She glanced again at the sheets in her hand and fell silent. Then she asked hesitantly, “You like the puppy this much?”
“Yes,” I said simply, and our eyes suddenly met. She stared into me in the same distracted way that she often stared out the window. Abruptly, her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Sometimes, you are so like him that …” She choked. “You should have been mine! It isn’t fair, you should have been mine!”
She cried out the words so fiercely that I thought she would strike me. Instead, she leaped at me and caught me in a flying hug, at the same time treading upon her dog and overturning a vase of greenery. The dog sprang up with a yelp, the vase shattered on the floor, sending water and shards in all directions, while my lady’s forehead caught me squarely under the chin, so that for a moment all I saw was sparks. Before I could react, she flung herself from me and fled into her bedchamber with a cry like a scalded cat. She slammed the door behind her.
And all the while Lacey kept on with her tatting.
“She gets like this, sometimes,” she observed benignly, and nodded me toward the door. “Come again tomorrow,” she reminded me, and added, “You know, Lady Patience has become quite fond of you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Galen
GALEN, SON OF A weaver, came to Buckkeep as a boy. His father was one of Queen Desire’s personal servants who followed her from Farrow. Solicity was then the Skillmaster at Buckkeep. She had instructed King Bounty and his son Shrewd in the Skill, so by the time Shrewd’s sons were boys, she was ancient already. She petitioned King Bounty that she might take an apprentice, and he consented. Galen was greatly favored of the Queen, and at Queen-in-Waiting Desire’s energetic urging, Solicity chose the youth Galen as her apprentice. At that time, as now, the Skill was denied to bastards of the Farseer House, but when the talent bloomed, unexpected, among those not of royalty, it was cultivated and rewarded. No doubt Galen was such a one as this, a boy showing strange and unexpected talent that came abruptly to the attention of a Skillmaster.
By the time the Princes Chivalry and Verity were old enough to receive Skill instruction, Galen had advanced enough to assist in their instruction, though he was but a year or so older than they.
Once again my life sought a balance and briefly found it. The awkwardness with Lady Patience gradually eroded into our acceptance that we would never become casual or overly familiar with one another. Neither of us felt a need to share feelings; instead we skirted one another at a formal distance, and nevertheless managed to gain a good mutual understanding. Yet in the formal dance of our relationship, there were occasional times of genuine merriment, and sometimes we even danced to the same piper.
Once she had given up the notion of teaching me everything that a Farseer prince should know, she was able to teach me a great deal. Very little of it was what she initially intended to teach me. I did gain a working knowledge of music, but this was by the loan of her instruments and many hours of private experimentation. I became more her runner than her page, and from fetching for her, I learned much of the perfumer’s art, as well as greatly increasing my knowledge of plants. Even Chade became enthused when he discovered my new talents for root-and-leaf propagation, and he followed with interest the experiments, few of them successful, that Lady Patience and I made into coaxing the buds of one tree to open to leaf when spliced into another tree. This was a magic she had heard rumored, but did not scruple to attempt. To this day, in the Women’s Garden, there is an apple tree, one branch of which bears pears. When I expressed a curiosity about the tattooer’s art, she refused to let me mark my own body, saying I was too young for such a decision. But without the least qualm, she let me observe, and finally assist with, the slow pricking of dye into her own ankle and calf that became a coiled garland of flowers.