The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince Page 6

  Now the midwife could not dare to challenge my right to be there. I rushed to her side and held the flowers where Caution could smell them. She lifted both her hands and seized my wrists so tightly that to this day, I swear I can still feel that clutch. And the nosegay seemed to work its charm, for she seemed to gain strength for her task. She still cried out for Lostler at each pain, but the word ceased to seem a name and more like her rallying cry. I stayed by her side, and let her strangle my hands as she would. My own belly ached and I felt my womb tighten over and over, almost in time with hers. I knew this to be normal and even a good thing when it followed birth, but I could not shake the feeling that I labored alongside her, and that somehow my contractions aided hers.

  She gained strength, it is true, but still she labored far longer than I liked. The midwife whispered to her assistants that she might have to cut the child from the Queen-in-Waiting’s womb, or else risk losing both of them. At that, my mistress opened wide her eyes.

  “No knife shall touch me!” she proclaimed. “Let my child come out as he went in. Enough blood has been shed over him!”

  And all who were near gasped at her words, but none defied her, for all know that in this, the woman has the final say. And so she labored on, though I think the pain would have been less had she allowed the midwife to open her belly for the child’s passing. Night gave way to dawn and then morning. Time and again the king sent messengers to her door, and over and over they were turned back with ‘not yet.’ Finally, he sent a page to sit in the hall outside the door and wait. With the passing of the darkness, I saw my mistress weakening.

  And when finally the midwife cried out, “I see the crown! A few more pushes, my queen, and your child will be here!” I saw her face whiten suddenly. Even her lips seemed pale as they pulled back from her teeth and I saw that she did not wait for her body, but pushed with every last bit of strength she had. The baby came then, in a final rush of blood and fluid, head emerging and then his body sliding out almost at once. The midwife caught him and held him up as joyously as if he were a fresh-caught salmon. “A boy!” she cried. “The Farseer line has a new prince! Send the runner to the king, and let the news reach his ears first, that he be the one to proclaim it!”

  At once, one of her assistants rushed for the door. The other accepted the prince into a clean white blanket and began to gently rub him clean while the midwife awaited the afterbirth. It came in time and once that last push was done, Caution closed her eyes for a long time. Yet still she gripped my wrists between her hands and I did not move for fear of disturbing whatever small rest she might be finding. The midwife busied herself between the Queen-in-Waiting’s legs, muttering her dislike of something. Cloth after cloth she folded and pressed there, and then pulled Caution’s thighs close together and bound them in a wrapping. And then she turned to her assistant, who had been tugging at her sleeve and whispering at her for some time.

  By then my mistress had begun to shake with cold, for she had labored long and now the heat of her work was leaving her. Blankets had been warmed by the hearth, and these were brought to her. When her shaking subsided, she demanded, “Where is my son? You have not yet shown him to me! Give him to me!”

  I saw the look that passed between the assistant and the midwife. The midwife folded her lips and gave a sharp nod. The woman approached the Queen-in-Waiting hesitantly, made a deep curtsey and then offered her the bundled child.

  Caution took him, smiling wearily, but as she lifted the flap of blanket to look into his little face, she exclaimed, “What is this clumsiness! You have not cleaned him! He is covered still in my blood. Look how it clings to his face!”

  The midwife did not speak. Not from her lips ever came those tidings. It was the assistant who said, “May it please my queen, your son is as he is marked, red and white, piebald as a puppy.”

  “It pleases me not!” Caution cried wildly. “Wash him! Wash him clean for me!”

  And then it was that I took the babe from her hands, and undid his wrappings that we might look on him. But it was as the midwife’s aide had said. He was mottled with red splotches that stood up from his pale flesh. The midwife said in a low voice, “Many things can happen to mark a child. A fright, or a strong emotion of any kind. My queen, look on him, and see if the marks on his body do not match where the blood from that evil horse stained you as he died.”

  “No,” Caution said. She looked down at her blotched babe, with half his face white and fair and half his face stained red. And then, “NO!” she shrieked and then her head fell back on her pillows and she fainted.

