Chapter Text
The remainder of the summer following Nettle's stay with us passed in a pleasant, hot blur. When she had left us after several days, she had hugged me and told me she would miss me, and hoped we would visit soon, and through the Skill I could tell she was genuine when she said this. She Skilled to me when they had returned safely, and continued to talk to me throughout the summer. There were nights the Fool gave me some distance, leaving me to sit in my study Skilling to her, sharing stories with her. I told her about Burrich, as well as stories about my friendship with her mother when we were children. She cherished the details I was able to provide, and laughed when I told her how brash her mother was with me, even at such a young age. Of all the relationships I had damaged and broken through my own ineptitude, I was becoming half-decent at repairing this one. One night, I lay in bed, Amber asleep beside me, and I felt her tapping at my Skill walls. When I let her in, she apologized, thinking she had disturbed my sleep. At first I could not tell what she wanted at such a late hour, but the longer she spoke, finding any inconsequential tidbit of court gossip she could as an excuse to keep talking to me, I realized that all she really wanted tonight was company. She felt pensive, and a bit sad.
Eventually, she admitted to me, I miss him badly tonight. Papa.
I knew that was a pain I could not ease, for I still felt it, too, but I pushed sympathy through the Skill to her as best as I could and told her a few stories of when I had first come to Buckkeep, how safe I had felt under his watchful eye in his cozy little room above the stables. I do not know if it helped, but I like to think it did.
The Fool spent much of the summer tending the new hives. When Nettle had visited, she had shyly told Amber one day in the gardens, "You have a great many flowers, and I have seen the bees at them. I could show you how to build hives. The designs for the frames would not be difficult for a gifted woodworker like you to build. If you want." Amber had been so touched by the offer, which she had naturally accepted, and the two women spent several hours constructing the things, Nettle instructing her how to best tend them in her absence. I could feel my daughter's pride, that she had some expertise to offer up to a dear friend who had taught her much. I did not interrupt their work, but watched them from afar, talking and laughing together like they had known each other all their lives. I did not feel left out or excluded, but incredibly lucky just to witness them like this.
In Nettle's absence, those hives were cared for like children, and the gardens were filled with bees that Constance patiently shooed out of her way. When fall crept in, Amber set about harvesting some of the honey, carefully sealing it in some glass jars with Constance's aid, saying she intended to take Nettle a jar of it when we went to Buckkeep for Harvest Fest. Nettle could be the judge of its quality, but Amber said she had tried some in tea and found it quite sweet and pleasant, even if she did not have the extensive knowledge she was certain Nettle had on the matter.
I had debated the wisdom of going for Harvest Fest, but I found that after several months away, some of the wounds from that place had begun to close and hurt less. It was as I had hoped: no longer trapped there, I could view it as a place to frequent when I saw fit, a place that I could hopefully associate with reunions and celebrations instead of death and pain. And so I acquiesced, much to my daughter's and my love's delight. Even with our frequent talks, I missed the girl dearly.
Word must have spread to the others, as Chade himself reached out with the Skill one night, cautiously expressing his pleasure that I would be returning for a visit. I wanted to applaud him for his restraint in not asking after the scrolls he had sent with Nettle all those months prior. He passed on well wishes from Kettricken as too, somewhat grudgingly, as always. Now and again, I wished Kettricken were Skilled, just so I could easily talk to her without relying on anyone to facilitate. I found ways to get letters to her, but it was not the same as the unfettered access I had to Chade and my daughter and even her son.
The trip to Buckkeep was uneventful, though more than once Amber chided my nervous fidgeting, insisting that I calm myself. No matter how I tried, I felt apprehensive about returning to the keep, even though in reality it had only been a handful of months since I had last seen it. In my eyes, any time I spent there opened the door for a thousand possible ways that my life could be ruined. I knew it was irrational, that a trip for a festival was hardly the same as being called in for a crisis or being played like a minstrel's harp to please the crown, but I could not banish all my anxiety about it. Even as we crossed through the main gates, I thought of it as walking into a beast's jaws. The thought was so dramatic even by my own standards that that was what finally made me shake my head to myself and return to what was left of my senses.
Shortly after we arrived, I met Chade in the workroom, where he sat at the table mixing some concoction in a small stone bowl. I only hoped it was not of the incendiary variety.
I dropped the sack of scrolls down on the table in front of him, prompting him to finally look up at me, though he surely heard me enter the room. "Your scrolls," I said. I did not sit, but waited to see how he would act before making my decision to stay or go.
