I sighed, yet admitted, 'If you had not believed it, Hap… well, then it would have been worse than foolish to do as you did. And then I halted, wondering if I had just made it worse.

'I feel such a fool, he admitted after a time. 'And the worst part is, I'd take her back in a breath if she came to me. Faithless as I know she is, first to him and now to me, I'd still take her back. Even if I had to wonder ever after if I could hold her. After a time, he asked quietly, 'Is this how you felt when I told you Starling was married?

A hard question, but mainly because I didn't want to tell him that I had never truly loved Starling. So I just said, 'I don't think any two pains are ever exactly the same, Hap. But the part about feeling a fool, oh, yes.

'I thought I would die from it, he declared passionately. 'The next day I was out on an errand for Master Gindast. He's come to trust me with making his purchases about town, because I am very exact with what he wants and what he will pay for it. So, I was hurrying, and then I saw a couple coming towards me. And I thought, "she looks so much like Svanja, she could be her sister." And then I saw it was Svanja, but wearing silver earrings and a shawl dyed such a violet as I had never seen. And the man beside her held her arm and she was looking up at him exactly as she looked up at me. I could not believe it. I stood gawking, and as they went by, she glanced at me. Tom, she blushed red, but pretended not to know me. I… I didn't know what to do. We have had to sneak about so much that I thought, well, perhaps this is her uncle or a man her father knows, and she must pretend not to know me. But even then, I knew it was not so. And when I went into the Stuck Pig two days later, in the hope of seeing her, the men in tavern mocked me, asking how it felt to be small fry now that the big fish was biting again. I did not know what they meant, but they soon explained it to me. In detail. Tom, I have never been so humiliated. I all but fled, and I’ve been too ashamed to go back, lest I encounter them. A part of me wants to, a part of me yearns to tell her sailor how faithless she is, and to tell her that I’ve discovered how worthless she is. Yet another part of me longs to fight and best him, to see if that would bring her back to my side. I feel both a fool and a coward.’

‘You are neither,’ I told him, knowing he could not believe me. ‘Walking away from it is the wisest thing to do. Fight him and win her back, and what do you have? A woman no better than a bitch in season that goes with the strongest dog. Confront her and have her disdain you, and you will only have added to your humiliation. Think of it this way, if it comforts you at all. She will always wonder at how easily you seemed to let her go.’

‘A sour comfort. Tom, is there any such thing as a true woman?’ He asked this so wearily that it twisted my heart to see him so soon disillusioned.

‘Yes, there is,’ I asserted. ‘And you are young yet, with as good a chance as any of finding one.’

‘Not really.’ he declared. He stood up abruptly. A tired smile twisted his mouth. ‘For I’ve no time to look for one. Tom, I’m so sorry to come and visit so briefly, but I must run now to be back at the woodshop on time. Old Gindast is a taskmaster. Since I discovered you were hurt, he’s given me time each dawn to come and try to see you, but he insists I make up the work in the evening.’

‘He’s wise. Work is the best cure for worry. And for heartbreak. Throw yourself into your tasks, Hap, and don’t berate yourself for foolishness. Every man makes his share of mistakes in that area.’

He stood looking at me for a time longer. Then he shook his head. ‘Every time I think I’ve grown up a bit more, I look around and see myself acting like a child again. I came here to see you, sick with worry, and the instant that I saw you could stand, all I did was bend your ear with my woes. You’ve told me nothing of all you went through.’

I managed a smile. ‘And that is how I’d like to leave it, son. Nothing there that I care to remember. Let’s put it behind us.’

‘For now, then. I’ll come back and see you again tomorrow.’

‘No, no, don’t do that. If you’ve been coming every day, as I know you have, then I know you must be wearied of it. I’m mending nicely, as you can see. Soon enough I’ll be down to visit with you, and then I’ll ask Gindast to give you an afternoon off and we can sit and talk together.’

‘I’d like that,’ he said, and the sincerity in his voice gave me heart. He hugged me before he left and I feared his youthful strength would snap my weakened bones. Then he left me and I sat staring after him. For the first time in months, I felt I had my Hap back again, I thought as I laboriously took out clean clothing and clambered into them. My relief at regaining him was tinged with guilt. I couldn’t keep him a boy. I shouldn’t expect him to be ‘my Hap’ any more than Chade should hope me to be his ‘boy’. To be relieved that his heartbreak and disappointment had brought him back to me and convinced him of my wisdom was a sort of betrayal on my part. Next time I saw him, I’d have to admit to him that I hadn’t known that Svanja would be false to him, only that she distracted him from his apprenticeship. I didn’t relish the idea.

Dressed, I left my room and went out into Lord Golden’s chamber. I was no longer tottering about, but it was more comfortable to move slowly and carefully. His serving-boy hadn’t brought breakfast up yet. The table was bare. He sat before the fire, looking weary. I nodded to him, and then set the cloth-wrapped feathers on the table. ‘I think these were meant for you,’ I said. I put no inflection in my voice. As I unrolled the cloth, he rose from his chair and came to see what I was doing. He watched, not saying a word as I nudged the feathers into a row.

‘They are extraordinary. How came you by these, Badgerlock?’ he asked at last, and I felt my silence had dragged the question from him. It burned me that he still spoke with Golden’s Jamaillian accent.

‘When Dutiful and I went through the Skill-pillar, it took us to a beach. I picked these up along the tideline there. They were lying amongst the driftwood and seaweed like flotsam. As I walked the beach I found them, one after the other.’

‘Indeed. Never have I heard such a tale.’

There was an unspoken question in his neutral comment. Had I concealed these from him deliberately or dismissed them as unimportant? I answered as best I could. ‘The time spent on that beach still seems strange to me. Disconnected from all else. When I did get back, so much happened all at once: the fight to regain Dutiful, and Nighteyes’ death and then our journey back here, with no privacy to speak to one another. Then, once we got to Buckkeep, there was the betrothal and all.’ Even as I made my excuses, they seemed weak. Why hadn’t I told him about the feathers? ‘I put them away up in Chade’s workroom. And the time never seemed right.’

He was just staring at them. I looked at them again. Set out in a row on the rough cloth, their flat greyness made them even more unremarkable. Yet at the same time they seemed profoundly strange, artefacts too perfect to have been shaped by men’s hands and yet obviously manufactured. I felt oddly reluctant to touch them.

‘I see,’ Lord Golden said at last. ‘Well. Thank you for showing them to me.’ He turned and walked back towards the hearth.

I couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. I tried again. ‘Fool. I think they belong in the Rooster Crown.’

‘Doubtless, you are correct’ he replied levelly, without interest. He sat down in front of the fire again and stretched his legs out toward it. After a moment, he crossed his arms on his chest and sank his chin down. He stared into the flames.

A flash of anger, cleansing as flame, washed through me. For an instant I wanted to seize him and shake him, to demand that he be the Fool again for me. Then the fury was gone and in its wake I stood trembling and sick. I felt then that I’d killed the Fool somehow, that I had destroyed him when I had demanded answers to the questions that had always floated unasked between us. I should have known that I could never understand him as I understood other people. Explanations had seldom worked between us. Trust had. But I had broken that, like a child who takes something apart to see how it works and ends up with a handful of pieces. Perhaps he could not be the Fool again, any more than I could go back to being Burrich’s stableboy. Perhaps our relationship had changed too profoundly for us to relate as Fitz and the Fool. Perhaps Tom Badgerlock and Lord Golden were all that was left to us.