Golden Fool

He made no reply of either kind, just kept on deliberately clunking each log into place. I took a breath and resolved not to react to that. I wondered what it would take to make him even a little more agreeable. For I suddenly wanted to teach him. I could make a start with him, as a sign to the Queen of my commitment. Could Thick be bribed to try to learn to Skill, as Chade suggested? Could I buy my daughter’s safety by enticing him? “Thick,” I asked him. “What do you want?”

That made him pause. He turned to look at me and his brow wrinkled. “What?”

“What do you want? What would make you happy? What do you want out of life?”

“What do I want?” He squinted at me, as if by seeing better he could understand my words. “You mean, to have? My own?”

At each query, I nodded. He stood slowly, and scratched at the back of his neck. His lips pushed out as he thought, his tongue sticking out with them. “I want . . . I want that red scarf that Rowdy has.” He stopped and stared at me sullenly. I think that he expected me to tell him that he could not have it. I didn’t even know who Rowdy was.

“A red scarf. I think I could get that for you. What else?”

For minutes he just stared at me. “And a pink sugar cake, to eat it all. Not a burnt one. And . . . and a whole bunch of raisins.” He stopped, and then looked at me challengingly.

“And what else?” I asked him. None of those things sounded too difficult.

He peered at me, coming closer. He thought I was mocking him. I made my voice gentle as I asked, “If you had all those things, right now, what else would you want?”

“If I . . . raisins and a cake?”

“Raisins and a cake, and a red scarf. Then what else?”

His mouth worked, his small eyes squinting. I don’t think he’d ever considered the possibility of wanting more than those things. I’d have to teach him to be hungry if I was going to use bribery. At the same time, the simplicity of the things that this man longed for as unattainable cut to my heart. He wasn’t asking for better wages or more time to himself. Just the small things, the little pleasures that made a hard life tolerable.

“I want . . . a knife like you got. And one of those feathers, those big feathers with the eyes in them. And a whistle. A red one. I used to have one—my mam gave me a red whistle, a red whistle on a green string.” He scowled more deeply, pondering. “But they took it and broke it.” For an instant he said no more, breathing hoarsely as he remembered. I wondered how long ago it had happened. His little eyes were squinted nearly shut with the effort of the recall. I had thought him too stupid to have memories that went back to his childhood. I was rapidly revising my image of just who Thick was. His mind certainly did not work as mine or Chade’s did, but work it did. Then he blinked his small eyes several times and took a long shuddering breath. The next words came out on a sob. His words, blunted at the best of times, were barely understandable now. “They didn’t even want to blow it. I said, ‘You can blow it. But then give it back.’ But they didn’t even blow it. They just broke it. And laughed at me. My red whistle that my mam gave me.”

Perhaps there was an element of humor in the tubby little man with the jutting tongue weeping for the loss of his whistle. I’ve known many men who would have laughed aloud. As for me, I caught my breath. Pain radiated off him like heat from a fire, and it ignited boyhood memories of my own, long buried. The way Regal would give me a casual push as he passed me in the hallway, or trample through my playthings as I sat in one of my private games on the floor in the corner of the Lesser Hall. It broke something in me, some wall I had held between Thick and myself because of all the differences I perceived between us. After all, he was dim-witted and fat, awkward bodied and ill-made, rude. Ragged and smelly and ill-mannered. And as much an outcast in this castle of wealth and pleasure as I had been when I was Nameless the dog-boy. It did not matter that he had a man’s years to him. The boy was suddenly who I saw, the boy who could never be a man, could never say that such hurts were a part of his past when he was vulnerable. Thick would always be vulnerable.

I had intended to bribe him. I had intended to find out what he wanted, and then hold it over him to get him to do what I wanted. Not in a cruel way, but to barter with him for obedience to my will. It would not have been so different from how my grandfather once bought me. King Shrewd had given me a pin and a promise of an education. He had never offered me his love, though I believe he had eventually come to care for me as I had for him. Yet I had always wished that his compassion had been the first thing he had offered me, instead of the last. Toward the end, I had suspected that he shared that vain wish.