‘Wait,’ she said, and when I paused, she asked, ‘Do you sleep up­stairs, or out in the stables?’

  ‘Both. Some­times. I mean, either. Ah, good night, then, lady.’ I turned and all but fled. I was halfway up the stairs be­fore I wondered at the strange­ness of her ques­tion. It was only when I went to un­dress for bed that I real­ized I still gripped my empty ale mug. I went to sleep, feel­ing a fool, and won­der­ing why.

  TWELVE

  Pa­tience

  The Red Ship Raid­ers were a misery and an af­flic­tion to their own folk long be­fore they troubled the shores of the Six Duch­ies. From ob­scure cult be­gin­nings, they rose to both re­li­gious and polit­ical power by means of ruth­less tac­tics. Chiefs and Head­men who re­fused to align them­selves with their be­liefs of­ten found that their wives and chil­dren had be­come the vic­tims of what we have come to call For­ging in memory of the ill-fated town of Forge. Hard-hearted and cruel as we con­sider the Outis­landers to be, they have in their tra­di­tion a strong vein of hon­our, and hein­ous pen­al­ties for those who break the kin-rules. Ima­gine the an­guish of the Outis­lander father whose son has been Forged. He must either con­ceal his son’s crimes when the boy lies to him, steals from him, and forces him­self upon the house­hold wo­men, or see the boy flayed alive for his crimes and suf­fer both the loss of his heir and the re­spect of the other Houses. The threat of For­ging was a power­ful det­ri­ment to op­pos­ing the polit­ical power of the Red Ship Raid­ers.

  By the time the Raid­ers began to harry our shores ser­i­ously, they had sub­dued most op­pos­i­tion in the Out Is­lands. Those who openly op­posed them died or fled. Oth­ers grudgingly paid trib­ute and clenched their teeth against the out­rages of those who con­trolled the cult. But many gladly joined the ranks, and painted the hulls of their raid­ing ves­sels red and never ques­tioned the right­ness of what they did. It seems likely that these con­verts were formed mostly from the lesser Houses, who had never be­fore been offered the op­por­tun­ity to rise in in­flu­ence. But he who con­trolled the Red Ship Raid­ers cared noth­ing for who a man’s fore­bears had been, so long as he had the man’s un­swerving loy­alty.

  I saw the lady twice more be­fore I dis­covered who she was. The second time I saw her was the next night, at about the same hour. Molly had been busy with her ber­ries, so I had gone out for an even­ing of tav­ern mu­sic with Kerry and Dirk. I had had per­haps one or at most two glasses more of ale than I should have. I was neither dizzy nor sick, but I was pla­cing my feet care­fully for I had already taken one tumble in a pothole on the dusky road.

  Sep­ar­ate but ad­ja­cent to the dusty kit­chen court­yard with its cobbles and wagon docks is a hedged area. It is com­monly re­ferred to as the Wo­men’s Garden, not be­cause it is ex­clus­ively their province but simply be­cause they have the tend­ing and the know­ing of it. It is a pleas­ant place, with a pond in the middle, and many low beds of herbs set among flower­ing plant­ings, fruit-vines and green-stoned path­ways. I knew bet­ter than to go straight to bed when I was in this con­di­tion. If I at­temp­ted to sleep now, the bed would be­gin to spin and sway, and within an hour, I would be puk­ing sick. It had been a pleas­ant even­ing, and that seemed a wretched way to end it, so I took my­self to the Wo­men’s Garden in­stead of to my room.

  In one angle of the garden, between a sun-warmed wall and a smal­ler pond, there grew seven vari­et­ies of thyme. Their fra­grances on a hot day can be gid­dy­ing, but then, with even­ing ver­ging on night, the ming­ling scents seemed to soothe my head. I splashed my face in the little pool, and then put my back to the rock wall that was still re­leas­ing the sun’s heat back to the night. Frogs were chir­rup­ing to one an­other. I lowered my eyes and watched the pond’s calm sur­face to keep my­self from spin­ning.

  Foot­steps. Then a wo­man’s voice asked tartly, ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Not quite,’ I replied af­fably, think­ing it was Tilly the orch­ard-girl. ‘Not quite enough time or coin,’ I ad­ded jok­ingly.

  ‘I sup­pose you learned it from Burrich. The man is a sot and a lecher, and he has cul­tiv­ated like traits in you. Ever he brings those around him down to his level.’

