Assassin's Apprentice (The Illustrated Edition) Page 22

  By habit my path took me through the kitchens. Cook was familiar with the appetites of stable boys and men-at-arms and knew that regular meals did not always suffice to keep one full. Especially lately I had found myself getting hungry at all hours, while Mistress Hasty had recently declared that if I didn’t stop growing so rapidly, I should have to wrap myself in barkcloth like a wild man, for she had no idea how to keep me looking as if my clothes fit. I was already thinking of the big earthenware bowl that Cook kept full of soft biscuits and covered with a cloth, and of a certain wheel of especially sharp cheese, and how well both would go with some ale when I entered the kitchen door.

  There was a woman at the table. She had been eating an apple and cheese, but at the sight of me coming in the door, she sprang up and put her hand over her heart as if she thought I were the Pocked Man himself. I paused. “I did not mean to startle you, lady. I was merely hungry, and thought to get myself some food. Will it bother you if I stay?”

  The lady slowly sank back into her seat. I wondered privately what someone of her rank was doing alone in the kitchen at night. For her high birth was something that could not be disguised by the simple cream robe she wore or the weariness in her face. This, undoubtedly, was the rider of the palfrey in the stable, and not some lady’s maid. If she had awakened hungry at night, why hadn’t she simply bestirred a servant to fetch something for her?

  Her hand rose from clutching at her breast to pat at her lips, as if to steady her uneven breath. When she spoke, her voice was well modulated, almost musical. “I would not keep you from your food. I was simply a bit startled. You…came in so suddenly.”

  “My thanks, lady.”

  I moved around the big kitchen, from ale cask to cheese to bread, but everywhere I went, her eyes followed me. Her food lay ignored on the table where she had dropped it when I came in. I turned from pouring myself a mug of ale to find her eyes wide upon me. Instantly she dropped them away. Her mouth worked, but she said nothing.

  “May I do something for you?” I asked politely. “Help you find something? Would you care for some ale?”

  “If you would be so kind.” She said the words softly. I brought her the mug I had just filled and set it on the table before her. She drew back when I came near her, as if I carried some contagion. I wondered if I smelled bad from my stable work earlier. I decided not, for Molly would have surely mentioned it. Molly was ever frank with me about such things.

  I drew another mug for myself, and then, looking about, decided it would be better to carry my food off up to my room. The lady’s whole attitude bespoke her uneasiness at my presence. But as I was struggling to balance biscuits and cheese and mug, she gestured at the bench opposite her. “Sit down,” she told me, as if she had read my thoughts. “It is not right I should scare you away from your meal.”

  Her tone was neither command nor invitation, but something in between. I took the seat she indicated, my ale slopping over a bit as I juggled food and mug into place. I felt her eyes on me as I sat. Her own food remained ignored before her. I ducked my head to avoid that gaze, and ate quickly, as furtively as a rat in a corner who suspects a cat is behind the door, waiting. She did not stare rudely, but openly watched me, with the sort of observation that made my hands clumsy and led to my acute awareness that I had just unthinkingly wiped my mouth on the back of my sleeve.

  I could think of nothing to say, and yet the silence jabbed at me. The biscuit seemed dry in my mouth, making me cough, and when I tried to wash it down with ale, I choked. Her eyebrows twitched, her mouth set more firmly. Even with my eyes lowered to my plate, I felt her gaze. I rushed through my food, wanting only to escape her hazel eyes and straight silent mouth. I pushed the last hunks of bread and cheese into my mouth and stood up quickly, bumping against the table and almost knocking the bench over in my haste. I headed toward the door, then remembered Burrich’s instructions about excusing oneself from a lady’s presence. I swallowed my half-chewed mouthful.

  “Good night to you, lady,” I muttered, thinking the words not quite right, but unable to summon better. I crabbed toward the door.

  “Wait,” she said, and when I paused, she asked, “Do you sleep upstairs, or out in the stables?”

