This is the dream from the end of my time. I have dreamed it six different ways, but I will only write what always stays the same. There is a wolf as big as a horse. He is black and stands still as stone and stares. My father is as grey as dust, and old, so old. ‘I’m just so tired,’ he says in two of the dreams. In three he says, ‘I’m sorry, Bee.’ In one of the dreams, he says nothing at all, but his silence means everything. I would like to stop having this dream. It feels so strong, as if it must happen, no matter the path I choose. Every time I wake from it, it feels as if I have taken a step closer to a cold and dangerous place.
Dream Journal, Bee Farseer
I refuse to believe I slept. How could such abject terror lend itself to falling asleep? Instead, I huddled there, behind my closed eyelids, trembling with terror.
And Wolf Father came. That was the first time.
I’d had dreams before, dreams that I knew were portentous, dreams that I committed to memory upon waking. I had begun writing my dreams down, the ones that I knew meant something. So I knew what dreams were.
That was not a dream.
The smells of dust and mice droppings blew away before the brisk scents of new snow and spruce needles. Then came a warm, clean smell of healthy animal. He was close. I curled my hands into the fur of his ruff and held tight, feeling my fingers warm there. His muzzle was by my ear, his breath warm there. Stop your whining. If you are frightened, be silent. Whining is for prey. It attracts predators. And you are not prey.
I caught my breath. My throat was sore and my mouth dry. I had been keening, without realizing it. I stopped, shamed by his disapproval.
That’s better. Now, what is your problem?
‘It’s dark. The doors won’t open and I’m trapped here. I want to get home, back to my bed.’
Didn’t your father tell you to stay safe in the den? Why did you leave it?
‘I was curious.’
And curious cubs have been getting into trouble since the world began. No, don’t start whining again. Tell me. What are you afraid of?
‘I want to be back in my bed.’
That is what you want. And you are wise to return to the den where your father left you, and remember not to leave it again without his permission. So why don’t you do that? What makes you afraid to do that?
‘I’m afraid of the rats. And I can’t find my way back. I’m trapped here.’ I tried to draw a breath. ‘I can’t get out.’
And why is that?
‘It’s dark. And I’m lost. I can’t find my way back.’ I was beginning to be angry with the calm, implacable voice even as I cherished the warmth and feeling of safety he gave me. Perhaps even then I realized that I only felt irritation with him because I now felt safe. Slowly it came to me that I was no longer afraid, just perplexed.
Why can’t you find your way back?
Now he was just being stupid. Or mean. ‘It’s dark. I can’t see. And even if I could see, I can’t remember which way to go.’
The voice never lost its patience. You can’t see, perhaps. Perhaps you can’t remember because you are so frightened. But you can smell. Get up.
Uncurling myself was hard. I was cold all over now, shaking with the chill. I stood up.
Lead the way. Follow your nose. Follow the scent of your mother’s candle.
‘I can’t smell anything.’
Blow out through your nose. Then breathe in slowly.
‘All I smell is dust.’
Try again. Inexorable.
I growled low.
So. You are finding your courage. Now find your wits. Sniff your way home, cub.
I wanted him to be wrong. I wanted to be justified in my fear and hopelessness. I took a breath to tell him how stupid he was and tasted my mother’s scent. Loneliness welled in me and hunger for she who had loved me so. My heart drew me toward the smell and my feet followed.
It was so faint. Twice I paused, thinking I had lost it. I must have walked in blackness but I recall that I moved slowly through the summer garden toward the honeysuckle that tangled and sprawled along a stone wall in the herb garden.
I came to a place where a draught of air touched my face. The moving air confused the scent and suddenly I was in darkness again. My heart jammed against my throat and I reached out blindly, touching nothing. A sob of terror fought with my hammering heart to see which could leap first from my mouth.
Steady. Use your nose. Fear is useless now.
I sniffled, thinking him heartless. And caught the scent again. I turned toward it, only to have it get fainter. Turned my head back the other way, more slowly. I walked toward the smell that now felt like my mother’s hands on my cheeks. I leaned my face forward, breathing my mother’s love. There was a slight bend in the corner and then a gradual ascent. The scent grew stronger. And then I bumped into the little shelf. That jolted my eyes open; I wasn’t aware I had closed them.
And there, leaking in around the peephole’s cover, was a tiny gleam of flickering light, illuminating the stub of my mother’s candle. The light caressed it, yellow and warm and welcoming. I knelt and took the candle and held it to my breast, breathing the fragrance that had led me to safety. I pushed the peephole cover aside and peered into the dimly-lit study. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ I said to Wolf Father. I turned to look back at him, but he was gone, leaving only a cooler place in the air behind me.
‘Father?’ I said but there was no reply. My heart sank and then I heard the rapping.
‘Bee. Unlatch the door. Right now.’ His voice was low and I could not tell if he was afraid or angry.
The rapping came again, louder, and then I saw the doors shake. Then they leapt at a blow.
It took me a moment to get my bearings. I seized my courage tight and left the peephole’s comforting light. Dragging my fingertips on the wall, I went down the narrow corridor, around a corner and then another sharp corner and out of the panel. The rapping and shaking were louder now. ‘I’m coming!’ I called back, as I pushed the panel closed. I had to work the catches on it and then I went to unbolt the study door. My father pushed it open so suddenly that he knocked me off my feet.
‘Bee!’ he exclaimed in a breathless shout and dropped to his knees to seize me. He hugged me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. He had forgotten to hold himself in. His fear drenched me. I stiffened in his grip. Abruptly it was gone, leaving me to wonder if I had truly felt that wave of love beneath it. He released me but his dark staring eyes held me. They were full of hurt. ‘What were you thinking? Why aren’t you in your bed?’ he demanded of me.