  The bit­ter­ness in the wo­man’s voice made me look up. I squin­ted through the dim­ming light to make out her fea­tures. It was the lady of the pre­vi­ous even­ing. Stand­ing on the garden path, in a simple shift, she looked at first glance to be little more than a girl. She was slender, and less tall than I, though I was not overly tall for my four­teen years. But her face was a wo­man’s, and right now her mouth was set in a con­demning line echoed by the brows knit over her hazel eyes. Her hair was dark and curl­ing, and though she had tried to re­strain it, ring­lets of it had es­caped at her fore­head and neck.

  It was not that I felt com­pelled to de­fend Burrich; it was simply that my con­di­tion was no do­ing of his. So I made an­swer some­thing to the ef­fect that as he was some miles dis­tant in a dif­fer­ent town, he could scarcely be re­spons­ible for what I put in my mouth and swal­lowed.

  The lady came two steps closer. ‘But he has never taught you bet­ter, has he? He has never coun­selled you against drunk­en­ness, has he?’

  There is a say­ing from the south­lands that there is truth in wine. There must be a bit of it in ale, also. I spoke it that night. ‘Ac­tu­ally, my lady, he would be greatly dis­pleased with me right now. First, he would be­rate me for not rising when a lady spoke to me.’ And here I lurched to my feet. ‘And then, he would lec­ture me long and severely about the be­ha­viour ex­pec­ted from one who car­ries a prince’s blood if not his titles.’ I man­aged a bow, and when I suc­ceeded, I dis­tin­guished my­self by straight­en­ing up with a flour­ish. ‘So, good even­ing to you, fair Lady of the Garden. I bid you good night, and I shall re­move my oafish self from your pres­ence.’

  I was all the way to the arched entry­way in the wall when she called out, ‘Wait!’ But my stom­ach gave a quietly protest­ing grumble, and I pre­ten­ded not to hear. She did not come after me, but I felt sure she watched me, and so I kept my head up and my stride even un­til I was out of the kit­chen court­yard. I took my­self down to the stables, where I vomited into the ma­nure pile, and ended up sleep­ing in a clean empty stall be­cause the steps up to Burrich’s loft looked en­tirely too steep.

  But youth is amaz­ingly re­si­li­ent, es­pe­cially when feel­ing threatened. I was up at dawn the next day, for I knew Burrich was ex­pec­ted home by af­ter­noon. I washed my­self at the stables, and de­cided the tu­nic I had worn for the last three days needed to be re­placed. I was doubly con­scious of its con­di­tion when in the cor­ridor out­side my room the lady ac­cos­ted me. She looked me up and down, and be­fore I could speak, she ad­dressed me.

  ‘Change your shirt,’ she told me. And then ad­ded, ‘Those leg­gings make you look like a stork. Tell Mis­tress Hasty they need re­pla­cing.’

  ‘Good morn­ing, lady,’ I said. It was not a reply, but those were the only words that came to me in my as­ton­ish­ment. I de­cided she was very ec­cent­ric, even more so than Lady Thyme. My best course was to hu­mour her. I ex­pec­ted her to turn aside and go on her way. In­stead she con­tin­ued to hold me with her eyes.

  ‘Do you play a mu­sical in­stru­ment?’ she de­man­ded.

  I shook my head mutely.

  ‘You sing, then?’

  ‘No, my lady.’

  She looked troubled as she asked, ‘Then per­haps you have been taught to re­cite the Epics and the know­ledge verses, of herbs and heal­ings and nav­ig­a­tion … that sort of thing?’

  ‘Only the ones that per­tain to the care of horses, hawks and dogs,’ I told her, al­most hon­estly. Burrich had de­man­ded I learn those. Chade had taught me a set about pois­ons and an­ti­dotes, but he had warned me they were not com­monly known, and were not to be cas­u­ally re­cited.

  ‘But you dance, of course? And you have been in­struc­ted in the mak­ing of verse?’

  I was totally con­fused. ‘Lady, I think you have con­fused me with someone else. Per­haps you are think­ing of Au­gust, the King’s nephew. He is but a year or two younger than I and …’

  ‘I am not mis­taken. An­swer my ques­tion!’ she de­man­ded, al­most shrilly.

  ‘No, my lady. The teach­ings you speak of are for those who are … well-born. I have not been taught them.’

  At each of my deni­als, she had ap­peared more troubled. Her mouth grew straighter, and her hazel eyes clouded. ‘This is not to be tol­er­ated,’ she de­clared, and turn­ing in a flurry of skirts, she hastened off down the hall­way. After a mo­ment, I went into my room, changed my shirt, and put on the longest pair of leg­gings I owned. I dis­missed the lady from my thoughts and threw my­self into my chores and les­sons for the day.

