‘Fitz? Is that you? In here, boy! What’s troub­ling my Leon?’

  ‘I’ll fetch the bone,’ the man as­sured me, and I rose and stepped to the en­trance of the ad­join­ing room.

  Ver­ity rose drip­ping from his bath and took the proffered towel from his serving-man. He tow­elled his hair briskly and then again de­man­ded as he dried him­self, ‘What’s the mat­ter with Leon?’

  That was Ver­ity’s way. Months had passed since we had last spoken but he took no time for greet­ings. Chade said it was a lack in him, that he didn’t make his men feel their im­port­ance to him. I think he be­lieved that if any­thing sig­ni­fic­ant had happened to me, someone would have told him. He had a bluff hearti­ness to him that I en­joyed, an at­ti­tude that things must be go­ing well un­less someone had told him oth­er­wise.

  ‘Not much is wrong with him, sir. He’s a bit out of sorts from the heat and from trav­el­ling. A night’s rest in a cool place will perk him up; but I’d not fill him full of pastry bits and su­ety things; not in this hot weather.’

  ‘Well.’ Ver­ity bent down to dry his legs. ‘Like as not, you’re right, boy. Burrich says you’ve a way with the hounds, and I won’t ig­nore what you say. It’s just that he seemed so moony, and usu­ally he has a good ap­pet­ite for any­thing, but es­pe­cially for any­thing from my plate.’ He seemed abashed, as if caught coo­ing at an in­fant. I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘If that’s all, sir, should I be re­turn­ing to the stables?’

  He glanced at me over his shoulder, puzzled. ‘Seems a bit of a waste of time to me. Hands will see to your mount, won’t he? You need to bathe and dress if you’re to be on time for din­ner. Charim? Have you wa­ter for him?’

  The serving-man straightened from ar­ran­ging Ver­ity’s gar­ments on the bed. ‘Right away, sir. And I’ll lay out his clothes as well.’

  In the space of the next hour, my place in the world seemed to shift topsy-turvy. I had known this was com­ing. Both Burrich and Chade had tried to pre­pare me for it. But to go sud­denly from an in­sig­ni­fic­ant hanger-on at Buck­keep to part of Ver­ity’s formal en­tour­age was un­nerv­ing. Every­one else as­sumed I knew what was go­ing on.

  Ver­ity was dressed and out of the room be­fore I was into the tub. Charim in­formed me that he had gone to con­fer with his cap­tain of guards. I was grate­ful that Charim was such a gos­sip. He did not con­sider my rank so lofty as to for­bear from chat­ting and com­plain­ing in front of me.

  ‘I’ll make you up a pal­let in here for the night. I doubt you’ll be chill. Ver­ity said he wanted you housed close by him, and not just to tend the hound. He has other chores for you as well?’

  Charim paused hope­fully. I covered my si­lence by duck­ing my head into the luke­warm wa­ter and soap­ing the sweat and dust from my hair. I came up for air.

  He sighed. ‘I’ll lay out your clothes for you. Leave me those dirty ones. I’ll wash them out for you.’

  It seemed very strange to have someone wait­ing on me while I washed, and stranger still to have someone su­per­vise my dress­ing. Charim in­sisted on straight­en­ing the seams on my jer­kin and see­ing the over­sized sleeves on my new best shirt hung to their fullest and most an­noy­ing length. My hair had re­grown long enough to have snarls in it and these he tugged out quickly and pain­fully. To a boy ac­cus­tomed to dress­ing him­self the primp­ing and in­spec­tion seemed end­less.

  ‘Blood will tell,’ said an awed voice from the entry. I turned to find Ver­ity be­hold­ing me with a mix­ture of pain and amuse­ment on his face.

  ‘He’s the im­age of Chiv­alry at that age, is he not, my lord?’ Charim soun­ded im­mensely pleased with him­self.

  ‘He is.’ Ver­ity paused to clear his throat. ‘No man can doubt who fathered you, Fitz. I won­der what my father was think­ing when he told me to show you well? Shrewd he is called and shrewd he is; I won­der what he ex­pects to gain. Ah, well.’ He sighed. ‘That is his kind of king­ship, and I leave it to him. Mine is simply to ask a fop­pish old man why he can­not keep his watch towers prop­erly manned. Come, boy. It’s time we went down.’

  He turned and left without wait­ing for me. As I hastened after him, Charim caught at my arm. ‘Three steps be­hind him and on his left. Re­mem­ber.’ And that is where I fell in be­hind him. As he moved down the hall­way, oth­ers of our en­tour­age stepped out from their cham­bers and fol­lowed their prince. All were decked in their most elab­or­ate finery, to max­im­ize this chance to be seen and en­vied out­side Buck­keep. The full­ness of my sleeves was quite reas­on­able com­pared to what some were sport­ing. At least my shoes were not hung with tiny chim­ing bells or gently rat­tling am­ber beads.

