“And I’d always wondered if he’d cared.”
“It cost him,” Chade said quietly. “I don’t think he regretted his decision. But he was king-in-waiting. You don’t have that latitude.”
Here it came. I’d suspected he’d know everything. And useless to hope he’d say nothing. I felt a slow flush steal up my face. “Molly.”
He nodded slowly. “It was one thing when it was down in town, and you were more or less a boy. That could be ignored. But now you’re being seen as a man. When she came here asking after you, it started tongues wagging and folk speculating. Patience was remarkably agile at hushing the rumors and taking charge of the situation. Not that I’d have kept the woman here, had it been left to me. But Patience handled it well enough.”
“The woman …” I repeated, stung. If he’d said “the whore” I couldn’t have felt it more sharply. “Chade, you misjudge her. And me. It began as a friendship, a long time ago, and if anyone was at fault in … how things went, it was me, not Molly. I’d always thought that the friends I made in town, that the time I spent there as `Newboy’ belonged to me.” I faltered to a halt, hearing only the foolishness of my words.
“Did you think you could lead two lives?” Chade’s voice was soft but not gentle. “We belong to the King, boy. King’s Men. Our lives belong to him. Every moment, of every day, asleep or awake. You have no time for your own concerns. Only his.”
I shifted slightly, to look into the fire. I considered what I knew of Chade in that light. I met him here, by darkness, in these isolated chambers. I had never seen him out and about around Buckkeep. No one spoke his name to me. Occasionally, disguised as Lady Thyme, he ventured forth. Once we had ridden together through the night, to that first awful Forging at Forge. But even that had been at the King’s command. What did Chade have for a life? A chamber, good food and wine, and a weasel for a companion. He was Shrewd’s older brother. But for his bastardy, he would be upon the throne. Was his life a foreshadowing of what mine was to be?