‘I wanted to—’
‘You are not allowed. Do you understand me? You are NOT allowed!’ He wasn’t shouting. The voice he was using was more frightening than shouting would have been. It was as low and intense as a snarl.
‘Not allowed what?’ I trembled out.
He looked at me with wild eyes. ‘Not allowed to be gone from where I left you. Not allowed to make me think I’ve lost you.’ He gathered me in again and held me close against his cold coat. I became aware that his hair was dripping wet and he still wore his outer garments. He must have come in and gone straight to my room to check on me. And instantly panicked when I wasn’t there. I felt an odd little lift to my heart. I was important to him. Very important.
‘Next time you tell me to stay in the den, I will,’ I promised him.
‘Good,’ he said fiercely. Then, ‘What were you doing in here with the door latched?’
‘Waiting for you to come home.’ Not quite a lie, and I couldn’t have said why I evaded his question.
‘And that’s how you come to be covered in cobwebs with a dirty face.’ He touched my cheek with a cold finger. ‘You’ve been crying. There are two clean streaks on your face.’ He reached into his pocket, pulled out a less-than-clean kerchief and reached for my face. I drew back from it. He looked at the cloth in his hand and laughed ruefully. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Come. Let’s go to the kitchen and see if we can get a bit of warm water and a clean cloth. And you can tell me exactly where you were waiting for me to return.’
He did not put me down but carried me, as if he did not trust me beyond his arm’s reach. I felt the power thrumming through him, battering to breach his walls and engulf me. It was a frightening, contained storm inside him. But I did not struggle against him. I think I decided that night that the discomfort of being close to him was preferable to standing away from the only person in the world who I knew loved me. I suspect that at some point he had made the same decision.
In the kitchen, he ladled water from the warming pot always kept there and found a clean rag for me to use to wash my face. I told him that I had been curious to explore the spy-warren and had gone in, but then lost my way when my candle went out and had become frightened. He didn’t ask me how I had found my way out; I am sure he did not imagine how far I had travelled in the hidden corridors, and at that time, I chose to keep it that way. Of Wolf Father, I said nothing.
He took me up to my room and found me a clean nightdress. The one I had been wearing was dirtied all round the hem, and the socks were thicker with cobwebs and dust than they were with wool. He watched over me as I got into bed and then sat in silence by my bed until he believed I was asleep. Then he blew out the candle and left the room.
I had almost been asleep, but held myself back from it for two reasons. The first was to find the peephole that had looked into my room. That took longer than I had expected. It was very well concealed in the panelling of one wall, and up high, so the viewer could see almost the entire room. I felt round the nearby woodwork and panelling to see if perhaps I could find an entrance to the spy-maze, to no avail. And I was chilly, weary, and my warm bed tempting.
Yet as I climbed into it and put my head on the pillow, I again felt the reluctance to sleep. Sleep brought dreams, and since my mother’s death, they seemed to come almost every night. I was tired of them, and tired of the labour of remembering them and writing them into my book each day. Some of the most frightening ones were recurrent. I hated the one with the snake boat. And the one where I had no mouth and could not close my eyes to avoid what I was seeing. I helped a rat to hide inside my heart. There was a fog, and a white rabbit and a black rabbit ran side by side from terrible ravening creatures. The white rabbit was pierced with a living arrow. The black rabbit screamed as it died.
I hated the dreams, and yet every time they came back to my sleep, I added a detail, a note, a curse to my journal.
This storm of dreams was something new, but not the dreaming. I had been dreaming for longer than I had been outside my mother’s womb. Sometimes I thought that the dreams went back beyond my existence, that they were the fragments of someone else’s life, but somehow bound to me. As an infant, I dreamed, and as a very small child. Some of the dreams were pleasant, others weirdly beautiful. Some frightened me. I never forgot my dreams, as some people say they do. Each was a complete and separate memory, as much a part of my life as remembering the day we took honey from the hives, or the time I slipped on the stairs and scraped all the skin off both shins. When I was small, it was almost as if I had two lives, one by day and one by night. Some dreams seemed more important than others, but none of them seemed trivial.
But after Wolf Father came to me, that very night, I had a dream that I knew, when I awoke, was no ordinary dream. And suddenly I realized there were two categories to my old dreams. There were dreams and then there were Dreams. And I was seized by a compulsion to begin anew and record my real Dreams in great detail and keep them safely collected. It was as if I had discovered the difference between river pebbles and gemstones, and realized that I had left jewels scattered haphazardly about for the past nine years.
I awoke in my curtained bed and lay still for a time in the winter darkness, thinking of what I must do. It had been good to record all my dreams, but now that I knew the difference between them, all of them must be recopied. I would need ink, good pens, and decent paper. I knew where to get those. I wanted vellum, but that would be missed, and I did not think I could persuade my father that my endeavour merited vellum. Perhaps later I would be able to acquire the quality of paper that my Dreams merited. For now, I would be content with recording them and keeping them safe. It suddenly seemed to me that there was only one place in the world for either of those activities. And that presented another problem.
For I was sure that after my nocturnal exploration, my father would limit my access to the spy-network in the walls of Withywoods. As I lay in bed and became convinced of this, it also became unthinkable.
