He glanced aside from me. A faint rose came to his cheeks, not of shame, but of some other deep passion. He spoke quietly in a controlled voice. ‘And that, too, is a thing that we both have known for years. A thing that never needed speaking, those words that I must now carry with me for the rest of my life.’ He turned to look at me, but his eyes seemed blinded. ‘We could have gone all our lives and never had this conversation. Now you have doomed us both to recall it forever.’

He turned and began to walk slowly toward his bedchamber. His pace was measured, as if he truly were ill. Then he stopped and looked back at me. Anger gleamed in his eyes and it shocked me that he could look at me so. ‘Did you ever truly believe I might seek from you something that you did not share my desire for? Well do I know how distasteful you would find that. Well do I know that seeking that from you would irreparably damage all else that we have shared. So I have always avoided this very discussion that you have forced upon our friendship. It was ill done, Fitz. Ill done and unnecessary.’

He went another halting step or two, like a man who walks dazed after a blow. Then again he halted. Hesitatingly, from the pocket of his dressing gown, he took the black and white posy. ‘This isn’t from you, is it?’ he asked. His voice was suddenly husky. He did not look at me.

‘Of course not.’

‘Then whom?’ His voice trembled.

I shrugged, irritated by the strange question in the midst of a serious discussion. ‘The garden woman. She puts one on your tray every morning.’

He drew a deeper breath and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Of course. They were never from you, not any of them.’ A long pause. He closed his eyes and from the set of his face I suddenly thought he might faint. Then he spoke softly. ‘Of course. There would be one who saw past my semblances, and if there was one, it would be she.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘The garden woman. She is about your age. Freckles on her face and arms. Hair the color of clean straw.’

I called the woman’s image back into my mind. ‘Freckles, yes. Her hair is light brown, not gold.’

He clenched his eyes shut. ‘Then it must have darkened as she grew older. Garetha was a garden girl here, when you were just a boy.’

I nodded. ‘I recall her, though I had forgotten her name. You’re right. So?’

He gave a short laugh, almost bitterly. ‘So. So love and hope blind us all. I thought the flowers were from you, Fitz. A fatuous notion. Instead they are from someone who, long ago, was infatuated with the King’s fool. Infatuated, I thought. But like me, she loves where love is not returned. Yet she remained true enough of heart to recognize me, despite all other changes. True enough of heart to keep my secret, yet let me know privately that she knew it.’ He held the posy up again. ‘Black and white. My winter colors, Fitz, back when I was the King’s jester. Garetha knows who I am. And she still harbours some fondness for me.’

‘You thought I was bringing you flowers?’ I was incredulous at his fancy.

He looked aside from me suddenly, and I perceived that my words and tone had shamed him. Head bowed, he walked slowly towards his bedchamber. He made no reply to my words and I felt a sudden rush of sympathy for him. As my friend, I loved him. I could not change my feelings about his unnatural desires, but I had no wish to see him shamed or hurt. So of course I made it worse as I blundered in with, ‘Fool, why do you not let your desires go where they would be welcome? Garetha is a fairly attractive woman. Perhaps, if you gladly received her attention—’

He rounded on me suddenly, and the true anger that flared up m his eyes lit them to a deep gold. His face flushed darker with the emotion as he demanded caustically, ‘Then? Then what? Then I would be like you, sate myself with whoever was available merely because it was offered to me? That, I would find “distasteful”. I would never use Garetha or any person that way. Unlike some we both know.’ He weighted those last two words for me. He took two more steps toward his room, then rounded on me again. A terrible, bitter smile was on his face. ‘Wait. I see. You imagine that I have never known intimacy of that sort. That I have been “saving myself” for you.’ He gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, FitzChivalry. I doubt you would have been worth the wait.’

I felt as if he had struck me, yet he was the one who suddenly rolled up his eyes and collapsed limply on the floor. For a moment, I stood frozen with both fury and terror. As only friends can do, we had found each other’s most tender spots to wound. The worst part of me bade me let him lie where he had fallen; I owed him nothing. But in less than a moment I went down on one knee by his side. His eyes were nearly closed, showing only a slit of white. His breath puffed in and out as if he had just run a race. ‘Fool?’ I said, and my pride forced annoyance into my voice. ‘Now what is wrong with you?’ Hesitantly I touched his face.

His skin was warm.

So he had not been feigning illness these last few days. I knew that ordinarily the Fool’s body was cool, much cooler than an ordinary man’s, so this mild warmth in him now was as a raging fever would be to me. I hoped it was no more than one of those strange times that came on him occasionally, when he was febrile and weakened. My experience of them was that in a day or two he recovered, with much peeling of skin to reveal a darker complexion beneath. Perhaps this fainting was only that weakness. Yet even as I stooped to slide my arms under him and lift him, my heart pinched with the fear that perhaps he was seriously ill. Truly, I had picked the worst possible time for my little confrontation with him. With him feverish and me dosed with elfbark, no wonder all our words to one another had gone awry.

I lifted him and carried him to his room, kicking the door open.

The room smelled heavy and oppressive. The bedding was rucked about as if he had tossed restlessly all night. What sort of a senseless clod was I, not even to have wondered if he could have been truly ill? I set his limp body down on the bed, I shook a pillow fat again and awkwardly slid it under his head, then tried to tug the bedding straight around him. What was I going to do? I knew better than to run for the healer. The Fool had never allowed any healer to touch him in all his years at Buckkeep. Occasionally he had gone to Burrich for some remedy or other when Burrich was the Stablemaster, but that help was far beyond my reach now. I patted his cheek lightly but he showed no sign of waking.

I went to the windows. I pushed the heavy curtains aside, and then unfastened the shutters and pushed them open to the cold winter day. Clean, chill air flowed into the room. I found one of Lord Golden’s kerchiefs, and gathered snow from the windowsill into it. I folded it into a compress and carried it back to the bed. I sat down on the bed beside him and pressed the kerchief gently to the Fool’s forehead. He stirred slightly, and when I pressed it to the side of his neck he suddenly revived with a frightening alacrity. ‘Don’t touch me!’ he snarled, thrusting my hands aside.

His rejection of my concern ignited my anxiety into anger. ‘As you wish.’ I jerked away from him and slapped the compress down onto the bedside table.

‘Please leave,’ he replied in a voice that rendered the courtesy an empty word.

And I did.

In a sort of frenzy, I put the other chamber to rights, clattering the dishes back onto the tray. Neither of us had eaten anything. So be it. My appetite had fled anyway. I took the tray back to the kitchens and cleared it there. Then I hauled water and wood for our chambers. When I came back upstairs with my load, I found the door to the Fool’s bedchamber closed. Even as I stood there, I heard the window shutters inside it slammed shut. I knocked loudly on his door. ‘Lord Golden, I’ve firewood and water for your room.’