The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince (12 page)

Nor did they burn his flesh. At least, not while Redbird dizzily watched did they do so. Instead, Lord Canny demanded that each man take a piece of the hewn body, wrapped in his cloak, and bear it away until he could decide how they would speak of all that had happened. And when King Charger’s body had been gathered, it was Canny himself who took away in his cloak the head and the circlet that still adorned it. Young Lord Lock of Bearns they left beneath that tree. It was Lord Curl who drew the king’s hip-knife from its sheath and left it standing in the boy’s back, as if such a short blade could have cut his throat so deeply that it near severed his neck as Curl’s blade had done.

Now the tale returns to Redbird who bade me note clearly that he considered himself an unredeemable coward but a truthful one. Sick of soul and quaking with terror, he felt he could neither loosen his grip on the trees branches nor otherwise move. He stayed in the tree for all that day and through the night to the next day. Only the raven did he have for company, and the bird came and sat on the branch near him and watched him with one eye, as if to say that they alone could witness the truth of what had been done. Yet Redbird the minstrel felt he had been seized by silence. A kitchen maid came in the early morning with a gathering basket on her arm, and when she saw the body of young Lord Lock, she fled screaming. Still Redbird did not stir.

Even when men came to examine the body and shout over the king’s knife in his back, and then to bear away the body of young Lord Lock, Redbird did not call out to them or come down. Even when he heard them exclaim at how low a death the boy had suffered, stabbed in the back by the king with his buck’s-head knife and left in the dirt like dead vermin, Redbird was still. All that time, folk came and went under the tree, talking and gossiping of what they knew not, weaving a tale from blood on the earth and a small dirk in a boy’s back. And never once did any of them look up to see the stricken minstrel and the raven in the tree.

Perhaps he would have stayed in the tree until he died, save that in his weariness and hunger and yes, terror, he finally swooned and fell from the branches to the blood-soaked earth below. There he was found by a cook’s helper, come late to the garden to gather herbs, and she called the healers. They gathered him up and took him into the castle. None could tell what ailed him, for the blackness of what he had seen had stilled his tongue and turned his eyes to staring. They all knew him for the king’s minstrel and thought he had come to that spot to see where the evil deed had been done. Few thought well of him, tainted as he was now by Charger’s friendship. But they bathed him, and fed him, and cared for him tenderly as is the rightful duty of a healer to any injured man. And so I will speak no ill of them.

After a day had passed, word was sent to his mother, to me, to come to take charge of my son, a man turned to a child again. And when I arrived there, I found Redbird as they had told me, staring of eye and still of tongue. And outside the window by his bed a raven sat in a tree and watched us. So the healer Nance remarked to me, saying the raven had followed them as they carried him from the garden to this bed, and as she is known as a woman who speaks true, so shall it be recorded as truth here.

I took my son back to my rooms in the keep. Alone, I urged him to walk and I took him up the stairs, a step at a time. No one aided me, but no one hindered me either. A draught I mixed for him, one long known to my family, and he plunged into sleep. A night and a full day and half a night more passed before he opened his eyes, but when he did, his soul was in his body again. And in the dark of that night, as I sat by his bed in a room lit by a single candle, his first words to me were that I must fetch the best pen and ink and vellum to write on. And when I had done so he first told me the full tale of all that had happened. Sitting in that circle of yellow light, I wrote it down as he spoke it, each word fresh and new in the telling, to be sure no drop of truth was lost from it.

Since no one had seen Redbird in the garden, none of the traitors who had slain their king knew there was a witness to their deed. Redbird lay in my room, as ill as if his body had been beaten from the shock to his heart and mind. The news I brought back to him each day grieved us both, for Buckkeep, and then all the Six Duchies, seemed to go mad. The king was missing, and the foul tale spread that he had killed young Lock and then fled his evil deed. With no man on the throne to keep order or speak of peace or measured justice, hatred flared and spread like a summer fire.