  “Both. Sometimes. I mean, either. Ah, good night, then, lady.” I turned and all but fled. I was halfway up the stairs before I wondered at the strangeness of her question. It was only when I went to undress for bed that I realized I still gripped my empty ale mug. I went to sleep, feeling a fool, and wondering why.

  Chapter

  12

  Patience

  The red-ship raiders were a misery and an affliction to their own folk long before they troubled the shores of the Six Duchies. From obscure cult beginnings, they rose to both religious and political power by means of ruthless tactics. Chiefs and headmen who refused to align with their beliefs often found that their wives and children had become the victims of what we have come to call Forging, in memory of the ill-fated town of Forge. Hard-hearted and cruel as we consider the Outislanders to be, they have in their tradition a strong vein of honor and heinous penalties for those who break the kin rules. Imagine the anguish of the Outislander father whose son has been Forged. He must either conceal his son’s crimes when the boy lies to him, steals from him, and forces himself upon the household women, or see the boy flayed alive for his crimes and suffer the losses of both heir and the respect of the other houses. The threat of Forging was a powerful deterrent to opposing the political power of the Red-Ship Raiders.

  By the time the Red-Ship Raiders began to seriously harry our shores, they had subdued most opposition in the Out Islands. Those who openly opposed them died or fled. Others grudgingly paid tribute and clenched their teeth against the outrages of those who controlled the cult. But many gladly joined the ranks, and painted the hulls of their raiding vessels red and never questioned the rightness of what they did. It seems likely that these converts were formed mostly from the lesser houses, who had never before been offered the opportunity to rise in influence. But he who controlled the Red-Ship Raiders cared nothing for who a man’s forebears had been, so long as he had the man’s unswerving loyalty.

  * * *

  I saw the lady twice more before I discovered who she was. The second time I saw her was the next night, at about the same hour. Molly had been busy with her berries, so I had gone out for an evening of tavern music with Kerry and Dirk. I had had perhaps one or at most two mugs more of ale than I should have. I was neither dizzy nor sick, but I was placing my feet carefully, for I had already taken one tumble in a pothole on the dusky road.

  Separate but adjacent to the dusty kitchen courtyard with its cobbles and wagon docks is a hedged area. It is commonly referred to as the Women’s Garden, not because it is exclusively their province but simply because they have the tending and the knowing of it. It is a pleasant place, with a pond in the middle, and many low beds of herbs set among flowering plantings, fruit vines, and green-stoned pathways. I knew better than to go straight to bed when I was in this condition. If I attempted to sleep now, the bed would begin to spin and sway, and within an hour I would be puking sick. It had been a pleasant evening, and that seemed a wretched way to end it, so I took myself to the Women’s Garden instead of my room.

  In one angle of the garden, between a sun-warmed wall and a smaller pond, there grow seven varieties of thyme. Their fragrances on a hot day can be giddying, but now, with evening verging on night, the mingling scents seemed to soothe my head. I splashed my face in the little pool, and then put my back to the rock wall that was still releasing the sun’s heat back to the night. Frogs were chirruping to one another. I lowered my eyes and watched the pond’s calm surface to keep myself from spinning.

  Footsteps. Then a woman’s voice asked tartly, “Are you drunk?”

  “Not quite,” I replied affably, thinking it was Tilly the orchard girl. “Not quite eno
ugh time or coin,” I added jokingly.

  “I suppose you learned it from Burrich. The man is a sot and a lecher, and he has cultivated like traits in you. Ever he brings those around him down to his level.”

  The bitterness in the woman’s voice made me look up. I squinted through the dimming light to make out her features. It was the lady of the previous evening. Standing on the garden path, in a simple shift, she looked at first glance to be little more than a girl. She was slender, and less tall than I, though I was not overly tall for my fourteen years. But her face was a woman’s, and right now her mouth was set in a condemning line, echoed by the brows knit over her hazel eyes. Her hair was dark and curling, and though she had tried to restrain it, ringlets of it had escaped at her forehead and neck.