I had told him little of my explorations in the corridors last night. He had deduced I had been in the spy-network, and that I had frightened myself. Perhaps he would think that enough to put an end to my explorations. But he might check for himself. He would find my cached candle, I did not doubt, and perhaps where I had dropped the end stub of the finished candle. Would he be alert enough to follow my footprints in the dusty passages to see how far I had explored? I could not know. Last night, he had been extremely alarmed to discover I was not where he had left me. Perhaps my relief at his homecoming would have reassured him.
I got up and dressed myself much more quickly than usual. The room was chill; I got the lid of my winter clothing chest opened, wedged it so with my shoe, and then climbed halfway in to find woollen leggings and a quilted tunic and my belt with the bird-shaped clasp. I had grown. Both leggings and tunic were short on me. I should tell my mother …
When I had finished weeping, I added some kindling to the embers in my hearth. Once, I would have awakened to my mother building up the fire in my room, and she would have set out my clothing for me. She’d continued to do that for me long after I was old enough to do it for myself. I did not think she had pitied me for my small size, but had enjoyed the rituals of having a small child and prolonged them.
I’d loved that ritual as much as she did. I missed it still. But gone was gone and done was done, I told myself. And life would go on.
I resolved to locate the other entrance in the pantry and devise a way to make it accessible. Yet even that was not a satisfactory solution. I wished again that my room had access to the corridors. The spyhole had shown me that the passage passed right behind my walls. Was it possible there was an access that not even my father knew about?
I moved slowly along the walls, searching again. I could see where the spyhole was, but only because I knew to look for it. One knot-hole in the panelling looked just a bit too convenient. I tapped cautiously on the wall panels, low at first and then as high as I could reach. The sounds told me only that whoever had built the corridors in the walls had done an excellent job of concealing them.
Abruptly, I was hungry. I turned the handle on my door and pushed it open and slipped out of my room. It was early and the house was quiet. I moved silently down the flagged hall and then down the wide stairways. Ever since I’d experienced that little private chamber in the spy-corridors, Withywoods had seemed ever more immense to me. To descend the stair was little different to me from being outside. The ceilings seemed almost as distant as the sky outside, and certainly the draughts that blew through the house were almost as chill as the winds outdoors.
The table was not yet set for breakfast. I went into the kitchens, where Tavia and Mild were already at work. The week’s bread was rising in a big covered crock near the hearth. As I went in, Elm went out, calling that she would look for eggs. Liar.
‘Hungry, moppet?’ Tavia greeted me and I nodded. ‘I’ll toast you a bit of bread then. Hop up to the table.’
I did what I’d always done since I could climb, which was to crawl up onto a bench and then take a seat on the table’s edge. Then, after a moment’s thought, I moved down and sat on my feet on the bench. It made me almost tall enough to be comfortable at the board. Tavia brought me my small mug full of milk and gave me a curious glance. ‘Growing up, are we?’
I gave her a nod.
‘Then you’re old enough to talk,’ Mild observed. ‘At least say, “ta”.’ As always, her comments to me had a sharper edge. I’d been in the act of picking up my mug. I stopped. I turned so I was looking only at Tavia. ‘Thank you, Tavia. You are always so kind to me.’ I enunciated each word carefully. Behind me, I head Mild drop her stirring spoon.
Tavia stared at me for a moment. ‘I’m sure you’re very welcome, Bee.’
I drank from the mug and set it carefully back on the table.
Tavia said, softly, ‘Well. She’s certainly her father’s daughter.’
‘Yes. I am,’ I agreed firmly.
‘That’s a certainty,’ muttered Mild. She breathed out through her nose and added, ‘And here I scolded Elm for telling tales when she said Bee could talk if she wanted to.’ She began to beat whatever she was stirring very hard. Tavia said nothing, but brought me a couple of slices of last week’s bread, toasted to freshen it up, and slathered with butter.
‘So. You’re talking now, eh?’ Tavia asked me.
I glanced at her and suddenly felt embarrassed. I looked at the table. ‘Yes. I am.’
I saw her curt nod out of the corner of my eye. ‘That would have pleased your lady mother. She told me once that you could speak a great many words, but were shy.’
I looked down at the scarred table top, feeling uncomfortable. I resented that she had known I could speak and said nothing. But I also valued that she had kept my secret. Perhaps there was more to Tavia than I had believed.
She set a little pot of my mother’s honey on the board next to my bread. I looked at it. Now that Mama was gone, who would tend the bees in the summer and harvest the honey? I knew I should do it, but doubted I’d be successful. I’d tried over the last few months, but my solo results had been uneven. I had watched my mother and helped her, and yet when I tried to harvest the honey and the wax by myself, I had made a terrible mess. The few candles I had made were lumpy and graceless, the pots of honey tainted with small bits of wax and possibly bits of bees. I hadn’t had the courage to show them to anyone. Cleaning up the mess to leave the honey-and-candle room tidy had taken me hours. I found myself wondering if we would buy all of our candles now. Where did one go to buy candles? And would we buy scented ones for special days? They could not be scented like my mother’s had been.
I looked up as my father came into the kitchen. ‘I was looking for you,’ he said sternly. ‘You weren’t in your bed.’
‘I was here, getting food. Papa, I don’t want to burn Mama’s candles any more. I want to save them.’
He stared at me for three heartbeats. ‘Save them for what?’
‘Special times. Times when I want to remember how she smelled. Papa. Who will do all the things she did? Who will tend the hives and put up the honey and sew my clothes and put little bags of lavender in my clothing chest? Do all those things just stop now that she’s gone?’
