“I will look after you,” I told her. “I'll look after all of you. I promised...I promised your papa I would do that, look after you and your little brothers. And I will.”
“I don't think you can,” she said. “Not as he did.” But trying to gentle her words, she added, “I do believe you will try. But there is no one like my papa in the world. No one.”
For a moment longer, she let me hold her. Then, gently, she disentangled herself from me. Subdued, she said, “My horse will be saddled and waiting. And the guardsman the Queen assigned me will be there, also.” She took a huge breath, held it, then slowly let it out. “I have to go. There will be a lot to do at home. Mama cannot manage the babies as well as she used to with Papa gone. I'm needed there.” She found her kerchief and dabbed unshed tears from her eyes.
“Yes. I'm sure you are.” I hesitated, and then said, “There was a message, from your father. You may think it odd or frivolous, but it was important to him.”
She looked at me quizzically.
“When Malta comes into season, Ruddy is to stud her.”
She lifted a hand to her mouth and gave a strangled little laugh. When she caught her breath, she said, “Ever since the mare came to us, he and Chivalry have argued about that. I'll tell him.” She took two steps away from me and repeated, “I'll tell him.” Then she whirled and was gone.
I stood for a moment, feeling bereft. Then a sad smile spread over my face. I sat down on the bench and looked out over the Women's Garden. It was summer and the air was rich with the fragrance of both herbs and blossoms, and yet the scent of my daughter's hair was still in my nostrils and I savored it. I stared into the distance over the top of the lilac tree and wondered. It was going to take me longer to get to know my daughter than I had thought. Perhaps there would never be a good time to tell her that I was her father. That piece of information did not seem as important as it once had. Instead, it seemed more important that I find a way to come into their lives without causing pain or discord. It wasn't going to be easy. But I would do it. Somehow.
I must have fallen asleep there. When I awoke, it was late afternoon. For a moment, I could not recall where I was, only that I was happy. That was such a rare sensation for me that I lay there, looking up at blue sky through green leaves. Then I became aware that my back was stiff from sleeping on a stone bench, and in the following instant, that I had planned to take food and wine back to the Fool today. Well, it was not too late for that, I told myself. I rose and stretched and rolled the kinks out of my neck and shoulders.
The pathway back to the kitchens led through the herb gardens. At that time of year, lavender and dill and fennel grow tall, and this year they seemed even taller than usual. I heard one woman say querulously to another, “Just see how they've let the gardens go! Disgraceful. Pull up that weed, if you can reach it.”
Then, as I stepped into view, I recognized Lacey's voice as she said, “I don't think that's a weed, dear heart. I think it's a marigo--Well, it's too late now, whatever it was, you've got it up, roots and all. Give it to me, and I'll throw it in the bushes where no one will find it.”
And there they were, two dear old ladies, Patience in a summer gown and hat that had probably last seen the light of day when my father was King-in-Waiting. Lacey, as ever, was dressed in the simple robe of a serving woman. Patience carried her slippers in one hand and the torn-out marigold in the other. She looked at me nearsightedly. Perhaps she saw no more than the blue of a guard's uniform as she declared to me sternly, “Well, it didn't belong there!” She shook the offending plant at me. “That's what a weed is, young man, a plant growing in the wrong place, so you needn't stare at me so! Didn't your mother teach you any manners?”
“Oh, dear Eda-of-the-Fields!” Lacey exclaimed. I thought I might still be able to retreat, but then Lacey, stolid, solid Lacey, turned slowly and fainted dead away into the lavender.
“Whatever are you doing, dear? Did you lose something?” Patience exclaimed, peering at her. And then, when she perceived Lacey was supine and unmoving, she turned on me, asking in outrage, “See what you've done now! Frightened the poor old woman to death, you have! Well, don't stand there, you simpleton. Pluck her out of the lavender before she crushes it completely!”
“Yes, ma'am,” I said, and stooping, I lifted her. Lacey had always been a hearty woman, and age had not dwindled her. Nonetheless, I managed to raise her, and even carried her to a shady spot before I set her down on the grass there. Patience had followed us, muttering and shaking her head over how clumsy I was.
“Faints at the drop of a hat she does, now! Poor old dear. Do you feel better now?” She eased herself down beside her companion and patted her hand. Lacey's eyes fluttered.