  It was not that I felt compelled to defend Burrich; it was simply that my condition was no doing of his. So I made answer something to the effect that as he was some miles distant in a different town, he could scarcely be responsible for what I put in my mouth and swallowed.

  The lady came two steps closer. “But he has never taught you better, has he? He has never counseled you against drunkenness, has he?”

  There is a saying from the Southlands that there is truth in wine. There must be a bit of it in ale, also. I spoke it that night. “Actually, my lady, he would be greatly displeased with me right now. First, he would berate me for not arising when a lady spoke to me.” And here I lurched to my feet. “And then, he would lecture me long and severely about the behavior expected from one who carries a prince’s blood, if not his titles.” I managed a bow, and when I succeeded, I distinguished myself by straightening up with a flourish. “So, good evening to you, fair lady of the garden. I bid you good night, and I shall remove my oafish self from your presence.”

  I was all the way to the arched entryway in the wall when she called out, “Wait!” But my stomach gave a quietly protesting grumble, and I pretended not to hear. She did not come after me, but I felt sure she watched me, and so I kept my head up and my stride even until I was out of the kitchen courtyard. I took myself down to the stables, where I vomited into the manure pile and ended up sleeping in a clean empty stall because the steps up to Burrich’s loft looked entirely too steep.

  But youth is amazingly resilient, especially when feeling threatened. I was up at dawn the next day, for I knew Burrich was expected home by afternoon. I washed myself at the stables and decided the tunic I had worn for the last three days needed to be replaced. I was doubly conscious of its condition when in the corridor outside my room the lady accosted me. She looked me up and down, and before I could speak, she addressed me.

  “Change your shirt,” she told me. And then added, “Those leggings make you look like a stork. Tell Mistress Hasty they need replacing.”

  “Good morning, lady,” I said. It was not a reply, but those were the only words that came to me in my astonishment. I decided she was very eccentric, even more so than Lady Thyme. My best course was to humor her. I expected her to turn aside and go on her way. Instead she continued to hold me with her eyes.

  “Do you play a musical instrument?” she demanded.

  I shook my head mutely.

  “You sing, then?”

  “No, my lady.”

  She looked troubled as she asked, “Then perhaps you have been taught to recite the Epics and the knowledge verses, of herbs and healings and navigation…that sort of thing?”

  “Only the ones that pertain to the care of horses, hawks, and dogs,” I told her, almost honestly. Burrich had demanded I learn those. Chade had taught me a set about poisons and antidotes, but he had warned me they were not commonly known, and were not to be casually recited.

  “But you dance, of course? And you have been instructed in the making of verse?”

  I was totally confused. “Lady, I think you have confused me with someone else. Perhaps you are thinking of August, the King’s nephew. He is but a year or two younger than I and—”

  “I am not mistaken. Answer my question!” she demanded, almost shrilly.

  “No, my lady. The teachings you speak of are for those who are…wellborn. I have not been taught them.”

  At each of my denials, she had appeared more troubled. Her mouth grew straighter, and her hazel eyes clouded. “This is not to be tolerated,” she declared, and turning in a flurry of skirts, she hastened off down the hallway. After a moment I went into my room, changed my shirt, and put on the longest pair of leggings I owned. I dismissed the lady from my thoughts and threw myself into my chores and lessons for the day.

  It was raining that afternoon when Burrich returned. I met him outside the stables, taking his horse’s head as he swung stiffly down from the saddle. “You’ve grown, Fitz,” he observed, and looked me over with a critical eye, as if I were a horse or hound that was showing unexpected potential. He opened his mouth as if to say something more, then shook his head and gave a half snort. “Well?” he asked, and I began my report.

  He had been gone scarcely more than a month, but Burrich liked to know things down to the smallest detail. He walked beside me, listening, as I led his horse to stall and proceeded to care for her.

  Sometimes it surprised me how much like Chade he could be. They were very alike in the way they expected me to recall exact details, and to be able to relate the doings of last week or last month in correct order. Learning to report for Chade had not been that difficult; he had merely formalized the requirements that Burrich had long expected of me. Years later I was to realize how similar it was to the reporting of a man-at-arms to his superior.

