Assassin's Quest

Burrich gave a brief snort of laughter. "I don't think anyone would have been eternally patient with that one. When I got him, he was five or six, and I knew nothing of him. And I was a young man, with many other interests. You can put a colt in a corral, or tie a dog up for a time. Not so with a child. You can never forget you have a child for even an instant." He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Before I knew it, he'd become the center of my life." An odd little pause. "Then they took him from me, and I let them …. And now he's dead."

A silence. I wanted desperately to reach to them both, to tell them that I lived. But I could not. I could hear them, I could see them, but I could not reach them. Like the wind outside the house, I roared and pounded at the walls, to no avail.

"What am I going to do? What will become of us?" Molly asked abruptly of no one. The despair in her voice was rending. "Here I am. No husband, and a child, and no way to make my own way in the world. Everything I saved is gone." She looked at Burrich. "I was so stupid. I always believed he would come to find me, that he would marry me. But he never did. And now he never will." She began to rock as she clutched the baby to her. Tears spilled unheeded down her cheeks. "Don't think I didn't hear that old man today, the one that said he'd seen me in Buckkeep Town and I was the Wit-Bastard's whore. How long before that tale races through Capelin Beach? I daren't go to town anymore, I can't hold up my head."

Something went out of Burrich at her words. He slumped, elbow on knee, head in his hand. He muttered, "I thought you had not heard him. Had he not been half as old as God, I'd have made him answer for his words."

"You can't challenge a man for speaking the truth," Molly said dispiritedly.

That brought Burrich's head up. "You're not a whore!" he declared hotly. "You were Fitz's wife. It's not your fault if not all were privy to it."

"His wife," Molly said mockingly to herself. "I was not, Burrich. He never married me."

"Such was how he spoke of you to me. I promise you, I know this. Had he not died, he would have come to you. He would. He always intended to make you his wife."

"Oh, yes, he had many intentions. And he spoke many lies. Intentions are not deeds, Burrich. If every woman who had heard a man promise marriage were a wife, well, there'd be a spate less of bastards in the world." She straightened up and wiped the tears from her face with a weary finality. Burrich made no answer to her words. She looked down into the little face that was finally at peace. The babe went to sleep. She slipped her little finger into the child's mouth to free her nipple from the babe's sleepy grip on it. As Molly did up her blouse, she smiled weakly. "I think I feel a tooth coming through. Maybe she's just colicky from teething."

"A tooth? Let me see!" Burrich exclaimed, and came to bend over the baby as Molly carefully pushed down her pink lower lip to reveal a tiny half-moon of white showing in her gum. My daughter pulled away from the touch, frowning in her sleep. Burrich took her gently from Molly and carried her over to the bed. He settled her into it, still wrapped in his shirt. By the fire, Molly took the lid off the kettle and gave the porridge a stir.

"I'll take care of you both," Burrich offered awkwardly. He looked down at the child as he spoke. "I'm not so old I can't get work, you know. As long as I can swing an axe, we can trade or sell firewood in town. We'll get by."

"You're not old at all," Molly said absently as she sprinkled a bit of salt into the porridge. She went to her chair and dropped into it. From a basket by her chair, she took up a piece of mending and turned it about in her hands, deciding where to begin. "You seem to wake up new each day. Look at this shirt. Torn out at the shoulder seam as if a growing boy did it. I think you get younger each day. But I feel as if I get older with every passing hour. And I can't live on your kindness forever, Burrich. I've got to get on with my life. Somehow. I just can't think how to begin, just now."

"Then don't worry about it, just now," he said comfortingly.

He came to stand behind her chair. His hands lifted as if he would put them on her shoulders. Instead he crossed his arms on his chest. "Soon it will be spring: We'll put in a garden and the fish runs will begin again. There may be some hiring work down in Capelin Beach. You'll see, we'll get by."

His optimism reached something in her. "I should start now and make some straw hives. With great good luck, I might chance on a swarming of bees."

"I know a flowering field up in the hills where the bees work thick in summer. If we set out hives there, would the bees move into them?"