“I'll fetch some water, shall I?”
“Yes. And hurry. And don't even think of running off, young man. This is all your doing, you know.”
I ran to the kitchens for a cup and filled it at the well on my way back. By the time I got there, Lacey was sitting up and Lady Patience was fanning her old servant, alternately scolding and sympathizing. “...and you know as well as I do how the eyes play tricks on us at our age. Why, only last week, I tried to shoo my wrap off the table, thinking it was the cat. It was the way it was curled, you know.”
“My lady, no. Look well. It is him or his ghost. He looks just as his father looked at that age. Look at him, do.”
I kept my eyes down as I knelt by her and offered her the cup. “A bit of water, ma'am, and I'm sure you'll feel better. It was most likely the heat.” Then, as Lacey took the cup from me, Patience reached across her to seize my chin in her hand. “Look at me, young man! Look at me, I said!” And then, as she leaned closer and closer to me, she exclaimed, “My Chivalry never had a nose like that. But his eyes do...remind me. Oh. Oh, my son, my son. It cannot be. It cannot be.”
She let go of me and sat back. Lacey offered her the cup of water, and Patience took it absently. She drank from it and, turning to Lacey, said calmly, “He wouldn't dare. He wouldn't have.”
Lacey still stared at me. “You heard the rumors, same as me, my lady. And that Witted minstrel sang us the song, about the dragons and how the Witted Bastard rose from the grave to serve his king.”
“He wouldn't,” Patience repeated. She stared at me, and my tongue was frozen to the roof of my mouth. Then, “Help me up, young man. And Lacey, too. She has the fainting spells, these days. Eating too much fish, is what I think brings them on. And river fish at that. Makes her wobbly, so you'll just see us back to our chambers, won't you?”
“Yes, ma'am. I'll be happy to.”
“I daresay you'll be happy to. Until we get you behind closed doors. Take her arm, now, and help her along.” But that was easier said than done, for Patience clung to my other arm as if a river might sweep her away if she let go.
Lacey was, in truth, swaying as she walked, and I felt very bad indeed to have given her such a shock. Neither one of them said another word to me, though twice Patience pointed out caterpillars on the roses and said they were never tolerated in the old days. Once inside, we still had a long walk through the Great Hall, and then up the wide stairs. I was grateful that it was only one flight, for Patience muttered nasty words as she mastered each riser, and Lacey's knees crackled alarmingly. We went down the hall and Patience waved at a door for me. It was one of the best chambers in Buckkeep, and it pleased me more than I could say that Queen Kettricken had accorded her this respect. Lady Patience's traveling trunk was already open in the middle of the room, and a hat was already perched on the mantel. Kettricken had even recalled that Lady Patience preferred to dine in her chambers, for a small table and two chairs had been placed in the fall of sunlight from the deep-set window.
I saw each of them to a chair, and when they were seated, asked them if there was anything else I could bring them.
“Sixteen years,” Patience snapped. “You can fetch me sixteen years! Shut that door. I don't suppose it would be wise for this to be gossip all over Buckkeep. Sixteen years, and not a peep, not a hint. Tom, Tom, whatever were you thinking?”
“More likely, not thinking at all,” Lacey suggested, looking at me with martyred eyes. That stung, for always when I had been a boy and in trouble with Patience, Lacey had taken my part. She seemed to have recovered well from her faint. There were spots of color on her cheeks. She ponderously rose from her chair and went into the adjoining room. In a few moments, she returned with three teacups and a bottle of brandy on a little tray. She set it down on the small table between them, and I winced at the sight of her lumpy knuckles and gnarled fingers. Age had crippled those nimble hands that once had tatted lace by the hour. “I suppose we could all do with a bit of this. Not that you deserve any,” she said coldly. “That was quite a fright you gave me in the garden. Not to mention years of grief.”
“Sixteen years,” Patience clarified, in case I had managed to forget in the last few moments. Then, turning to Lacey, she said, “I told you he wasn't dead! When we prepared his body to bury him, even then, washing his cold legs, I told you he couldn't be dead. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew it. And I was right!”