He stood very still in the kitchen, just looking at me with his dark, broken eyes. He was untidy, his curly hair growing out raggedly from his mourning cut, his beard a tattered thing, and his shirt still wrinkled from last night’s rain. I could tell he hadn’t shaken it out and put it neat, but had taken it off and tossed it onto a chair or the bedpost. I felt sorry for him; Mama had always reminded him to do things the right way. Then I remembered I hadn’t brushed my hair before I left my room. I hadn’t brushed it out last night, either. It wasn’t long enough to braid. I reached up and felt it standing up in tufts all over my head. We were a pair, he and I.
Slowly he began again, starting to move as if he were coming back to life. He walked to the table and sat down heavily across from me. ‘She did a lot of things around here, didn’t she? So many things. You never miss the water until the well runs dry.’
I looked at him. He sighed. ‘We’ll save her scented candles. For you. And as for those other things, well. Your sister Nettle already told me that I’d best hire more help to keep the house in better order. I suppose she was right. She might be planning to visit here more often and to bring friends with her when she comes. So there will be other people coming to live here and help us do things. I’ve already sent for my cousin. She’ll arrive in a few days. Her name is Shun. She’s about twenty. I hope you’ll like her.’
Mild and Tavia were listening in so hard it made a sort of silence in the kitchen. I wanted to demand how I could have a cousin I’d never heard of. Did that mean my father had a brother or sister I didn’t know about? I wanted to ask but could not while they were listening so hard. I spoke bluntly. ‘I don’t want anyone else to come and live here. Can’t we just manage on our own?’
‘I’d like that, too,’ my father replied. Tavia came to set a fat steaming pot of tea on the board. We didn’t usually breakfast in the kitchen, but I knew she was hoping he’d stay where he was and keep talking. I wondered if he was aware of their keen interest as much as I was. ‘But that’s not realistic, Bee. Not for either of us. Sometimes I have to be away from Withywoods, and you’ll need someone to look after you while I’m gone. You’ll need someone to teach you all the things a girl needs to know, not just how to read and figure, but how to sew and how to take care of yourself and do your hair and, well, all of those things that girls know.’
I stared at him anxiously, realizing that he didn’t know what those things were any more than I did. I offered, ‘It would be a lot easier if I were a boy. Then we wouldn’t need anyone else coming to live here.’
That choked a brief laugh from him. Then he grew grave again. ‘But you aren’t a boy. And even if you were, we would still need to hire on more help. Nettle and I have spoken of it, several times. I’ve been neglecting Withywoods. Revel has been after me for months about a blocked chimney in one room, and a leak down the side of a wall in another. I can’t put it off any longer. The entire house needs a good cleaning, and then it needs to be better maintained. Your mother and I talked about it in spring, all the things we would fix over the summer.’ He halted again, his eyes going far. ‘Now winter is upon us, and none of it’s done.’ The cup that Tavia set down at his elbow clattered slightly in its saucer. She slid it carefully toward him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, the courtesy a reflex. Then he turned and looked at her. ‘I’m so sorry, Tavia. I should have given you a lot more notice. Riddle will be escorting my cousin here, and possibly staying a few days as well. We’ll have to decide what rooms to give Shun and, well, I don’t know exactly what else will need to be done. Her branch of my family is fairly well to do. She may expect to have her own maid …’
My father’s words faltered to a halt and his brows knit together as if he had just recalled something that was not pleasant. He fell silent. Cook Nutmeg had been pounding and kneading dough when I came into the kitchen. I glanced over at her. She was squishing it quietly on the bread board, listening with every pore of her skin. I dared to break the quiet. ‘I did not know I had a cousin.’
He took a short breath. ‘My family is not close, I’m afraid, but for all that, when trouble calls, they recall that blood is thicker than water. And so Shun will come to help us, at least for a time.’
‘Shun?’
‘Shun Fallstar is her name.’
‘Did her mother not like her?’ I asked and I heard Mild titter nervously.
My father sat up straighter and poured tea from the pot into the waiting cup. ‘As a matter of fact, she did not. So, when she comes, to be kind, we will not ask her about her name nor about her home. I think she will find it as great a relief to come to us as we shall be grateful to have her. When she first arrives, she may feel awkward and may be wearied from her journey. So we shall not expect too much of her at first, shall we?’
‘I suppose not,’ I said and felt my confusion swirl faster. Something was not right here and I could not put my finger on it. Was my father lying to me? I watched his face as he sipped his tea and could not tell. I started to ask and then bit back the question. I should not make him admit he was lying in front of Tavia and Mild and Cook. I would ask him later. Instead I said, ‘I had a special dream last night. I will need pen, ink, and paper to write it down.’
‘Oh, will you?’ my father asked me indulgently. He smiled at me but I actually felt Mild and Tavia exchange startled looks behind us. They were finding out too much about me too fast but I found I didn’t care. Perhaps it would make my life easier if they didn’t think me simple any more.
‘Yes. I will.’ I said it firmly. He had spoken as if this were just a sudden fancy of mine rather than an important matter. Did he not grasp what a special dream was? I decided to explain it.
‘The dream came to me all edged in black and gold. The colours of the dream were very bright and everything in it seemed very large, so that the smallest details could not be ignored. It began in my mother’s garden. The lavenders were heavy with bees and the sweet scent hung in the air. I was there. Then, I saw the long carriageway that leads to the house. Four wolves were coming up the drive, trotting two by two. A white, a grey, and two red ones. But they were not wolves.’ I stopped a moment, struggling to name creatures I had only seen in a dream. ‘They were not beautiful like wolves, nor did they have the honour of wolves. They slunk with their hind haunches low and their scrawny tails down. Their ears were round and their red mouths hung open and they slavered as they came. They were wicked … no, that’s not right. They were the servants of wickedness. And they came hunting for the one who served the right.’
