Hawkmistress! (14 page)

One morning, a rider came from Scathfell, and when he was welcomed in the courtyard, uncovered a cage before him on the saddle.

“A message from Dom Garris, sir,” he said to The MacAran, “and a gift for Mistress Romilly.”

The MacAran took the letter, scowling slightly, and tore it open. “Your eyes are better than mine, Darren,” he said to his son, “Read it for me.”

Romilly thought, annoyed, that if the letter concerned her, she should have been the one to read it. But perhaps The MacAran did not want it known that his daughter was so much a better scholar than his Nevarsin-educated son. Darren glanced through the letter and frowned, then read aloud.

“To The MacAran of Falconsward and to my affianced wife Romilly, greeting from Gareth-Regis Aldaran at Scathfell. Your daughter informed me that she flies a verrin hawk, which is understandable in the daughter of the finest hawk-trainer in these hills, but would be unseemly for the wife of Aldaran’s Heir. Therefore I take the liberty of sending her two fine ladybirds which will fittingly adorn the most beautiful wrist in all of the Kilghard Hills, so that she need not fly a man’s hawk. I beg her acceptance of these fine birds, and I send them now so that she may be accustomed to their flight. Kindly convey my compliments and respectful wishes to my promised wife, and to you my most respectful greetings, sir.” Darren looked up, saying, “It has Scathfell’s own seal affixed.”

The MacAran raised his eyebrows, but said, “A courteous letter indeed. Uncover the cage, man.”

The cover lifted, two beautiful little hawks were revealed; their hoods were of fine scarlet-dyed leather with an Aldaran crest worked in gold thread, and the jesses glimmered with gold threads too. They were tiny brilliant birds, gleaming with gloss and health, and Romilly caught her breath at the sight of them.

“A beautiful gift,” she said, “and most thoughtful. Tell my-my promised husband,” she said, and stumbled over the words, “That I am most grateful to him and I shall fly them with all kind thoughts of him.” She held out her wrist, and lifted one of the hawks on to her glove. It sat so quietly that she could tell it was perfectly trained. Never mind that such hawks were no good for anything but flying at field-mice, they were exquisite little birds and for Dom Garris to pay so much heed to her known interests was a good sign. For a little while she thought better of her promised husband; but later she began to think it over; was this simply his way of telling her that when she was his wife she would not be allowed to work with a proper hawk at all? From what Gareth of Scathfell - the old man - had said, she was inclined to think so. It would be unseemly for the wife of Scathfell’s Heir. She made up her mind, firmly, whatever they said, she would never be argued or bullied into giving up Preciosa! The bond between them was too strong for that.

While she was first flying the little hawks - with a guilty thought that she was being disloyal to her beloved Preciosa - she reached out for contact, the strong bond between hawk and flyer. But the tiny birds gave only a faint sense of confusion, exhilaration; there was no close emotion, no sense of rapport and union - the smaller hawks were too lowly-organized to have the capacity for laran. She knew the cagebirds had no such abilities - she had once or twice tried to communicate with them - in fact, “the mind of a cage-bird” was a byword for a stupid woman! Flying the small hawks was dull; she could watch them fly, and they were beautiful indeed, but there was none of the excitement, the sense of rapport and completion, she felt with Preciosa. She flew them dutifully every day for exercise, but it was always with relief that she hooded them again with the beautifully-worked hoods and cast off Preciosa into the sky, climbing the sky with her hi an ecstasy of flight and soaring freedom.

She rode mostly with Darren, now, and Rael; Alderic had been put to the coridom’s work and was always busy about the place with accounts, arranging the stud-books, supervising the many men about court and stables. She seldom saw him, except now and again for a decorous word as he sat by the fire in the evening, or played a game of castles or cards with Darren or her father, or sometimes whittled wooden toys to amuse Rael in the long evenings.

