It is as I feared for young Lant. He is completely unsuitable for quiet work. When I first told him that I would be ending his apprenticeship and finding him a more suitable post, I was unprepared for how dramatically upset he would be. He begged both Rosemary and me to give him a second chance. Against my own better judgment, I agreed. I must be becoming both softer of heart and feebler of mind, for of course it was not a kindness. We continued to train him in the physical skills and the requisite knowledge. He is very nimble of finger and hand, excellent at sleight, but not as quick to remember the recipes that one must master for use in an instant. Still, I confess that I had hoped that the lad would follow in my footsteps.
Rosemary had less doubt of him and proposed that we give him a challenge. I set him a theft, and he accomplished it. Rosemary proposed a minor poisoning. His target was but a guardsman. We told him the man had taken bribes and was actively spying for a Chalcedean nobleman. Nonetheless, over the course of three days and ample opportunities, Lant was unable to achieve his task. He returned to us shamed and despondent. He simply could not bring himself to end a life. I refrained from telling him that the ‘poison’ was merely a finely ground spice and would have done the man no harm. I am glad we tested him on a subject that was not truly a threat to anyone.
The result is that Lant now realizes he is unsuited to this profession. He has, to my surprise, said that he does not mind if he cannot be my apprentice so long as he does not lose my friendship! And so, to ease his transition, I think I shall keep him here in Buckkeep for a time longer. I will see that he receives sufficient education to be a tutor, and weapons training that will fit him as a bodyguard as well.
Only to you will I admit that I am sadly disappointed in him. I was so certain I had found a worthy successor. Fortunately, a second candidate has been located and her training begun. She seems to show an aptitude, but then, so did Lant. We shall see. I tell you all this, of course, in the greatest confidence in your discretion. Strange, where once I taught you never to entrust such things to paper, now it is the only way I can be certain that no one else in our coterie shall be privy to my thoughts. How times change.
Unsigned and unaddressed scroll
Oh, the things we discover and the things we learn, much too late. Worse are the secrets that are not secrets, the sorrows we live with but do not admit to one another.
Bee was not the child we had both hoped for. I hid my disappointment from Molly, and I think she did the same for me. The slow months and then the year ticked past, and I saw little change in our daughter’s abilities. It aged Molly, taking a toll both on her body and her spirit as she allowed no one else to care for the child, and silently contained her growing sorrow. I wanted to help her, but the child clearly avoided my touch. For a time, I sank into a darkness of spirit, lost appetite and the will to do anything. My days always seemed to end with thunderous headaches and a sour belly. I awoke at night and could not find sleep again, only anxiety over the child. Our baby remained a baby, small and passive. Chade’s eagerness to plan for her education and eventual marriage became a sour-sweet memory. Once, there had been a time when we could hope for such things. But the passing year stole all such dreams from us.
I do not recall how old Bee was the first time Molly broke down and wept in my arms. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,’ she said, and it took me some time to understand that she blamed herself for our simple child. ‘I was too old,’ she told me through her tears. ‘And she will never be right. Never, never, never.’
‘Let’s not be hasty,’ I told her, with a calmness I did not feel. Why had we hidden our fears from one another? Perhaps because sharing them, as we did now, made them more real. I tried to deny them. ‘She’s healthy,’ I told my Molly as she sobbed in my arms. I bent to whisper the words by her ear. ‘She eats well. She sleeps. Her skin is smooth, her eyes are clear. She’s small and perhaps slow to do things, but she will grow and—’
‘Stop,’ she begged me in a dull little voice. ‘Stop, Fitz.’ She pulled a little away from me and looked up at me. Her hair clung to her wet face like a widow’s veil. She sniffed once. ‘Pretending won’t change it. She’s simple. And not just simple, but weak in her body. She doesn’t roll over, or hold her head strongly. She doesn’t even try. She just lies in her cradle and stares. She hardly even cries.’
And what was there for me to say to that? She was a woman who had birthed seven healthy children. Bee was the first baby I’d ever experienced.
‘Is she truly so different from what she should be?’ I asked helplessly.
Molly nodded slowly. ‘And ever will be.’
‘But she’s ours,’ I objected softly. ‘She’s our Bee. Perhaps she is what she’s meant to be.’