My father’s smile had grown puzzled. ‘This is quite a detailed dream,’ he said.
I turned to Tavia. ‘I think the bacon is burning,’ I said, and she startled as if I’d poked her with a pin. She turned back to the pan where the sizzling strips had begun to smoke and pulled it away from the heat.
‘So it is,’ she muttered, and busied herself with it.
I turned back to my father and my toast. I ate two bites of it and drank some of the milk before I said, ‘I told you it’s a special dream. It goes on and on, and it is my duty to remember it all and keep it safe.’
The smile was beginning to fade from his face. ‘Why?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m just supposed to. There’s a lot more to it. After the false wolves go past, I find a butterfly wing on the ground. I pick it up, but as I do the wing becomes larger and larger and under it is a pale man, white as chalk and cold as a fish. I think he is dead, but then he opens his eyes. They have no colour. He does not speak with his mouth but opens his hand to talk. He dies with rubies falling from his eyes …’
My father set his cup back down on the edge of his saucer. It tipped and his cup spilled, rolling across the table and leaving a trail of tea. ‘Damn!’ he cried in a voice I didn’t know, and stood suddenly, nearly overturning the bench.
‘Oh, sir, never mind, I’ll clean that up,’ Tavia exclaimed and came right away with a rag.
My father backed away from the table, shaking hot tea from his hand. I ate the last bite of my toasted bread and butter. The dreaming had left me very hungry. ‘Is there going to be bacon soon?’ I asked.
Mild brought the platter to the table. It was only scorched a little, and as I’ve always liked it crispy, I didn’t mind.
‘I need to go out for a bit,’ my father said. He had gone to the door, opened it and was staring out at the muddy kitchen yard. He was drawing deep breaths of the chill winter air and cooling the kitchen as well.
‘Sir, the bread sponge!’ Tavia objected to his open door.
He said nothing but walked out with no cloak or coat. ‘I’ll need paper!’ I cried, distressed that he would dismiss my request and my dream so carelessly.
‘Take what you need from my desk,’ he said without looking back at me, and shut the door behind him.
For the rest of that day, I saw little of my father. He was busy, I knew, and he put Withywoods into an uproar with his business. A set of rooms was chosen for my cousin, bedding taken out of the cedar chests and aired, the flues of the hearth in the room must be cleared for it was discovered that some creature had completely blocked it with a nest. Over the next two days, the chaos increased. Our steward, Revel, was completely delighted with the activity, and dashed hither and thither in the house, thinking of more and more tasks that the servants must undertake. A stream of strangers came to our door and met with my father and Revel in the manor study. They chose artisans and labourers, maids and lads from among those who came and some of them came back the next day with their tools to begin work. And others came with handcarts full of their possessions, to move into the servants’ wing of the house.
It seemed that no matter where I went the house was full of business. People were scrubbing floors and polishing woodwork and bringing furniture out of storage. A carpenter and his helpers came to repair a leaking roof in one of the plant rooms. In so much noise and activity, I went back to my silence and stealthy ways. No one noticed. Whenever I glimpsed my father, he was talking to someone or studying a paper or walking about scowling with Revel at his elbow pointing at things and complaining. When he looked at me, he smiled, but there was something sad in his eyes and sick about his mouth that made me want to go and hide myself.
So that was what I did. I took the paper and ink and pens from his desk, and as he had said that I could take what I needed, I did that, taking good vellum as well and his best coloured inks and pens with tips of copper. I took candles as well. I gathered many of my mother’s scented candles and hid them in my room where they perfumed my clothing chest and filled my dreams with her fragrances. I took also the tall white slow burning tapers we had made together, and these I kept in my spy-room.
I took many things in those days of my father forgetting about me. I took hard bread and dried fruit and a nice wooden box to keep the rats away from them. I took a jug and stopper so I could have water, and a chipped cup that no one would miss. I took a woollen blanket they put out to air that Tavia said had been nibbled by mice and was good for nothing but polishing rags. The bustle at Withywoods was such that I stole with impunity, and no one noticed, for each thought someone else had moved the missing item. I found a rug figured in reds and oranges that was only a little too large for my spyhole. I rolled it a little up the walls, making my room a nest. From my mother’s stores, I took the lavender we had gathered and other fragrant herbs in sachets.
My hidey-hole became quite comfortable. I did not access it from my father’s private study. Somehow I knew that he would not approve of how much time I was spending there, so I found the hidden door in the pantry and then built a wall in front of it from boxes of salt fish. I left just enough room that I could creep behind the boxes, open the concealed door and squeeze in. I drew it shut behind me but took care that it could not latch me in. I never discovered the latch that allowed me to open it from the pantry side, so I always left it ajar a tiny crack.
I chalked my paths through my warren, and swept cobwebs and mouse droppings to one side. I hung bunches of the fragrant herbs along my path to my little chamber, so that even in full darkness I could scent the way. I quickly memorized it, but never forgot that terrifying night.
I found that the warren of paths in the walls were more extensive than my father had told me. I wondered if he knew and had lied to me, or if the openings were so small that he had dismissed them. I had to set exploring aside for another time. I had many old Dreams to record, and each writing must be as detailed as I could wring from my memory. I wrote my dream of the flying buck and the one about the tapestry with the tall ancient kings with golden eyes. It took six pages for me to write my dream about the fish-white boy in the boat with no oars and how he sold himself as a slave. I wrote a dream I’d had of my father cutting open his chest and taking out his heart and pressing it into a stone until there was no blood left in it.