  Ver­ity paused at the top of a stair­way, and a hush fell over the folk gathered be­low. I looked out over the faces turned up to their prince, and had time to read on them every emo­tion known to man­kind. Some wo­men simpered while oth­ers ap­peared to sneer. Some young men struck poses that dis­played their clothes; oth­ers, dressed more simply, straightened as if to be on guard. I read envy and love, dis­dain, fear, and on a few faces, hatred. But Ver­ity gave none of them more than a passing glance be­fore he des­cen­ded. The crowd par­ted be­fore us, to re­veal Lord Kelvar him­self wait­ing to con­duct us into the din­ing hall.

  Kelvar was not what I ex­pec­ted. Ver­ity had called him fop­pish, but what I saw was a rap­idly age­ing man, thin and har­ried, who wore his ex­tra­vag­ant clothes as if they were ar­mour against time. His grey­ing hair was pulled back in a thin tail as if he were still a man-at-arms, and he walked with that pe­cu­liar gait of the very good swords­man.

  I saw him as Chade had taught me to see folk, and thought I un­der­stood him well enough even be­fore we were seated. But it was after we had taken our places at table (and mine, to my sur­prise, was not so far down from the high folk) that I got my deep­est glance into the man’s soul. And this not by any act of his, but in the bear­ing of his lady as she ar­rived to join us.

  I doubt if Kelvar’s Lady Grace was much more than a hand of years older than I, and she was decked out like a mag­pie’s nest. Never had I seen ac­coutre­ments be­fore that spoke so gar­ishly of ex­pense and so little of taste. She took her seat in a flurry of flour­ishes and ges­tures that re­minded me of a court­ing bird. Her scent rolled over me like a wave, and it too smelled of coin more than flowers. She had brought a little dog with her, a feist that was all silky hair and big eyes. She cooed over him as she settled him on her lap, and the little beast cuddled against her and set his chin on the edge of the table. And all the time, her eyes were on Prince Ver­ity, try­ing to see if he marked her and was im­pressed. For my part, I watched Kelvar watch her per­form her flir­ta­tions for the prince, and I thought to my­self, there is more than half our prob­lems with keep­ing Watch Is­land tower manned.

  Din­ner was a trial to me. I was raven­ous, but man­ners for­bade that I show it. I ate as I had been in­struc­ted, pick­ing up my spoon when Ver­ity did, and set­ting aside a course as soon as he showed dis­in­terest in it. I longed for a good plat­ter of hot meat with bread to sop up the juices, but what we were offered were tid­bits of meat oddly spiced, exotic fruit com­potes, pale breads, and ve­get­ables cooked to pal­lor and then seasoned. It was an im­press­ive dis­play of good food ab­used in the name of fash­ion­able cook­ing. I could see that Ver­ity’s ap­pet­ite was as slack as mine, and wondered if all could see that the prince was not im­pressed.

  Chade had taught me bet­ter than I had known. I was able to nod po­litely to my din­ner com­pan­ion, a freckled young wo­man, and fol­low her con­ver­sa­tion about the dif­fi­culty of get­ting good linen fab­ric in Rip­pon these days, while let­ting my ears stray enough to pick up key bits of talk about the table. None of it was about the busi­ness that had brought us here. Ver­ity and Lord Kelvar would closet them­selves to­mor­row for the dis­cus­sion of that. But much of what I over­heard touched on the man­ning of Watch Is­land’s tower, and cast odd lights on it.

  I over­heard grumblings that the roads were not as well main­tained as pre­vi­ously. Someone com­men­ted she was glad to see that re­pair on Bay­guard’s for­ti­fic­a­tions had been re­sumed. An­other man com­plained that in­land rob­bers were so com­mon, he could scarcely count on two-thirds of his mer­chand­ise com­ing through from Far­row. This, too, seemed to be the basis of my din­ing com­pan­ion’s com­plaint about the lack of good fab­ric. I looked at Lord Kelvar, and how he doted upon his young wife’s every ges­ture. As if Chade were whis­per­ing in my ear, I heard his judge­ment. ‘There is a duke whose mind is not upon the gov­ern­ing of his duchy.’ I sus­pec­ted Lady Grace was wear­ing the re­quired road re­pairs and the wages of those sol­diers who would have kept his trade routes po­liced against brig­ands. Per­haps the jew­els that dangled from her ears should have gone for pay to man Watch Is­land’s towers.