He set down a vial of some strange powder and opened the sack, pulling out my translation work, a grin spreading across his face. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist," he said.
"It was not a matter of failed resistance. It was simply a way to pass the time," I told him. The information in the scrolls had been interesting in passing, but it was the work I enjoyed. The results of that work mattered little to me. That was Chade's business, not mine. But I could tell by the gleam in his eyes that he did not believe me and desperately hoped this was a sign that I could be persuaded back, or convinced to take a bigger part in his research.
"Can I send you back with more?" he asked without hesitation.
"It is lovely to see you, too, Chade."
He stood from the table and approached me, and I frowned at him, my patience already thin. How had we lived under the same roof for so long? "Oh, do not give me that sour look, Fitz! I only joke with you. Of course, you're more than welcome to take whatever interests you, but really, my boy, I am...well, I am simply glad to see you." He looked so earnest, so contrite for the span of a heartbeat, that I opened my mouth to speak some amicable words to him, and then he added, "Alas, I have a meeting which I must attend, and so cannot stay to chat right now, I'm afraid, but you will be here for several days, yes? We must catch up. I have many things I would like to get your thoughts on." And he patted me on the shoulder as he swept out of the room. Well. I suppose that was Chade. I shook my head in the fresh silence, caught myself investigating his mysterious powder before walking away from the table. I was not looking to inhale something noxious into my lungs or get burns on my skin today.
There was only so much I could fault the old man for. We had each chosen who we were sworn to. If he chose to always be a servant to the crown above all else, that was his prerogative, just as it was mine to leave.
I stood alone in the empty workroom. I had expected some long drawn-out talk with Chade, had expected bickering and argument. Instead, he was carrying on well enough without me. I could not decide if that pleased me or stung my ego a bit. But the result was it left me in a mental place I had not planned to be. The bed was clearly not often used, made up and tidy. The room was Chade's particular breed of cluttered. But nothing was left of me here. It was difficult to believe that a year ago, this room had felt like an entire world within a handful of stone walls. How many hours had I spent in here, in the course of my life? And how many of those hours were not that long ago, easing the Fool back to himself, helping him heal from all that had been done to him? For a moment, I could almost see the ghosts of us before my eyes, those early days of hesitance and caution with each other, all the times we had almost crossed that line with each other before one or both of us inevitably retreated. I could see the late-night meals and drinking, the midnight talks in the bed across the room, the confessions and admissions, the moment I had overcome what was left of my cowardice. Amazing, how such recent memories could feel so weighty. Equally amazing, how they almost rewrote other memories of this room from when I was younger. It was hard to think of this room now as the place Chade had trained me in the art of death as a child. It was instead the room that had fostered a love I had been so terrified to embrace. So it was true. It was possible for a place to stop hurting so deeply, to stop assaulting a man with painful memories. They were there, of course, a shadow beneath the current of a fast-moving river, but they were now so heavily overlaid by the glitter of sunlight on the water that they did not threaten me quite so severely. I sat down on the edge of the bed with my face in my hands, on the verge of tears at the thought. I had not even realized it had happened, that I had grown to associate this room with something else, something that did not hurt to remember. Maybe I could rewrite Buckkeep as a whole as well.
The past had always been my home, much to my own detriment. In my cabin, I often dwelt on missed opportunities and people from my youth gone too soon from me, desperate to have them back, to have that familiarity returned. A place of past pains would always be just that unless I tried to craft it into something else. Maybe there was something to the way the Fool spoke of being a White Prophet, of the careful manipulations needed to tweak the strings of the world to produce a better outcome for it. I did not have to stay in a past tormented by agony and death and loneliness unless I chose to, and that thought seemed so revolutionary to me that I wondered how much time I had wasted languishing in a past that had shown no kindness to me instead of reveling in a present or future that loved me dearly.
No more.
The night of the Harvest Fest celebration, the keep was awash in festive decorations and every table brimmed with food. The Great Hall was hot from the fires and press of bodies. It was a struggle at times, but I forced myself to see it for what it was instead of what it had once been to me, and found it more satisfying when I did. All the light and merriment, so many of my loved ones under one roof, it made any negative associations I had with it more difficult to hold on to so stubbornly. Not to say that I could eliminate the past entirely from these walls; I knew better than to think I could manage that so quickly. But when my thoughts turned to lonely meals at tables I did not belong at, or my own rampage before they locked me in Regal's dungeon, I instead looked at it as it was now before me. There was Kettricken, fussing over Dutiful a bit in the way only a mother can do to her child, and him tolerating it with good humor. There was Molly and Nettle playing with the boys while Riddle stared at her adoringly. There was Patience in her out-of-date fashions, and Lacey listening to her prattle on about whatever her fixation was this week. There was Chade, charming a lady of the court easily half his age, as usual. There was Thick, who had been persuaded to join via simple bribery, sitting at a table near one of the fires with a mountain of food before him. And so, the ghosts began to fade from view.