I did not understand the dreams I wrote down but I thought that one day someone might, and so I recorded them. I wrote until my fingers were all colours of ink and my hands ached abominably. I stole more paper and wrote some more.
And at night, when I put myself to bed, I read. My mother had owned three books that were completely hers. One was the herbal that Patience had given her. It was one that my father had given to Patience, and I believe she had sent it to Molly when they both believed he was dead. The other was a book of flowers and the third was a book on bees. This she had written herself, and it was not a proper book nor a scroll but a collection of pages bound together with ribbon laced through punched holes. It was more her journal of her hives than anything else and it was my favourite. From the first pages to the last, I watched her lettering and her spelling become more certain, and her observations more acute as she increased her knowledge of the craft. I read it over and over, and promised myself that by spring I would tend her hives better.
Patience had spent her lifetime acquiring books and manuscripts. Many had been pilfered from the library at Buckkeep Castle. Some were very expensive books, bound with covers of oak and straps of leather and silver studs, gifts given in the hopes of winning influence with her when Chivalry had been King-in-Waiting and everyone had presumed that one day she would be Queen Patience. There were not many of these lovely volumes. Most of them she had sold off during the dark days of the war against the Red-Ship Raiders. Those that remained were heavy and sadly boring, being mostly historical accounts of exaggerated glory of previous Farseer royalty, tales written more to curry favour than to educate. In many places, Patience had written scathingly sceptical notes about the veracity of what she was reading. Often they made me giggle uncontrollably: it was a glimpse into her that no one else had shared with me. Her notes were fading, so I renewed them in black ink as I found them.
Patience’s own books were a far more eclectic and battered collection. There was a book on horseshoeing and smithying, with notes in Patience’s hand about her own experiments. There were books on butterflies and birds and famous highwaymen and legends of sea monsters. There was an old vellum on the managing of pecksies and how to bind them so that they must do all your housework, and a set of little scrolls on distilling and flavouring spirits. There were three old tablets, much worn, on ways a woman might make herself fecund.
But I quickly discovered that they were not the most interesting books in Withywoods. The most fascinating ones were the ones hidden and forgotten. In Patience’s disorderly old study, I found her bundled letters. The oldest, in a box with blossoms so old they had lost all colour and fragrance, were tied up with a strand of leather tie. They were heartfelt missives from a young man of great passion and greater restraint, promising her that he would make something of himself and acquire a fortune and a reputation that might make up for his lack of noble birth. He begged her to wait until he could come to her father and claim honourably the right to court her. The last one was much crumpled and stained as if a girl had wept over it often. In it, he was chiding her for wanting to run off with him regardless of what it might do to her reputation or how it would break her father’s heart. I puzzled out that they had been seen sharing a kiss and young Lady Patience was being whisked off to visit Bingtown and Jamaillia with relatives, to benefit from exposure to art and culture and to separate her from ardent young stablehands. Lady Patience would be gone the better part of two years. The young man promised her that he would wait for her, that he would continue to think of her and work hard. He had heard there was a call for soldiers, hard work but much better pay. While she was away, he would seek his fortune and acquire what they needed for him to stand proudly before her father and beg to rightfully court her.
The next set of letters were dated some four years later and were from Prince Chivalry, begging her pardon for being so presumptuous as to send her such a personal gift on such a brief acquaintanceship but that he could not help himself, the tiny gold earrings were almost as delicate and graceful as she was. And would she allow him to call on her soon?
The next five letters were equally apologetic for his continuing gifts and missives, each with an invitation for her to travel to Buckkeep Castle and join him for a feast or a hunt or a special performance by Jamaillian acrobats. I did not possess her replies but judged that she had rebuffed him over and over.
I knew the day on which her heart warmed toward him. He wrote that he saw no reason why a young lady should not be fascinated by iron smithing and that he hoped the scrolls and small anvil and tools he was sending to her would aid her in following that interest. His next letter expressed undying gratitude for the spoon she had sent him as evidence of her new skill. He declared it his treasure and said he was sending her some excellent iron ingots from Forge for her to further experiment with.
Their letters after that became more frequent and eventually so romantic that my interest in them waned. It was intriguing to ponder that the first set of love letters was from Burrich, who raised my father and later wed my mother, raising my sister as if she were his own child and fathering six boys of his own with her. So, his first love had been Lady Patience, wife to my grandfather? And later he had raised my father, before marrying my mother? The contorted branches of my family tree dizzied and fascinated me. And that fascination led to pilfering more scrolls from my father’s study.
I did not begin with the intention of spying upon him. It was my quest for good paper that led me to take a dozen sheets of the precious stuff from his supply. It was only after I was safely in my hidey-hole with it that I discovered that only the top sheet was blank. Evidently my father had set a clean sheet down on a stack of written ones. I gathered them up to return them to his desk but my eyes snagged on his clean, firm penmanship and I soon found myself drawn into his tale.
It was a simple account of an incident in his childhood. At the time I recall that I wondered why he had written it down. He obviously recalled it clearly; why bother to record it on paper? Only later was I to learn from my own obsessive journaling of my dreams that sometimes the best way to understand something is to write it down. His account began with him musing on friendships, on how they begin and how they end, and also on friendships that never happened or perhaps never should have happened. Then he recounted his tale.
It was a simple incident that he recorded, but in his meticulous fashion, he had noted that it happened at the hour when the dew had burned off the gardens at Buckkeep but the sun had not yet warmed them. My father and his dog named Nosy were sneaking away from the castle to follow the steep wooded path that went down to Buckkeep Town. He was shirking his chores to do so, and already felt guilty, but longing to see children of his own age and have some time to play had conquered his dread of the chastisement he’d get for absenting himself.
