When we reached her favourite chair by the hearth, I deposited her there, fetched her a cup of mulled cider, and then confided to her, ‘The last of your musicians arrived just as I came down the stairs. I haven’t seen them come in yet, but I thought you’d want to know that they had arrived.’
She raised her brows at me and then turned to peer the length of the room. The third set of musicians were moving to take over the dais there. She looked back at me, ‘No, they’re all there. I was most careful in my selection this year. For Winterfest, I thought to myself, we must have some warm-tempered folk to keep the chill away. And so, if you look, there is a redhead in every group that I’ve invited. There, see the woman warming her voice? Look at that cascade of auburn hair. Don’t tell me that she won’t warm this fest with her spirit alone.’ She did indeed appear to be a very warm-natured woman. She let the dancers rest by launching into a long story song, more fit for listening than dancing, sung in a rich and throaty voice. Her audience, old and young, drew closer as she sang the old tale of the maiden seduced by the Old Man of winter and carried off to his distant ice fortress in the far south.
All were rapt by the tale, and so it was that my eye caught the motion as two men and a woman entered the hall. They looked around as if dazzled, and perhaps they were after their long hike through an evening of falling snow. It was obvious they had come on foot, for their rough leather trousers were soaked to the knee. Their garb was odd, as minstrels were wont to wear, but unlike any that I had ever seen. Their knee-boots were yellow mottled brown from the wet, their leather trousers short, barely hanging past the tops of their boots. Their jackets were of the same leather, tanned to the same pale brown, with shirts of heavy-knit wool beneath them. They looked uncomfortable, as if the wool were too snug a fit under the leathers. ‘There they are now,’ I told her.
Patience stared at them from across the room. ‘I did not hire them,’ she declared with an offended sniff. ‘Look at that woman, pale as a ghost. There’s no heat to her at all. And the men are just as wintry, with hair the colour of an ice-bear’s hide. Brr. They chill me just looking at them.’ Then the lines smoothed from her brow. ‘So. I shall not allow them to sing tonight. But let’s invite them back for high summer, when a chilly tale or a cool wind would be welcome on a muggy evening.’
But before I could move to her bidding, I heard a roar of ‘Tom! There you are! So good to see you, old friend!’
I turned with that mixture of elation and dismay that surprise visits from unconventional and loving friends stir in one. Web was crossing the room in long strides, with Swift but a step or two behind. I lifted my arms wide and went to greet them. The burly Witmaster had grown in girth these last few years. As always, his cheeks were as red as if he had just stepped in from the wind. Molly’s son Swift was a couple of steps behind him, but as I watched, Nettle emerged from the crowd of guests and ambushed her brother in a hug. He stopped to lift her and whirl her in a joyous circle. Then Web engulfed me in a spine-cracking hug, followed by several solid thumps to my back. ‘You’re looking well!’ he told me as I tried to catch my breath. ‘Almost whole again, aren’t you? Ah, and my Lady Patience!’ Having released me from his exuberant greeting, he bowed gracefully over the hand that Patience extended to him. ‘Such a rich blue gown! You put me in mind of a jay’s bright feathers! But please tell me the feathers in your hair did not come from a live bird!’
‘Of course not!’ Patience looked properly horrified at the thought. ‘I found him dead on the garden path last summer. And I thought, now here is a time for me to see just what is beneath those lovely blue feathers. But I saved his feathers, of course, plucking them carefully before I boiled him down to bones. And then, of course, once I had discarded the jay broth, my task was before me: to assemble his little bones into a skeleton. Did you know that a bird’s wing is as close to a man’s hand as is a frog’s flipper? All those tiny bones! Well, doubtless you know the task is somewhere on my workbench, half-done as are so many of my projects. But yesterday, when I was thinking of feathers to take flight from our troubles, I remembered that I had a whole box full! And luckily for me, the beetles had not found and eaten them down to the quill, as they did when I tried to save the gull feathers. Oh! Gull! Have I been thoughtless? I beg pardon!’
She had obviously suddenly recalled that he was bonded with a gull. But Web smiled at her kindly and said, ‘We of the Wit know that when life is done, what remains is empty. None, I think, know better than we do. We sense the presence of all life, of course, with some burning brighter than others. A plant is not as vital in our senses as is a tree. And of course a deer outshines both, and a bird most of all.’
I opened my mouth to object to that. With my Wit I could sense birds, but had never found them particularly brimming with life. I recalled something that Burrich – the man who had all but raised me – had said to me, many years ago, when he had declared that I would not work with the hawks at Buckkeep Castle. ‘They don’t like you: you are too warm.’ And I had thought he meant my flesh, but now I wondered if he had sensed something about my Wit that he could not, then, have explained to me. For the Wit had then been a despised magic, and if either of us had admitted to possessing it we would have been hanged, quartered and burned over water.
‘Why do you sigh?’ Patience abruptly demanded of me.
‘Your pardon. I was not aware I had done so.’
‘Well, you did! Witmaster Web was just telling me the most fascinating things about a bat’s wing and suddenly you sigh as if you find us the most boring old things in the world!’ She punctuated her words with a tap of her fan on my shoulder.
Web laughed. ‘Lady Patience, doubtless his thoughts were elsewhere. I know Tom of old, and recall his melancholy streak well! Ah, but I have been keeping you to myself, and here are others of your guests, come to claim you!’