Much changed in the next ten days. I kept to my routine as far as I could, but said little of Redbird recovering in my room. The door to my chamber was always bolted. My meals with the other servants supplied me with all I needed of gossip and rumor, and all of it was frightening. I scarcely dared look out the window onto the courtyard below for fear of what I might see. All the piebald horses in Buckkeep and every spotted hound in the stables were put to the sword. Those who dared denounce such deeds were declared Witted, partaking of the king’s evil magic. Many a noble of the Motley Court was beaten or simply vanished. Any that could flee did. To be Witted had become a sign of an evil and beastly nature, low and deceiving.

By the end of the month, common men and women had been hanged for the offense of being Witted. That was when the custom of quartering the bodies and burning the parts over water began, for all sorts of tales had spread of how the Witted could change into beasts, or hide their souls in their Witted partner’s body and return later to reclaim their own dead flesh. Now this was a tale never heard before, and I judged that I knew well why such an idea was being planted. To be Witted was spoken of as a taint, and children with one Witted parent were just as endangered as those who had formerly claimed the Wit proudly in their professions as animal-healers and shepherds and grooms. All, not just the truly Witted, lived in terror of being accused of beast-magic. Many—nobles as well as merchants and tradesmen—fled Buckkeep and the entire duchy of Buck, leaving behind their homes, their fortunes and even their names. It was a blood-letting such as Buck had never known.

The Duke of Buck, Strategy Farseer, brother to dead Virile and father to Lord Canny, tried to calm the wild seas that pounded the throne, but he was elderly and not in the best of health. He pointed out that he was the rightful heir to the crown, but he was man enough to refuse to take the throne while the king to whom he had sworn allegiance might still be alive. The other dukes and duchesses of his realm were not so high-minded. Every evil that had befallen the Six Duchies for the last score of years were laid at the feet of the Piebald Prince and the Witted ones he had raised to power. They spoke of his absence as a blessing, and for the first time in many years even the lesser courtiers gossiped openly that the Farseer line had been polluted by the blood of a Chalcedean slave who was a beast-wizard. It was time, they said, for the crown to go to one of true and pure lineage, someone who could redeem the Farseer line from the depths to which it had fallen. They called for Canny to step forward and don the crown that his father had not claimed.

They knew King Charger was dead. This perhaps my Redbird would not sing as a truth, but I saw it in their hard eyes. They never feared that the king would reappear to claim his throne. Even then, I believe, they were concocting the lie that would explain why no body had been found. Their cowardly slaughter of King Charger was being transformed by false-hearted nobles and minstrels who cared only for the favor of the powerful and nothing for the truth. But, to be true to Redbird, I shall write here that the flat truth is that I have no proof that any of them knew, save those who had been present at the murder.

So. My Piebald Prince was dead. I mourned alone for the babe I had held at my breast, for the boy who had not forgotten me when he no longer needed me, for the prince who had elevated my bastard son to be his truthsinger, for the man who had always smiled at first sight of me. I mourned him alone for I dared not speak of how my grief tore me. Redbird was sunk so deep in sorrow that I feared if I added my burden to his, he would drown in it and die. He was all I had left, the only one in the world who might look at me with love. And so, unbelieving, I spoke to him of better days and hope for a future that neither one of us could imagine. Without the protection of King Charger what hope had we, Witted or not? When I left the room, I did so either early or late, taking what I needed from what was left in the kitchens, no longer claiming a place at the servants’ table, but striving to move around unnoticed.

All these changes at Buckkeep Castle transpired in less than thirty days, still with no proof that the king was fled or dead. And all that time, within my room, Redbird dwindled and mourned. He was too lost in his grief even to shear his hair as he should have done for his dead king. He changed his clothes only when I demanded it, and washed his face only when I set the bowl and cloth before him. He ate little, picking at the trays I brought up from the kitchen, letting the soup go cold and scummy, the warmed bread turn to stale crusts. My son shrank and soured, it seemed to me, hating himself because he was a truthsinger and not a warrior. He poisoned himself with self-disgust, and I was powerless to stop him.

Now in that time, Canny had taken Lady Wiffen back to his side and his bed. Whatever rift there had been between them seemed healed. Her hand was on the back of his wrist when they entered the feasting hall, and she rode at his side when he went out to the hunt. And when, two months after her wedding, she began to exhibit the signs of a woman with child, the Canny Court rejoiced and urged Canny Farseer ever more urgently to ascend the throne. They wanted ‘an untainted Farseer’ to wear the crown.

