The bed curtains had been pulled back and the chest and bench that were the other furnishings had been dusted. To my inexperienced eyes, it was a rich room indeed. A real bed, with coverings and hangings about it, and a bench with a cushion to it, and a chest to put things in were more furniture than I could recall having to myself before. That they were for my exclusive use made them larger somehow. There was also the fireplace, that I boldly added another piece of wood to, and the window, with an oak seat before it, shuttered now against the night air, but probably looking out over the sea.
The chest was a simple one, cornered with brass fittings. The outside of it was dark, but when I opened it, the interior was light-colored and fragrant. Inside the chest I found my limited wardrobe, brought up from the stables. Two nightshirts had been added to it, and a woolen blanket was rolled up in the corner of the chest. That was all. I took out a nightshirt and closed the chest.
I set the nightshirt down on the bed and then clambered up myself. It was early to be thinking of sleep, but my body ached and there seemed nothing else for me to do. Down in the stable room, by now Burrich would be sitting and drinking and mending harness or whatever. There would be a fire in the hearth, and the muffled sounds of horses as they shifted in their stalls below. The room would smell of leather and oil and Burrich himself, not dank stone and dust. I pulled the nightshirt over my head and nudged my clothes to the foot of the bed. I nestled into the feather bed; it was cool and my skin stood up in goose bumps. Slowly my body heat warmed it and I began to relax. It had been a full and strenuous day. Every muscle I possessed seemed to be both aching and tired. I knew I should rise once more, to put the candles out, but I could not summon the energy. Nor the willpower to blow them out and let a deeper darkness flood the chamber. So I drowsed, halflidded eyes watching the struggling flames of the small hearth fire. I idly wished for something else, for any situation that was neither this forsaken chamber nor the tenseness of Burrich's room. For a restfulness that perhaps I had once known somewhere else but could no longer recall. And so I drowsed into oblivion.
CHAPTER FOUR. Apprenticeship
A STORY IS TOLD OF King Victor, he who conquered the inland territories that became eventually the Duchy of Farrow. Very shortly after adding the lands of Sandsedge to his rulings, he sent for the woman who would, had Victor not conquered her land, have been the Queen of Sandsedge. She traveled to Buckkeep in much trepidation, fearing to go, but fearing more the consequences to her people if she appealed to them to hide her. When she arrived, she was both amazed and somewhat chagrined that Victor intended to use her not as a servant but as a tutor to his children, that they might learn both the language and customs of her folk. When she asked him why he chose to have them learn of her folk's ways, he replied, 'A ruler must be of all his people, for one can only rule what one knows.' Later she became the willing wife of his eldest son and took the name Queen Graciousness at her coronation.
I awoke to sunlight in my face. Someone had entered my chamber and opened the window shutters to the day. A basin, cloth, and jug of water had been left on top of the chest. I was grateful for them, but not even washing my face refreshed me. Sleep had left me sodden and I recall feeling uneasy that someone could enter my chamber and move freely about without awakening me.
As I had guessed, the window looked out over the sea, but I didn't have much time to devote to the view. A glance at the sun told me that I had overslept. I flung on my clothes and hastened down to the stables without pausing for breakfast.
But Burrich had little time for me that morning. 'Get back up to the keep,' he advised me. 'Mistress Hasty already sent Brant down here to look for you. She's to measure you for clothing. Best go find her quickly; she lives up to her name, and won't appreciate your upsetting her morning routine.'
My trot back up to the keep reawakened all my aches of the day before. Much as I dreaded seeking out this Mistress Hasty and being measured for clothing I was certain I didn't need, I was relieved not to be on horseback again this morning.
After querying my way up from the kitchens, I finally found Mistress Hasty in a room several doors down from my bedchamber. I paused shyly in the door and peered in. Three tall windows were flooding the room with sunlight and a mild salt breeze. Baskets of yam and dyed wool were stacked against one wall, while a tall shelf on another wall held a rainbow of cloth goods. Two young women were talking over a loom, and in the far corner a lad not much older than I was rocking to the gentle pace of a spinning wheel. I had no doubt that the woman with her broad back to me was Mistress Hasty.