I don’t recall how I intended her to hear those words. I knew I did not deserve it when she gave a sudden sob and then hugged me tightly, asking my chest, ‘Then you are not bitterly disappointed and shamed by her? You can still love her? You still love me?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Of course and always.’ And even though I had comforted her by chance rather than by intent, I was glad I had done so.
Yet we had opened a door that could not be closed. Once we had admitted that our little girl would likely be always as she was now, we had to talk about it. Yet we did not speak of it before the servants, nor in the light of day, but at night, in our bed, with the child that had so wounded us sleeping nearby in a cradle. For though we could admit it, we could not accept it. Molly faulted her milk, and tried to coax the tiny thing to sip cow’s milk and then goat’s milk, with very little success.
Our baby’s health baffled me. Many a young creature had I tended in my life, and yet I had never known one that ate with an appetite, slept well, appeared full of good health, and yet did not grow. I tried to encourage her to move her limbs, but I quickly learned that she did not seem to want me to handle her at all. Placid and calm when left to herself, she would not meet my gaze when I bent over her crib. If I picked her up, she would lean away from me, and then with her feeble strength try to fling herself from my arms. If I insisted on holding her and flexing her legs and moving her arms, she rapidly went from wails to angry screams. After a time, Molly begged me not to try, for she feared that somehow I was causing her pain. And I gave way to her wishes, though my Wit gave me no sense of pain from her, only alarm. Alarm that her father would try to hold her. Is it possible to express how painful that was for me?
The servants were at first curious about her, and then pitying. Molly all but hissed at them, and kept all care of the child to herself. To them, she would never admit anything was wrong. But late at night her worries and fears for her child grew darker. ‘What will become of her after I am gone?’ she asked me one evening.
‘We will make provision for her,’ I said, but Molly shook her head.
‘People are cruel,’ she said. ‘Who could we trust that much?’
‘Nettle?’ I suggested.
Molly shook her head again. ‘Must I sacrifice one daughter’s life to be caretaker for the other?’ she asked me, and to that I had no answer.
When one has been disappointed for so long, hope becomes the enemy. One cannot be dashed to the earth unless one is lifted first, and I learned to avoid hope. When, midway through Bee’s second year of life, Molly began to tell me that she was getting stronger and could hold her head more steadily, I nodded and smiled but did little more than that. But at the end of her second year, she could roll over, and shortly after that, she began to sit without support. She grew, but remained tiny for her age. In her third year, she began to crawl, and then to pull herself to a stand. In her fourth year, she toddled about the room, a peculiar sight to see a child so tiny walking. At five, she trotted behind her mother everywhere. She began to have teeth and she made garbled noises that only Molly could interpret.
The oddest things seemed to excite her. The texture of a piece of weaving, or the wind stirring a cobweb would catch her attention. Then the little thing would shake her hands wildly and gobble out nonsense. Every now and then, a word would burst from her lips embedded in a stream of burbled sound. It was both maddening and sweet to hear Molly talk to her child, keeping up her half of an imaginary conversation.
We kept Bee mostly to ourselves. Her older siblings did not visit as often as they once had, for growing families and the demands of their occupations kept them busy at their homes. They visited when they could, which was not often. They treated Bee kindly, but they realized that pitying her was useless. She would be what she would be. They saw that Molly seemed content with her, and possibly gave no more thought to the child that comforted their mother as she aged.
Hap, my fostered son, came and went on his minstrel wanderings. He most often arrived in the coldest months, to spend a moon with us. He sang and played pipes, and Bee was the most avid listener that any minstrel could ask for. She would focus her pale blue eyes on him and her little mouth would hang ajar as she listened. She would not willingly go to bed while Hap was there, unless he followed her to her room and played her a soft, slow tune until she slept. Perhaps that was why he accepted Bee as she was, and when he visited, he always brought her a simple present such as a string of bright beads or a soft scarf figured with roses.
Of all her brothers and sisters, Nettle came most often in those early years. I could tell she longed to hold her sister, but Bee reacted to her touch much as she did to mine, and so Nettle had to be content with being beside her sister but not able to tend to her needs.
