Robin Hobb: The Tawny Man Series Books 2 and 3

I reined back before I plunged completely into self-pity. I was not the only one who was bereaved. Despite the Prince’s briefer bond with his cat, I knew he suffered deeply. The magic link that the Wit forms between a human and an animal is a complex one. Severing it is never trivial. Yet the boy had mastered his grief and was stalwartly going through the motions of fulfilling his duties. At least I did not have to face my betrothal tomorrow night. The Prince had been plunged immediately back into his routine since we returned to Buckkeep yesterday afternoon. Last night he had attended the ceremonies that welcomed his bride-to-be. Tonight, he must smile and eat, make conversation, accept good wishes, dance and appear well pleased with what fate and his mother had decreed for him. I thought of bright lights and skirling music and laughter and loud conversations. I shook my head in sympathy for him.

‘And what makes you shake your head like that, Tom Badgerlock?’

Jinna’s voice broke in on my introspection, and I realized that the silence had grown long. I drew a long breath and found an easy lie. ‘The storm shows no sign of dying, does it? I was pitying those who must be out in it this night. I am grateful that I am not one of them.’

‘Well. To that, I’ll add that I am thankful for the company,’ she said, and smiled.

‘And I the same,’ I added awkwardly.

To pass the night in the placid companionship of a pleasant woman was a novel experience for me. Jinna’s cat sat purring on my lap, while Jinna’s hands were occupied with knitting. The cosy warmth of the firelight reflected in the auburn shades of Jinna’s curly hair and the scattering of freckles on her face and forearms. She had a good face, not beautiful, but calm and kind. Our conversation had wandered wide this evening, from the herbs she had used to make the tea to how driftwood fires sometimes burned with coloured flames and beyond, to discussing ourselves. I had discovered she was about six years younger than I truly was, and she had expressed surprise when I claimed to be forty-two. That was seven years past my true age; the extra years were part of my role as Tom Badgerlock. It pleased me when she said that she had thought I was closer to her age. Yet neither of us really gave mind to our words. There was an interesting little tension between us as we sat before the fire and conversed quietly. The curiosity suspended between us was like a string, plucked and humming.

Before I had left on my errand with Lord Golden, I had spent an afternoon with Jinna. She had kissed me. No words had accompanied that gesture, no avowals of love or romantic compliments. There had been just the one kiss, interrupted when her niece had returned from the market. Right now, neither of us quite knew how to return to the place where that moment of intimacy had been possible. For my part, I was not sure that I wished to venture there. I was not ready even for a second kiss, let alone what it might bring. My heart was too raw. Yet I wanted to be here, sitting before her fireside. It sounds a contradiction, and perhaps it was. I did not want the inevitable complications that caresses would lead to, yet in my Wit-bereavement, I took comfort in this woman’s company.

Yet Jinna was not why I had come here tonight. I needed to see Hap, my foster son. He had just arrived at Buckkeep Town and had been staying here with Jinna. I wished to be sure his apprenticeship with Gindast the woodworker was going well. I must also, much as I dreaded it, give him the news of Nighteyes’ death. The wolf had raised the lad as much as I had. Yet even as I winced at the thought of telling him I hoped it would, as the Fool had said, somehow ease the burden of my sorrow. With Hap, I could share my grief, however selfish a thing that might be. Hap had been mine for the last seven years. We had shared a life, and the wolf’s companionship. If I still belonged to anyone or anything, I belonged to my boy. I needed to feel the reality of that.

‘More tea?’ Jinna offered me.

I did not want more tea. We had already drunk three pots of it, and I had visited her back-house twice. Yet she offered the tea to let me know I was welcome to stay, no matter how late, or early, the hour had become. So, ‘Please,’ I said, and she set her knitting aside, to repeat the ritual of filling the kettle with fresh water from the cask and hanging it from the hook and swinging it over the fire again. Outside, the storm rattled the shutters in a fresh surge of fury. Then it became not the storm, but Hap’s rapping at the door. ‘Jinna?’ he called unevenly. ‘Are you awake still?’

‘I’m awake,’ she replied. She turned from putting the kettle on. ‘And lucky for you that I am, or you’d be sleeping in the shed with your pony. I’m coming.’

As she lifted the latch, I stood up, gently dumping the cat off my lap.

Imbecile. The cat was comfortable . Fennel complained as he slid to the floor, but the big orange tom was too stupefied with warmth to make much of a protest. Instead he leapt onto Jinna’s chair and curled up in it without deigning to give me a backward glance.

The storm pushed in with Hap as he shoved the door open. A gust of wind carried rain into the room. ‘Whew. Put the wood in the hole, lad,’ Jinna rebuked Hap as he lurched in. Obediently he shut the door behind him and latched it, and then stood dripping before it.

‘It’s wild and wet out there,’ he told her. His smile was beatifically drunken, but his eyes were lit with more than wine. Infatuation shone there, as unmistakable as the rain slipping from his lank hair and running down his face. It took him a moment or two to realize that I was there, watching him. Then, ‘Tom! Tom, you’ve finally come back!’ He flung his arms wide in a drunkard’s ebullience for the ordinary, and I laughed and stepped forward to accept his wet hug.

‘Don’t get water all over Jinna’s floor!’ I rebuked him.

‘No, I shouldn’t. Well. I won’t then,’ he declared, and dragged off his sodden coat. He hung it on a peg by the door and peeled off his wool cap to drip there as well. He tried to take his boots off standing, but lost his balance. He sat down on the floor and tugged them off. He leaned far to set them by the door under his wet coat and then sat up with a blissful smile. ‘Tom. I’ve met a girl.’

‘Have you? I thought you’d met a bottle from the smell of you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he admitted unabashedly. ‘That, too. But we had to drink the Prince’s health, you know. And that of his intended. And to a happy marriage. And for many children. And for as much happiness for ourselves.’ He gave me a wide and fatuous smile. ‘She says she loves me. She likes my eyes.’

‘Well. That’s good.’ How many times in his life had folk looked at his mismatched eyes, one brown and one blue, and made the sign against evil? It had to be balm to meet a girl who found them attractive.

And I suddenly knew that now was not the time to burden him with any grief of mine. I spoke gently but firmly. ‘I think perhaps you should go to bed, son. Won’t your master be expecting you in the morning?’

He looked as if I had slapped him with a fish. The smile faded from his face. ‘Oh. Yes, yes that’s true. He’ll expect me. Old Gindast expects his apprentices to be there before his journeymen, and his journeymen to be well at work when he arrives.’ He gathered himself and slowly stood up. ‘Tom, this apprenticeship hasn’t been what I expected at all. I sweep and carry boards and turn wood that is drying. I sharpen tools and clean tools and oil tools. Then I sweep again. I rub oil finishes into the completed pieces. But not a tool have I had in my hand to use, in all these days. It’s all, “watch how this is done, boy,” or “repeat back what I just told you” and “this isn’t what I asked for. Take this back to the wood stock and bring me the fine-grained cherry. And be quick about it.” And, Tom, they call me names. “Country boy” and “dullard”.’