  The midwife and her assistants bustled close to her side, pushing me away from her. I stepped back, cradling her child to my breast, and as if he knew that this was our fate, he turned his face toward me and quested for a nipple.

  In the days that followed, I heard many a wild tale. Some said that the babe was so marked because his father was one in spirit with the Spotted Stud. Just as every foal born to the Spotted Stud’s service was born with his spots, so must every child born to the beast’s Wit-partner be likewise blotched. And others said that the baby had been marked in Caution’s womb with the blood spattered on her, and they did not seem to make a difference whether it was Lostler’s blood or the Stud’s.

  However it was, this I know for truth: Caution would never let the child be put to suck on her, and so from that moment he was mine to nurse. The Queen-in-Waiting lingered until the change of the moon, speaking little and always looking at me with accusing eyes whenever I came into the room. I knew she blamed me and I would take that blame with me to my grave. The only lie I ever told her was my undoing, and hers, and the Stablemaster’s. Such is the power of a lie given to one you love. And never did I think of telling her the truth, for I knew it would only make her lover’s end more bitter in her memory, and that she would blame herself as well. That burden I kept from her and made it mine alone.

  My queen never grew stronger, but dwindled away with that last moon until, in the dark of the moon, she died. My heart shrank as her spirit grew smaller, and when she died, something in me died as well. I cut my hair to mourn her, shearing it off shorter than even the king cut his. My mother rebuked me for this, and I heard gossip hissing and sputtering whenever I passed, but I cared nothing then for any of them or what they thought of me. My queen, my sister, my daughter, my lover all were gone, as if the sun had vanished from the sky, leaving me with nothing but two squalling children.

  I was as good a cow as my mother before me, with ample milk, and that was well, for my mother refused to nurse either child. “What future is there in giving suck to a bastard once his protector is dead?” she asked me bluntly. And coming close to me, she added quietly, “But there might be some who would reward a woman who saw that the king’s bastard grandson did not prosper.”

  And that was when I took both infants from my mother’s rooms and placed them in my own. And little enough did I have to do with her after that, or she with me. As if all that had come to pass were my own fault, she treated me. And perhaps it was true. And in times to come, when she could neither bear nor nurse, and thought that I would be the one to cushion her life, I did not. Nor do I regret that.

  All seemed content to leave the boy to me, so I had his full care as well as my own son’s. The little prince was hearty and strong. His face was mottled and his body as well, but no other flaw did he have to him. His eyes were bright and he nursed with an appetite.

  Not so my own child. Born too soon, he was small and where some might have called him placid, I saw him as listless. The prince was pink and plump, but my child was sallow and sunken-eyed. Put to the breast, he dozed off too soon, and had to be pinched awake to nurse. He had not the spirit to cry loudly, but whimpered only. He slept well only when I put him down beside the prince, and so I did, for there was no one who cared enough to say that was not fitting.

  In the days after his grandson’s birth, the king was beside himself with grief. He had no thought to th
e grandson that remained to him, but only to the daughter he had lost. After four days, I named the boy Charger, for he needed a name, and it seemed a good name for a prince. But by then I was too late. The Piebald Prince was how the servants spoke of him. I went to the king himself with the infant, claiming that his mother had chosen that name and it was only proper that he be known by it. So he was entered as Charger Farseer on the rolls of Buckkeep. But since he was a bastard, no one bothered to seal that name to him, and few called him by it. And to the name Piebald he would answer to the end of his days.

  To my natural son, I gave the name Redbird, for his hair was russet as a robin’s breast feathers. He was smaller than Prince Charger, and not a healthy child at first. His vision was weak, so he developed a peering expression, and this I think was the result of him being forced so soon into the outer world. I raised him beside the prince, just as I had been raised beside his mother, but to my boy I did not give the ill counsels my mother had bestowed on me.

