The Complete Farseer Trilogy. Robin Hobb

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СКАЧАТЬ prodded just below my temple. A blast of pain rocked my consciousness. ‘That’s how near you were to losing an eye to this “teaching”.’ His temper was rising, and I kept my mouth closed. He took a quick turn around the room, then spun to face me.

      ‘That puppy. He’s from Patience’s bitch, isn’t he?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘But you haven’t … oh, Fitz, please tell me that it wasn’t your using the Wit that brought this on you. If he did this to you for that, there’s not a word I can say to anyone, or an eye I can meet anywhere in the keep or the whole kingdom.’

      ‘No, Burrich. I promise you, this had nothing to do with the pup. It was my failure to learn what I had been taught. My weakness.’

      ‘Quiet,’ he ordered me impatiently. ‘Your word is enough. I know you well enough to know your promise will always be true. But for the rest, you’re making no sense at all. Go back to sleep. I’m going out, but I’ll be back soon enough. Get some rest. It’s the real healer.’

      A purpose had settled on Burrich. My words seemed to have satisfied him finally, settled something for him. He dressed quickly, pulling on boots, changing his shirt for a loose one, and putting only a leather jerkin over it. Smithy stood and whined anxiously as Burrich went out, but could not convey his worry to me. Instead, he came to the bedside and scrabbled up, to burrow into the covers beside me and comfort me with his trust. In the bleak despair that settled over me, he was my only light. I closed my eyes and Burrich’s herbs sank me into a dreamless sleep.

      I awoke later that afternoon. A gust of cold air preceded Burrich’s entry into the room. He checked me over, casually prising open my eyes and then running competent hands down my ribs and over my other bruises. He grunted his satisfaction, then changed his torn and muddied shirt for a fresh one. He hummed as he did so, seeming in a fine mood much at odds with my bruises and depression. It was almost a relief when he left again. Below, I heard him whistling and calling orders to the stable-boys. It all sounded so normal and workaday and I longed for it with an intensity that surprised me. I wanted that back, the warm smell of the horses and dogs and straw, the simple tasks, done well and completely, and the good sleep of exhaustion at the end of a day. I longed for it, but the worthlessness that filled me now predicted that, even at that, I would fail. Galen had often sneered at those who worked such simple jobs about the keep. He had only contempt for the kitchen-maids and cooks, derision for the stable-boys, and the men-at-arms who guarded us with sword and bow, were, in his words, ‘ruffians and dolts, doomed to flail away at the world, and control with a sword what they can’t master with their minds’. So now I was strangely torn. I longed to return to being what Galen had convinced me was contemptible, yet doubt and despair filled me that I could even do so much as that.

      I was abed for two days. A jovial Burrich tended me with banter and good nature that I could not fathom. There was a briskness to his step and a sureness to him that made him seem a much younger man. It added to my dispiritedness that my injuries put him in such fine fettle. But after two days of bed rest, Burrich informed me that only so much stillness was good for a man, and it was time I was up and moving if I wished to heal well. He proceeded to find me many minor chores to perform, none heavy enough to tax my strength, but more than enough to keep me busy, for I had to rest often. I believe that the busyness was what he was after rather than any exercise for me, for all I had done was to lie in bed and look at the wall and despise myself. Faced with my unrelenting depression, even Smithy had begun to turn aside from his food. Despite this, he remained my only real source of comfort. Following me about the stable was the purest enjoyment he’d ever had. Every scent and sight he relayed to me with an intensity that, despite my bleakness, renewed in me the wonder I had first felt when I’d plunged into Burrich’s world. Smithy was savagely possessive of me as well, challenging even Sooty’s right to sniff me, and earning himself a snap from Vixen that sent him yipping and cowering to my heels.

      I begged the next day free for myself, and went into Buckkeep Town. The walk took me longer than it had ever taken me before, but Smithy rejoiced in my slow pace, for it gave him time to snuff his way around every clump of grass and tree on the way. I had thought that seeing Molly would lift my spirits, and give me some sense of my own life again. But when I got to the chandlery she was busy, filling three large orders for outbound ships. I sat by the hearth in the shop. Her father sat opposite me, drinking and glaring at me. Although his illness had weakened him, it had not changed his temperament, and on days when he was well enough to sit up, he was well enough to drink. After a while, I gave up all pretence at conversation, and simply watched him drink and disparage his daughter as Molly bustled frantically about, trying to be both efficient and hospitable to her customers. The dreary pettiness of it all depressed me.

      At noon she told her father she was closing the shop while she went to deliver an order. She gave me a rack of candles to carry, loaded her own arms, and we left, latching the door behind us. Her father’s drunken imprecations followed us, but she ignored them. Once outside in the brisk winter wind, I followed Molly as she walked quickly to the back of the shop. Motioning for my silence, she opened the back door and set all that she carried inside. My rack of candles, too, were unloaded there, and then we left.

      For a bit, we just wandered through the town, talking little. She commented on my bruised face; I said only that I had fallen. The wind was cold and relentless, so the market stalls were near-empty of both customers and vendors. She paid much attention to Smithy, and he revelled in it. On our walk back, we stopped at a tea shop, and she treated me to mulled wine and made so much of Smithy that he fell over on his back and all his thoughts turned into wallowing in her affection. I was struck suddenly by how clearly Smithy was aware of her feelings, and yet she did not sense his at all, except on the shallowest level. I quested gently toward her, but found her elusive and drifting, like a perfume that comes strong and then faint on the same breath of wind. I knew that I could have pushed more insistently against her, but somehow it seemed pointless. An aloneness settled on me, a deadly melancholy that she never had been and never would be any more aware of me than she was of Smithy. So I took her brief words to me as a bird pecks at dry breadcrumbs, and let alone the silences she curtained between us. Soon she said that she could not tarry long, or it would be the worse for her, for if her father no longer had the strength to strike her, he was still capable of smashing his beer mug on the floor or knocking over racks of things to show his displeasure at being neglected. She smiled an odd little smile as she told me this, as if it would be less appalling if somehow we thought of his behaviour as amusing. I couldn’t smile and she looked away from my face.

      I helped her with her cloak and we left, walking uphill and into the wind. And that suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life. At her door, she shocked me with a hug and a kiss on the corner of my jaw, the embrace so brief that it was almost like being bumped in the market. ‘Newboy …’ she said, and then, ‘Thank you. For understanding.’

      And then she whisked into her shop and shut the door behind her, leaving me chilled and bewildered. She thanked me for understanding her at a time when I had never felt more isolated from her, and everyone else. All the way up to the keep Smithy kept prattling to himself about all the perfumes he’d smelt on her and how she had scratched him just where he could never reach in front of his ears and of the sweet biscuit she’d fed him in the tea shop.

      It was mid-afternoon when we got back to the stables. I did a few chores, and then went back up to Burrich’s room, where Smithy and I fell asleep. I awoke to Burrich standing over me, a slight frown on his face.

      ‘Up, and let’s have a look at you,’ he commanded, and I arose wearily and stood quiet while he went over my injuries with deft hands. He was pleased with the condition of my hand, and told me that it might go unbandaged now, but to keep the wrapping about my ribs and to come back to have it adjusted each evening. ‘As for the rest of it, keep it clean and dry, and don’t pick at the scabs. If any of it starts to fester, come and see me.’ He filled a little СКАЧАТЬ