Fool's Quest

I left her room and drifted through the halls until I came to my ruined study. I entered and almost thought of building a fire and ordering my thoughts by writing them down. Instead, I triggered the secret door and returned to Bee’s tiny hidden chamber. As I turned the corner to enter it, my Wit told me that someone awaited me there. I felt a sudden leap of hope, only to confront a small black cat blinking resentfully at my candlelight. He was curled on the cushions in perfect ease and regarded me as an annoying but unimportant intruder. We looked at each other.



She’s not here.



She is Bee?



The girl who promised me fish and sausage if I would catch rats and mice for her.



I contained my impatience. Someone stole her. Can you tell me about the people who took her?



They took all the fish. And the sausages, too.



I noticed that. What else?



Some of them stank. Some did not.



I waited for a time. Cats themselves may be very chatty, but they seem to resent it in anyone else. Cats like listeners. But when he had sat regarding me for some time, I dared to ask, Anything else?



They came for her. The ones that did not stink.



What?



A silence fell between us. My question went unanswered. Finally I said aloud, “I wonder if they found all the fish and sausages? I think I shall go down to the pantry to find out.”



I took my shortened candle and left him, eeling my way through the wandering passages. I stepped over the gnawed bread, and took up one of the fallen candles and kindled it from my failing one. It had been nibbled by mice, but not badly. I listened at the door before pushing it open and emerging into the storage room. The sacks of beans and peas and grains had been left. The raiders had taken meat and fish, the two supplies that any traveler depletes first. Could I deduce anything from that?



Gone. Confirmed the cat.



“Do you care for cheese at all? Or butter?”



The cat looked at me speculatively. I pushed the door to the labyrinth closed and went down a short stairway into the cold-room, lined with stone. Here on shelves were crocks of summer butter and wheels of cheese. Either the raiders had not fancied these or they had not discovered the cold-room. I took out my belt-knife and carved a wedge of cheese. As I did so, I became aware that I was hungry. I felt shamed by that. My child and Lady Shun had vanished from Withywoods. Carried off by brutes into the cold and dark. How could I feel such ordinary things as hunger? Or sleepiness?



Yet I did.



I pared off another generous wedge and went back to the kitchen. The cat followed me and when I sat down at the table, he leapt up on it. He was a handsome fellow, very tidy in black and white, the picture of health save for the kink in his tail. I broke off a chunk of the cheese and set it down before him. By the time I returned to the table with a piece of bread and a mug of ale, he had finished it and hooked a second slab toward himself. I ignored that. We ate together and I tried to be patient. What could a cat know, I wondered, that would do me any good?



He finished before I did and sat cleaning his whiskers and dabbing at his face. When I set my mug down on the table, he stopped and looked at me. The ones that didn’t stink had no scent of their own at all.



A shiver ran up my spine. The Scentless One, my wolf had called the Fool. Because he had no scent. And he was invisible to my Wit. Would that be true of all folk with White in their bloodlines?



Once they had her, they stopped killing. They took only her. And one other.



I did not appear too interested. I rose and went back to the cold-room. I emerged with more cheese. I sat down at the table, broke off a respectable piece, and placed it before the cat. He looked down at it, then up at me. They took a woman.



Lady Shun.



I do not bother with the names of humans. But that might have been her name. He bent his head to eat his cheese.



“The girl who promised you fish and sausages. Did they … hurt her?”



He finished part of the cheese, sat up, and then suddenly decided to groom his front claws. I waited. After a time, he looked up at me. I scratched her once. Hard. She took it. He hunched over the remainder of the cheese. Pain is not the thing she fears. I teetered between feeling comforted and horrified. I left him eating and went back to the estate study. The boy did not stir as I put the last of the wood into the fire. With a sigh, I took up Chade’s wet cloak and the lantern I’d earlier taken from the door servant. I lit it again and carried it down the hall.



My errand had been firewood, but when I stepped outside into the clear night, my mind cleared. The bite of the cold seized me and the terrible lassitude that was misting my mind receded a bit in the physical discomfort. I walked instead to the burnt ruin of my stables. As I did so, I crossed the drive in front of Withywoods. Snow had fallen recently. There were no tracks to read. I moved in wide circles around the stable and then between the house and stables, looking for sleigh tracks. But the fresh snow had gentled all tracks to dimples. The tracks the runners had left were indistinguishable from the marks of the carts and wagons we used on the estate. I walked through the darkness down the long drive that led up to Withy. Somewhere Per had bled and somewhere Bee had been captured. But I found no traces of either event. I found my horse’s tracks, and the hoofprints of Sildwell’s horse. No others. No one else had come this way for days. Falling snow and wind had softened all traces of the raiders’ passage as smoothly as whatever magic had misted my people’s memories of them.