  Din­ner fi­nally ended. My stom­ach was full, but my hun­ger un­abated, there had been so little sub­stance to the meal. Af­ter­wards, two min­strels and a poet en­ter­tained us, but I tuned my ears to the cas­ual talk of folk rather than to the fine phras­ings of the poet or the bal­lads of the mu­si­cians. Kelvar sat to the prince’s right, while his lady sat to the left, her lap-dog shar­ing the chair.

  Grace sat bask­ing in the prince’s pres­ence. Her hands of­ten strayed to touch first an ear­ring, then a brace­let. She was not ac­cus­tomed to wear­ing so much jew­ellery. My sus­pi­cion was that she had come of simple stock, and was awed by her own po­s­i­tion. One min­strel sang ‘Fair Rose amidst the Clover’, his eyes on her face, and was re­war­ded with her flushed cheeks. But as the even­ing wore on and I grew weary, I could tell that Lady Grace was fad­ing. She yawned once, lift­ing a hand too late to cover it. Her little dog had gone to sleep in her lap, and twitched and yipped oc­ca­sion­ally in his small-brained dreams. As she grew sleepier, she re­minded me of a child; she cuddled her dog as if it were a doll, and leaned her head back into the corner of her chair. Twice she star­ted to nod off. I saw her sur­repti­tiously pinch­ing the skin on her wrists in an ef­fort to wake her­self up. She was vis­ibly re­lieved when Kelvar summoned the min­strels and poet for­ward to re­ward them for their even­ing. She took her lord’s arm to fol­low him off to their bed­cham­ber while never re­lin­quish­ing the dog she snuggled in her arm.

  I was re­lieved to make my way up to Ver­ity’s ante­cham­ber. Charim had found me a feather­bed and some blankets. My pal­let was fully as com­fort­able as my own bed. I longed to sleep, but Charim ges­tured me into Ver­ity’s bed­cham­ber. Ver­ity, ever the sol­dier, had no use for lack­eys to stand about and tug his boots off for him. Charim and I alone at­ten­ded him. Charim clucked and muttered as he fol­lowed Ver­ity about, pick­ing up and smooth­ing the gar­ments the Prince so cas­u­ally shed. Ver­ity’s boots he im­me­di­ately took off into a corner and began work­ing more wax into the leather. Ver­ity dragged a night­shirt on over his head and then turned to me.

  ‘Well? What have you to tell me?’

  And so I re­por­ted to him as I did to Chade, re­count­ing all I had over­heard, in as close to the words as I could man­age, and not­ing who had spoken and to whom. At the last I ad­ded my own sup­pos­i­tions about the sig­ni­fic­ance of it all. ‘Kelvar is a man who has taken a young wife, one who is eas­ily im­pressed with wealth and gifts,’ I sum­mar­ized. ‘She has no idea of the re­spons­ib­il­it­ies of her own po­s­i­tion, let alone his. Kelvar di­verts money, time and thought from his du­ties to en­thralling her. Were it not dis­respect­ful to say so, I would ima­gine that his man­hood is fail­ing him, and he seeks to sat­isfy his young bride with gifts as a sub­sti­tute.’

  Ver­ity sighed heav­ily. He had flung him­self onto the bed dur­ing the lat­ter half of my re­cit­a­tion. Now he prod­ded at a too-soft pil­low, fold­ing it to give more sup­port to his head. ‘Damn Chiv­alry,’ he said ab­sently. “This is his kind of a knot, not mine. Fitz, you sound like your father. And were he here, he’d find some subtle way to handle this whole situ­ation. Chiv would have had it solved by now, with one of his smiles and a kiss on someone’s hand. But that’s not my way, and I won’t pre­tend to it.’ He shif­ted about in his bed un­com­fort­ably, as if he ex­pec­ted me to raise some ar­gu­ment to him about his duty. ‘Kelvar’s a man and a duke. And he has a duty. He’s to man that tower prop­erly. It’s simple enough, and I in­tend to tell him that bluntly. Put de­cent sol­diers in that tower, keep them there, and keep them happy enough to do a job. It seems simple to me. And I’m not go­ing to make it into a dip­lo­matic dance.’

