Hawkmistress! (26 page)

At the monastery gates Orain tugged at the bell-pull which announced their presence to the porter at the guest-house. It was very late; for a moment Romilly wondered if they would be admitted at all, but finally the Brother Porter appeared at the gates and, grumbling, let them inside. He frowned and sniffed disapprovingly at the reek of wine which hung around them, but he did let them in, and shook his head when Orain offered him a silver bit.

“I am not allowed, friend. I thank you for the kind thought. Here, your door is this way,” he said, and added audibly to Romilly, “Can you get him inside?”

“This way, Orain,” said Romilly, shoving him to the door of his room. Inside, Orain looked around, fuzzily, like an owl in daylight “Whe-“

“Lie down and go to sleep,” Romilly said, pushed him down on the nearer of the two beds and hauled at his heavy boots. He protested incoherently … he was drunker than she had realized.

He held her by one wrist. “You’re a good boy,” he said, “Aye, I like you, Rumal - but you’re cristoforo. Once I heard you call on the Bearer of Burdens … damn …”

Gently Romilly freed her hand, pulled his cloak around him, went quietly away, wondering where Dom Carlo was. Not, surely, still closeted with the Father Master? Well, it was none of her affair, and she must be up early to care for the animals and the sentry-birds. She shrank from sharing the sleeping quarters of the men who attended on Carlo and Orain, so she had chosen to sleep on the hay in the stables - it was warm and she was unobserved; she need not be quite so careful against some accidental revealing of her body. She had not realized, until she was alone again, quite what a strain it was to be always on guard against some momentary inadvertent word or gesture which might betray her. She pulled off her boots, glad of the thick stockings under them, rolled herself into a bundle in the hay and tried to sleep again.

But she found herself unexpectedly wakeful. She could hear the stirring of the birds on their perches, the soft shifting hooves of horses and chervines; far away inside the depths of the monastery she heard a small bell and a faraway shuffle of feet as the monks went their way to the Night Offices, when all the world around them slept. Had Orain some feud with the cristoforos that he would say he liked her, but she was cristoforo! Was he bigoted about religion? Romilly had never really thought much about it, she was cristoforo because her family was, and because, all her life, she had heard tales of the good teachings of the Bearer of Burdens, whose teachings had been, so the cristoforos said, brought from beyond the stars in days before any living man could remember or tell. At last, hearing the muffled chanting, far away, she fell into a restless sleep, burrowing herself into the hay. For a time she dreamed of flying, soaring on hawk-wings, or on the wings of a sentry-bird; not over her own mountains, but over a lowland country, green and beautiful, with lakes and broad fields, and a white tower rose above a great lake. Then she came half awake as a bell rang somewhere in the monastery. She thought, a little ruefully, that if she had had supper within the monastery she would have heard the choir singing-perhaps the only woman who would ever do so.

Well, they would be there for days, it seemed; there would be other nights, other services to hear. How lucky Darren was no longer here at the monastery - even from his seat within the choir, he would have seen and recognized her.

If King Carolin comes to the monastery, young Caryl will recognize him - Dom Carlo must warn him….

And then she slept again, to dream confused dreams of kings and children, and someone at her side who spoke to her in Orain’s voice and drowsily caressed her. At last she slept, deep and dreamlessly, waking at first light to the screams of the sentry-birds.

Life in the monastery quickly fell into routine. Up at early light to tend the animals, breakfast in the guest-house, occasionally an errand to be done for Dom Carlo or Orain. Two days later she had her new boots, made to her own measure, and with the pay they gave her - for now she had been in their service ten days - she found a stall where warm clothing was sold, and bought warm stockings so that she could wash and change the ones she had been wearing since Orain had given them to her. In the afternoon she wandered alone around the city of Nevarsin, enjoying a freedom she had never had in the days when she was still the ladylike daughter of The MacAran; in the evenings, when the birds had been tended and exercised again, after a frugal supper in the guesthouse, she would slip into the chapel and listen to the choir of men and little boys. There was one soprano among the boys, with a sweet, flutelike voice; she strained her eyes to see the singer and realized at last that it was small Caryl, the son of Lyondri Hastur.

He wished King Carolin no ill. Romilly hoped that Orain had passed along his message to Dom Carlo and that he, somehow, had gotten word to the king, that Carolin had not come to the city.

Once or twice during the tenday that followed, she went again with Orain to the tavern, or to another, though never again did he drink more than a mug or two of the local wine, and seemed not even a little befuddled by it. Dom Carlo she had not seen again; she supposed he was about whatever business for King Carolin had brought him to this city. For all she knew to the contrary, he had left Nevarsin and gone to warn Carolin not to come here - there was one who would recognize him. She did not think the child would betray Carolin - he had said the king had been kind to him - but his loyalties, naturally, would be to his own father. She did not question Orain. It was none of her business, and she was content to have it that way.

