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 to myself. 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 But I well recalled what Regal’s torture had done to me, and how withdrawn the Fool had been after the Pale Woman’s savage attentions.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.
Good night.
And she was gone, fading from my awareness like perfume blown from a room by an errant breeze.