  It was rain­ing that af­ter­noon when Burrich re­turned. I met him out­side the stables, tak­ing his horse’s head as he swung stiffly down from the saddle. ‘You’ve grown, Fitz,’ he ob­served and looked me over with a crit­ical eye, as if I were a horse or hound that was show­ing un­ex­pec­ted po­ten­tial. He opened his mouth as if to say some­thing more, then shook his head and gave a half-snort. ‘Well?’ he asked, and I began my re­port.

  He had been gone scarcely more than a month, but Burrich liked to know things down to the smal­lest de­tail. He walked be­side me, listen­ing, as I led his horse to her stall and pro­ceeded to care for her.

  Some­times it sur­prised me how much like Chade he could be. They were very alike in the way they ex­pec­ted me to re­call ex­act de­tails, and to be able to re­late the do­ings of last week or last month in cor­rect or­der. Learn­ing to re­port for Chade had not been that dif­fi­cult; he had merely form­al­ized the re­quire­ments that Burrich had long ex­pec­ted of me. Years later I was to real­ize how sim­ilar it was to the re­port­ing of a man-at-arms to his su­per­ior.

  An­other man would have gone off to the kit­chens or the baths after hear­ing my sum­mar­ized ver­sion of everything that had gone on in his ab­sence. But Burrich in­sisted on walk­ing through his stables, stop­ping here to chat with a groom and there to speak softly to a horse. When he came to the lady’s old pal­frey, he stopped. He looked at the horse for a few minutes in si­lence.

  ‘I trained this beast,’ he said ab­ruptly, and at his voice the horse turned in the stall to face him and whickered softly. ‘Silk,’ he said softly, and stroked the soft nose. He sighed sud­denly. ‘So the Lady Pa­tience is here. Has she seen you yet?’

  Now there was a ques­tion dif­fi­cult to an­swer. A thou­sand thoughts col­lided in my head at once. The Lady Pa­tience, my father’s wife, and by many ac­counts, the one most re­spons­ible for my father’s with­drawal from the court and from me. That was who I had been chat­ting with in the kit­chen, and drunk­enly sa­lut­ing. That was who had quizzed me this morn­ing on my edu­ca­tion. To Burrich I muttered, ‘Not form­ally. But we’ve met.’

  He sur­prised me by laugh­ing. ‘Your face is a pic­ture, Fitz. I can see she hasn’t changed much, just by your re­ac­tion. The first time I met her was in her father’s orch­ard. She was sit­ting up in a tree. She de­man­ded that I re­move a splinter from her foot, and took her shoe and stock­ing off right there so I could do it. Right there in front of me. And she had no idea at all of who I was. Nor I, her. I thought she was a lady’s maid. That was years ago, of course, and even a few years be­fore my prince met her. I sup­pose I wasn’t much older than you are now.’ He paused, and his face softened. ‘And she had a wretched little dog she al­ways car­ried about with her in a bas­ket. It was al­ways wheez­ing and retch­ing up wads of its own fur. Its name was Feat­her­duster.’ He paused a mo­ment, and smiled al­most fondly. ‘What a thing to re­mem­ber, after all these years.’

  ‘Did she like you when she first met you?’ I asked tact­lessly.

  Burrich looked at me and his eyes be­came opaque, the man dis­ap­pear­ing be­hind the gaze. ‘Bet­ter than she does now,’ he said ab­ruptly. ‘But that’s of small im­port. Let’s hear it, Fitz. What does she think of you?’

  Now there was a ques­tion. I plunged into an ac­count­ing of our meet­ings, glossing over de­tails as much as I dared. I was halfway through my garden en­counter when Burrich held up a hand.

  ‘Stop,’ he said quietly.

  I fell si­lent.

  ‘When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid look­ing like a fool, you end up sound­ing like a moron in­stead. Let’s start again.’

  So I did, and spared him noth­ing, of either my be­ha­viour or the lady’s com­ments. When I was fin­ished, I waited for his judge­ment. In­stead, he reached out and stroked the pal­frey’s nose. ‘Some things are changed by time,’ he said at last. ‘And oth­ers are not.’ He sighed. ‘Well, Fitz, you have a way of present­ing your­self to the very people you should most ar­dently avoid. I am sure there will be con­sequences from this, but I have not the slight­est idea what they will be. That be­ing so, there’s no point to wor­ry­ing. Let’s see the rat-dog’s pups. You say she had six?’

  ‘And all sur­vived,’ I said proudly, for the bitch had a his­tory of dif­fi­cult whelp­ing.

  ‘Let’s just hope we do as well for ourselves,’ Burrich muttered as we walked through the stables, but when I glanced up at him, sur­prised, he seemed not to have been talk­ing to me at all.

