kicked some of the ends of the branches back into the center and waited. A thin tendril of smoke began to rise and eventually the fire woke to flames again. I stood, watching it burn, recalling all that our peculiar visitor had said, and wondering if my father would act on it, or forget it now that she was gone. An unexpected son had been foretold. And someone had once believed that my father fulfilled that foretelling. Clearly, I still did not know his full tale. I wondered if I could safely be bolder about stealing his papers and reading them while he was enslaved to the repairs on Withywoods. I decided I would have to.

I walked past the sheep pens on the way back to the house. On a lichened rock in the middle of the close-cropped pasture a lean black kitten was hunched, looking down at the deeper grass. He had two white paws that I could see, and a crook in his tail. He was hunting. I stopped and stood silently. I watched his muscles tighten and tighten and then, like an arrow released from the bow, he dived down onto something in the grass. He hit it hard with both his front paws and then shot his head in to kill it with a swift bite. He looked up at me and I suddenly knew he had been aware of my scrutiny the whole time. The dark-gray mouse was limp in his jaws.

“I know where there are plenty of mice, mice fat on cheese and sausages,” I called to him. He looked at me silently as if considering my words, and then turned and trotted purposefully away with his prey. He had grown up fast, I thought to myself.

Cats do. Once a cat can hunt, he can get all he needs. Then his life is his own.

The thought came so clearly to my mind that I almost believed it was my own.

“I have need of a hunter such as you!” I called after him. He did not pause as he trotted away.

I watched him go and thought that my needs meant little to anyone but me. What I needed, I would have to obtain for myself.

Chapter Twenty-One
Search for the Son

...

The first task a lady must undertake in her new home is the establishment of respect for herself. This may be more difficult than one might expect, especially if one is moving into her new residence after wedding, and one’s husband’s mother is still the mistress of the household. But, startling as it might seem, it can be even more difficult for the lady who takes charge of her bachelor husband’s residence after wedding. In a case where servants have become accustomed to there being only a master of the house, the new lady may find it difficult to wrest control or even gain respect from the upper echelon of servants. Stewards and cooks are notoriously hard to deal with in this regard. The new mistress of the house will rapidly tire of hearing, “But this is how it has always been done here.” Even worse is to be told by a servant, “This is how the master prefers it be done.” If it is not addressed immediately, the new lady of the house will find herself delegated to the same status as a visiting minstrel.

Often the best course is simply to dismiss the heads of staff and begin afresh with servants of the lady’s choosing. But in cases where the master is attached to older servants, the lady must be direct and firm in taking immediate control. It is a mistake simply to accede to what is first offered to her. Immediately challenge the menus, the flower arrangements, the attire of the staff—in other words, establish control of your domestic domain from the moment you step in the door.

I found Revel already busy with the workmen. He was outside the door of the rooms that were to be Shun’s, berating them for the mud they had tracked in. I waited until he had finished, and then mentioned to him that perhaps Lady Shun would want a different color of room. Could the Yellow Suite be painted to accommodate her?

He looked at me as if I were daft. “But then the rainbow would be out of order.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“By Lady Patience’s decree, years ago, the seven suites were painted to reflect the order of colors in the rainbow. Thus it begins with red, then orange. Yellow is followed by green, then blue, and …”

“And purple. Is the Purple Suite in good repair?”

The crease between his eyes deepened. “As good a repair as I’ve been able to keep it in, given the budget you’ve allotted me.” He looked down on me, struggling to hide his disapproval over how little consideration I’d given to the estate over the years.

I made a hasty decision. “Send for Lady Shun. Let her select the room with the color that best suits her. And prepare the Green Suite as well. No. Wait. You are right, Revel. Bring me a list of what must be done for each of the suites in the main house in order to meet your approval. Let us begin, as we should have years ago, to make them right, one after another. Oh, and there will be another guest coming to stay with us, arriving in ten days or less. FitzVigilant is to be tutor to Lady Bee. And perhaps to some of the other estate children.”

That last came to me in a flash. King Shrewd had always insisted that every child at Buckkeep be afforded at least a chance for letters and numbers. Not all parents chose to take advantage of that, and many a child begged his way out of it, but every youngster at Buckkeep Castle was offered a chance to learn. It was time I stepped up to that legacy as well.

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