Fool’s Assassin

I came back slowly into my room. Nothing on the mantel over the fireplace. No blue pottery candleholder. No little carving of an owl that my mother and I had bought at the Oaksbywater market. I opened my small clothing chest. Empty. The larger chest at the foot of my old bed. Empty save for a faint waft of cedar and lavender. Even the sachets had been cleared away. The blue woolen blanket, worn to thinness, was gone. Not one of my old nightgowns or tunics remained. All those stitches from my mother’s hands, gone to ash to protect my father’s pretense, so no one could know we had burned a body in the night. The only old clothing left to me would be what I had carried off to my mother’s room where I had been sleeping. And the nightrobe I had hidden there. Unless those had already been discovered and taken, too!

I crossed my arms on my chest and held myself tightly as I cataloged what else was missing. The engraved “book” of herbs that I had always kept by my bed. The candleholder for my bed table. A terrible fear seized me and I fell to my knees by that table and opened the cupboard beneath it. Gone, all gone, every one of the fat scented candles that my mother had made. I’d never slept in this room without one burning as I drowsed off, and I could not imagine moving into a new room without their comforting fragrance. I stared into the dim emptiness of the cupboard and held myself tighter, digging my nails into my arms to keep from flying into pieces. I shut my eyes tightly. If I breathed slowly through my nose, I could catch the fading essence of the candles that had been there.

I wasn’t aware of him until he sat down on the floor behind me and put his arms around me. My father spoke by my ear. “Bee. I saved them. I came back here, late that night. I took the candles and a few other things that I knew you would want. I’ve got them safe for you.”

I opened my eyes but I didn’t relax in his arms. “You should have told me,” I said fiercely, suddenly furious with him. How could he have let me feel that loss, even for a few minutes? “You should have let me come here to get my important things before they were burned.”

“I should have,” he conceded, and then he stabbed me with, “I didn’t think of it then. And it had to be done immediately. So much was happening here, so fast.”

My voice was cold as I asked, “So what did you save? My candles? My book on herbs? My owl figurine, my candleholder? Did you save my blue blanket? The tunic with the daisies embroidered around the hem?”

“I didn’t save the blue blanket,” he admitted hoarsely. “I didn’t know it was important.”

“You should have asked me! You should have asked me!” I hated the tears that suddenly flooded my eyes and how my throat closed and choked me. I didn’t want to be sad. I wanted to be angry. Angry hurt less. I turned and did something I’d never done before. I hit my father, as hard as I could, my fist connecting with the braced muscles of his chest. It wasn’t a little girl’s slapping. I hit him with as much force as I could muster, wanting to hurt him. I hit him again, and again, until I realized he was allowing me to do it, that he could have seized my arms and stopped me at any time. That perhaps he even wanted me to hurt him. That made it useless and worse than futile. I stopped and looked up at him. His face was still. His eyes looked at me, open, offering no defense against my anger. He accepted it as just.

That woke no sympathy in me. It only made me angrier. This was my pain; I had been robbed of things I had cherished. How dare he stare at me as if he were the one who was hurt? I folded my arms again, this time to lock him out. I bowed my head so I wouldn’t have to look at him. When he put one hand on my cheek and the other on top of my head, I only set my muscles and curled in more tightly. He sighed.

“I do my best, Bee, poor as it is sometimes. I saved what I thought was important to you. When you want to, tell me, and we’ll get them and put them in your new room. I wanted it to be something of a surprise for you; I thought you’d like having the Yellow Suite. It was a mistake. Too great a change, too fast, and you should have had more say in it.”

I didn’t loosen my muscles, but I listened.

“So. This will not be a surprise. In five days you and I are going into Oaksbywater. Revel was clever enough to suggest that you might want to choose some fabric from the weavers there for your heavy winter tunics. And we will visit the cobbler instead of waiting for him to make his winter visit here. I think your feet have done more than a year’s growing already. Revel told me that you needed new shoes, and that you needed boots as well. For riding.”

That jolted me enough to look up at him. Sorrow still filled his eyes, but he said kindly, “That was a surprise for me. A very nice one.”