Her days, too, were filled; her father had said she need do no more lessons, and the plan for her to study ciphering with the old steward had of course been put aside, since she was to be married so soon, so Calinda filled her days with stitching, and taught her how to oversee the kitchen-women and the sewing-women and even the dairies … not that there would be so much need for her to do any of these things, but, Calinda said, she must know how to do these things so that she could know whether her servants did them well or not; Lord Scathfell was a widower and she would be the first lady in authority at Scathfell; she must not let them think that Falconsward was a poorly run household, so that the daughter of Falconsward could not fitly supervise her women. Romilly thought she would rather muck out barns and milk dairy-animals and make the butter herself than have to oversee other women doing it; while as for the sewing-women, she was grimly certain that the youngest and least skilled of them would be better than she, so how could she ever presume to supervise or oversee, far less chide or correct? Luciella, too, hunted up one of Mallina’s old dolls, and dressed it in Rael’s cast-off babyclothes and taught both Mallina and Romilly how to bathe a young baby, how to hold it and support its floppy little head, how to change its napkins and what to do to keep it from having rashes and skin disorders; Romilly could not imagine why, if there were skilled nurses and midwives there, and Darissa with two - no, three children by now - she should have to know how to do all this herself, even before she had any children, but Luciella insisted that it was part of a young wife’s proper knowledge. Romilly had no particular objection to having children - Rael as a baby had been adorable - but when she thought of having children, she thought first of Darissa, soft and flabby and fat and sick, and then of the inevitable process by which those children would be gotten. She was farmbred and healthy, and had often thought, with secret pleasure, of the time when she would have a lover, a husband, but when she sought to put Dom Garris’s face into that place, which (to do her credit) she virtuously tried to do, she only felt sick, and now even when she thought of any man, the very idea made her feel queasy and faint. No, but she could not, she would run away, she would join the Sisterhood of the Sword and wear weapons and fight as a mercenary soldier for one of the kings contending for this land, she would cut her hair and pierce her ears - and when she got to this point she realized how foolish she was, for if she ran away they would only follow her and drag her back. And then she would make wild plans, a final appeal to her father, to her stepmother, to Lord Scathfell himself - when they put the bracelets on her she would scream “No” and tear them off, when they tried to lead her to the bedding she would fall on Dom Garris with a knife… . Surely then he would put her away, he would not want her … she would tell him how much she loathed him, and he would refuse to have her….

But she knew in her heart that all this was useless. She must marry… and she could not!

The summer drew on; the evening snow was only a brief trickle of rain, and the hills were bright with flowers and budding trees; the nut-bushes were covered with little green lumps which would ripen into nuts, and almost every day she and Mallina could cut fresh mushrooms from the sides of the old trees which had been implanted with fungus-roots. She picked berries dutifully and helped to stem them for conserves, helped churn butter in the dairies, and seldom had leisure even for a ride, let alone to give Preciosa proper exercise; but every day she visited her hawk in the mews, and begged Darren or Alderic to take her out and fly her. Darren was afraid of hawks, and still avoided them when he could, but when Alderic had leisure he would take out Preciosa on his saddle.

“But she does not fly well for me,” he told her one evening, “I think she is pining for you, Romilly.”

“And I am neglecting her,” Romilly said, with a pang of guilt. She had herself formed the tie with this wild thing; now she could not betray it. She resolved that tomorrow, no matter what duties Luciella laid on her, she would find some tune for a ride, and to take out the hawk.

She flew through her work the next morning with such speed and willingness that Luciella stared, and said, “Why, what you can do when you are willing, child!”

“Since I have finished, foster-mother, may I take my hawk out for a little while?”

Luciella hesitated, then said, “Why yes; you must not neglect Dom Garris’s gift. Go then, Romilly, enjoy yourself in the fresh air.”

Released, she fled to put on her riding-habit and boots, to order her horse saddled - she supposed it would have to be a lady’s saddle, but riding sidesaddle was better than not riding at all - and was swiftly off to the mews. Darren was in the yard, glumly exercising one or two of the hawks; she noted his clumsy movements, and told him she was going hawking - would he come? He went, with relief, and had his own horse saddled. She was taking Preciosa from her block, holding her familiar weight on the gauntlet with pleasure, extending her senses toward the hawk to set up the old contact, when her father stepped into the mews.

