A sudden deep blush suffused Burrich’s dark face, and almost I thought I saw tears stand in his dark eyes. He turned aside from me to the fire, and I sensed we were coming to the heart of what he needed to say. Needed, not wanted. There was a deep fear in him, one he denied himself. A lesser man, a man less stern with himself, would have trembled with it.
“… fear for you, boy.” He spoke to the stones above the mantelpiece, and his voice was so deep a rumble that I almost couldn’t understand him.
“Why?” A simple question unlocks best, Chade had taught me.
“I don’t know if he will see it in you. Or what he will do if he does. I’ve heard … no. I know it’s true. There was a woman, actually, little more than a girl. She had a way with birds. She lived in the hills to the west of here, and it was said she could call a wild hawk from the sky. Some folk admired her, and said it was a gift. They took sick poultry to her, or called her in when hens wouldn’t set their eggs. She did aught but good, for all I heard. But Galen spoke out against her. Said she was an abomination, and that it would be the worse for the world if she lived to breed. And one morning she was found beaten to death.”
“Galen did it?”
Burrich shrugged, a gesture most unlike him. “His horse had been out of the stable that night. That much I know. And his hands were bruised, and he had scratches on his face and neck. But not the scratches a woman would have dealt him, boy. Talon marks, as if a hawk had tried to strike him.”
“And you said nothing?” I asked incredulously.
He barked a bitter laugh. “Another spoke before I could. Galen was accused, by the girl’s cousin, who happened to work here in the stables. Galen would not deny it. They went out to the Witness Stones and fought one another for El’s justice, which always prevails there. Higher than the King’s court is the answer to a question settled there, and no one may dispute it. The boy died. Everyone said it was the El’s justice, that the boy had accused Galen falsely. One said it to Galen. And he replied that El’s justice was that the girl had died before she bred, and her tainted cousin, too.”
Burrich fell silent. I was queasy with what he had told me, and a cold fear snaked through me. A question once decided at the Witness Stones could not be raised again. That was more than law, it was the very will of the gods. So I was to be taught by a man who was a murderer, a man who would try to kill me if he suspected I had the Wit.
“Yes,” Burrich said as if I had spoken aloud. “Oh, Fitz, my son, be careful, be wise.” And for a moment I wondered, for it sounded as if he feared for me. But then he added, “Don’t shame me, boy. Or your father. Don’t let Galen say that I’ve let my prince’s son grow up a half beast. Show him that Chivalry’s blood runs true in you.”
“I’ll try,” I muttered. And I went to bed that night wretched and afraid.
The Queen’s Garden was nowhere near the Women’s Garden or the kitchen garden or any other garden in Buckkeep. It was, instead, atop a circular tower. The garden walls were high on the sides that faced the sea, but to the south and west, the walls were low and had seats along them. The stone walls captured the warmth of the sun and fended off the salt winds-from the sea. The air was still there, almost as if hands were cupped over my ears. Yet there was a strange wildness to the garden founded on stone. There were rock basins, perhaps birdbaths or water gardens at one time, and various tubs and pots and troughs of earth, intermingled with statuary. At one time the tubs and pots had probably overflowed with greenery and flowers. Of the plants, only a few stalks and the mossy earth in the tubs remained. The skeleton of a vine crawled over a half-rotted trellis. It filled me with an old sadness colder than the first chill of winter that was also here. Patience should have had this, I thought. She would bring life here again.