The mugs of ale and fresh bread, crusty and steaming, were delivered to our table. Hap tore the bread into chunks and bit into one while I was still trying to grasp it all. “You're going to become a minstrel?”

“Yes! Starling brought me to a fellow named Sawtongue. He has a terrible voice, but a way with the strings that is little short of a god's gift. And he's a bit old, so he can use a young fellow like me to carry the packs and make up a fire on the nights when we're between inns in our traveling. We'll stay in town until after Harvest Fest, of course. He'll play tonight at the lesser hearth, and I may sing a song or two at the earlier revels for the children. Tom, I never knew that life could be this good. I love what I'm doing now. With everything Starling taught me, all unknowing, I've the repertoire of a journeyman already. Though I'm behind on the making of my own instrument, and of course I've few of my own songs yet. But they'll come. Sawtongue says I should be patient, and not try to make songs, but to wait and let them come to me.”

“I never thought to see you turn minstrel, Hap.”

“Nor I.” He lifted a shoulder in a shrug and grinned. “It's a fit, Tom. No one cares who my mother and father were or weren't, or if my eyes don't match. There's not the endless grind of being a woodworker. Oh, I may complain about reciting, over and over, until every single word is exactly as Sawtongue wants it turned, but it's not difficult. I never realized what a good memory I had.”

“And after Harvest Fest?”

“Oh. That will be the only sad part. Then I'm away with Sawtongue. He always winters in Bearns. So we'll sing and harp our way there, and then stay with his patron at a warm hearth for the winter.”

“And no regrets.”

“Only that I'll see even less of you than I have this last summer.”

“But you're happy?”

“Hmm. As close to it as a man can get. Sawtongue says that when you let go and follow your fate instead of trying to twist your life around and master it, a man finds that happiness follows him.”

“So may it be for you, Hap. So may it be.”

And then we talked for a time of incidental things and drank our ale. To myself, I marveled at the knocks he had taken and still struggled back onto his feet. I wondered too that Starling had stepped in to help him as she had, and said nothing of it to me. That she had given him permission to sing her songs told me that she truly intended to leave her old life behind her.

I would have talked the day away with him, but he glanced out of the window and said he had to go wake his master and bring him his breakfast. He asked if I would be at the Harvest Eve revels that night, and I told him I was not sure, but that I hoped he'd enjoy them. He said he'd be certain to, and then we made our farewells.

I took my homeward path through the market square. I bought flowers at one stall, and sweets at another, and racked my brains desperately for any other gifts that might buy me back into Patience's good graces. In the end, however, I could think of nothing and was horrified to realize how much time I'd wasted wandering from booth to booth. As I made my way back to Buckkeep Castle, I was part of the throng going there. I walked behind a wagon full of beer barrels and in front of a group of jugglers who practiced all the way there. One of the girls in the group asked me if the flowers were for my sweetheart, and when I said no, they were for my mother, they all laughed pityingly at me.

I found Patience in her rooms, sitting with her feet up. She scolded me and wept over my heartlessness in making her worry while Lacey put the flowers into a vase and set out the sweets with tea for us. My tale of what had befallen me actually brought me back into her good graces, though she complained still that there were more than a dozen years of my life unaccounted for.

I was trying to recall where I had left off in my telling when Lacey said quietly, “Molly came to visit us a few days ago. It was pleasant to see her again, after all the years.” When I sat in stunned silence, Lacey observed, “Even in widow's dress, she's still a fine-looking woman.”

“I told her she shouldn't have kept my granddaughter from me!” Patience declared suddenly. “Oh, she had a hundred good reasons for it, but not one good enough for me.”

“Did you quarrel with her?” I asked in dismay. Could it become any worse?

“No. Of course not. She did send the girl to see me the next day. Nettle. Now there's a name for a child! But she's straight-spoken enough. I like that in a girl. Said she didn't want Withywoods or anything that might come to her because you were her father. I said it had nothing to do with you, but with the fact that she was Chivalry's granddaughter, and who else was I to settle it on? So. I think she'll come to find that I'm more stubborn than she is.”