The two young women noticed me and paused in their conversation. Mistress Hasty turned to see where they stared, and a moment later I was in her clutches. She didn't bother with names or explaining what she was about. I found myself up on a stool, being turned and measured and hummed over, with no regard for my dignity or indeed my humanity. She disparaged my clothes to the young women, remarked very calmly that I quite reminded her of young Chivalry, and that my measurements and coloring were much the same as his had been when he was my age. She then demanded their opinions as she held up bolts of different goods against me.
'That one,' said one of the loom women. 'That blue quite flatters his darkness. It would have looked well on his father. Quite a mercy that Patience never has to see the boy. Chivalry's stamp is much too plain on his face to leave her any pride at all.'
And as I stood there, draped in wool goods, I heard for the first time what every other person in Buckkeep knew full well. The weaving women discussed in detail how the word of my existence had reached Buckkeep and Patience long before my father could tell her himself, and of the deep anguish it caused her. For Patience was barren, and though Chivalry had never spoken a word against her, all guessed how difficult it must be for an heir such as he to have no child to eventually assume his title. Patience took my existence as the ultimate rebuke, and her health, never sound after so many miscarriages, completely broke along with her spirit. It was for her sake as well as for propriety that Chivalry had given up his throne and taken his invalid wife back to the warm and gentle lands that were her home province. Word was that they lived well and comfortably there, that Patience's health was slowly mending, and that Chivalry, substantially quieter a man than he had been before, was gradually learning stewardship of his vineyard-rich valley. A pity that Patience blamed Burrich as well for Chivalry's lapse in morals, and had declared she could no longer abide the sight of the man. For between the injury to his leg and Chivalry's abandonment of him, old Burrich just wasn't the man he had been. Was a time when no woman of the keep walked quickly past him; to catch his eye was to make yourself the envy of nearly anyone old enough to wear skirts. And now? Old Burrich, they called him, and him still in his prime. And so unfair, as if any manservant had any say over what his master did. But it was all to the good anyway, they supposed. And didn't Verity, after all, make a much better king-in-waiting than had Chivalry? So rigorously noble was Chivalry that he made all others feel slatternly and stingy in his presence; he'd never allowed himself a moment's respite from what was right, and while he was too chivalrous to sneer at those who did, one always had the feeling that his perfect behavior was a silent reproach to those with less self-discipline. Ah, but then here was the bastard, now, though, after all those years, and well, here was the proof that he hadn't been the man he'd pretended to be. Verity, now there was a man among men, a king folk could look to and see as royalty. He rode hard, and soldiered alongside his men, and if he was occasionally drunk or had at times been less than discreet, well, he owned up to it, honest as his name. Folk could understand a man like that, and follow him.
To all this I listened avidly, if mutely, while several fabrics were held against me, debated, and selected. I gained a much deeper understanding of why the keep children left me to play alone. If the women considered that I might have thoughts or feelings about their conversation, they showed no sign of it. The only remark I remember Mistress Hasty making to me specifically was that I should take greater care in washing my neck. Then Mistress Hasty shooed me from the room as if I were an annoying chicken, and I found myself finally heading to the kitchens for some food.
That afternoon I was back with Hod, practicing until I was sure my stave had mysteriously doubled its weight. Then food, and bed, and up again in the morning and back to Burrich's tutelage. My learning filled my days, and any spare time I found was swallowed up with the chores associated with my learning, whether it was tack care for Burrich, or sweeping the armory and putting it back in order for Hod. In due time I found not one, or even two, but three entire sets of clothing, including stockings, set out one afternoon on my bed. Two were of fairly ordinary stuff, in a familiar brown that most of the children my age seemed to wear, but one was of thin blue cloth, and on the breast was a buck's head, done in silver thread. Burrich and the other men-at-arms wore a leaping buck as their emblem. I had only seen the buck's head on the jerkins of Regal and Verity. So I looked at it and wondered,