  ‘I’d have thought you’d have the good sense to avoid her,’ Chade grumbled at me.

  It was not the greet­ing I had looked for after more than two months’ ab­sence from his cham­bers. ‘I didn’t know it was the Lady Pa­tience. I’m sur­prised there was no gos­sip about her ar­rival.’

  ‘She strenu­ously ob­jects to gos­sip,’ Chade in­formed me. He sat in his chair be­fore the small fire in the fire­place. Chade’s cham­bers were chilly, and he was ever vul­ner­able to cold. He looked weary as well to­night, worn by whatever he had been do­ing in the weeks since I’d last seen him. His hands, es­pe­cially, looked old, bony and lumpy about the knuckles. He took a sip of his wine and con­tin­ued. ‘And she has her ec­cent­ric little ways of deal­ing with those who talk about her be­hind her back. She has al­ways in­sisted on pri­vacy for her­self. It is one reason she would have made a very poor queen. Not that Chiv­alry cared. That was a mar­riage he made for him­self rather than for polit­ics. I think it was the first ma­jor dis­ap­point­ment he dealt his father. After that, noth­ing he did ever com­pletely pleased Shrewd.’

  I sat still as a mouse. Slink came and perched on my knee. It was rare to hear Chade so talk­at­ive, es­pe­cially about mat­ters re­lat­ing to the royal fam­ily. I scarcely breathed for fear of in­ter­rupt­ing him.

  ‘Some­times I think there was some­thing in Pa­tience that Chiv­alry in­stinct­ively knew he needed. He was a thought­ful, or­derly man, al­ways cor­rect in his man­ners, al­ways aware of pre­cisely what was go­ing on around him. He was chiv­al­rous, boy, in the best sense of that word. He did not give in to ugly or petty im­pulses. That meant he ex­uded a cer­tain air of re­straint at all times – so those who did not know him well thought him cold or cava­lier.

  ‘And then he met this girl … and she was scarcely more than a girl. And there was no more sub­stance to her than to cob­webs and sea-foam. Thoughts and tongue al­ways fly­ing from this to that, nit­terdy-nat­terdy, with never a pause or con­nec­tion I could see. It used to ex­haust me just to listen to her. But Chiv­alry would smile, and mar­vel. Per­haps it was that she had ab­so­lutely no awe of him. Per­haps it was that she didn’t seem par­tic­u­larly eager to win him. But with a score of more eli­gible ladies, of bet­ter birth and brighter brains, pur­su­ing him, he chose Pa­tience. And it wasn’t even timely for him to wed; when he took her to wife, he shut the gate on a dozen pos­sible al­li­ances that a wife could have brought him. There was no good reason for him to get mar­ried at that time. Not one.’

  ‘Ex­cept that he wanted to,’ I said, and then I could have bit­ten out my tongue. For Chade nod­ded, and then gave him­self a bit of a shake. He took his gaze off the fire and looked at me.

  ‘Well. Enough of that. I won’t ask you how you made such an im­pres­sion on her, or what changed her heart to­ward you. But last week, she came to Shrewd and de­man­ded that you be re­cog­nized as Chiv­alry’s son and heir and given an edu­ca­tion ap­pro­pri­ate to a prince.’

  I was diz­zied. Did the wall tapestries move be­fore me, or was it a trick of my eyes?

  ‘Of course he re­fused,’ Chade con­tin­ued mer­ci­lessly. ‘He tried to ex­plain to her why such a thing is totally im­possible. All she kept say­ing was, “But you are the King. How can it be im­possible for you?” “The nobles would never ac­cept him. It would mean civil war. And think what it would do to an un­pre­pared boy, to plunge him sud­denly into this.” So he told her.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said quietly. I couldn’t re­mem­ber what I had felt for the one in­stant. Ela­tion? An­ger? Fear? I only knew that the feel­ing was gone now, and I felt oddly stripped and hu­mi­li­ated that I had felt any­thing at all.

  ‘Pa­tience, of course, was not con­vinced at all. “Pre­pare the boy,” she told the King. “And when he is ready, judge for your­self.” Only Pa­tience would ask such a thing, and in front of both Ver­ity and Regal. Ver­ity listened quietly, know­ing how it must end, but Regal was livid. He be­comes over­wrought far too eas­ily. Even an idiot should know Shrewd could not ac­cede to Pa­tience’s de­mand. But he knows when to com­prom­ise. In all else, he gave way to her, mostly I think to stop her tongue.’

  ‘In all else?’ I re­peated stu­pidly.