Perhaps the gods punish us by bringing us face to face with our own foolish mistakes, condemning us to watch our children fall into the same traps that crippled us. For all the sweetness of the secret hours I had shared with Molly, there had been a price. At the time, I had thought that we shared it, that the only cost was keeping our love secret. Molly had known better, I am sure. She had been the one to pay it, far more than I had. If Burrich had not existed to shelter and shield them both, my daughter would have paid it as well. Perhaps she still would, in her differences, in the dangers of being a cuckoo’s nestling, unlike her brothers. I wondered if I could warn Hap, if he would listen to me, as I had not listened to Burrich or Verity. I pushed my anger aside and spoke out of my fears for them both.
‘Hap. Please hear me. There are no safe and certain ways for a woman to avoid conceiving. All of them have a risk and a price to her. Every time she lies with you, she must wonder, “will I conceive from this? Will I bring shame to my family?” You know I would not cast you from my household for any mistake you made, but Svanja’s life is not so certain. You should protect her, not expose her to danger. You are asking her to risk all, for the pleasure of being with you, with no guarantees. What will you do if her father turns her out? Or beats her? What will you do if she suddenly finds herself ostracized and condemned by her friends? How can you be responsible for that?’
A scowl darkened his face. His stubbornness, so rarely woken, mastered him now. He took several breaths, each deeper than the last, and then the words exploded from him. ‘If he throws her out, I’ll take her in, and do whatever I must to support her. If he beats her, I’ll kill him. And if her friends turn on her, then they were never truly her friends anyway. Don’t worry about it, Tom Badgerlock. It’s my consideration now.’ He bit off each of his final words, as if somehow I had betrayed him just by stating my concerns. He turned away from me. ‘I’m a man now. I can make my own decisions and my own way. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get to my work. I’m sure Master Gindast is waiting for his turn to lecture me on responsibility.’
‘Hap.’ I spoke the word sharply. When the boy turned back to me, startled at the harshness in my tone, I forced out the rest of what I knew I had to say. ‘Making love to a girl does not make you a man. You have no right to do that; not until you both can declare yourself partners publicly, and provide for any children that come along. You should not see her again, Hap. Not like that. If you don’t go soon to meet her father and face him squarely, you’ll never be able to stand before him as a man in his eyes. And –’
He was walking away. Halfway through my speech he turned and walked away from me. I stood stunned, watching him go. I kept thinking he would stop and come back to ask my forgiveness and help in putting his life to rights. Instead, he strode into Master Gindast’s shop without a backward glance.
I stood a time longer in the snow. I was not calm. On the contrary, an anger flamed in me that seemed enough to warm all winter away from the land. My fists were clenched at my sides. I think it was the first time I had ever felt deeply furious with Hap, to the point at which I longed to beat some sense into him if he would not listen to reason. I pictured myself barging into the shop and dragging him out, forcing him to confront what he was doing.
Then I turned and stalked away. Would I have listened to reason at his age? No. I had not, not even when Patience had explained to me, over and over and over, why I must stay away from Molly. Yet such a realization did not decrease my anger with Hap, nor my belated contempt for my boyhood self. Instead it gave me a sense of futility, that I must witness my foster son committing the same foolish and selfish acts that I had performed myself. Just as I had, he believed that their love justified the risks they took, without ever considering that the child might come to pay the price for their intemperance. It could all happen again, and I could not stop it. I think I grasped then, fleetingly, the passion that powered the Fool. He believed in the terrible strength of the White Prophet and the Catalyst, to shoulder the future from the rut of the present and into some better pathway. He believed that some act of ours could prevent others from repeating the mistakes of the past.
By the time I reached Buckkeep and had ascended to the Skill-tower, I had walked away the fierceness of my anger. Yet the sick, dull weight of it lingered, poisoning my day. I was almost relieved to find that Dutiful had given up on me and left. Only a simple underlining of the word had altered my note. The boy was learning to be subtle. Perhaps at least with this young man I could succeed in turning him aside from the errors of the past. That errant thought only made me feel cowardly. Was I surrendering Hap then, abandoning him to his own poor judgement? No, I decided, I was not. But that decision put me no closer to knowing what to do about it.
I returned to Lord Golden’s chambers and was in time to join the Fool for his breakfast. As I entered, however, he was not eating. Rather he sat at table, bemusedly twirling a tiny bouquet of flowers between his forefinger and thumb. It was an unusual token, for the blossoms were made of white lace and black ribbon. It seemed a clever subterfuge for a season without flowers, and it put me in mind of his old fool’s motley for this season. He saw me looking at the posy, smiled at my bemusement, and then carefully pinned it to his breast. It was the Fool who gestured at the spread of food before him and said, ‘Sit down and eat quickly. We are summoned. A ship docked at dawn with an ambassadorial contingent from Bingtown. And not just any ship, but one of their liveships, with a talking, moving figurehead. Goldendown, I believe his name is. I don’t think one has ever ventured into Buck waters before. Aboard was an emissary mission from the Bingtown Council of Traders. They have applied with great urgency to see Queen Kettricken at her earliest convenience.’
The news startled me. Usually Six Duchies contacts with Bingtown were contacts between individual merchants and traders, not their ruling council treating with the Farseers. I tried to recall if the city-state had ever sent us ambassadors when Shrewd was king, then gave it up. I had not been privy to such matters when I was a lad. I took a seat at the table. ‘And you are to be there?’
‘At Councillor Chade’s suggestion, we will both be there. Not visibly, of course. You are to take me there through Chade’s labyrinth. He himself came to tell me so. I’m quite excited to see it, I admit. Save for my brief glimpse of it on the night Kettricken and I fled the castle and Regal, I’ve never glimpsed it.’
I was shocked. It was inevitable that he knew of the spy passages’ existence, but I had not thought Chade would ever offer him access to them. ‘Does the Queen concur in this?’ I asked, trying to be delicate.
‘She does, but reluctantly.’ Then, dropping the aristocratic air, he added, ‘As I have spent some time in Bingtown and know something of how their council operates, Chade hopes my evaluation of their words may give him a deeper understanding. And you, of course, provide an extra pair of eyes and ears for him, to catch any nuances that might otherwise be missed.’ As he spoke, he served us adroitly, adapting a platter to be my plate. He was generous with smoked fish, soft cheese and fresh bread and butter. A pot of tea steamed in the middle of the table. I went to my room to fetch my cup. As I returned with it, I asked, ‘Why could not the Queen simply invite you to be present when she receives them?’
The Fool shrugged one shoulder as he took a forkful of smoked fish. After a moment, he observed, ‘Don’t you think the Bingtown ambassadors might look askance at the Queen of the Six Duchies inviting a foreign noble to attend her first meeting with them?’
‘They might, but then they might not. I believe it has been decades since the Bingtown Council has sent a formal declaration to the Six Duchies court. And we have a Mountain queen now, a woman from a realm completely outside their ken. Did she greet them by slaughtering chickens in their honour or scattering roses before them, it would be all one to them. Whatever she does, they will assume it is her custom, and they will attempt to receive it politely.’ I took a sip of tea and then added pointedly, ‘Including inviting foreign nobles to her first reception of them.’