Fool’s Assassin

I breathed out the names of the first five letters and just as softly, Perseverance repeated them. Under his breath, he added, “They look like hen’s tracks and have names that are just sounds. Who can remember such useless things?”

I had never seen letters in such a light. But I had seen them through my mother’s eyes before I was born, and had seen them for myself when I sat on her lap of an evening and she read aloud to me. When I considered Perseverance’s words, I understood his frustration. I tried to make connections for him. “The first one, see, it makes the sound at the beginning of Revel’s name, and it has long legs, just as he does. And this second one that makes the sound at the beginning of water has a curl here, like water running over a rock.” In this way we named not just the first five letters, but ten of them. So engrossed were we in this new game of looking at letters that neither of us was aware of the looks from the other children until Elm giggled in a very nasty way. We both looked up to see her roll her eyes at Lea. And there, coming down the hall toward us, was our teacher.

As he passed me, he observed in a jolly voice, “You, Lady Bee, have no need of that!” and he plucked the letter scroll from my startled fingers. Before I could react, he called all of us to assemble in the schoolroom. We entered, each resuming the same place as the day before. He was much more brisk than he had been the day before. He organized us into groups, putting children of similar ages together with a wax tablet. He sent Larkspur and me to a different corner of the room. He gave us a scroll about the geography and crops of each of the Six Duchies, along with a map, and told us to familiarize ourselves with them. He smiled at both of us as he directed us, and it seemed a sincere expression. Now that I knew fear was the source of his kindly regard, I felt shamed for us both. Then he looked round in annoyance and demanded, “Where is Taffy? I will not tolerate tardiness!”

A silence held among the children. Several exchanged glances, and I became aware that there was a secret I didn’t know. Perseverance was focused on his tablet. I watched him carefully copy a letter.

“Well?” Scribe FitzVigilant demanded of us. “Does no one know where he is?”

“He’s home,” Elm said.

One of the sheep-smelling boys said quietly, “He’s poorly. He won’t come today.” He glanced at Perseverance. A very slight smile stretched the stable boy’s swollen lip tight. He appeared to be very intent on his letter scroll.

FitzVigilant breathed out through his nose. The day had barely begun but he already sounded tired as he said, “Children, I have been charged with teaching you. It is not my first choice of what I would do with the days of my life, but it has been given me as a duty, and I will do it. I commend your families for seeing the wisdom of sending you to me. I am well aware that several of you wish yourselves elsewhere. Taffy made it clear to me yesterday that he regarded our lessons as a waste of his time. Today he pretends illness to avoid me. Well, I will not tolerate such malingering!”

Several children exchanged puzzled looks at the unfamiliar word, but Perseverance didn’t even look up from his letter as he said softly, “Taffy’s not shamming.” Could everyone hear the satisfaction in his voice or was it only me? I stared at him, but he did not lift his eyes to meet mine.

Our scribe spoke. There was condemnation in his voice. “And did your fists have anything to do with his ‘feeling poorly’?”

Perseverance looked up. He met the scribe’s eyes. I knew he was only a few years older than me, but he sounded like a man as he said, “Sir, my fists took no action until after his mouth had said untrue things about my sister. Then I did what any man would do when his family was insulted.” He looked at FitzVigilant. Perseverance’s brow was unlined and his gaze open. There was no guilt in him for what he had done, only righteousness.

A silence held in the schoolroom. My feelings were mixed. I had not even known that Perseverance had a sister. She was not here, so she was either much younger than him, or much older. Or perhaps his parents did not think a girl needed to read and write. Some were like that, even in Buck.

Neither of them looked away, but the scribe spoke first. “Let us return to our lessons.”

Perseverance immediately lowered his eyes to the wax tablet and resumed his careful tracing of the letter he had engraved there. I spoke under my breath, a sentence I had heard in a dream about a young bull. “Horns not grown, he swings his head in warning and still all take heed.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven Time and Again