Very late one night, as I left my private study my route took me past the door of Bee’s nursery. I saw a light burning through the half-open door and paused, thinking perhaps Bee had taken sick and Molly was sitting up with her. But as I peered in I saw not Molly but Nettle sitting by her sister’s bed, looking down at her with a face of tragic wistfulness. She was speaking softly. ‘For years, I dreamed of a sister. Someone to share dreams with, to braid each other’s hair and tease about boys and take long walks with me. I thought I would teach you to dance and we would have secrets and cook together late at night when everyone else was asleep. And here you are, at last. But we will have none of that, will we? Yet this I will promise you, little Bee. No matter what happens to our parents, I will always care for you.’ And then my Nettle lowered her face into her hands and wept. I knew then that she mourned for the sister she had imagined, just as I still longed for the perfect little girl I had dreamed we would have. I had no comfort for either of us, and I left that scene silently.
Since her birth, Bee had accompanied Molly everywhere, in a sling or riding on Molly’s hip or tottering along behind her. Sometimes I wondered if she feared to leave the child alone. When Molly went about her regular tasks at Withywoods, from supervising the servants to managing her own hives, honey and candlemaking, tasks she still seemed to enjoy, Bee was with her, watching and listening. Now that the babe had discovered she could make sounds, Molly redoubled her efforts with her. She did not speak in the babyish sing-song I’d hear the servants use on the rare occasions when they spoke to Bee. Instead Molly earnestly explained every aspect of her work as if Bee might one day need to know how to smoke a hive or strain hot wax for candles or polish silver or make a bed. And Bee, in her simple way, mirrored Molly’s earnestness, peering at what she was shown and earnestly gabbling back at her. My most unnerving experience was when I went to seek Molly one summer day and found her tending her hives. Over our years, I’d become accustomed to Molly’s calm acceptance that her bees might blanket her arms in the course of her beekeeping. What I did not expect was to see small Bee standing beside her mother, holding a bucket and cloaked in bees. The child was smiling beatifically, her eyes almost closed. Every now and then she would giggle and give a tiny wiggle as if the fuzzy creatures had tickled her. ‘Molly,’ I said in a soft warning voice, for my lady was so intent on her tasks that I was not sure she had seen what was happening to our child.
She turned slowly, ever mindful of her buzzing charges.
‘The baby,’ I said with quiet urgency. ‘The bees have her.’
Molly looked down and behind her. A slow smile appeared on her face. ‘Bee! Are you tending the hives with me?’
Our little daughter looked up and babbled something to her. Molly laughed. ‘She’s fine, dear. Not scared at all.’
But I was. ‘Bee. Come away. Come to Papa,’ I coaxed her. She turned and looked past me. She never willingly met my eyes. She babbled at her mother again.
‘She’s fine, dear. She says you are worried because you don’t know the bees like she and I do. Go along. We’ll be along presently.’
And so I’d left them, and spent an anxious hour in my study. I wondered if my child were Witted, and if were possible for a Witted child to bond to a hive of bees. Don’t be ridiculous, the wolf in me snorted. And insisted that if it were so, he would have sensed it. I could only hope so.
Another year passed and Bee slowly grew. Our lives changed, for Molly centred her days on our daughter and I circled the two of them, marvelling at what they shared. By the time Bee was seven, she was a genuine help to her mother, in her simple way. I could see Molly was slowing and feeling the burden of her years. Bee could pick up what Molly had dropped, could harvest the herbs that Molly pointed out or bring her items from the lowest shelves in the sewing room.
She looked like a little pecksie as she followed her mother and assisted in her small ways. Molly had the softest wool dyed in the brightest colours she could create, as much to make Bee happy as to make her easy to see in the deep grass of the meadows. She was no taller than waist high on Molly when she was seven. Her pale blue eyes and blonde brows lent her a perpetually startled expression, and her wildly curly hair added to it. Her hair flew into stubborn knots at the slightest breeze and grew so slowly that Molly despaired of her ever looking like a girl. Then, when it did reach her shoulders in a wild cloud of fine ringlets, it was so fine that Molly resorted to wetting it, combing it and braiding it in a long tail down her back. They came to show me, with my little girl dressed in a simple yellow tunic and green leggings of the sort that Molly and I had worn as children. I smiled to see her and told Molly, ‘That’s the smallest warrior I’ve ever seen!’ for so the soldiers of Buck had always worn their hair tailed back. Bee surprised me by crowing with delight.