  I requested a room on a higher floor than I had previously occupied, and the house steward was quick enough to find one for us. No one tried to take the bastard prince from me and if anyone even knew I had borne a child as well, no one cared. So it was that I lived on the floor above the royal family’s quarters, but on a level below that occupied by the common servants. My neighbors were those well born, but not royal, and visiting nobility. I lived quietly among them. The court was happy to forget us.

  I saw to the young prince’s needs as I once had to his mother’s, visiting the royal seamstresses when he needed new garments, and making sure that they were well made enough that they would serve my smaller son as well when he grew into Charger’s cast offs. As the months passed my son grew healthier, though he never matched his royal companion in size or appetite, and once he passed his sickly beginning, was an easy child, content to give way to the prince in all things. I mourned my lost princess and cherished her son for he was all I had left of her; but as the months passed, the razor of my pain dulled.

  At Buckkeep life and politics must continue, no matter whose wife or daughter dies. In less than a year King Virile had been bereaved of both wife and daughter. Many said that he would follow them swiftly to the grave, for grief and shame as heavy as that might kill any man. They began to look to his younger brother, wondering if Virile would not name him as King-in-Waiting now. But in truth, King Virile bore up under his sorrows. I do not mean that I was privy to the king’s private thoughts or doings, but only that I saw what everyone did. He still came to sit in judgment on the appointed days. The flesh of his face sagged with grief and his eyes were never clear, but he was clean and walked as tall and sat as straight as ever he had.

  He became a man both grave and thoughtful, seldom smiling and never laughing, but a better king all the same than he had been in the years before his grief. For the next two decades, he was to rule wisely and well. At first, his dukes and duchesses spoke amongst themselves, saying: “Perhaps he will take another wife and get another heir for the throne, for he is not too old a man to father another child, or even five.” But the years came and went, and he showed no sign of this. Then they began to say, “Then surely he will name his brother’s son, Canny Farseer, as heir to the Farseer throne.” Many a noble daughter was presented to Canny Farseer as a suitable wife, with many a parent thinking that the daughter they placed before him now might sit upon the Farseer throne later.

  Of the Piebald Prince little was noised about outside the castle at Buckkeep. Yet the truth of it must be told, even if minstrels have lied and said he was a twisted little half-man, wicked in his lies and cruel to his nurses. The truth makes a shorter tale: Charger was both as handsome and as ugly a child as has ever walked the earth. He was well made in form and in manner, save for the blotching of his flesh, and this discoloring was over his whole body, not just his face. For all the discoloration, his features were Farseer, resembling both his mother and his grandfather far more than his father. As for his temperament, he was as stubborn as his mother in having his own way, and near as silent as his father. For though it was seldom whispered, no one now doubted that Lostler the Stablemaster had sired the boy.

  Now this was the manner of his marking: the left side of his face was colored as anyone might expect it to be. The right was blotched the color of an over-ripe berry, from brow to chin, but not around his mouth. His hair was black, and dark brown his eyes. At the nape of his neck another blotch began, and trickled like spilled wine over his left shoulder. On his left arm, he was marred with three blots, and one was shaped like a bird with outstretched wings. On the back of his right leg the color went from the back of his thigh to just below his knee. Now some will say that the splotches of colors were just the same as the Spotted Stud wore, as like to the places on the horse as a man’s body can be. But by the time this was noised about, the horse was long dead, and man’s memory is a chancy thing when the evidence is not before his eyes. So as to the truth of that, I will not vouch. I think it more likely that the blood of the Stableman and the stallion had soaked the princess and marked the babe in her womb. For such things do happen, as is well known.

  I had the raising of him for his infancy. And when the day came that Charger and Redbird could sit and listen, I was the one who took him and my own boy beside him, down to the hearth in the Great Hall where the children took their lessons from Scribe Willowby. Even then, the law was that no child in Buckkeep could be denied learning, so no one thought to turn away either bastard, royal or red. And Willowby, being a just man, soon perceived that the Piebald Prince had a quick mind. The scribe himself appealed to the king for a proper tutor for the boy. I feared then that he would be taken from me, and my son and I turned out to find a new livelihood. But instead when the boy was moved down the stairs to a set of rooms on the same floor as the king, Redbird and I joined him there, likely because they were empty and no one thought to forbid us from doing so.