I stood against a wall, dressed in some dark green outfit that Amber had selected. "Blue really suits you better," she had said, "but it is probably unwise to invite the comparison too strongly. It's a shame, though. You were born to wear Buck blue." Even the green ensemble was a bit flashy for my tastes, though as I looked around the room, I saw I was in fact one of the more subdued attendees. Most were decked in harvest regalia. There was a great deal of golds and oranges, browns that somehow managed to look warm and celebratory, wreaths upon heads made from autumn leaves. I counted myself grateful to have escaped the latter fate, at least. Both Molly and Nettle were in dark reds. They made such a pair.
"Tom?" a voice said beside me. Amber extended a glass of wine to me. "Do try to relax a bit."
I took the glass reluctantly. "Should I not try to remain alert?"
She laughed at me dismissively. "And to what purpose? What are you guarding, exactly? There are no great plots coming to fruition at this party, I think." I had always considered crowded rooms to be threats, so many bodies concealing a hundred ways for things to go wrong at a moment's notice. But she was right. There was no hostility between anyone in the air tonight. Maybe that was a way of thinking I would have to rewrite as well.
As I took a placating sip of the wine, Patience and Lacey approached us, or rather, Patience approached Amber. They took to chatting in their sort of code with each other, never revealing just how much they knew of one another to anyone who might listen in.
"And how are you settling into your estate?" Patience asked her.
"Quite well, my lady. It is lovely."
"And how are you finding the staff?" Patience raised one eyebrow at her.
Amber's mouth formed the most knowing little smile. "Permissive and discreet, as promised." Patience gave a sharp nod, and I cut my eyes away from both of them, only to find Lacey watching me with amusement. "How ever did you find such a crew?"
"Years of practice in such endeavors," she said with a flippant wave of her fan. "Though I cannot take credit for Sage. She was Lacey's selection."
I did not take my eyes away from the old woman, but asked Patience under my breath, "And does she have the same skill set as Lacey?"
My mother's companion winked at me, and Patience blessed me with the briefest glance. "Perhaps. Oh, do not look at me like that, Tom. I am not disparaging your skills. It is always nice to have an extra set of eyes around." So. That confirmed it for me. The girl surely knew everything about me and who I was, then. I tried not to be set on edge by the confirmation of what I had already suspected. Did that mean too that she knew who Nettle actually was in relation to me?
I paused, took a breath. Would I ever train myself out of seeing danger at every turn? Instead I should take comfort in knowing someone as gifted as Lacey shared my home and acted as a second layer of protection for the one I loved.
The night carried on, and I managed to even speak to a few people without appearing too horribly tense or awkward. Web seemed especially pleased with the state I was in, commenting, "The country life appears to have done you some good, Tom." I thought back to our conversation on the ship to Bingtown, about open secrets. And while I was not going to announce who I was to this room of people, I decided I would at least attempt to drop the pretense with those I could. As we chatted, Web had the proud look of a man who had coaxed a feral dog into letting him pet it without it snapping at his hand.
All through the night, I watched Amber dance with any who offered, her gown in the same rich color of her name, skirts flowing around her like falling leaves. Our last Harvest Fest, the Fool had been too unwell to join in, and I thought of how we had sat observing the affair from a single hole in the wall. The light had fallen over his eyes so beautifully, and I had cherished that one point of light. By comparison, it felt indulgent to see Amber lit so warmly and brightly, no longer confined or infirm, a flame brought to life in this golden room.
As I watched her sitting at a table of her lady friends from court across the room, Molly sidled up to me so quietly I had not heard her footsteps over the music. Her hair had grown out considerably since Burrich's death, and while she looked a bit tired, as was expected as the mother of several small children, she looked at peace with her life. It was a relief to see her look at me without frowning.
She spoke softly to me, as if hoping we would not be overheard. "You look well," she said.
"As do you."
"As does your lady." I let my eyes drop to the ground. "Did you take my advice?" she asked.
"Advice?"
"To not make the same mistakes with her as you made with me?"