And so our days passed, and Molly took great pleasure in our peculiar child and I took satisfaction in her pleasure. Despite her years, Molly would romp like a child with Bee, seizing her and tossing her high, or chasing her recklessly around and sometimes through the manicured flower and herb beds of Patience’s garden. Round and round they would go until Molly was wheezing and coughing for breath. Bee would halt as soon as Molly did and go to stand close to her mother and look up at her with fond concern. There were times when I longed to join in, to spring out and pounce on my cub and roll her on the grass to hear her laugh. But I knew that would not be the response I would get from her.
For despite Molly’s assurance that our child did not dislike me, Bee remained distant from me. She rarely came closer than arm’s length, and if I sat down near her to see her little bit of needlework, she would always hunch her shoulders and turn slightly away from me. She seldom met my eyes. On a few occasions, when she fell asleep beside Molly in her chair, I would pick her up and try to carry her off to her bed. But at my touch, awake or asleep, she would stiffen and then arch like a fighting fish, flinging herself away from me. It would be a struggle for me to set her safely down, and after a number of efforts I gave up trying to touch her. I think Molly was relieved when I surrendered to Bee’s will in this.
So Molly tended to all Bee’s personal needs. She taught our child to keep herself clean, and to tidy her room as much as such a small person was able. Molly had a small bed built for her, and bedding of a matching size. Molly required her to keep her playthings in order and to do all things for herself as if she were a peasant child. Of this, I approved.
Molly taught her to gather from the woods mushrooms, berries and herbs that we could not easily grow in our gardens. In the gardens and hot houses, I would find them together, picking caterpillars from leaves or gathering herbs to dry. I would pass Molly’s wax room and see small Bee standing on the table, holding a wick straight as Molly carefully poured hot wax. There they strained the golden honey from the combs and packed it into fat little pots for our winter sweetness.
They made a perfect unit, Molly and Bee. It came to me that though Bee was not the child I had dreamed we would have, she was perfect for Molly. She was utterly devoted to her mother, intent on every shifting of the expression on her face. If, in their closeness, they closed me out, I tried not to resent it. Molly deserved the joy she took in this child.
So I was content to hover at the edges of their world, a moth at a window, looking in at warmth and light. Slowly I began to forsake my private study, and instead to take my translation work to the room where Bee had been born. By the time Bee was seven, I spent almost every evening in that warmly lit room. Molly’s softly flickering candles scented it with heather and lavender, or sage or rose, depending on her mood. She and Bee would do simple stitching together, while Molly softly sang the old learning songs about herbs and bees and mushrooms and flowers.
I was at my work one evening, the fire crackling softly and Molly humming over some embroidery she was working onto the neck of a little red nightgown for Bee, when I became aware that my daughter had left off sorting skeins of thread for her mother and had approached my table. I was careful not to look at her. It was as if a hummingbird hovered near me. I could not recall that she had ever voluntarily come so close to me. I feared that if I turned, she would flee. And so I continued painstakingly to copy the old illustration on a scroll about the properties of nightshade and its relatives. It asserted that one branch of the family that grew in desert regions bore red fruit that could be eaten. I was sceptical of such a claim for such a toxic plant, but nonetheless I copied the text and did my best to reproduce the illustrations of leaves, starry flowers and hanging fruit. I had begun to ink the flowers in with yellow. This, I surmised, was what had brought Bee to my shoulder. I listened to her open-mouthed breathing and became aware that Molly was no longer humming. I did not need to turn my head to know she was watching our child with as much curiosity as I felt.
A small hand touched the edge of my table and spidered slowly to the edge of the page I was working on. I pretended not to notice. I dipped my brush again and added another yellow petal. As softly as a pot bubbling on the hearth, Bee murmured something. ‘Yellow,’ I said, as if I were Molly pretending to know her thoughts. ‘I’m painting the little flower yellow.’
Again, the bubbling mutter, this time a bit louder with more of a plea in it.
‘Green,’ I told her. I lifted the vial of ink and showed it to her. ‘The leaves will be this green at the edges. And I will mix green and yellow for the centre, and green and black for the veins of the leaves.’
The little hand fumbled at the corner of my page. Her fingers lifted it and tugged. ‘Careful!’ I cautioned her and received a cascade of bubbling muttering in a pleading tone.
‘Fitz,’ Molly gently rebuked me. ‘She’s asking you for paper. And a quill and ink.’
