Fool’s Fate. Робин Хобб

offence or be in danger. Nonetheless, I felt abandoned as I watched them walk away.

      I backed away from the gulf of self-pity that beckoned me by putting my mind on the folks I cared about. I tried not to wonder what had befallen Hap or the Fool since I had left Buckkeep Town. Hap was a sensible lad. I had to trust him. And the Fool had managed his own life, or lives, for many years with no help from me. Yet it still made me uncomfortable to know that somewhere back in the Six Duchies, he was probably furious at me. I caught myself tracing the silvery fingerprints his Skill-touch had left on my wrist. I had no sense of him, but nonetheless put both my hands behind my back. I wondered again what he had said to Burrich, or if he had seen him at all.

      Useless thoughts, but there was little else to occupy me. Thick watched me as I drifted idly around the small cottage. I offered him a dipper of cold water from the cask, but he refused it. I drank, tasting the difference of this island in its water. It tasted mossy and sweet. Probably pond water, I thought. I decided to build a small fire on the hearth in case Web and Swift brought back uncooked meat.

      Time passed very slowly. Riddle and another guardsman came with our trunks from the ship. I took brewing herbs from my trunk. I filled the heavy kettle and set it on the hearth to heat, more to be doing something than because I wanted a cup of tea. I mixed the herbs to be sweet and calming, chamomile and fennel and raspberry root. Thick watched me suspiciously when I poured the hot water, but I didn’t offer him the first cup. Instead I put a chair by the window where I could look out over the sheep on the grassy hillside above the town. I drank my tea and tried to find the satisfaction I had once taken in peace and solitude.

      When I offered Thick the second cup, he accepted it. Perhaps my drinking the first one had reassured him that I didn’t intend to drug or poison him, I thought wearily. Web and Swift returned, their arms full of bundles and the lad’s cheeks pink from the walk and fresh air. Thick slowly levered himself to an upright position to eye what they had brought. ‘Did you find a strawberry tart and yellow cheese?’ he asked hopefully.

      ‘Well, no, but look what we did find,’ Web invited him as he unloaded his trove onto the table. ‘Sticks of smoked red fish, both salty and sweet. Little rolls of bread, with seeds sprinkled on top. And here’s a grass basket full of berries for you. I’ve never seen any like this. The women called them mouse-berries, for the mice stuff their tunnels full of them to dry for the winter. They’re a bit sour, but we did find some goat-cheese to go with them. These funny orange roots they said to roast in the coals and then eat the insides with salt. And lastly, these, which aren’t as hot as when we bought them but still smell good to me.’

      The last items were pastries about the size of a man’s fist. Web carried them in a sack of twisted and woven grass lined with wide fronds of seaweed. As he set them out on the table, I smelled fish. The pasties were stuffed with chunks of white fish in rich and greasy gravy. It heartened me when Thick tottered out of his bed to come to the table for one. He ate one hurriedly, pausing only when his coughing fits forced him to, and a second one more slowly, with another cup of tea to wash it down. He coughed so heavily and for so long after his tea that I feared he was choking, but at last he took a deeper breath and looked round at us with watery eyes. ‘I’m so tired,’ he said in a trembling voice, and no sooner did Swift help him back to bed than he nodded off to sleep.

      Swift had enlivened our meal with his discussion of the town with Web. I had kept quiet while we ate, listening to the boy’s observations. He had a quick eye and an inquisitive mind. It seemed that most of the market-folk had been friendly enough after they’d seen his coins. I suspected that Web’s genial curiosity had once more worked for him. One woman had even told him that the morning’s low tide would be a good time for gathering the sweet little clams from the beaches. Web mentioned this, and then wandered into a tale of clamming with his mother when he was a youngster, and from there to other tales of his childhood. Both Swift and I were fascinated by them.

      We shared another mug of the tea I’d made, and just as the afternoon began to seem companionable and pleasant, Riddle arrived at the door. ‘Lord Chade sent me to say you’re to go up to the mothershouse for a welcome,’ he announced from the door.

      ‘You’d best go then,’ I told Web and Swift reluctantly.

      ‘You, too,’ Riddle informed me. ‘I’m to stay with the Prince’s half-wit.’

      I gave him a look. ‘Thick,’ I said quietly. ‘His name is Thick.’

      It was the first time I’d ever rebuked Riddle for anything. He just looked at me, and I could not tell if he were hurt or offended. ‘Thick,’ he amended. ‘I’m to stay with Thick. You know I didn’t mean anything by that, Tom Badgerlock,’ he added almost petulantly.

      ‘I know. But it hurts Thick’s feelings.’

      ‘Oh.’ Riddle glanced suddenly at the sleeping man, as if startled to learn he had feelings. ‘Oh.’

      I took pity on him. ‘There’s food on the table, and hot water for tea if you want.’

      He nodded, and I sensed that we’d made peace. I took a moment to smooth my hair back and put on a fresh shirt. Then I took a comb to Swift, much to his disgust, and was dismayed at the knots in the boy’s hair. ‘You need to do this every morning. I’m sure your father taught you better than to go about looking like a half-shed mountain pony.’

      He gave me a sharp look. ‘That’s the very words he uses!’ he exclaimed, and I excused my own slip, saying, ‘It’s a common saying in Buck, lad. Let’s look at you, now. Well, you’ll do. Washing a bit more often wouldn’t hurt you either, but we’ve no time for it now. Let’s go.’

      I felt a pang of sympathy for Riddle as we left him sitting alone at the table.

       TEN

       The Narcheska

       This is their custom regarding marriage; it is binding only so long as the woman wishes to be bound by it. The woman chooses the man, although the man may court a woman he finds desirable, with gifts and deeds of war done in her honour. If an Outislander woman accepts a man’s courtship, it does not mean she has bound herself to him, only that she may welcome him into her bed. Their dalliances may last a week, a year or a lifetime. It is entirely of the woman’s choosing. All things that are kept under a roof belong to the woman, as does all that comes from the earth which her mothershouse claims. Her children belong to her clan, and are commonly disciplined and taught by her brothers and uncles rather than by their father. While the man lives on her land or in her mothershouse, his labour is hers to command. All in all, it baffles this traveller why a man would willingly submit to such a minor role, but Outislanders seem likewise baffled by our arrangements, asking me sometimes, ‘Why do your women willingly leave the wealth of their own families to become servants in a man’s home?’

      An Account of Travel in a Barbarous Land, by Scribe Fedwren

      The mothershouse of the Narwhal Clan was both fortification and home. It was by far the oldest structure in Wuislington. The stout wall that surrounded its grounds and garden were the first line of defence. If invaders pushed the defenders back, they could retreat to the mothershouse itself. Scorch marks on its stone walls and timbers showed that it had stood even against fire. There were no apertures at all in the lower storey, the second boasted arrow slits and only the third had real windows and these featured stout shutters that would have defied any missiles. Yet it was not a castle in our tradition. There was no place to bring sheep or for an entire village to take shelter, nor a place for great stores of food. I suspected it was intended to defy raiders who would come and go with a tide rather than to withstand a significant siege. It was one more way in which the Outislanders differed from our folk and our way of thinking.

      Two young men wearing the Narwhal badge nodded us past the gate in the wall. Inside, the road had crushed shell added to the beach gravel that paved it, giving it a