As he was leaving the gardens he happened to look back and saw another youngster sitting on top of the wall looking down on him. ‘Pale as an egg, and as fragile-looking.’ He sat cross-legged, his elbows on his knees and his cheeks in his long-fingered hands as he stared down at my father. My father had felt with great certainty that the boy longed to leap down and follow them. He suspected that if he had so much as smiled or tossed his head, he would have joined him.
But he did not. He was still the New Boy in the gaggle of town children that he ran with, and barely sure of his acceptance there. To bring another stranger with him, especially one so pale and odd, dressed in the motley of a jester, would risk all he had gained. He feared then that he would either have been excluded along with the pale fellow, or worse, had to choose between defending him from a beating, or joining in with fists and feet to prove he was one with his new friends. And so he had turned his back and hurried on with his dog and left the pale boy perched there.
I lifted the last sheet, expecting to find more of the story, but there were only a few smudged words there, the ink so run with water that I could not read what he had begun to write. I restacked his pages and tapped them into alignment. The ink on the pages was dark and new; this was not something he had written years ago, but days at most. And so he would probably look for it soon, perhaps to finish it, and discover it missing. That might be disastrous for me.
And yet I could not resist the urge to read it over yet again before I crept back to his study to return it and filch more paper. But that was not all I took.
I had always known that my father spent time almost every evening with pen and ink. I had always assumed that it had to do with the estate accounts, keeping track of wages paid and how many sheep were sheared and how many lambs born in the spring and what the grape harvest had been like. Indeed, when I later explored his ordinary study, that was what I found in his papers. But here, in his private study, was quite a different assortment of writing. I was certain it was writing that he had never expected to share with anyone.
My mother was a pragmatic reader, given only to deciphering texts that had some use to her. She had come to letters late in her life, and though she had mastered them, they had never become her good friends. So doubtless my father would have judged her unlikely to pore over his papers. Nor were most of our servants lettered folk, save Revel; my father did not employ a clerk to keep the accounts or write his correspondence, preferring to do that for himself. And his private study was not an area where the servants tidied or came and went at all. My father kept its disorder to a level he found tolerable and no one else ventured in.
Except for me.
And so his private writings were hidden in plain sight. I did not take many, only a handful, and those from the dustiest shelves. I restored the ones I had taken by accident to his stack of papers and then absconded with this new supply of fascinating reading. I began to do this as an everyday exercise, reading, replacing, and stealing more. It opened a window onto my father’s life that I otherwise would never have glimpsed.
I sensed that I had picked up his tale in the middle, for the earliest journals were musings on coming to Withywoods and taking up residence with my mother. He recounted how he presented himself as Lady Molly’s husbandman, a commoner born and simply the caretaker of Lady Nettle’s estate. It explained to me why they had chosen to live so simply; he was still hiding from any who might suspect that FitzChivalry Farseer had not died in Prince Regal’s dungeons, but had risen from his grave and become Tom Badgerlock. That was a tale I discerned in bits and pieces from his writing. I suspected that somewhere, perhaps in Buckkeep Castle, there was a full accounting of that portion of his life. I longed to know why he had been put to death and how he had survived, and a thousand other things about him. I discovered, in bits, that Nettle was indeed my full sister. That was a revelation. My father, I quickly saw, was not the man I had thought he was. The lies and deceptions cloaked and covered him in so many layers that it woke fear in me. To discover that all I thought I knew about both my parents was based on falsehoods and deliberate deceptions shook me.
If he was FitzChivalry Farseer, first born son of a king who had abdicated the throne, then who was I? Princess Bee? Or simply Bee Badgerlock, daughter of the stepfather of Lady Nettle? Snatches of overheard conversations between my parents, thoughts my mother had had while pregnant with me, comments from Nettle all began to fall into order and make an astonishing sense.
I had just returned to my bedchamber late on the third day of my discovery about my father. I had exited from my little den via the entrance in the pantry and in the dark, crept up the stairs and regained the safety of my room. I had dared to take one of my father’s documents with me. He had noted on the top that it was a fresh copy of an old manuscript. It was entitled Instructing Potential Skill Students in Guarding One’s Mind. Lately, he had had some rather strange material on his desk. There had been a written copy of a song called Crossfire’s Coterie. And a manuscript about mushrooms with lovely painted illustrations. I was trying to read the one on guarding the mind when I heard my father’s tap at my door. I dived onto my bed, pushed the paper under my pillow and burrowed hastily under my blankets. As he opened the door, I turned toward him slowly as if roused from sleep.
‘I’m sorry, dear. I know it’s late.’ He gave a small sigh and then lied, ‘I’m sorry I’ve had so little time for you in the past few days. There’s been a great deal to do to get ready for our cousin, and it has made me realize how far behind I am on the upkeep of the house. But tomorrow is the day that Shun will arrive. So I wanted to talk to you tonight, to see if you had any questions.’
I studied his face for a moment in the flickering light from the hearth fire. I dared myself. I spoke. ‘Actually, I do. I wondered what about my dream made you so angry.’
For a short time, he just looked at me. His eyes weren’t angry, I saw, but full of pain. Was that why he had been avoiding me? I could almost feel him thinking about whether he would lie or not. Then he said quietly, ‘Your dream made me think of someone I knew a long time ago. He was a very pale man, and he often had peculiar dreams. And when he was a child, he wrote his dreams down, just as you said you would do.’
