20072007 2010-2-15 18:57
刺客后传2奸情大放送
想来花费上千购买台湾版本的刺客读者还是很少的吧!
但是对于弄臣和斐滋的关系觊觎不已的人不少吧!
这里是刺客后传系列最有奸情的片段之一
我手上亦无台湾版本,所以全部是英文(先)
剧透?大大的有啊 大家谨慎小心了诶
A long silence held between us. For a moment the Fool folded his lips, as if holding in words. Then he took a sip of his tea. He lifted his eyes to meet mine, and I was surprised by the weariness on his face. ‘Is there?’ he asked unwillingly.
Reluctance tugged at me but I forced the word out. ‘Yes. There is. I want to know what you have said to that Jek woman to make her think that I, that we, that—’ I hated the words. It was as if I feared to express the thought, that by speaking it aloud it would gain some sort of reality.
An odd expression fleeted over the Fool’s head. ‘I’ve said nothing to her, Fitz. “That Jek woman” as you name her, is capable of concocting her own theories on just about anything. She is one of those people you never need lie to; simply withhold information, and she makes up her own stories. Some, wildly inaccurate, as you have seen. Rather like Starling, in some ways.’
I didn’t need to hear that name right then. She was another one who had believed that my bond with the Fool went beyond friendship. I recognized now that he had led her to believe that by the same technique he had used with Jek. No denials of it, leading remarks and witticisms, all encouraging her to form a mistaken opinion. At one time it had seemed a trifle uncomfortable but humorous all the same, to watch her labouring under her delusion. Now it seemed humiliating and deceitful that he had led her to believe that.
He set his teacup down on the table. ‘I thought I was feeling stronger, but I am not,’ he said in Golden’s aristocratic tones. I think I shall retire to my room. No visitors, Tom Badgerlock. He started to rise.
‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘We need to talk.’
He stood. ‘I think not.’
‘I insist.’
‘I refuse.’ He looked past me, into a distance I could not see. He lifted his chin.
I stood. ‘I need to know, Fool. You look at me sometimes, you say things, apparently in jest, but… you let both Starling and Jek believe that we could be lovers.’ The word came out harshly, like an epithet. ‘Perhaps you deem it of little importance that Jek believes you are a woman and in love with me. I cannot be so blithe about such assumptions. I’ve already had to deal with rumours of your taste in bed partners. Even Prince Dutiful has asked me. I know that Civil Bresinga suspects it. And I hate it. I hate that people in the keep look at us, and wonder what you do to your servant at night.’
At my harsh words, he shuddered and then swayed, like a sapling that feels the first blow of the axe. When he spoke, his words were faint. ‘We know what is real between us, Fitz. What others may wonder about should remain their issue, not ours.’ Slowly he turned from me, ending the discussion.
I almost let him go. It was such a long habit with me, to accept the Fool’s decisions on such things. But suddenly it did matter to me what others in the keep gossiped about, what Hap might overhear as a crude jest in a Buckkeep Town inn. ‘I want to know!’ I suddenly roared at him. ‘It does matter, and I want to know, once and for all. Who are you? What are you? I’ve seen the Fool, I’ve seen Lord Golden, and I heard you speak to that Jek in a woman’s voice. Amber. I confess that baffles me most of all. Why would you live as a woman in Bingtown? Why do you allow Jek to go on believing you are a woman and in love with me?’
He did not look at me. I thought he would let my questions go unanswered, as he so often had before. Then, he took a breath and spoke quietly. ‘I became Amber because she most suited my purpose and needs in Bingtown. I walked amongst them as a foreigner and a woman, unthreatening and without power. In that guise, all felt free to speak to me, slave and Trader, man and woman. That role suited my needs, Fitz. Just as Lord Golden fulfils them now.’
His words cut right to my heart. I spoke coldly what injured me most. ‘Then the Fool, too, was only a role? Someone you became because it “suited your purpose”? And what was your purpose? To gain a doddering king’s trust? To befriend a royal bastard? Did you become what we most needed in order to get close to us?’
He still was not looking at me, but as I gazed at his still profile he closed his eyes. Then he spoke. ‘Of course I did. Make of that what you will.’
His words were like spurs to my fury. ‘I see. None of it was real. I’ve never known you at all, have I?’ I expected no answer as for an instant I strangled silently on my anger and insult.
Then, ‘Yes. You have. You more than anyone in my life.’ He looked down now and stillness seemed to grow around him.
‘If that is true, then I think you owe me the truth about yourself. What is the reality, Fool, not what you jest about or allow others to suspect? Who and what are you? What is it you feel for me?’
He looked at me at last. His eyes were stricken. But as I continued to gaze at him, demanding this knowledge, I saw his own anger come to life there. He suddenly stood straight and gave a small huff of disdain, as if unbelieving that I could ask. He shook his head then drew a deep breath. The words rushed out of him in a torrent. ‘You know who I am. I have even given you my true name. As for what I am, you know that, too. You seek a false comfort that I define myself for you with words. Words do not contain or define any person. A heart can, if it is willing. But I fear yours is not. You know more of the whole of me than any other person who breathes, yet you persist in insisting that all of that cannot be me. What would you have me cut off and leave behind? And why must I truncate myself in order to please you? I would never ask that of you. And by those words, admit another truth. You know what I feel for you. You have known it for years. Let us not, you and I, alone here, pretend that you don’t. You know I love you. I always have. I always will.’ He spoke the words levelly. He said them as if they were inevitable. There was no trace of either shame or triumph in his voice. Then he waited. Words such as that always demand an answer.
I took a deep breath and managed the elfbark’s black mood. I spoke honestly and bluntly. ‘And you know that I love you, Fool. As a man loves his dearest friend. I feel no shame in that. But to let Jek or Starling or anyone think that we take it beyond friendship’s bound, that you would want to lie with me is—’ I paused. I waited for his agreement. It did not come. Instead, he met my eyes with his open amber gaze. There was no denial in them.
‘I love you,’ he said quietly. ‘I set no boundaries on my love. None at all. Do you understand me?’
‘Only too well, I fear!’ I replied, and my voice shook. I took a deep breath and my words grated out. ‘I would never… do you understand me? I could never desire you as a bed partner. Never.’
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.