I felt her sigh. Please stop the formalities. You are not truly my Holder reporting to me. We both
know that, by every right, Withywoods should have come to you. Your insistence that
it is mine and you must justify every action you take there wears on me.
But it is your inheri—
And it hurts my feelings. Do you truly think I would object to what you might do there
to benefit Bee? Or yourself? I know you do not believe me so selfish. So stop, please.
Do what must be done to keep it standing and in good repair, and spend the income
from the lands as it must be spent. Or as you’d like to spend it. A pause. You know that FitzVigilant will soon be on his way to you?
I’ve been so informed, yes. I tried to conceal from her the reservations I felt about the arrangements.
Well, I do not think he is truly fit for travel yet. I’ve urged Chade to leave him
in hiding for a time. When he arrives, you should have a healer see to him. He’s a
stiff-necked lad, and will insist he is quite all right, thank you very much. Insist
on it. He took a bad beating, a very bad beating. I think Chade will finally send
him away in the hope it will keep him safe. He should have been sent to you years
ago. As I’ve told Chade repeatedly.
He should have put the boy’s best interests before his inclination to keep him near.
I’ll see that he’s well cared for. I was going to put him in the Green Suite, but
then Revel informed me that Patience had created a schoolroom in the east wing and
that there are living chambers for the schoolmaster adjacent to them.
Is there? Oh, yes, I recall it now. It’s a rambling old place, isn’t it? But that
should suit Lant well. He’s private. And seems to be even more so since the beating.
Physical abuse tends to bring that out in a person, I thought. It was nothing that I needed to share with Nettle. But I well recalled
what Regal’s torture had done to me, and how withdrawn the Fool had been after the
Pale Woman’s savage attentions. We live in our bodies. An assault on that outside
fortress of the mind leaves scars that may not show, but never heal. I would give
him his privacy. And if he chose to talk, his words would remain safe with me.
Are you still awake? Nettle sounded annoyed that I might disturb her rest with my Skilling and then nod
off myself.
Yes. Just mulling over the arrangements I’ll make for FitzVigilant.
Treat him gently.
You’re fond of him, aren’t you? Again, I had the impression that he was more important than Chade had informed me.
I am. Treat him well and make him welcome. And whatever it was, Nettle was not divulging it to me, either. I’m going to sleep now, she informed me. Not all of us are night wolves, Tom. Some of us prefer to sleep.
Good night, then, my dear.