Robin Hobb - The Golden Fool

‘Fer what’s a birdie agonna do t’you?’ one drunkenly demanded of a less courageous fellow. ‘Shittapon you, praps? You oughta be ‘customed to that, Reddy. That woman of yers does it oft enough.’

And that made for a brief and very cramped fistfight at that end of the table. When the combatants had been ejected by their fellows into the chilly night, Web declared that he’d had all the ale and stories he could hold for one evening, but he’d be pleased to join them again tomorrow, if he were welcome. To my dismay, Blade and several others heartily decided he was welcome, Witted or not, yes, and his bird, too.

‘Well, my Risk’s not one for coming within walls, nor for flight by dark. But I’ll see you get a chance to meet her tomorrow, if you’ve a mind.’

As we parted from them and crossed the castle to the east apartments, it gradually came to me that Web had probably done more to further the cause of the Witted tonight than all the talk of the earlier day had. Perhaps he truly was a gift to us.

I reported on Web to Chade, of course, and in turn he reported to the Queen. And thus at the next day’s meeting, in front of the Six Duchies representatives, she made certain that Web had the first opportunity to speak. I crouched behind the wall, my eye to the crack and listened to him. She introduced him to the delegates before he spoke, saying that he represented the oldest of the Old Blood lines, and that she desired that he be treated with all courtesy. Yet when she yielded her audience to him, he assured them all that he was only a humble fisherman who happened to be descended of parents far wiser than he would ever be. Then, with an abruptness that left me gasping, he introduced his proposals for ending the unjust persecution of the Witted. He spoke as much to the Witted as he did to our queen as he suggested that perhaps her best method to begin to bring the two groups together would be to admit some Witted into her own household.

As he spoke, he sounded more like a Jhaampe wise-man settling a dispute than a spokesman for the Old Blood. My queen’s eyes shone as she listened to him. I caught not just Chade, but at least two of the Six Duchies men, nodding thoughtfully at what he proposed. Step by step, he revealed the reasoning behind his suggestion. He attributed much of the unjust persecution to fear, and much of the fear to ignorance. The ignorance he blamed on the Witted’s need to remain hidden for their own safety. Where better to begin an end to ignorance than in the Queen’s own household? Let an Old Blood woman with birding-skills assist in the mews, and a Witted dog-boy come to help her Huntswoman. Let her have a Witted page or maid, for no other reason than to let folk discover that they were no different from unWitted pages and maids. Let other nobles see that these folk did no harm to her household or to others, but rather prospered them. The Queen would, of course, commit to their protection from persecution until others had been won firmly to the cause. The Old Blood thus placed would take oath to initiate no strife.

Then, with a smoothness which left me gasping, he offered his own services to the Queen. This he did as courteously and correctly as any court-trained noble’s son, so that I wondered uneasily if he had truly come of a fishing family. Down on one knee he sank before her, and begged to be allowed to remain at Buckkeep when the others departed. Let him live in the keep, and both learn and teach. Carefully keeping the secret of the Prince’s Wit when speaking before her Six Duchies councillors, he nonetheless offered himself as ‘a rough tutor, admittedly but one who would love to educate the Prince in how our folk live and in our customs, that he might know this group of his subjects more thoroughly’.

Chade objected. ‘But if you do not return to your folk as we promised, will not some say we kept you hostage against your will?’ I suspected my old mentor did not desire an Old Blood man counselling the Prince.

Web chuckled at his concern. ‘All in the room have witnessed that I offer myself. If after they leave me here, you choose to chop and burn me, well, then let it be said that it was due to my own wooden-headedness, that I trusted wrong. But I do not think that will be so. Will it, my lady?’

‘Of a certainty, not!’ Queen Kettricken declared. ‘And whatever else may come of these meetings, I will count it a benefit that I have added such a clear-minded fellow to my household men.’

His careful pondering of the situation and his suggestions had taken all the morning. When it was time for the noon meal, Web declared that he would eat with his new friends in the guardroom and then introduce them to his bird. Before Chade could suggest that would not be wise, the Queen announced that indeed she and Chade and her Six Duchies councillors would join him there, for she too wished see his Risk.

How I longed to be present for that, not just to witness it, but also to see the reaction of the guards when they found themselves honoured with the Queen at their table. It could not damage Web’s standing with him that he had brought about such a thing. And I did not doubt that more would come to meet his bird if the Queen herself did not fear his Wit-beast.

But I was trapped in my watching-place, being Chade’s eyes when he was not in the room. I saw the Old Bloods unmask after their food had been brought in. As before, Boyo and Silvereye spoke loudly of injustices done and the need for retribution, but theirs were not the only voices raised. Some spoke of Web’s performance with amazement. I heard at least one woman say to another that, having met Kettricken, she would not mind entrusting a son to her to be her page, for she had heard that all children in the Keep were given a chance to learn both numbers and writing. And a young man, clearly a minstrel from his voice, wondered aloud what it would be like to sing the Old Blood songs at the Queen’s own hearth, and if such a thing would not truly be the best way to teach the unWitted that his people were neither fearsome nor monstrous.

A crack had been opened. Tomorrow’s possibilities were gaining strength, growing in the light of Web’s optimism. I wondered if they could grow enough to cast their shadows over the weeds of yesterday’s wrongs.

The afternoon, however, was a disappointment, long and tedious. When the Queen and her councillors returned with Web, Boyo rose to claim his turn to speak. Forewarned about him by Chade and myself, Kettricken listened calmly as he detailed first all the generalized wrongs the Farseers had ever done to the Old Bloods, and then the specifics of his case. There, at least, my queen was able to muffle him. Firmly but courteously, she told him that now was not the time for her to settle personal wrongs. If lands and wealth had been unjustly taken from his family, then that was a matter to be settled before her on a judging day rather than at this time. Chade would help him to make an appropriate appointment, and would also tell him what documentation he would need. Most of it would likely relate to the need for him to define a clear line of succession from his dispossessed ancestor to himself, including a minstrel that could attest to his being of the line of the eldest child of an eldest child for the intervening generations.

Very neatly she made it seem that he was putting his own interests ahead of the others at the meeting, as indeed he was. She did not refuse to find justice for him, but relegated his seeking of it to the path which any Six Duchies citizen would have to follow. She reminded them all that this convocation was intended to allow all to join their thoughts as to how unjust persecution of the Old Bloods might be ended.