LITMIR.BIZ

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lowered his heels to the floor and stood like a statue. ‘Would it help at all?’ he asked soberly. ‘Would you listen to me if I came to you and did not speak in riddles? Would that make you pause and think and hang upon every word, and ponder those words later, in your chamber? Very well then. I shall try. Do you know the rhyme, Six Wisemen went to Jhaampe-town?’

      I nodded, as confused as ever.

      ‘Recite it for me.’

      ‘Six Wisemen went to Jhaampe-town, climbed a hill and never came down, turned to stone and flew away…’ The old nursery rhyme eluded me suddenly. ‘I don’t recall it at all. It’s nonsense anyway, one of those rhyming things that sticks in your head but means nothing.’

      ‘That, of course, is why it is enscrolled with the knowledge verses,’ the Fool concluded.

      ‘I don’t know!’ I retorted. I suddenly felt irritated beyond endurance. ‘Fool, you are doing it again. All you speak is riddles, ever! You claim to speak plain, but your truth eludes me.’

      ‘Riddles, dear Fitzy-fitz, are supposed to make folk think. To find new truth in old saws. But, be that as it may … Your brain eludes me. How shall I reach it? Perhaps if I came to you, by dark of night, and sang under your window:

       Bastard princeling, Fitz my sweet,

       You waste your hours to your own defeat.

       You work to stop, you strive to refrain,

       When all your effort should go to a gain.’

      He had flung himself to one knee, and plucked nonexistent strings on his sceptre. He sang quite lustily, and even well. The tune belonged to a popular love ballad. He looked at me, sighed theatrically, wet his lips and continued mournfully,

       ‘Why does a Farseer look never afar,

       Why dwells he completely in things as they are?

       Your coasts are besieged, your people beset.

       I warn and I urge, but they all say, “not yet!”

       Oh bastard princeling, gentle Fitz,

       Will you delay until chopped to bits?’

      A passing servant girl paused to stand bemused and listen. A page came to the door of one chamber and peeped out at us, grinning widely. A slow flush began to heat my cheeks, for the Fool’s expression was both tender and ardent as he looked up at me. I tried to walk casually away from him, but he followed me on his knees, clutching at my sleeve. I was forced to stand, or engage in a ridiculous struggle to free myself. I stood, feeling foolish. He simpered a smile up at me. The page giggled, and down the hall I heard two voices conferring in amusement. I refused to lift my eyes to see who was so enjoying my discomfort. The Fool mouthed a kiss up at me. He let his voice sink to a confidential whisper as he sang on:

       ‘Will fate seduce you to her will?

       Not if you struggle with all your Skill.

       Summon your allies, locate the trained,

       Consummate all from which you’ve refrained.

       There’s a future not yet fashioned

       Founded by your fiery passions.

       If you use your Wits to win

       You’ll save the duchies for your kin.

       Thus begs a Fool, on bended knee,

       Let not a darkness come to be.

       Let not our peoples go to dust

       When Life in you has placed this trust.’

      He paused, then sang loudly and jovially:

       ‘And if you choose to let this pass

       Like so much farting from your ass,

       Behold my reverence for thee,

       Feast eyes on what men seldom see!’

      He suddenly released my cuff, to tumble away from me in a somersault that somehow reached a finish with his presentation of his bare buttocks to me. They were shockingly pale, and I could conceal neither my amazement nor affront. The Fool vaulted to his feet, suitably clothed again, and Ratsy on his sceptre bowed most humbly to all who had paused to watch my humiliation. There was general laughter and a scattering of applause. His performance had left me speechless. I looked aside and tried to walk past him, but with a bound the Fool blocked my passage once again. The Fool abruptly assumed a stern stance and addressed all who still grinned.

      ‘Fie and shame upon you all, to be so merry! To giggle and point at a boy’s broken heart! Do not you know the Fitz has lost one most dear to him? Ah, he hides his grief beneath his blushes, but she has gone to her grave and left his passion unslaked. That most stubbornly chaste and virulently flatulent of maidens, dear Lady Thyme, has perished. Of her own stench, I doubt it not, though some say it came of eating spoiled meat. But spoiled meat, you say, has a most foul odour, to warn off any from consuming it. Such we can say of Lady Thyme also, and so perhaps she smelt it not, or deemed it but the perfume of her fingers. Mourn not, poor Fitz, another shall be found for you. To this I shall devote myself, this very day! I swear it, by Sir Ratsy’s skull. And now, I bid you hasten on your tasks, for in truth I have delayed mine much too long. Fare well, poor Fitz. Brave, sad heart! To put so bold a face on your desolation! Poor disconsolate youth! Ah, Fitz, poor poor Fitz …’

      And he wandered off down the hall from me, shaking his head woefully, and conferring with Ratsy as to which elderly dowager he should court on my behalf. I stared in disbelief after him. I felt betrayed, that he could make so public a spectacle of me. Sharp-tongued and flighty as the Fool could be, I had never expected to be the public butt of one of his jokes. I kept waiting for him to turn around, and say some last thing that would make me understand what had just happened. He did not. When he turned a corner, I perceived that my ordeal was finally at an end. I proceeded down the hallway, fuming with embarrassment and dazed with puzzlement at the same time. The doggerel of his rhymes had stored his words in my head, and I knew that I would ponder his love song much in days to come, to try and worry out the meanings hidden there. But Lady Thyme? Surely he would not say such a thing, were it not ‘true’. But why would Chade allow his public personage to die in such a way? What poor woman’s body would be carried out as Lady Thyme, no doubt to be carted off to distant relatives for burial? Was this his method of beginning his journey, a way to leave the keep unseen? But again, why let her be dead? So that Regal might believe he had succeeded in his poisoning? To what end?

      Thus bemused, I finally came to the doors of Kettricken’s chamber. I stood in the hall a moment, to recover my aplomb and compose my face. Suddenly the door across the hall flung open and Regal strode into me. His momentum jostled me aside, and before I could recover myself, he grandly offered, ‘It’s all right, Fitz. I scarcely expect an apology from one so bereaved as yourself.’ He stood in the hallway, straightening his jerkin as the young men following him emerged from his chamber, tittering in amusement. He smiled round at them, and then leaned close to me to ask, in a quietly venomous voice, ‘Where will you suckle up now that the old whore Thyme is dead? Ah, well. I am sure you will find some other old woman to coddle you. Or are you come to wheedle up to a younger one, now?’ He dared to smile at me, before he spun on his heel and strode off in a fine flutter of sleeves, trailed by his three sycophants.

      The insult to the Queen poisoned me into rage. It came with a suddenness such as I had never experienced. I felt my chest and throat swell with it. A terrible strength rushed through me; I know my upper lip lifted in a snarl. From afar I sensed, What? What is it? Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! I took a step, the next would have been a spring, and I know my teeth would have sunk into the place where throat meets shoulder.

      But, ‘FitzChivalry,’ said a voice, full of surprise.

      Molly’s voice! I turned to her, my emotions wrenching from rage to delight at seeing her. But as swiftly she was turning aside, saying, ‘Beg pardon, my lord,’ and brushing past me. Her eyes were down, her manner that of a servant.

      ‘Molly?’

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