Fool's Fate (112 page)

    The package was lumpy and rather heavy. When I untied the slithery fabric, a piece of memory stone the size of my fist rolled out on the table. The Fool's Skilled fingers had carved it, I was sure. I poked at it cautiously but felt only stone. I lifted it up to look at it. It had three faces, each blending into the next. Nighteyes was there, and me, and the Fool. Nighteyes looked out at me, ears up and muzzle down. The next facet showed me as a young man, unscarred, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar. Had I ever truly been that young? And the Fool had carved himself as a fool, in a tailed cap with one long forefinger lifted to shush his pursed lips and his brows arched high in some jest.

    It was only when I cupped the carving in my hand that it woke for me and revealed the memories the Fool had imbued in it. Three simple moments it recalled. If my fingers spanned the wolf and myself, then I saw Nighteyes and I curled together in sleep in my bed in the cabin. Nighteyes sprawled sleeping on the Fool's hearth in the Mountains when I touched both Fool and Nighteyes. The last was confusing at first. My fingers rested on the Fool and myself. I blinked at the memory presented to me. I stared at it for some time before recognizing it as another of the Fool's memories. It was what I looked like when he pressed his brow to mine and looked into my eyes. I set it down on the table and the Fool's mocking smile looked up at me. I smiled back at him and impulsively touched a finger to his brow. I heard his voice then, almost as if he were in the room. “I have never been wise.” I shook my head over that. His last message to me and it had to be one of his riddles.

    I took my treasures and crawled back behind the hearth and set the panel back in place. I went to my workroom and hid them there. Gilly appeared, with many questions about the lack of sausages. I promised him I'd look into it. He told me I should, and bit a finger firmly as a reminder.

    Then I left the workroom and slipped back into the main halls of Buckkeep. I knew that Starling would be sniffing over the visiting minstrels, so I went to the lower hall where they usually rehearsed and were generously hosted with viands and drink. The room was stuffed with entertainers, competing with one another in that boisterous and cooperative way they have, but I saw no sign of Starling. I then sought her in the Great Hall and the Lesser, but without success. I had given up and was leaving on my way down to Buckkeep Town when I caught a glimpse of her in the Women's Gardens. She was walking slowly about with several other ladies. I waited until I was sure she had seen me and then went to one of the more secluded benches. I was certain she would find me there and I did not have to wait long. But as she sat down beside me, she greeted me with “This is not wise. If people see us, they will talk.”

    I had never heard her voice concern over that before and it took me aback, as well as stung my feelings. “Then I will ask my question and be on my way. I'm going to town to look for Hap. I've heard he's been frequenting one of the minstrel taverns and I thought you'd know which one?”

    She looked surprised. “Not I! It's been months since I've been to a minstrel tavern. At least four months.” She leaned back on the bench, her arms crossed and looked at me expectantly.

    “Could you guess which one?”

    She considered a moment. “The Pelican's Pouch. The younger minstrels go there, to sing bawdy songs and make up new verses to them. It's a rowdy place.” She sounded as if she disapproved. I raised my brows to that. She clarified. “It's fine enough for young folk new to singing and telling, but scarcely an appropriate place for me these days.”

    “Appropriate?” I asked, trying to master a grin. “When have you ever cared for appropriate, Starling?”

    She looked away from me, shaking her head. She did not meet my eyes as she said, “You must no longer speak to me so familiarly, Tom Badgerlock. Nor can I meet you again, alone, like this. Those days are over for me.”

    “Whatever is the matter with you?” I burst out, shocked and a bit hurt.

    “The matter with me? Are you blind, man? Look at me.” She stood up proudly, her hands resting on her belly. I had seen bigger paunches on smaller matrons. It was her stance rather than her size that informed me. “You're with child?” I asked incredulously.

    She took a breath and a tremulous smile lit her face. Suddenly, she spoke to me as if she were the old Starling, the words bubbling from her. “It is little short of a miracle. The healer woman that Lord Fisher has hired to watch over me says that sometimes, just when a woman's chances for it are nearly gone, she can conceive. And I have. Oh, Fitz, I'm going to have a baby, a child of my own. Already, I love it so that I can scarcely stop thinking of it, night or day.”