I looked down into her dark eyes. "I took your advice. Though I am certain I made plenty of other new, unique mistakes instead."
She laughed at that, and the sound comforted me. "Nettle speaks often of the two of you. She very proudly shared with me the honey from the hives she helped your lady set up." Silence fell between us for a moment, and both of our gazes drifted to Amber and her ladies. Molly bit nervously on her lip before suggesting, "You should have a dance with her."
"It would be improper."
"It's Harvest Fest. No one cares about proper or improper."
"I am not a gifted dancer."
"Somehow I doubt she would care," she said, her hand resting briefly on my shoulder before she walked off to join Nettle, who was fresh off a dance herself. With Riddle. Perhaps propriety really was given leave at celebrations such as this.
But it was a ludicrous thought.
This is what I told myself for the next three songs as I wistfully stared at Amber drinking wine with her ladies.
I let my feet carry me, attempting to beat down the sounds of alarm that rang in my head at doing something so opposite my usual instincts. If I thought too much about it, I would talk myself out of it.
"Pardon me, my lady?"
Amber's laugh cut off abruptly at the sound of my voice. She turned from her friends and with a completely appropriate smile said, "Yes, Tom?"
My voice was quiet, as if speaking too loudly might draw undue attention. "I wondered if you would join me in a dance?" The other ladies erupted in titters of girlish laughter, hidden behind their hands, eyes sparkling with teasing delight.
Amber glanced at them in weak reproach and said to them, "Stop," but with a smile forming at the edge of her lips. When she met my gaze, there was disbelief in it, so I held out my hand in offering. Her smiled broadened. "It would be my pleasure," she said, and she set her hand in mine.
It should not have felt brave. For anyone else, it would not have. Millions of people danced at parties every day without a second thought. But I knew there were eyes on me, eyes who knew me well and knew Amber in all her many forms, people who knew our stories. Even though to the bulk of the people in this room, we were just a lady and guard enjoying Harvest Fest, for those who knew us, this simple public act felt more revealing than anything I had ever done. I tried to keep my face pleasantly neutral, like I was not checking the reactions of those who knew me. Most looked pleased, a few uncertain. But none hostile.
We took our places on the dance floor, and with her hands in mine, she beamed at me and said, "Somehow I doubt this will help quell the rumors about the two of us."
"Nettle danced with her guard," I said.
She gave me that tilt of her head that was unique to her. "Yes. And that did nothing to quell the rumors about the two of them, either." I opened my mouth to utter some weak retort, but the music started, and at the insistent squeeze of her hand in mine, I did my best to lead her through steps I barely knew. However I might have been lacking did not seem to matter, and for a moment, I was able to pretend the music played only for us. My stupid little attempt at courage rewarded me, for the unconcealed look of love in her eyes would have made me willing to make a fool of myself at every dance for the rest of my life, if it made her happy. I could not help but feel a bit victorious. As a youth, the crown had tried so intensely to keep me from Molly, had tried to steer my heart into an advantageous marriage with someone I did not love. But here I was, effectively proclaiming to any of them who might dare suggest I put the crown's needs before my heart again that it would come to nothing, that I had chosen love for myself, and did not care what they thought of it. In my younger years, I had rebelled in private in whatever ways I could think of. This was more direct. My love, in all her sunset colors, no longer confined, weakened, behind a wall, any more than I was. For a moment, I felt incredibly free beneath that swell of music. I knew there would be no denying what we were to each other, knew that the look surely writ across my face would reveal that much to anyone who saw me. I did not care. As she twirled, glittering, in my arms, I chased out the ghosts of the old King trying to steer me away from my own heart.
This ghost, too, could be rewritten.
I have spent many hours writing this tale, ending many nights with my hands covered in inky blotches that I have had to scrub from my skin before taking to my bed, lest I leave marks on the sheets. Even after all these years, I still turn to paper in an effort to make sense of a life that has been so heavily senseless. I doubt I will ever write out the history of my country as I once intended to do so long ago, but perhaps my own history will suffice. The story of one man may not seem as important, but even the greater histories are made of these smaller tales.
There is less to make sense of than there used to be. I do not turn to these pages to puzzle out royal motivations, or detail ills done to me as if writing them down could somehow make them stop hurting. It is a welcome change, to have a pleasant story to put here instead. If any of my writings survive my impulse to be cast into the fire, let it be this.
