“Perhaps what you have already done is enough?” the Fool ventured.
“I’ve done nothing noteworthy lately,” I informed him. “Unless you count knowing when to stop talking back to Regal.”
“Ah. That’s a skill we’re all learning, then,” he agreed morosely. He drew his knees up to his chin, rested his arms atop them. He took a breath. “Have you no news, then, that you’d care to share with a Fool? A very discreet Fool?”
“I’ve no news to share with you that you would not already know, and probably sooner than I did.” The darkness of the room was restful. My headache was easing.
“Ah.” He paused delicately. “Shall I, perhaps, ask a question? To be answered or not as you see fit?”
“Save your breath and ask it. You know you shall, whether I give you permission or no.”
“Indeed, there you are right. Well then. The question. Ah, I surprise myself, I blush, I do. FitzChivalry, have you made a fitz of your own?”
I sat up slowly on my bed and stared at him. He did not move nor flinch. “What did you ask me?” I demanded quietly.
He spoke softly, almost apologetically now. “I must know. Is Molly carrying your child?”
I sprang at him from the bed, caught him by the throat, and dragged him up to his feet. I drew back my fist, and then stopped, shocked by what the firelight revealed on his face.
“Batter away,” he suggested quietly. “New bruises will not show much atop the old ones. I can creep about unseen for a few more days.”
I snatched my hand back from him. Strange, how the act I had been about to commit now seemed so monstrous when I discovered someone else had already done it. As soon as I released him, he turned away from me, as if his discolored and swollen face shamed him. Perhaps the pallor of his skin and his delicate bone structure made it all the more horrifying to me. It was as if someone had done this to a child. I knelt by the fire and began to build it up.