“Romilly,” he said sharply, “Take your own hawks, not that one. You know what your promised husband said; it is unseemly to fly a verrin hawk, and you have hawks of your own. Put her back.”

“Father!” she protested, in a sudden flood of anger, “Preciosa is my own hawk, I trained her myself! She is mine, mine! No one else shall fly her! How can it be unseemly for me to fly a hawk I trained? Are you going to let Dom Garris tell you what it is right for your own daughter to do, in your own stable-yard?”

She saw conflict and dismay on his face; but he said sharply, “I told you, put that hawk back on the block and take out your own! I will not have you defy me, girl!” He strode toward her; Preciosa sensed Romilly’s agitation and bated wildly, threshing furiously on her wrist, whirling up to the length of the fastened jesses, then settling restively back.

“Father-” she pleaded, lowering her voice not to disturb the easily-frightened birds, “Don’t say this-“

The MacAran thrust out his hand and firmly gripped Preciosa’s feet. He set her back on the block and said, “I will be obeyed, and that is all there is to it.”

“She’s not getting enough exercise,” Romilly pleaded, “she needs to be flown.”

The MacAran paused. “That’s right,” he said, and beckoned to Darren.

“Here,” he jerked his head to indicate Preciosa on her block, “Take her; I give her to you. You need a good hawk to work with, and this is the best we have. Take her out today, and start getting used to her.”

Romilly’s mouth fell open in indignant surprise. He could not do that to her - nor to Preciosa! The MacAran grasped the bird again, held it firmly until the bating quieted, then set her on Darren’s wrist; he jerked back, startled, and Preciosa, even hooded, thrust her head about, trying to peck, beating her wings; Darren ducked away, his wrist twisting so that she overbalanced and fell, hanging from her jesses. He stood holding the wildly bating hawk, and The MacAran said in a harsh whisper, “Pick her up! Quiet her, damn you, if she breaks a wing-feather I’ll break your neck, boy!”

Darren made ineffectual movements to quiet the bird, finally getting her to something like quiet on his glove. But his voice broke into falsetto as he said, “It’s not-not fair, sir. Father, I beg you-Romilly trained that hawk herself, and with her own laran-“

“Silence, young man! Don’t you dare speak that word in my presence!”

“Refusing to hear it won’t make it less true, sir. It’s Romilly’s hawk, she trained it, she earned it, and I don’t want it - I won’t take it from her!”

“But you will take it from me,” said The MacAran, his jaw thrusting forth, his jutting chin hard with fury, “How dare you say a hawk trained at Falconsward in my own mews is not mine to give? Romilly has been given hawks by her promised husband. She needs not this one, and you will take it or-” he leaned toward Darren, his eyes blazing, his breath coming and going in rough harsh noises, “Or I will wring its neck here before you both! I will not be defied here in my own mews!” He made a threatening gesture as if to carry out his threat here and now, and Romilly cried out.

“No! No, Father - no, please! Darren, don’t let him - take the hawk, it’s better for you to have it.”

Darren drew a long, shaking breath. He wet his lips with his tongue, and settled the hawk on his arm. He said shakily, “Only because you ask me, Romilly. Only for that, I promise you.”

Her eyes burning, Romilly turned aside to take up one of the tiny, useless hawks that had been Dom Garris’ gift. At that moment she hated them, the little half-brained, stupid things. Beautiful as they were, elegantly trapped, they were only ornaments, pretty meaningless jewels, not real hawks at all, no more than one of Rael’s carven toys! But it was not their fault, poor silly little things, that they were not Preciosa. Her heart yearned over Preciosa, perched unsteadily on Darren’s awkward wrist

My hawk. Mine. And now that fool of a Darren will spoil her … ah, Preciosa, Preciosa, why did this have to happen to us? She felt that she hated her father too, and Darren, clumsily transferring Preciosa from his glove to the block on the saddle. Tears blurred her eyes as she mounted. Her father had called for his great rawboned grey; he would ride with them, he said wrathfully, to make sure Darren used the hawk well, and if he did not, he would learn it as he had learned his alphabet, beaten into him with The MacAran’s own riding-crop!