I set the quill down, careful not to mar the paper with the stray drops of ink, and sighed contentedly to myself. The pages had been stacking up over the summer and fall, and now, with the first nip of cold in the air, they were as complete as they could be. For now. The last of daylight had faded outside my window, and I decided I was long overdue for a warm bed.
When I entered our chambers, I did so quietly in case the Fool was already asleep, but he was still awake, sitting up in bed pulling the pin from the clip, shaking out his freshly loosened hair. He glanced up at me and said, "I thought you might be in there all night, scribbling away." Even if I had been, it would not have bothered him. He approved of my writing, and would have left me to it had I needed him to do so. But I never much felt like staying up late by myself, working.
"Why would I do that, when I could be in here with you?" I said, changing hastily out of my simple clothes and sliding beneath the blankets. The only way the bed would grow warm was if I was in it, as the Fool still had virtually no natural heat of his own, and I heard a pleased hum escape his lips at the realization that soon he would be quite warm indeed. I was tired, and my shoulders ached a bit from where I had hunched over my work, but soon the softness of the mattress, and him tucked close against me made every joint and muscle in my body feel comfortably loose. We chatted quietly beneath the crackle of our fire for a few minutes, about my latest talk with Nettle, the good results from the fall harvest, plans for Winterfest, all the mundane pieces of our lives. In a lull in the conversation, I impulsively asked, "Do you think we will be here forever?"
I was startled by his immediate laugh. He brushed the hair out of my face with a smile that I felt was incongruous with his answer. "Of course not!" He must have seen the alarm on my face, because he fought the laughter and continued, "Oh, Fitz, you are always so quick to imagine every conceivable catastrophe! Naturally, we will always have this place to come home to. It is ours. But you know as well as I do that we are in but a period of rest. You know one day the world will call on one or both of us again, and we will answer that call together, like we always have."
"I think the world should find assistance elsewhere," I said sulkily.
He kissed me lightly and said in such a way that told me he found my grumbling endearing, "And I think we both know that despite your protestations, you could never abandon the world entirely. But neither of us are the people we once were. You are not shackled to people who have none of your interests at heart. I have no visions of our possible futures. The only future I am certain of is that I will be with you, whatever else comes. And that is all that matters to me."
And who was I to argue with such a blatant truth? Regardless, I would cherish this rest, hard-earned that it had been.
Growing up, I had never had the luxury of sitting and listening to all the usual stories adults told to children, unless I heard snatches of them here and there while I was completing assignments for Chade throughout the keep. Still, I was aware enough of how they went. The lovers were together, in the end. I do not think I ever believed in these endings as a child. Why would I have? Instead I faced them with a degree of cynicism, even if my heart pounded in my chest with longing, wishing that these sorts of gentle endings were real and likely and possible even for unwanted bastards like me. But my lived experiences did little to support these hopes, and so it was easier to bury them, just as I had buried so many parts of myself for so long.
Except, it was never actually the end. These princes and princesses in stories were all still so young when the adult telling the story reached the happily ever after. There was always more story that the listener would never hear. I struggled to comprehend the idea of an ending when I was with Beloved. I firmly believed there would never be an end for us, that somehow, one way or another, something about the two of us would remain eternal, no matter what befell us.
Still, I wanted to, at least for tonight, think of my life as one of those stories, even though it frightened me to do so, like if I dared to think I had reached that happily ever after that something would rise from the shadows to curse it and undo all this happiness, that everything would fall, irreparably, apart. But even as I thought to myself how blessed I was, how lucky, I found that the world did not end. Instead, Beloved continued to smile sweetly at me in the firelight, his gloved hand settled reassuringly over the fingerprints above my heart.
Finally, I was more interested in looking forward instead of into the tangle of my past. All that mattered was this perfect, simple moment, knowing I had the love of my life in my arms, with no horrors lurking about us, knowing that we had a safe home to always come back to at the end of the day that belonged only to us. And I thought that the most effective and meaningful stories would never be about politics or wars or epic events. Instead, the most important stories to me felt like this: chill nights in a warming bed. Peaceful mornings where we would sleep late, with few obligations to clutter the day. Warm cups of tea on crisp, sunny afternoons, made from the hips of our own roses. Late-night moments sharing bread in our kitchen, slathered with honey from our hives. Warm spring days in the gardens. Visits to see people who loved us. Not having our love be questioned or picked apart. I thought that perhaps that these small joys were what happily ever after actually meant.
I would call it contentment, but the word is inadequate to apply to all these simple shining moments that make you feel like nothing ugly or painful can ever touch you or the one you love again. No, I am not merely content.
I am happy.