“I had gone into town. Lady Patience had given me the afternoon. And I needed to get a few things … for my candles.” As she spoke, her trembling lessened. I tilted her chin up so that she looked into my eyes.

“And then?”

“I was … coming back. I was on the steep bit, just outside of town. Where the alders grow?”

I nodded. I knew the spot.

“I heard horses coming. In a hurry. So I stepped off the road to make way for them.” She started to tremble again. “I kept walking, thinking they would pass me. But suddenly they were right behind me, and when I looked back, they were coming right at me. Not on the road, but right at me. I jumped back into the brush, and still they rode right at me. I turned and ran, but they kept coming….” Her voice was getting higher and higher.

“Hush! Wait a bit. Calm down. Think. How many of them? Did you know them?”

She shook her head wildly. “Two. I couldn’t see their faces. I was running away, and they were wearing the kind of helm that comes down over your eyes and nose. They chased me. It’s steep there, you know, and brushy. I tried to get away, but they just rode their horses right through the brush after me. Herding me, like dogs herd sheep. I ran, and ran, but I couldn’t get away from them. Then I fell, I caught my foot on a log and I fell. And they jumped from their horses. One pinned me down while the other snatched up my basket. He dumped it all out, like he was looking for something, but they were laughing and laughing. I thought …”

My heart was hammering as hard as Molly’s now. “Did they hurt you?” I asked fiercely.

She paused, as if she could not decide, then shook her head wildly. “Not like you fear. He just … held me down. And laughed. The other one, he said … he said, I was pretty stupid, letting myself be used by a bastard. They said …”

Again she paused a moment. Whatever they had said to her, called her was ugly enough that she could not repeat it to me. It was like a sword through me, that they had been able to hurt her so badly she would not even share the pain. “They warned me,” she went on at last. “They said stay away from the bastard. Don’t do his dirty work for him. They said … things I didn’t understand, about messages and spies and treason. They said they could make sure that everyone knew I was the Bastard’s whore.” She tried just to say the word, but it came out with greater force. She defied me to flinch from it. “Then they said … I would be hanged … if I didn’t pay attention. That to run errands for a traitor was to be a traitor.” Her voice grew strangely calmer. “Then they spit on me. And they left me. I heard them ride away, but for a long time I was afraid to get up. I have never been so scared.” She looked at me and her eyes were like open wounds. “Not even my father ever scared me that bad.”

I held her close to me. “It’s all my fault.” I did not even know I had spoken aloud until she drew back from me, to look up in puzzlement.

“Your fault? Did you do something wrong?”

“No. I am no traitor. But I am a bastard. And I’ve let that spill over onto you. Everything Patience warned me of, everything Ch—everyone warned me about, it’s all coming true. I’ve got you caught up in it.”

“What is happening?” she asked softly, eyes wide. Her breath suddenly caught. “You said … the guard wouldn’t let you out the gate. That you can’t leave Buckkeep? Why?”

“I don’t know, exactly. There’s a lot I don’t understand. But one thing I do know. I have to keep you safe. That means staying away from you, for a time. And you from me. Do you understand?”

A glint of anger came into her eyes. “I understand you’re leaving me alone in this!”

“No. That’s not it. We have to make them believe that they’ve scared you, that you’re obeying them. Then you’ll be safe. They’ll have no reason to come after you again.”

“They have scared me, you idiot!” she hissed at me. “One thing I know. Once someone knows you’re afraid of him, you’re never safe from that person. If I obey them now, they will come after me again. To tell me to do other things, to see how far I’ll obey them in my fear.”

These were the scars her father had left on her life. Scars that were a kind of strength, but also a vulnerability. “Now is not the time to stand up to them,” I whispered. I kept looking over her shoulder, expecting that at any moment the guard would come to see where we had vanished. “Come,” I said, and led her deeper into the maze of warehouses and outbuildings. She walked silently beside me for a ways, then suddenly jerked her hand from mine.