Fool’s Errand. Robin Hobb

‘After all the years we have been together, surely you know by now that I do not consider you tainted.’ She kissed my cheek.

      Our current conversation had almost driven my resolve from my mind. Nearly, I took her in my arms. Instead, I stood, awkwardly, for she was right behind my chair. When she tried to embrace me, I chilled my heart. I set her at arm’s length from me. ‘You are not mine,’ I told her quietly.

      ‘Nor am I his!’ She blazed at me suddenly. Her dark eyes shone with her anger. ‘I belong to myself, and I shall decide who shares my body. It hurts nothing for me to be with both of you. I will not get pregnant by either of you. If any man could get me with child, it would have happened long ago. So what does it matter whose bed I share?’

      She was quick-witted and words served her tongue far better than mine. I had no clever reply. So I echoed her own words. ‘I, too, belong to myself, and I decide who will share my body. And I will not share it with another man’s wife.’

      I think then that she finally believed it. I had set her belongings in a neat pile beside the hearth. She flung herself to her knees beside it. Snatching up her saddle pack, she began to stuff it furiously. ‘I don’t know why I ever bothered with you,’ she muttered.

      Mishap, true to his name, chose that moment to enter the cabin. The wolf was at his heels. At the sight of Starling’s angry face, Hap turned to me. ‘Should I leave?’ he asked baldly.

      ‘No!’ Starling spat the word. ‘You get to stay. I’m the one he’s throwing out. Thanks to you. You might ponder a moment or two, Hap, on what would have become of you if I had left you digging in that village garbage heap. I deserved gratitude from you, not this betrayal!’

      The boy’s eyes went wide. Nothing she had ever done, not even how she had deceived me, angered me as much as witnessing her hurt him. He gave me a stricken look, as if he expected I, too, would turn on him. Then he bolted out of the door. Nighteyes gave me a baleful look, then spun to follow him.

       I’ll come soon. Let me finish this first.

       Better you had never started it.

      I let his rebuke hang unanswered, for there was no good reply to it. Starling glared up at me, and as I glowered back, I saw something almost like fear pass over her face. I crossed my arms on my chest. ‘Best you were gone,’ I said tightly. The wary look in her eye was as great an insult to me as the abuse she had flung at Hap. I left the cabin and went to fetch her horse. A fine horse and a fine saddle, doubtless both gifts from a fine young man. The animal sensed my agitation and pranced restlessly as I saddled her. I took a breath, gathered control over myself and set my hand to the horse. I sent calmness to her. In doing so, I calmed myself. I stroked her sleek neck. She turned to whuffle her nose against my shirt. I sighed. ‘Take care of her, would you? For she takes no care with herself.’

      I had no bond with the creature, and my words were only reassuring sounds to her. I sensed in return her acceptance of my mastery. I led her to the front of the cottage and stood outside, holding her reins. In a moment, Starling appeared on the porch. ‘Can’t wait for me to leave, can you?’ she observed bitterly. She threw her pack across the saddle, unsettling the horse once more.

      ‘That’s not true and you know it,’ I replied. I tried to keep my voice level and calm. The pain I had been denying broke through my humiliation at how gullible I had been, and my anger that she had used me so. Our bond had not been a tender, heartfelt love; rather it had been a companionship that had included the sharing of our bodies and the trust of sleeping in one another’s arms. The betrayal of a friend differs from the treachery of a lover only in the degree of pain, not the kind. I suddenly knew I had just lied to her; I desperately wanted her to leave. Her presence was like an arrow standing in a wound; it could not be healed until she was gone.

      Nevertheless, I tried to think of some significant words, something that would salvage the good part of what we had shared. But nothing came to me, and in the end I stood dumbly by as she snatched the reins from my hand and mounted. She looked down on me from the animal’s back. I am sure she felt some pain, but her face showed only her anger that I had thwarted her will. She shook her head at me.

      ‘You could have been someone. Regardless of how you were born, they gave you every chance of making something of yourself. You could have mattered. But this is what you chose. Remember that. You chose this.’

      She tugged the horse’s head around, not so badly as to injure her mouth, but rougher than she needed to be. Then she kicked the horse to a trot and rode away from me. I watched her go. She did not look back. Despite my pain I felt, not the regret of an ending, but the foreboding of a beginning. A shiver ran over me, as if the Fool himself stood at my elbow and whispered words at my ear. ‘Do not you sense it? A crossroads, a vertex, a vortex. All paths change from here.’

      I turned, but there was no one there. I glanced at the sky. Dark clouds were hastening from the south; already the tips of the trees were stirring with the oncoming squall. Starling would begin her journey with a drenching. I told myself I took no satisfaction in that, and went looking for Hap.

       FOUR

       The Hedge-Witch

       There was a hedge-witch in those parts, Silva Copperleaf by name, whose charms were of such a strength that their potency lasted not just from year to year, but continued to protect the folk who possessed them for generations. It is said that she made for Baldric Farseer a marvellous sieve such that it purified all waters that passed through it. This was a great boon for a king so often threatened by poisoners.

       Above the gate of the walled town of Eklse, she hung a charm against pestilence, and for many years the grain bins were free of rats and the stables clean of fleas and other vermin. The town prospered under this protection, until the town elders foolishly built a second gate in their walls, to admit more trade. This opened a way for pestilence to enter the town, and all there perished from the second wave of the Blood Plague.

       Selkin’s Travels in the Six Duchies

      High summer found Hap and me just as it had found us for the last seven years. There was a garden to tend, poultry to mind, and fish to salt and smoke against winter’s need. Day followed day in its round of chores and meals, sleeping and waking. Starling’s departure, I told myself, had effectively quenched the restlessness that Chade’s visit had sparked. I had spoken to Hap, in a desultory way, of putting him out to an apprenticeship. With an enthusiasm that surprised me, he told me of a cabinetmaker in Buckkeep whose work he had greatly admired. I balked at that, having no desire to visit Buckkeep Town, but I think he suspected I could not pay such a high prentice fee as a fine workman like Gindast could demand. In that, he was likely correct. When I asked him of any other woodworkers he had noticed, he stoutly replied that there was a boatbuilder in Hammerby Cove whose work was often praised. Perhaps we might try there. This was a far humbler master than the cabinetmaker in Buckkeep. I uneasily wondered if the boy was not tailoring his dreams to the depths of my pockets. His apprenticeship would determine the course of his life’s work. I didn’t want my lack of coin to condemn him to a trade he found merely tolerable.

      Yet despite the boy’s interest, the apprenticeship remained a topic for late night talks by the hearth and little more. Oh, I set aside the small store of coins that remained to me against a prentice fee. I even told the boy that we would make do with fewer eggs for meals if he wished to let the hens set some. There was always a market for chickens, and whatever he got for them he could save towards his fee. Even then, I wondered if it would be enough to buy him a good place. Willing hands and a strong back could buy a lad an apprenticeship, it was true, but the better artisans and craftsmen usually demanded a fee before they would take a likely boy into their shops. It was the way of Buck. The secrets of a man’s trade and the good livelihood he made at it were not to be carelessly given to strangers. If parents loved their children, they