I watched his face, waiting. He lifted his hand, covering his mouth as he rubbed his bearded cheeks. Perhaps he was thinking, but to me he looked as if he were holding words in. He sighed again, heavily. ‘We were very good friends for a long, long time. We did hard things for one another. Risked our lives. Gave up our lives and faced death, and then faced life again. You might be surprised to find that facing life can be much harder than facing death.’ He stopped talking and was silent for a time, thinking about something. When he blinked and looked back at me, he seemed almost surprised to see me. He took a deep breath. ‘Well. So when you said you had a dream with a pale man in it, and that he was dead, well … it was alarming.’ He looked away from me, to a shadowy corner of the room. ‘I was a bit silly to take it so seriously, I admit. So. Let’s talk about your cousin coming, shall we?’
I shrugged. I was still mulling over his answer. ‘I don’t think I’ll have any questions about her until I’ve met her. Except … what is she going to help you do?’
‘Oh, well, that isn’t quite decided yet.’ He smiled evasively. I think the smile would have fooled anyone who did not know him as well as I did. ‘We’ll get to know her, and see what she’s good at doing, and then give those sorts of things to her to do,’ he added brightly.
‘Does she do beekeeping?’ I asked in sudden alarm. When spring came, I did not want anyone except myself to touch my mother’s dormant hives.
‘No. I’m quite sure of that.’ My father sounded as emphatic in his response as I had been. I felt a sense of relief. He came and sat on the foot of my bed. It was a very large bed and it still felt as if he were across the room. My mother would have sat down beside me, close enough to touch me. Gone. The thought blew cold through me again. My father looked as if he felt that same chill wind, but he did not move closer to me.
‘What happened to your pale friend?’
He flinched and then pasted a casual smile on his face. He shrugged stiffly. ‘He went away.’
‘Where?’
‘Back to the place where he had first come from. A land far to the south of here. Clerres, he called it. I don’t know exactly where. He never told me.’
I thought for a time. ‘Did you send him a message to say you missed him?’
He laughed. ‘Moppet, you have to know where a letter must go in order to send it.’
I hadn’t meant a letter. I meant that other kind of reaching out that he and my sister did. Since he had started holding himself inside his own mind, I heard far less of it than I once had. And ever since I had felt it tug at me and try to shred me away into nothing, I’d always hung back from trying to understand it. I’d felt him do it a dozen times at least in the last few days, but hadn’t really known to whom he reached or what he conveyed. Not his pale friend, though.
‘Will he come back some day?’ I wondered out loud. Would he come and take my father away from me?
My father fell into that stillness again. Then he slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I think if he was going to come back or send me a letter, he would have done it by now. He told me before he left that the work he and I were to do was done, and that if he stayed near me, we might accidentally undo it. And that would mean that all we had gone through would have been for naught.’
I tried to put this together in my mind. ‘Like the puppeteer’s mistake.’
‘What?’
‘That time the puppeteers came in the storm and mother let them in. Remember? They set up a little stage in the great hall and even though they were very tired, they put on a show for us.’
‘I do remember that. But what was the mistake?’
‘At the end, when the Blue Soldier had slain the Boar with Red Tusks and freed the Rain Cloud so it could rain on the land and the crops would grow? The story was meant to stop there. But then, when they were folding the curtains, I saw the Blue Soldier dangling next to the Boar with Red Tusks, and his tusks were deep in the soldier’s vitals. So I knew that in the end, the Boar came back and slew the soldier after all.’
‘Uh, no, Bee. That wasn’t part of the story at all! It was just something that happened when the puppets were put away.’
He didn’t understand at all. I explained to him. ‘No. It was the next story. Like your friend said could happen. An accident when it was all supposed to be over.’
He looked at me with his dark eyes. I could look into them to a deep place where things were still broken, never to be mended. My mother had always been able to make that broken part recede, but I didn’t know how. Maybe no one did, now. ‘Well. It’s late,’ he said suddenly. ‘And I’ve wakened you and kept you awake longer than I intended. I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t worrying about your cousin coming. I’m glad you’re fine with it.’ He stood and stretched.
‘Do I have to obey her?’
He dropped his arms suddenly. ‘What?’
‘Must I obey Shun Fallstar when she comes?’
‘Well, she’s a woman grown, so she is to be respected by you. Just as you respect Tavia or Mild.’
Respect. Not obey. I could do that. I nodded slowly and slid down in my bed. My mother would have come to tuck the covers more closely around me. He didn’t.
He walked softly to the door, and then paused. ‘Did you want a story? Or a song?’
I thought about it. Did I? No. I had his stories, his real ones, to think about until I fell asleep. ‘Not tonight,’ I said and yawned.
‘Very well. Sleep, then. I’ll see you in the morning.’ He yawned widely. ‘It’s going to be a big day for all of us,’ he said, and to me it sounded more like dread than anticipation.
‘Papa?’
He stopped just inside the door. ‘What is it?’
‘You should trim your hair tonight. Or make it lie down with grease tomorrow, or however boys do that. It looks very wild now. And your beard is awful. Like, like …’ I searched for words I had heard long ago. ‘Like a mountain pony with its coat half shed.’
He stood very still, and then smiled. ‘You heard that from Nettle.’
‘I think so. But it’s true.’ I dared to add, ‘Please shave it off. You don’t need to look older, like Mother’s husband any more. I want you to look like my father instead of my grandfather.’
He stood there, one hand touching his beard.
‘No. She never liked it in the first place. You should cut it all off.’ I’d known what he was thinking.
‘Well. Perhaps I shall, then.’ And he softly closed the door behind himself.