“He was dead,” Lacey insisted. “My lady, he had not breath to fog a bit of glass, nor a single thump of his heart. He was dead.” She pointed a finger at me. It shook slightly. “And now you are not. You had best have a good explanation for this, young man.”
“It was Burrich's idea,” I began, and before I could say another word, Patience threw up her hands in the air, crying, “Oh, I should have guessed that man would be at the bottom of this. That's your girl he has been raising all these years, isn't it? Three years after we'd buried you, we heard a rumor. That tinker, Cottlesby, that sells such nice needles, he told us he had seen Molly in, oh, some town, with a little girl at her side. I thought to myself then, how old? For I said to Lacey, when Molly left my service so abruptly she puked and slept like a woman with child. Then, she was gone, before I could even offer to help her with the babe. Your daughter, my grandchild! Then, later, I heard that Burrich had gone with her, and when I asked about, he was claiming all the children as his own. Well. I might have known. I might have known.”
I had not been prepared for Patience to be quite so well informed. I should have been. In the days after my death, she had run Buckkeep Castle, and developed a substantial network of folk who reported to her. “I think I could do with some brandy,” I said quietly. I reached for the decanter, but Patience slapped my hand away.
“I'll do it!” she exclaimed crossly. “Do you think you can pretend to be dead and vanish from my life for sixteen years and then walk in and pour yourself some of my good brandy? Insolence!”
She got it open, but when she tried to pour, her hand shook so wildly that she threatened to deluge the table. I took it from her, as she began to gasp, and poured some into our cups. By the time I set the bottle down, she was sobbing. Her hair, never tidy for long, had half fallen down. When had so much gray come into it? I knelt down before her and forced myself to look up into her faded eyes. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed harder. Cautiously, I reached up and tugged her hands from her face. “Please believe me. It was never by my choice, Mother. If I could have come back to you without putting the people I loved at risk, I would have. You know that. And the way you prepared my body for burial may have saved my life. Thank you.”
“A fine time to call me 'mother,' after all these years,” she sniffed, and added, “And what would Burrich have known about anything, unless it had four legs and hooves.” But she put her tear-wet hands on my cheeks and drew me forward to kiss me on the brow. She sat back and looked down at me severely. The tip of her nose was very pink. “I'll have to forgive you now. Eda knows, I may drop dead tomorrow, and angry as I am with you, I still would not wish you to walk about the rest of your life regretting that I had died before I forgave you. But that does not mean I'm going to stop being angry with you, or that Lacey has to stop being angry with you. You deserve it.” She sniffed loudly. Lacey passed her a kerchief. The old serving woman's face rebuked me as she took her seat at the table. More clearly than ever, I saw how the years together had erased the lines between lady and maid.
“Yes. I do.”
“Well, get up. I've no desire to get a crick in my neck staring at you down there. Why on earth are you dressed as a guardsman? And why have you been so foolish as to come back to Buckkeep Castle? Don't you know there are still people who would love to see you dead! You are not safe here, Tom. When I return to Tradeford, you shall come with me. Perhaps I can pass you off as a gardener or a wayward cousin's son. Not that I shall allow you to touch my plants. You know nothing about gardens and flowers.”
I came to my feet slowly and could not resist saying, “I could help with the weeding. I know what a marigold looks like, even when it isn't in flower.”
“There! You see, Lacey! I forgive him and the next word out of his mouth is to mock me!” Then she covered her mouth suddenly, as if to suppress another sob. The tendons and blue veins stood out on the back of her hand. Behind it, she drew a sharp breath, and then said, “I think I'll have my brandy now.” She lifted her cup and sipped from it. She glanced at me over the rim, and more tears suddenly spilled. She set the cup down hastily, shaking her head. “You're here and alive. I don't know what I've got to weep about. Except sixteen years and a grandchild, lost to me forever. How could you, you wretch! Account for them. Account for yourself and what you've been doing that was so very important you couldn't come home to us.”
And suddenly, all the very good reasons I'd had for not going to her seemed trivial. I could have found a way. I heard myself say aloud, “If I hadn't given my pain to the stone dragon, I think I would have found a way, however risky. Maybe you have to keep your pain and loss to know that you can survive whatever life deals you. Perhaps without putting your pain in its place in your life, you become something of a coward.”