By then, the rumors had begun to circulate that King Charger was no more. There was no proof of it, and yet men nodded and smiled coldly when his name was spoken, often with a curse attached to it. Slowly the story began to leak and swirl into the minds and mouths of all the servants. Lord Canny Farseer had saved the Six Duchies. Soon would come a time when the full tale could be told.

Canny Farseer chose Harvest Fest as the time when he would take the crown. Whatever his father thought of this, he kept it to himself, while the other dukes assented easily to his claim. The Witted folk, both great and small, had been driven from Buckkeep. All of Buckkeep, both castle and town, was deemed cleansed of the Witted taint. Despite the poor spring the harvest promised abundance and this too was attributed to Canny Farseer, as if a mere man could take credit for such a thing. But folk are easily persuaded of such things. A strong and handsome young Farseer stood ready to ascend the throne, and the future queen’s belly already swelled with the heir. An aura of well-being had begun to suffuse the air despite the lingering stench of blood spilled on the earth. All folk, both great and small, seemed weary of the savagery they had witnessed, and were more than ready to declare that with Canny’s ascent to the throne all was now well.

Within my chambers, Redbird had fully come back to himself. He had spent many days in dark dreams or silent staring, tormenting himself for his cowardice. He had spoken only to me of what he had witnessed.

The day for Canny Farseer’s crowning drew nigh, and still Redbird kept to his bed and still the raven perched outside my window. Canny had declared the court purified of beast-magic and now that his labors were finished he was ready to be king of the cleansed kingdom. Only when I reported that announcement to him did Redbird stir. “Fetch me my harp,” were his first words; and his second request was, “Find me a pen, Mother, and set out the best vellum we can buy, for I would make a song for King Canny’s coronation.” He spoke those words merrily, more cheery than he had been in weeks, and yet my heart sank to hear them. I feared what he intended.

Yet still I brought him the ink and the plume and the vellum. He plucked strings softly and muttered words to himself, and then went back and tried other chords and other words. I came and went as quiet as a mouse. Isolated in my rooms, Redbird worked on his song and all the while the raven sat on the sill and kept watch over him.

The day before King Canny’s coronation, the song was finished. I returned to my room to find Redbird rolling up the scroll that held his words. He sealed it with wax and pressed into the wax his sigil. Then, with a sigh, he set it down beside an identically sealed scroll on the table before him. It was then he gave me my instructions: that he wished me to copy his song in my best hand, and to write down in my own words all he had told me. “Then you must hide my tale where it will be safe from those who would seek to destroy truth, and where wise men may find it a decade or a century hence.”

My heart went cold at his words. “Why must they be written down? Surely you will sing this song a thousand times.”

He looked at me, sadness in his eyes, his head tilted to my words and then told, perhaps, the closest to a lie that he had ever uttered. “Perhaps I shall indeed, Mother. Perhaps I shall.” Then he patted my hand. “But all the same, I shall ask you to see to the safety of these scrolls as I have asked. For I believe I shall be remembered for this song as I am for no other.”

Redbird had not been invited to sing at the coronation. Doubtless many thought him dead or fled, for in all that time he had kept to my room in the keep and none had seen him. He had been the Piebald Prince’s friend, and then the Witted King’s minstrel, and well we both knew that all would now regard him with disdain if not hatred. It shames me to admit it now, but the truth I will tell, as he bade me. I thought he was going to seek to curry favor with the new king, that he would sing a song to honor King Canny. It saddened me to see my son so broken, but he had never been a brave child, and given what he had witnessed, I believed he had chosen the wiser path. We would bow our heads to the change in our fortunes, and somehow we would go on.

The coronation was to be held in the Great Hall, and as was the custom, everyone was welcome to witness the event. He bade me go early so that I would have a better view. Yet I did not go to see Canny claim a bloodied crown, but to hear my son sing and to hope that all went well for him. And so I chose a spot that few others would envy, for I went to the upper galleries and stood where I would have at best a view of the left corner of the throne, for from there I could clearly see the minstrel’s dais where they would be called to perform to honor the new king.