Fool's Errand (Tawny Man, #1)(12)

The coals of the hearth fire gave hesitant light to the main room, but I did not linger there. I opened the door and stepped barefoot into the mild spring night. I stood still a moment, letting my eyes adjust, and then made my way away from the cottage and garden and down to the stream bank. The path was cool hard mud underfoot, well packed by my daily trips to fetch water. The trees met overhead, and there was no moon, but my feet and my nose knew the way as well as my eyes did. All I had to do was follow myWit to my wolf. Soon I picked out the orange glow of Hap's dwindled fire, and the lingering scent of cooked fish.

They slept by the fire, the wolf curled nose to tail and Hap wrapped around him, his arm around Nighteyes' neck. Nighteyes opened his eyes as I approached, but did not stir. I told you not to worry.

I'm not worried. I'm just here. Hap had left some sticks of wood near the fire. I added them to the coals. I sat and watched the fire lick along them. Light came up with the warmth. I knew the boy was awake. One can't be raised with a wolf without picking up some of his wariness. I waited for him.

“It's not you. Not just you, anyway.”

I didn't look at Hap, even when he spoke. Some things are better said to the dark. I waited. Silence can ask all the questions, where the tongue is prone to ask only the wrong one.

“I have to know,” he burst out suddenly. My heart seized up at the question to come. In some corner of my soul, I had always dreaded him asking it. I should not have let him go to Springfest, I thought wildly. If I had kept him here, my secret would never have been threatened.

But that was not the question he asked.

“Did you know that Starling is married?”

I looked at him then, and my face must have answered for me. He closed his eyes in sympathy. “I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “I should have known you didn't. I should have found a better way to tell you.”

And the simple comfort of a woman who came to my arms when she would, because she desired to be with me, and the sweet evenings of tales and music by the fire, and her dark merry eyes looking up into mine were suddenly guilty and deceptive and furtive. I was as foolish as I had ever been, no, even stupider, for the gullibility of a boy is fatuousness in a man. Married. Starling married. She had thought no one would ever want to marry her, for she was barren. She had told me that she had to make her own way with her songs, av, for there would never be a man to care for her, nor children to provide for her old age. Probably, when she had told me those things, she had believed they were true. My folly had been in thinking that truth would never change.

Nighteyes had risen and stretched stiffly. Now he came to lie down beside me. He set his head on my knee. I don't understand. You are ill?

No. Just stupid.

Ah. Nothing new there. Well, you haven't died from that so far.

But sometimes it has been a near thing. I took a breath. “Tell me about it.” I didn't want to hear it, but I knew he had to tell it. Better to get it over with.

Hap came with a sigh, to sit on the other side of Nighteyes. He picked up a twig from the ground beside him and teased the fire with it. “I don't think she meant for me to find out. Her husband doesn't live at Buckkeep. He traveled in to surprise her, to spend Springfest with her.” As he spoke, the twig caught fire. He tossed it in. His fingers wandered to idly groom Nighteyes.

I pictured some honest old farmer, wed to a minstrel in the quiet years of his life, perhaps with grown children from an earlier marriage. He loved her, then, to make a trip to Buckkeep to surprise her. Springfest was traditionally for lovers, old and new.

“His name is Dewin,” Hap went on. “And he's some sort of kin to Prince Dutiful. A distant cousin or something. He's a tall man, always dressed very grand. He wore a cloak, twice as big around as it need be, collared with fur. And he wears silver on both wrists. He's strong, too. At the Springfest dancing, he lifted Starling right up and swung her around, and all the folk stood back to watch them.” Hap was watching my face as he spoke. I think he found my obvious dismay comforting. “I should have known you didn't know. You wouldn't cuckold a grand man like that.”

“I wouldn't cuckold any man,” I managed to say. “Not knowingly.”

He sighed as if relieved. “So you've taught me.” Boyishly, his mind instantly reverted to how it had affected him. “I was upset when saw them kiss. I'd never seen anyone except you and Starling kiss like that. I thought she was betraying you, and then when I heard him introduced as her husband . . .” He cocked his head at me. “It really hurt my feelings. I thought then that you knew and didn't care. I thought that perhaps all these years you had taught me one thing, and done another. I wondered if you thought me so dull I'd never discover it, if you and Starling laughed about it as if it were a joke for me to be so stupid. It built up in my mind until I began to question everything you'd ever taught me about anything.” He looked back at the fire. “It felt horrible, to be so betrayed.”

I was glad to hear him sort it out this way. Better far that he consider only what it meant to him, rather than how it could cut me. Let him follow his own thoughts where they would lead. My own mind was moving in another direction, creaking like an old cart dragged out of a shed and newly greased for spring. I resisted the turning of the wheels that led me to an inevitable conclusion. Starling was married. Why not? She'd had nothing to lose and all to gain. A comfortable home with her grand lord, some minor title no doubt, wealth and security for her old age, and for him, a lovely and charming wife, a celebrated minstrel, and he could bask in her reflected glory and enjoy the envy of other men.