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“Yes, ma'am. I'll be happy to.”

“I daresay you'll be happy to. Until we get you behind closed doors. Take her arm, now, and help her along.” But that was easier said than done, for Patience clung to my other arm as if a river might sweep her away if she let go.Advertisement

Lacey was, in truth, swaying as she walked, and I felt very bad indeed to have given her such a shock. Neither one of them said another word to me, though twice Patience pointed out caterpillars on the roses and said they were never tolerated in the old days. Once inside, we still had a long walk through the Great Hall, and then up the wide stairs. I was grateful that it was only one flight, for Patience muttered nasty words as she mastered each riser, and Lacey's knees crackled alarmingly. We went down the hall and Patience waved at a door for me. It was one of the best chambers in Buckkeep, and it pleased me more than I could say that Queen Kettricken had accorded her this respect. Lady Patience's traveling trunk was already open in the middle of the room, and a hat was already perched on the mantel. Kettricken had even recalled that Lady Patience preferred to dine in her chambers, for a small table and two chairs had been placed in the fall of sunlight from the deep-set window.

I saw each of them to a chair, and when they were seated, asked them if there was anything else I could bring them.

“Sixteen years,” Patience snapped. “You can fetch me sixteen years! Shut that door. I don't suppose it would be wise for this to be gossip all over Buckkeep. Sixteen years, and not a peep, not a hint. Tom, Tom, whatever were you thinking?”

“More likely, not thinking at all,” Lacey suggested, looking at me with martyred eyes. That stung, for always when I had been a boy and in trouble with Patience, Lacey had taken my part. She seemed to have recovered well from her faint. There were spots of color on her cheeks. She ponderously rose from her chair and went into the adjoining room. In a few moments, she returned with three teacups and a bottle of brandy on a little tray. She set it down on the small table between them, and I winced at the sight of her lumpy knuckles and gnarled fingers. Age had crippled those nimble hands that once had tatted lace by the hour. “I suppose we could all do with a bit of this. Not that you deserve any,” she said coldly. “That was quite a fright you gave me in the garden. Not to mention years of grief.”

“Sixteen years,” Patience clarified, in case I had managed to forget in the last few moments. Then, turning to Lacey, she said, “I told you he wasn't dead! When we prepared his body to bury him, even then, washing his cold legs, I told you he couldn't be dead. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew it. And I was right!”

“He was dead,” Lacey insisted. “My lady, he had not breath to fog a bit of glass, nor a single thump of his heart. He was dead.” She pointed a finger at me. It shook slightly. “And now you are not. You had best have a good explanation for this, young man.”

“It was Burrich's idea,” I began, and before I could say another word, Patience threw up her hands in the air, crying, “Oh, I should have guessed that man would be at the bottom of this. That's your girl he has been raising all these years, isn't it? Three years after we'd buried you, we heard a rumor. That tinker, Cottlesby, that sells such nice needles, he told us he had seen Molly in, oh, some town, with a little girl at her side. I thought to myself then, how old? For I said to Lacey, when Molly left my service so abruptly she puked and slept like a woman with child. Then, she was gone, before I could even offer to help her with the babe. Your daughter, my grandchild! Then, later, I heard that Burrich had gone with her, and when I asked about, he was claiming all the children as his own. Well. I might have known. I might have known.”

I had not been prepared for Patience to be quite so well informed. I should have been. In the days after my death, she had run Buckkeep Castle, and developed a substantial network of folk who reported to her. “I think I could do with some brandy,” I said quietly. I reached for the decanter, but Patience slapped my hand away.

“I'll do it!” she exclaimed crossly. “Do you think you can pretend to be dead and vanish from my life for sixteen years and then walk in and pour yourself some of my good brandy? Insolence!”

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She got it open, but when she tried to pour, her hand shook so wildly that she threatened to deluge the table. I took it from her, as she began to gasp, and poured some into our cups. By the time I set the bottle down, she was sobbing. Her hair, never tidy for long, had half fallen down. When had so much gray come into it? I knelt down before her and forced myself to look up into her faded eyes. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed harder. Cautiously, I reached up and tugged her hands from her face. “Please believe me. It was never by my choice, Mother. If I could have come back to you without putting the people I loved at risk, I would have. You know that. And the way you prepared my body for burial may have saved my life. Thank you.” pqdm.com