I transferred my gaze to Molly. She met my eyes steadily, her brows raised that I could be either so stupid or so unreasonable. The happily affirmative note in Bee’s babbling seemed to confirm that she was right. I looked down at Bee. She lifted her face and looked past me, but did not retreat. ‘Paper,’ I said, and did not hesitate as I took a sheet of the best quality paper that Chade had sent to me. ‘A quill.’ It was one I had just cut. ‘And ink.’ I slid a small well of black ink across the table. I set the paper and the quill on the edge of my desk. Bee stood silent for a moment. Her mouth worked and then she pointed a small finger and trilled at me.
‘Coloured ink,’ Molly specified and Bee gave a wriggle of delight. I surrendered.
‘We’ll have to share, then,’ I told her. I moved a chair to the other side of my table, set a cushion on it and then arranged Bee’s supplies where she could reach them. She surprised me with the alacrity with which she mounted to this throne.
‘You dip just the pointed end of the quill into the inkpot …’ I began. I stopped. I had ceased to exist in Bee’s world. Her entire focus was on the pen that she carefully inked and then set to her page. I froze and watched the child. Obviously, she had been observing me for some time. I had expected her to dunk the quill and smear ink across the page. Instead, her little hand moved with precision.
Her effort was not without blotches and drips. No one uses a pen correctly the very first time. But the image that emerged onto the page was intricately and intimately drawn. In silence, she filched my pen wipe, cleaned the quill. She blew on the black ink to dry it and claimed the yellow and then the orange inks. I watched in rapt silence, scarce aware when Molly drew near. A bee, exactly the scale of a live one, emerged from the pen onto the paper. There came a moment when our Bee heaved a huge sigh of satisfaction, as if she had consumed the perfect meal, and stood back from her work. I examined it without moving closer to her, the delicate antennae, the panes of the wings and the bright bands of yellow shaded to orange.
‘It’s her name, isn’t it?’ I said quietly to Molly.
Bee shot me a rare look that met my eyes and then skated away. Her annoyance with me was plain. She drew the paper closer as if to protect it from me and hunched over it. The pen once more visited the black well and then scratched carefully over the paper. I glanced at Molly, who wore a proud and secretive smile. I watched in growing suspense until Bee leaned back from the page. There, in careful characters that mirrored Molly’s hand was lettered ‘Bee’.
I was not aware my mouth was hanging open until Molly put her fingers under my chin and pushed it shut. Tears welled in my eyes. ‘She can write?’
‘Yes.’
I took a breath and carefully capped my excitement. ‘But only her name. Does she understand they are letters? That they mean something?’
Molly made a small sound of exasperation. ‘Of course she does. Fitz, did you think I would neglect her education as mine was? She reads along with me. So she recognizes the letters. But this is the first time she has taken pen in hand and written.’ Her smile trembled a little. ‘In truth, I am almost as surprised as you to see her do so. To know the shape of a letter on the page is so different from reproducing it on paper. Truly, I did not do as well as she has the first time I tried to write.’
Bee was now ignoring both of us as a twining vine of honeysuckle began to emerge from her pen.
I wrote no more that night. I ceded all my inks and my best quills to my little daughter, and allowed her to fill page after page of my best paper with illustrations of flowers, herbs, butterflies and insects. I would have needed to study the live plant to draw it well; she drew it forth from her memory and captured it on the page.
I went to bed that night a grateful man. I was not at all convinced that Bee understood the concepts of letters or writing or reading. What I had seen was someone who could duplicate on paper what she had seen, even if she did not have the model before her. It was a rare enough talent that it gave me hope for her. It put me in mind of Thick, a man prodigiously strong in the Skill even if he could not fully grasp the concept of what he was doing when he used it.
That night, in bed with Molly warm beside me, I had the rare pleasure of reaching out with the Skill and rousing Chade from a sound sleep. What? he demanded of me in a tone of reproach.
Do you remember the herbal scrolls from that Spice Island trader that we set aside as beyond my skill to copy? The tattered ones that might be of Elderling origin?’
Of course. What of them?
Send them to me. With a good supply of paper. Oh, and a set of rabbit hair brushes. And have you any of that purple ink from the Spice Islands?
Do you know how much that costs, boy?
Yes. And I know that you can afford it, if it’s used well. Send me two bottles of that, as well.
I smiled as I closed my mind to his hailstorm of questions. They were still rattling against my walls as I sank into sleep,