  He shif­ted heav­ily in the bed, then ab­ruptly turned his back to me. ‘Put out the light, Charim.’ And Charim did, so promptly that I was left stand­ing in the dark and had to blun­der my way out of the cham­ber and back to my own pal­let. As I lay down, I pondered that Ver­ity saw so little of the whole. He could force Kelvar to man the tower, yes. But he couldn’t force him to man it well, or take pride in it. That was a mat­ter for dip­lomacy. And had he no heed for the road­work and main­ten­ance on the for­ti­fic­a­tions and the high­way­men prob­lem? All that needed to be remedied now, in such a way that Kelvar’s pride was kept in­tact, and that his po­s­i­tion with Lord Shem­shy was both cor­rec­ted and af­firmed. And someone had to un­der­take to teach Lady Grace her re­spons­ib­il­it­ies. So many prob­lems. But as soon as my head touched the pil­low, I slept.

  NINE

  Fat Suf­fices

  The Fool came to Buck­keep in the sev­en­teenth year of King Shrewd’s reign. This is one of the few facts that are known about the Fool. Said to be a gift from the Bing­town Traders, the ori­gin of the Fool can only be sur­mised. Vari­ous stor­ies have arisen. One is that the Fool was a cap­tive of the Red Ship Raid­ers, and that the Bing­town Traders seized the Fool from them. An­other is that the Fool was found as a babe, adrift in a small boat, shiel­ded from the sun by a para­sol of shark­skin and cush­ioned from the thwarts by a bed of heather and lav­ender. This can be dis­missed as a cre­ation of fancy. We have no real know­ledge of the Fool’s life be­fore his ar­rival at King Shrewd’s court.

  The Fool was al­most cer­tainly born of the hu­man race, though, not en­tirely of hu­man par­ent­age. Stor­ies that he was born of the Other Folk are al­most cer­tainly false, for his fin­gers and toes are com­pletely free of webbing and he has never shown the slight­est fear of cats. The un­usual phys­ical char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the Fool (lack of col­our­ing, for in­stance) seem to be traits of his other par­ent­age, rather than an in­di­vidual ab­er­ra­tion, though in this I well may be mis­taken.

  In the mat­ter of the Fool, that which we do not know is al­most more sig­ni­fic­ant than that which we do. The age of the Fool at the time of his ar­rival at Buck­keep has been a mat­ter for con­jec­ture. From per­sonal ex­per­i­ence, I can vouch that the Fool ap­peared much younger, and in all ways more ju­ven­ile than at present. But as the Fool shows little sign of age­ing it may be that he was not as young as he ini­tially ap­peared, but rather was at the end of an ex­ten­ded child­hood.

  The gender of the Fool has been dis­puted. When dir­ectly ques­tioned on this mat­ter by a younger and more for­ward per­son than I am now, the Fool replied that it was no one’s busi­ness but his own. So I con­cede.

  In the mat­ter of his pres­ci­ence and the an­noy­ingly vague forms that it takes, there is no con­sensus as to whether a ra­cial or in­di­vidual tal­ent is be­ing mani­fes­ted. Some be­lieve he knows all in ad­vance, and even that he will al­ways know if any­one, any­where, speaks about him. Oth­ers say it is only his great love of say­ing, ‘I warned you so!’ and that he takes his most ob­scure say­ings and twists them to have been proph­ecies. Per­haps some­times this has been so, but in many well-wit­nessed cases, he has pre­dicted, how­ever ob­scurely, events that later came to pass.

  Hun­ger woke me shortly after mid­night. I lay awake, listen­ing to my belly growl. I closed my eyes but my hun­ger was enough to make me naus­eous. I got up and felt my way to the table where Ver­ity’s tray of pastries had been, but ser­vants had cleared it away.

  Eas­ing open the cham­ber door, I stepped out into the dimly-lit hall. The two men Ver­ity had pos­ted there looked at me ques­tion­ingly. ‘Starving,’ I told them. ‘Did you no­tice where the kit­chens were?’

  I have never known a sol­dier who didn’t know where the kit­chens were. I thanked them, and prom­ised to bring back some of whatever I found. I slipped off down the shad­owy hall. As I des­cen­ded the steps, it felt odd to have wood un­der­foot rather than stone. I walked as Chade had taught me, pla­cing my feet si­lently, mov­ing within the shad­ow­i­est parts of the pas­sage­ways, walk­ing to the sides where floor­boards were less likely to creak. And it all felt nat­ural.

  The rest of the keep seemed well asleep. The few guards I passed were mostly doz­ing; none chal­lenged me. At the time I put it down to my stealth; now I won­der if they con­sidered a skinny, tousle-headed lad any threat worth both­er­ing with.

  I found the kit­chens eas­ily. It was a great open room, flagged and walled with stone as a de­fence against fires. There were three great hearths, fires well-banked for the night. Des­pite the late­ness, or earli­ness, of the hour, the place was brightly lit. A keep’s kit­chen is never com­pletely asleep.

 

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