Fool’s Assassin

The vineyard required a horseback trip. When I told Bee this, she seemed to consider it for a longer time before informing me, “I have not checked on my mother’s beehives for some days. I do have tasks of my own, you know.”

“I don’t know how to help you with the hives,” I told her.

She lifted her head and again squared her small shoulders. “I know what must be done. And I’m stronger than I look,” she told me.

And so we parted, but came back together for a noon meal. I reported to her that the grapes had an excellent set, and that I had seen many of her bees busy at their work. She nodded gravely to that and said that all had appeared well with the hives.

After our meal I retreated to the Withywoods study to go over the long-neglected accounts. There was a list from Steward Revel there of maintenance projects for Withywoods that he judged too important to ignore. There were small notes next to some of the suggestions, in Molly’s handwriting. I couldn’t bear to look at it. She’d put it there at least two months ago, and I had promised her, promised her that we’d get the most pressing work under way this summer. But I hadn’t. I’d set it aside, confident that she would nag me into action when it became urgent.

Well, she wouldn’t. Not ever again.

There were other messages on my desk, accounts that needed to be paid for supplies brought in from the outlying farms. There was a lot of tallying to do for men who had worked the hayfields in exchange for a share. Here was a note that we’d have to hire more workers for the grape harvest, and if we wanted good ones, we’d best secure them now. Everything needed to be done now.

And another list, poorly written and spelled worse, of various foodstuffs. I stared at it for a time. I must have looked perplexed because Bee wandered over to peer past my elbow at it. “Oh. Cook Nutmeg wrote that, I think. She always asked Mama what meals she would like for the week to come, so Cook could be sure she had all she needed on hand for them. Mama used to write the list for her to send to town.”

“I see. And this?”

She scowled at it for a minute. “I’m not sure. I think that word is meant to be ‘wool.’ And that might be ‘cobbler.’ Mama was talking of winter woolens for the help, and new boots for you and me.”

“But it’s summer!”

She cocked her head at me. “It’s like the garden, Papa. You have to plan now what you want to have three months from now.”

“I suppose.” I stared at the unintelligible scribbling, wondering if I could somehow persuade Revel to translate and assume command of whatever this was. It was suddenly all too much. I set it down and pushed away from the desk. “We should go look at the apple trees.”

And so we did, until evening.

Day by aching day, we groped toward a routine. We made our needless daily inspection of the stables, the sheep pens, and the grapes. I did not throw myself into the work; I did not have the focus—but the accounts did not go too late, and Revel seemed almost relieved to take up the meal planning. I didn’t care what he put before me; eating had become a task to accomplish. Sleep evaded me, only to ambush me at my desk in the middle of the afternoon. More and more often Bee followed me to my private study in the evenings, where she amused herself by pretending to read my discarded papers before drawing lavish illustrations on the backs of them. We talked little, even when we played games together. Most evenings ended with her asleep on the floor. I would carry her back to her bed, tumble her into it, and then return to my study. I let go of far too many things. I felt sometimes as if we were both waiting for something.

The evening that I realized I was waiting for Molly to come back, I put my head down on my arms and wept useless bitter tears. I only came back to myself when I felt a soft hand patting my shoulder and heard her voice saying, “It can’t be changed, dear. It can’t be changed. You must let go of the past.”

I lifted my head and looked at my little daughter. I had thought her asleep on the hearth. It was the first time she had touched me of her own volition. Her eyes were such a pale blue, like Kettricken’s, and sometimes she did seem—not blind, but as if she looked past me into another place. Her words were not ones I would have expected from a child. They were Molly’s words, the words she would have spoken to me to comfort me. My little child, trying to be strong for me. I blinked my eyes clear of tears, cleared my throat, and asked her, “Would you like to learn how to play Stones?”

“Of course,” she said, and even though I knew she didn’t mean it, I taught her that night and we played until it was almost morning. We both slept in until nearly noon the next day.