  Another man would have gone off to the kitchens or the baths after hearing my summarized version of everything that had gone on in his absence. But Burrich insisted on walking through his stables, stopping here to chat with a groom and there to speak softly to a horse. When he came to the lady’s old palfrey, he stopped. He looked at the horse for a few minutes in silence.

  “I trained this beast,” he said abruptly, and at his voice the horse turned in the stall to face him and whickered softly. “Silk,” he said softly, and stroked the soft nose. He sighed suddenly. “So the Lady Patience is here. Has she seen you yet?”

  Now there was a question difficult to answer. A thousand thoughts collided in my head at once. The Lady Patience, my father’s wife, and by many accounts, the one most responsible for my father’s withdrawal from the court and from me. That was who I had been chatting with in the kitchen, and drunkenly saluting. That was who had quizzed me this morning on my education. To Burrich I muttered, “Not formally. But we’ve met.”

  He surprised me by laughing. “Your face is a picture, Fitz. I can see she hasn’t changed much, just by your reaction. The first time I met her was in her father’s orchard. She was sitting up in a tree. She demanded that I remove a splinter from her foot, and took her shoe and stocking off right there so I could do it. Right there in front of me. And she had no idea at all of who I was. Nor I, her. I thought she was a lady’s maid. That was years ago, of course, and even a few years before my prince met her. I suppose I wasn’t much older than you are now.” He paused, and his face softened. “And she had a wretched little dog she always carried about with her in a basket. It was always wheezing and retching up wads of its own fur. Its name was Featherduster.” He paused a moment, and smiled almost fondly. “What a thing to remember, after all these years.”

  “Did she like you when she first met you?” I asked tactlessly.

  Burrich looked at me and his eyes became opaque, the man disappearing behind the gaze. “Better than she does now,” he said abruptly. “But that’s of small import. Let’s hear it, Fitz. What does she think of you?”

  Now there was another question. I plunged into an accounting of our meetings, glossing over details as much as I dared. I was halfway through my garden encounter when Burrich held up a hand.

  “Stop,” he said quiet
ly.

  I fell silent.

  “When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead. Let’s start again.”

  So I did, and spared him nothing, of either my behavior or the lady’s comments. When I was finished, I waited for his judgment. Instead, he reached out and stroked the palfrey’s nose. “Some things are changed by time,” he said at last. “And others are not.” He sighed. “Well, Fitz, you have a way of presenting yourself to the very people you should most ardently avoid. I am sure there will be consequences from this, but I have not the slightest idea what they will be. That being so, there’s no point to worrying. Let’s see the rat dog’s pups. You say she had six?”

  “And all survived,” I said proudly, for the bitch had a history of difficult whelping.

  “Let’s just hope we do as well for ourselves,” Burrich muttered as we walked through the stables, but when I glanced up at him, surprised, he seemed not to have been talking to me at all.

  * * *

  —

  “I’D HAVE THOUGHT YOU’D have the good sense to avoid her,” Chade grumbled at me.

  It was not the greeting I had looked for after more than two months’ absence from his chambers. “I didn’t know it was the Lady Patience. I’m surprised there was not gossip about her arrival.”

  “She strenuously objects to gossip,” Chade informed me. He sat in his chair before the small fire in the fireplace. Chade’s chambers were chilly, and he was ever vulnerable to cold. He looked weary as well tonight, worn by whatever he had been doing in the weeks since I’d last seen him. His hands, especially, looked old, bony and lumpy about the knuckles. He took a sip of his wine and continued. “And she has her eccentric little ways of dealing with those who talk about her behind her back. She has always insisted on privacy for herself. It is one reason she would have made a very poor queen. Not that Chivalry cared. That was a marriage he made for himself rather than for politics. I think it was the first major disappointment he dealt his father. After that, nothing he did ever completely pleased Shrewd.”