“And just like the wishes granted in old tales, you gave me what I wanted and it has broken my heart.”
“What happened?” I asked unwillingly.
She didn't want to tell me, and yet she did. “I told him I'd had a dream, and that in the dream, a wolf with porcupine quills in his nose had promised to watch over Swift and bring him safely home to us. And I said the words you gave me. ‘As once you did, so I do now. I shelter and guide your son. I will put my life between him and any harm, and when my task is done, I will bring him safely home to you.' ”
“And?”
“My mother was kneading bread, and she told me not to speak of Swift if all I could talk was moonshine and foolishness. But her back was to the table where I sat with my father. She did not see his eyes widen at my words. For a time, he just stared at me, with his eyes showing the whites all around them. Then he fell from the chair to the floor and lay there, staring like a corpse. I thought he was struck dead. My brothers and I carried him to his bed, fearing the worst. My mother was terrified, demanding of him where he hurt. But he did not answer. He only put his hands over his eyes, curled up like a beaten child, and began to weep.
“He wept all day today, and did not say a word to any of us. As night fell, I heard him get up. I came to the edge of my loft and looked down. He was dressed for travel. My mother was holding to his arm, begging him not to go out. But he said to her, ‘Woman, you've no idea what we have done, and I haven't the courage to tell you. I'm a coward. I've always been a coward.' Then he shook her off and left.”
For a terrible flashing instant, I imagined Molly spurned and abandoned. It was devastating.
“Where did he go?” I managed to ask her.
“I suspect he's coming to you. Wherever you are.” Her words were curt, and yet I heard hope in them, hope that someone knew where her father was bound and why. I had to take it from her.
“That cannot be. But I think I know where he has gone, and I think he will come back to you soon.” Buckkeep, I thought to myself. Burrich was a direct man. He'd go to Buckkeep, hoping to corner Chade and question him. He'd get Kettricken instead. And she would tell him. Just as she had told Dutiful who I really was. Because she believed in telling people the truth, even if it hurt them.
While I was still pondering that scene, Nettle spoke again. “What have I done?” she asked me. It was not a rhetorical question. “I thought I was so clever. I thought I could bargain with you, and get my brother safely home. Instead . . . what have I done? What are you? Do you wish us ill? Do you hate my father?” Then, with even more dread she asked, “Is my brother in your power somehow?”
“Please don't fear me. You have no reason to fear me,” I said hastily, and then wondered if it was true. “Swift is safe, and I promise I will do all in my power to bring him home to you as soon as I can.” I paused, wondering what I could safely tell her. She was no fool, this daughter of mine. Too many hints and she'd unravel the whole mystery. Like as not, then I'd lose her forever. “I knew your father, a long time ago. We were close. But I made decisions that went against his rules, and so we parted. For a long time, he has believed I was dead. With your words, he knows I am not. And, because I never came back to him, he now believes he did me a great wrong. He didn't. But if you know your father at all, you will know that it is what he believes in that regard that will drive him.”
“You knew my father a long time ago? Did you know my mother then, too?”
“I knew him long before you were born.” Not quite a lie, but a deception nonetheless. I let her mislead herself.
“And so my words meant nothing to my mother,” Nettle softly concluded after a moment.
“Yes,” I confirmed. Then, gingerly I asked, “Is she all right?”
“Of course not!” I felt her impatience with my stupidity. “She stood outside the house and shouted after him when he left, and then ranted to all of us that she never should have married such a stiff-necked man. A dozen times she asked me what I said, and a dozen times I told her of my ‘dream.' I came so close to telling her all I knew of you. But that would not have helped, would it? For she never knew you.”
For one chill instant, I saw it through Nettle's eyes. Molly stood in the road. In her struggle to restrain Burrich, her hair had come loose. It curled as it ever had, brushing against her shoulders as she shook her fist after him. Her youngest son, little more than six, clutched at her skirts, sobbing in terror at this wild spectacle of his father abandoning his mother. The sun was setting, tingeing the landscape with blood. “You blind old fool!” Molly shrieked after her husband, and the flung words rattled against me like stones. “You'll be lost or robbed! You'll never come home to us!” But the fading clatter of galloping hooves was her only reply.