    She looked luminously happy. I blinked. Sometimes, she had spoken of being barren with bitterness, saying that her inability to conceive meant she would never have a secure home or a faithful husband. But never had she uttered a word of the deep longing for a child that she must have felt all those years. It stunned me. I said, quite sincerely, “I'm happy for you. I truly am.”

    “I knew you would be.” She touched the back of my hand, briefly, lightly. Our days of greeting one another with an embrace were over. “And I knew you would understand why I must change my ways. No breath of scandal, no hint of inappropriate behavior by his mother should mar my baby's future. I must become a proper matron now, and busy myself only with the matters of my household.”

    I knew a shocking moment of greenest envy.

    “I wish you all the joys of your home,” I said quietly.

    “Thank you. You do understand this parting?”

    “I do. Fare you well, Starling. Fare you well.”

    I sat on the bench and watched her leave me. She did not walk, she glided, her arms across her belly as if she already held her unborn child. My greedy, raucous little bird was a nesting mother now. I felt a twinge of loss to watch her go. In her own way, she had always been someone I could turn to when my days were hard. That was gone now.

    I thought about my days with Starling on the walk down to Buckkeep Town. I wondered, if I had not given my pain to the dragon, would I ever have given anything of myself to Starling? Not that I had shared much with her. I looked back at how we had come together and wondered at myself.

    The Pelican's Pouch was in a new part of Buckkeep Town, up a steep path and then down, and half-built on pilings. It was a new tavern, in the sense that it hadn't existed when I was a lad, yet its rafters seemed well smoked and its tables showed the battering of most minstrel taverns, where folk were prone to leap to a tabletop either to sing or declaim an epic.

    It was early in the day for minstrels to be up and about, so the place was mostly deserted. The tavernkeeper was sitting on a tall stool near the salt-rimed window, gazing out over the sea. I let my eyes adjust to the perpetual dimness and then saw Hap sitting at a table by himself in the corner. He had several pieces of wood in front of him and was moving them around as if playing some sort of game with them. He'd grown a little beard, just a fringe of curly hair along his jaw. Immediately, I didn't like it. I walked over and stood across the table until he looked up and saw me. Then he jumped to his feet with a shout that startled the dozing tavernkeeper and came around the table to give me a big hug. “Tom! There you are! I'm so glad to see you! Word went out that you were missing. I came to see you when I heard you'd turned up, but you were sleeping like the dead. Did the healer give you the note I left for you?”

    “No, he didn't.”

    My tone warned him. His shoulders sagged a bit. “Ah. So I see you've heard all the bad news of me, but not the good, I'll wager. Sit down. I'd hoped that you'd read it and I wouldn't have to tell it all again. I get weary of repeating the same words over and over, especially since I do it so much these days.” He lifted his voice. “Marn? Could we have two mugs of ale here? And a bit of bread too if there's any out of the oven yet.” Then, “Sit down,” he said again to me, and took a seat himself. I sat down opposite him. He looked at my face and said, “I'll tell it quickly. Svanja took my money and spent it on pretties that attracted the eye of an older man. She's now Mistress Pins. She married the draper, a man easily twice as old as me. And wealthy, and settled. A substantial man. So. That's done.”

    “And your apprenticeship?” I asked quietly.

    “I lost it,” he replied as quietly. “Svanja's father made complaint about my character to my master. Master Gindast said I must change my ways or leave his employ. I was stupid. I left his employ. I tried to get Svanja to run away with me, back to our old cabin. I told her things would be hard, but that we could live simply with our love for each other to make us rich. She was furious that I'd lost my apprenticeship, and told me I was crazy if I thought she wanted to live in the woods and tend chickens. Four days later, she was walking out on Master Pins's arm. You were right about her, Tom. I should have listened to you.”

    I bit my tongue before I could agree with him. I sat and stared at the tabletop, wondering what would become of my boy now. I'd left him on his own just when he'd needed a father the most. I pondered what to do. “I'll go with you,” I offered. “We'll go to Gindast together and see if he will reconsider. I'll beg if I have to.”

