Robin Hobb - The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy - Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, Fool’s Fate

The lad turned it in his hands thoughtfully, glanced up at Golden’s smile, and drank. Then he sat, the bottle held loosely in his hands, the neck of it pointed towards the small fire that limned his features against the night. ‘My cat took me to her,’ he confided at last. He took another sip of the wine. ‘I had slipped out one night to go hunting with her. Sometimes, I just have to get away on my own. You know what it is like at court. If I say I will ride at dawn, I arise and there are six gentlemen ready to accompany me, and a dozen ladies to bid us farewell. If I say I will walk in the gardens after dinner, I cannot turn a corner in the path without finding a lady writing poetry beneath a tree, or encountering some noble who wishes me to have a word with the Queen on his behalf. It’s stifling, Lord Golden. In truth, I do not know why so many choose to come to court when they do not have to. Had I the privilege of freedom, I would leave it.’ He drew himself up suddenly and looked all around at the night. ‘I have left it,’ he declared abruptly, almost as if it surprised him. ‘I’m here, away from all that pretence and manipulation. And I’m happy. Or I was happy, until you came to drag me back.’ And he glared at me, as if it were all my doing, and Lord Golden an innocent bystander.

‘So. You went out hunting with your cat one night, and this lady …?’ Lord Golden deftly picked up the threads that had interested him.

‘I went out hunting with my cat and –’

The cat’s name? Nighteyes pressed with sudden urgency.

I grunted mockingly. ‘Sounds to me as if the cat and the lady got the same name. “Neverspeakit.”’ I skewered the rabbit on my sword. I didn’t like to cook on the end of my blade; it was bad for the tempering, but to get a green branch I would have had to leave the conversation and go to the forest’s edge and I wanted to hear what he had to say.

The Prince replied scathingly to my comment. ‘I would think that you, as a Piebald, would know that beasts have their own names, which they reveal to you at a time they think is proper. My cat has not shared her true name with me yet. When I am worthy of that confidence, I will have it.’

‘I’m not a “Piebald”,’ I asserted gruffly.

Dutiful ignored me. He took a breath and spoke earnestly to Lord Golden. ‘And the same is true of my lady. I do not need to know her name when it is her essence that I love.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Lord Golden comforted him. He hitched himself closer to the Prince and went on, ‘But I would hear of your first meeting with the fair one. For I confess that at heart, I am as soft a romantic as any court lady weeping at a minstrel’s tale.’ He spoke as if what Dutiful had said was of no consequence. But a profound sense of wrongness washed through me. It was true that Nighteyes had not immediately shared his true name with me, but the cat and the Prince had been together for months. I turned the sword, but the rabbit flopped around on the blade, its body cavity a loose fit, the seared side turning back to the flames. Grumbling, I pulled it out of the fire and burnt my fingers jamming it more firmly onto the weapon. I thrust it back over the flames and held it there.

‘Our first meeting,’ Dutiful mused. A rueful smile curved his mouth. ‘I fear that has yet to happen. In some ways. In all the important ways, I have met her. The cat showed her to me, or rather, she revealed herself to me through the cat.’

Lord Golden cocked his head and gave the boy an interested, if confused look. The lad’s smile widened.

‘It is hard to explain to someone with no experience of the Wit. But I will try. Through my magic, I can share thoughts with the cat. Her senses enhance my own. Sometimes, I can lie abed at night, and surrender my mind to hers, and become one with her. I see what she sees, feel what she feels. It’s wonderful, Lord Golden. Not debased and bestial as others would have you believe. It brought the world to life around me. If there was some way I could share the experience with you, I would, just so that you could understand it.’

The boy was so earnest in his proselytizing. I glimpsed the quick flash of amusement through Lord Golden’s eyes, but I am sure the Prince saw only his sympathetic warmth. ‘I shall have to imagine it,’ he murmured.

Prince Dutiful shook his head. ‘Ah, but you cannot. No one can, who is not born with this magic. That is why all persecute us. Because, lacking this magic, they become filled with envy and it turns to hatred.’

‘I think fear might have something to do with it,’ I muttered, but the Fool shot me a glance that bade me shut up. Chastened, I turned away from them and rotated the smoking rabbit.

‘I think I can imagine your communion with the cat. How wondrous it must be to share the thoughts of such a noble creature! How rich to experience the night and the hunt with one so attuned to the natural world! But I confess, I do not understand how she could reveal this wondrous lady to you … unless she guided you to her?’

How pleasant to feel her filthy claws raking your belly!

Shush.

Cats noble creatures? Spitting, carrion-breathed sneaks.

With difficulty, I ignored Nighteyes’ asides and focused on the conversation while appearing to be engrossed with the rabbit. The Prince was smiling and shaking his head at Lord Golden, totally enraptured now with speaking of his love. Had I ever been that young?

‘It was not like that. One night, as the cat and I moved through a forest of black trees, lit to silver by the moon’s radiance, I perceived we were not alone. It was not that uncomfortable sensation of being watched. This was more like … Imagine if the wind was the breath of a woman on the back of your neck, if the scent of the forest was her perfume, the chuckling of a brook her amusement. There was nothing there I had not seen or heard or felt a hundred times, and yet that night it was more than it had ever been before. At first, I thought I was imagining it, and then, through the cat, I began to know more of her. I felt her watching us as we hunted together, and I knew that she approved of me. When I shared fresh meat with the cat from her kill, I sensed that the woman shared its savour. The cat’s senses sharpen my own, I told you that. But suddenly I was seeing things, not as the cat or as myself, but as she saw things. I saw how the tumbled gap in a stone wall framed a struggling sapling, I saw the infinite pattern in the ripple of moonlight on a stream’s rapids, I saw … I saw the night world as her poetry.’

Prince Dutiful sighed slowly. He was lost in his romance, but the slow suspicion forming in my mind sent a chill up my back. I could feel the perk of the wolf’s ears and the readiness in his muscles as he shared my foreboding.

‘That was how it began. As shared glimpses of the beauty of the world. I was so foolish. At first, I thought she must be near us, watching us from a hiding place. I kept asking the cat to take me to her. And she did, but not in the manner I had expected. It was like approaching a castle through a fog. Layer after layer of mist lifted like veils. The closer I came to her, the more I longed to behold her in the flesh. Yet she taught me it would be nobler to wait for that. First, I must complete my lessons in the Wit. I must learn to surrender my human boundaries and self, and let the cat possess me. When I let the cat inside me, when I become the cat completely, then am I most aware of my lady. For we are both bonded to the same creature.’

Can that happen? The wolf’s question was incredulous and sharp.

I don’t know , I admitted. Then, more strongly. But I don’t think so .

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ I said aloud. I tried to say it in an unthreatening way, but I wanted the Fool to know that immediately. Nevertheless, the Prince bristled at me.