  Now from the beginning, Charger had from his father the tongue of the beasts. This was a magic that in those days some folk owned to having with no shame, for at that time the degradations it might lead to were not well known. So folk would openly claim the Wit, and some made their living from having it, as huntmasters and beast-healers and swineherds and the like, and the Piebald Prince had the Wit in plenty. Humans might shun him for the patches that marred his face and body, but not beasts. They came to him as bees to nectar. Birds came through the windows to perch on the edge of his cradle. This is a truth I will swear to, for I saw it myself. There was no lapdog that would not leave its master’s side to run at the boy’s heels. Cats trailed after him. As he grew, there was not a horse in the stable he could not ride. All of this, he accepted as his due.

  He was as well taught as a prince should be, for as he grew the king himself saw to that, personally choosing his tutors, seeing that he learned his languages from those who had spoken them from birth and that he learned his history from a minstrel trusted to teach the boy the truth. Charger remained an apt and eager student. My Redbird was not so eager for his studies, and yet I insisted, switch in hand, that he be as attentive to the prince’s lessons as if the tutor were his own. And so he learned.

  Charger remained without noble friends of his own age or elders sympathetic to him. Instead, he found his friends as my Redbird did, amongst the lowly folk of the keep, the dog-boys and the kitchen-help and the gardeners and such. Redbird was ever at his heels, faithful as a hound, and often the two would fall asleep by the hearth, leaning on one another. Folk shook their heads to see any kind of a prince, even a piebald bastard one, reduced to such playmates.

  In due time, Charger was tested for the Skill, and found to have little of the rightful Farseer magic. It was only with the greatest effort that the Skillmaster could reach his mind with his thoughts, and Charger was completely unable to make his own thoughts known to any of the King’s Coterie. Now some will say that this alone was a strong sign of his common birth, and others that the lowly magic
of animals destroyed any Farseer magic in him. But no one can know one way or another, and therefore no proper minstrel would vouch for the truth of it. I would say that his mother had little ability for that magic either, and it is well known that it is not bestowed every generation, nor that every child of royal blood inherits the same strength of it.

  King Virile ruled well and the Piebald Prince grew as boys will, sprouting up like bean plants, so that it seemed one but turned around and he stood one day as tall as his grandfather. By then my own Redbird, slight as he was, had been discovered to have a sweet voice and strong lungs. He had his father’s looks, his copper hair and hazel eyes, and from his father too, he took his fine voice. More than once I overheard folk marvel that a rangy cow like me should have dropped such a fine calf. He would remain small of stature and slender as a boy for all his life, but he was sunny natured, and clever at his letters and numbers. He was as cautious as the prince was daring, well aware he could not climb, wrestle or run as well as the other lads of his age; but for all that, he was utterly devoted to the prince, and for his part, Charger watched out for him as if he were a younger brother, with both fondness and tolerance for his lesser strength. I dared to dream large dreams for my son, but kept them to myself, resolved that he should be the one to steer his life.

  When the minstrels of the keep offered to vouch for Redbird to enter their guild, he beseeched me to allow it. It cut like a knife but I smiled and I let him go. I told myself that it was right to let him have his own life. And he did not go far, for in those days his own father, Copper Songsmith, had returned to the keep. Although he never claimed Redbird as his son, he was pleased to take him as an apprentice. So I saw my son often enough, even if he did leave Buckkeep Castle to live in the Guild Hall with the other apprentices. Redbird chose to take the path of one who keeps the records and witnesses to the truth of agreements. He had many lineages to learn, and all of the old histories to memorize, but these things he seemed to relish. I sometimes thought of the days when only a switch would make him sit down and take heed, and wondered where that distractible child had gone.