    “No!” Hap was aghast. Then he laughed, saying, “You haven't given me a chance to tell the rest. As usual, you've seized on the worst and made it the only. Tom. I'm here, amongst the minstrels, and I'm happy. Look.”

    He pushed his bits of wood toward me. The shape was rough yet, but I could see that, pegged together, they'd make a harp. I'd been with Starling long enough to know that the making of a basic harp was among the first steps toward becoming a minstrel. “I never knew I could sing. Well, I knew I could sing, of course, but I mean I never knew I could sing well enough to be a minstrel. I grew up listening to Starling and singing along with her. I never realized how many of her songs and tales I'd got by heart, simply listening to her of an evening. Now, we've had our differences, Starling and I, and she doesn't approve of my taking this path at all. She said you'd blame her for it. But she vouched for me, and she let it be known that I could sing her songs until my own came to me.”

    The mugs of ale and fresh bread, crusty and steaming, were delivered to our table. Hap tore the bread into chunks and bit into one while I was still trying to grasp it all. “You're going to become a minstrel?”

    “Yes! Starling brought me to a fellow named Sawtongue. He has a terrible voice, but a way with the strings that is little short of a god's gift. And he's a bit old, so he can use a young fellow like me to carry the packs and make up a fire on the nights when we're between inns in our traveling. We'll stay in town until after Harvest Fest, of course. He'll play tonight at the lesser hearth, and I may sing a song or two at the earlier revels for the children. Tom, I never knew that life could be this good. I love what I'm doing now. With everything Starling taught me, all unknowing, I've the repertoire of a journeyman already. Though I'm behind on the making of my own instrument, and of course I've few of my own songs yet. But they'll come. Sawtongue says I should be patient, and not try to make songs, but to wait and let them come to me.”

    “I never thought to see you turn minstrel, Hap.”

    “Nor I.” He lifted a shoulder in a shrug and grinned. “It's a fit, Tom. No one cares who my mother and father were or weren't, or if my eyes don't match. There's not the endless grind of being a woodworker. Oh, I may complain about reciting, over and over, until every single word is exactly as Sawtongue wants it turned, but it's not difficult. I never realized what a good memory I had.”

    “And after Harvest Fest?”

    “Oh. That will be the only sad part. Then I'm away with Sawtongue. He always winters in Bearns. So we'll sing and harp our way there, and then stay with his patron at a warm hearth for the winter.”

    “And no regrets.”

    “Only that I'll see even less of you than I have this last summer.”

    “But you're happy?”

    “Hmm. As close to it as a man can get. Sawtongue says that when you let go and follow your fate instead of trying to twist your life around and master it, a man finds that happiness follows him.”

    “So may it be for you, Hap. So may it be.”

    And then we talked for a time of incidental things and drank our ale. To myself, I marveled at the knocks he had taken and still struggled back onto his feet. I wondered too that Starling had stepped in to help him as she had, and said nothing of it to me. That she had given him permission to sing her songs told me that she truly intended to leave her old life behind her.

    I would have talked the day away with him, but he glanced out of the window and said he had to go wake his master and bring him his breakfast. He asked if I would be at the Harvest Eve revels that night, and I told him I was not sure, but that I hoped he'd enjoy them. He said he'd be certain to, and then we made our farewells.

    I took my homeward path through the market square. I bought flowers at one stall, and sweets at another, and racked my brains desperately for any other gifts that might buy me back into Patience's good graces. In the end, however, I could think of nothing and was horrified to realize how much time I'd wasted wandering from booth to booth. As I made my way back to Buckkeep Castle, I was part of the throng going there. I walked behind a wagon full of beer barrels and in front of a group of jugglers who practiced all the way there. One of the girls in the group asked me if the flowers were for my sweetheart, and when I said no, they were for my mother, they all laughed pityingly at me.

    I found Patience in her rooms, sitting with her feet up. She scolded me and wept over my heartlessness in making her worry while Lacey put the flowers into a vase and set out the sweets with tea for us. My tale of what had befallen me actually brought me back into her good graces, though she complained still that there were more than a dozen years of my life unaccounted for.