Fool's Errand (Tawny Man, #1)(160)

I tented several skinny sticks over my tiny fire. “So. What's she look like?” I spoke with a soldier's crude interest, the inflection learned from many a meal with the guardsmen at Buckkeep. “Is she . . .” I made the unmistakable, universal gesture “any good?”

“Shut up!” He spat the words savagely.

I leered at Lord Golden knowingly. “Ah, we both know what that means. It means he don't know. At least, not firsthand. Or maybe it's only his hand that knows.” I leaned back and smirked at him challengingly.

“Badgerlock!” Lord Golden rebuked me. I think I had truly scandalized him.

I didn't take the hint. “Well, that's always how it is, isn't it? He's just a moony boy for her. Bet he's never even kissed her, let alone ...” I repeated the gesture.

The taunting had the desired effect. As I added larger sticks to the flames, the Prince stood up indignantly. The firelight revealed that his color was high and his nostrils pinched with anger. “It isn't like that!” he grated. “She isn't some . . . Not that I expect you to understand anything other than whores! She's a woman worth waiting for, and when we come together, it will be a higher and sweeter thing than you can imagine. Hers is a love to be earned, and I will prove myself worthy of her.”

Inside, I bled for him. They were a boy's words, taken from minstrel tellings, a lad's imaginings of something he had never experienced. The innocence of his passion blazed in him, and his idealistic expectations shone in his eyes. I tried to summon some withering crudity worthy of the role I had chosen, but could not force it past my lips. The Fool saved me.

“Badgerlock!” Lord Golden snapped. “Enough of this. Just cook the meat.”

ROBIN HOB B “My lord,” acknowledged gruffly. gave Dutiful a sidelong sneer that he refused to see. As I picked up the stiff rabbit and the knife, Lord Golden spoke more gently to the Prince.

“Does she have a name, this lady you so admire? Have I met her at court?” Lord Golden was courteously curious. Somehow the warmth in his voice made it flattering that he would care to ask such a question. Dutiful was instantly charmed, not only despite his earlier irritation with me, but perhaps because of it. Here was a chance for him to prove himself a wellbred gentleman, to ignore my crass interest and reply as politely as if did not exist.

He smiled as he looked down at his hands, the smile of a boy with a secret sweetheart. “Oh, you will not have met her at Court, Lord Golden. Her kind is not to be found there. She is a lady of the wild woods, a huntress and a forester. She does not hem handkerchiefs in a garden on a summer's day, nor huddle within walls by a hearth when the wind begins to blow. She is free to the open world, her hair blowing in the wind, her eyes full of the night's mysteries.” “I see.” Lord Golden's voice was warm with a worldly man's tolerance for a youth's first romance. He came to sit on his saddle, next to the boy and yet slightly above him. “And does this paragon of the forest have a name? Or a family?” he asked paternally.

Dutiful looked up at him and shook his head wearily. “There, you see what you ask? That is why I am so weary of the Court. As if I cared whether she has family or fortune ! It is her whom I love.”

“But she must have a name,” Lord Golden protested tolerantly as I slid my knife blade under the rabbit's hide and loosened it. “Else what do you whisper to the stars at night when you dream of her?” I peeled the hide from the rabbit as Lord Golden stripped the layers of secrets from the boy's romance. “Come. How did you meet her?” Lord Golden picked up the wine bottle, drank delicately from it, and then handed it to the Prince. .

The lad turned it in his hands thoughtfully, glanced up at Golden's smile, and drank. Then he sat, the bottle held loosely in his hands, the neck of it pointed toward the small fire that limned his features against the night. “My cat took me to her,” he confided at last. He took another sip of the wine. “ had slipped out one night to go hunting with her. Sometimes, just have to get away on my own. You know what it is like at court. If say will ride at dawn, arise and there are six gentlemen ready to accompany me, and a dozen ladies to bid us farewell. If say will walk in the gardens after dinner, cannot turn a comer in the path without finding a lady writing poetry beneath a tree, or encountering some noble who wishes me to have a word with the Queen on his behalf. It's stifling, Lord Golden. In truth, do not know why so many choose to come to court when they do not have to. Had the privilege of freedom, would leave it.” He drew himself up suddenly and looked all around at the night. “ have left it,” he declared abruptly, almost as if it surprised him. “I'm here, away from all that pretense and manipulation. And I'm happy. Or was happy, until you came to drag me back.” And he glared at me, as if it were all my doing, and Lord Golden an innocent bystander.

“So. You went out hunting with your cat one night, and this lady...?” Lord Golden deftly picked up the threads that had interested him.

“I went out hunting with my cat and ê” The cat's name? Nighteyes pressed with sudden urgency. grunted mockingly. “Sounds to me as if the cat and the lady got the same name. 'Neverspeakit.'” I skewered the rabbit on my sword. I didn't like to cook on the end of my blade; it was bad for the tempering. But to get a green branch I would have had to leave the conversation and go to the forest's edge and I wanted to hear what he had to say. The Prince replied scathingly to my comment. “I would think that you, as a Piebald, would know that beasts have their own names, which they reveal to you at a time they think is proper. My cat has not shared her true name with me yet. When I am worthy of that confidence, I will have it.”