Shyly, she began to wonder; if her father had chosen to marry her to one like Orain, would she have refused him? She thought not. But that was conflict too.

For then would I have stayed at home and been married, and never known this wonderful freedom of city and tavern, woods and fields, never have worked free and had money in my pockets, never really known that I had never been free, never flown a sentry-bird.

She was growing fond of the huge ugly birds; now they came to her hand for their food as readily as any sparrow-hawk or child’s cagebird. Either her arm grew stronger or she was more used to it, for now she could hold them for a considerable time and not mind the weight. Their docility and the sweetness she felt when she went into rapport with them, made her think with regret of Preciosa; would see ever see the hawk again?

She seldom saw the other men; she slept apart from them, and encountered them only morning and night, when they all came together for meals in the monastery guest-house. She was quite content that it should be so; she was still a little afraid of Alaric, and the others seemed strange and alien too. It seemed sometimes that the only person to whom she spoke these days, aside from the man who delivered the bird-food and fodder for horses and chervines, was young Caryl, who came whenever he could escape for a few minutes from his lessons, to look at the birds, hold them, croon lovingly to them. With Caryl she was always a little troubled, lest he should forget and thoughtlessly address her again as vai domna - it was a heavy weight of secrets for a child to bear. Once Orain came to the chapel to hear the singing; he took a seat far back and in the shadows, and she was sure that the little boy, in the lighted choir, could not see the face of a solitary man in the darkest part of the chapel, but she remembered that the child knew Carolin and would certainly recognize one of the king’s men; she was so agitated that she rose quietly and went out, afraid that the telepathic child would sense her agitation and know its cause.

Midwinter-night was approaching; stalls of spicebread trimmed with copper foil, and gaily painted toys, began to appear in the marketplace, and sweet-sellers filled their displays with stars cut from spicebread or nut-paste. Romilly, homesick at the smell of baking spicebread - Luciella always baked it herself, saying that the servants should not be given extra work at this season - almost regretted leaving her home; but then she remembered that in any case she would not have spent this holiday at her home, but at Scathfell as the wife of Dom Garris - and by now, no doubt, she would have been like Darissa, swollen and ugly with her first child! No, she was better here; but she wished she could send a gift to Rael, or that he could see these bright displays with her.

On the morning before the Festival, she woke to snow blowing into the cracks of the room where she slept, though she was warm in the deep-piled hay. A midwinter storm had blown down, wailing, from the Wall Around the World, and the monastery courtyard was knee-deep in fresh powdery snow. She put on both pairs of warm stockings when she dressed, and her extra tunic, and even so she shivered as she went out into the yard to wash at the well; but the little novices and students were running about barefoot in the snow, and she wondered how they could do it, laughing and gossiping and tossing snowballs at one another. They looked rosy and warm, whereas her own hands were blue with cold!

She went in to care for the riding-animals, and stopped in dismay; Dom Carlo’s horse was not in the stable! Had it been stolen? Or had Dom Carlo gone out, into this bitter storm? It was still snowing, a few flakes drifting down now and again from the overburdened sky. As she was lifting forkfuls of fragrant hay to the beasts, Orain came in, and she turned to him in distress.

“Dom Carlo’s horse-“

“Hush, lad,” he said in a low tone, “Not even before the men. His life could be in your hands; not a word!”

Romilly nodded, and he said, “Good boy. After midday, walk to the town with me; perhaps, who knows, I shall have a Midwinter gift for you, away as you are from home and family.”

It seemed as if he must be reading her mind, and she turned away. “I expect no gifts, sir,” she said stiffly. Did he know, had he guessed? But he only grinned and said, “Midday, remember.” and went away.

At midday Romilly was trying, in the deep snow, to get the sentry-birds to fly a little - they got little enough exercise, in this weather - before they were fed. They screamed rebelliously as she snapped them on lure-lines and tried to encourage them to fly - they were temperamental and did not like the still-falling snow. The snow in the cobbled court, too, was so deep that it came over her boot-tops and trickled down inside, and her feet were cold and her fingers stiff. She was chilled and cross, and even little Caryl’s cheerful face could not lighten her mood. She thought, it might, in this weather, be just as well to be a lady by the fire, with nothing to do but make embroidery stitches and bake spicebread! Caryl was wearing only a thin tunic, his arms bare, and his feet were bare in the snow, and she asked crossly, “Aren’t you freezing?”

He shook his head, laughing. “It is the first thing the monks teach us,” he said, “How to warm ourselves from within, by breathing; some of the older monks can bathe in the water of the well and then dry their clothes by their body heat when they put them on, but that seems a little more than I would want to try. I was cold for the first tenday before I learned it, but I have never suffered from the cold since then. Poor Rumal, you look so cold, I wish I could teach it to you!” He held out his arm to take Prudence, saying seriously, “Come, birdie, you must fly, I know you do not like the snow, but it is not good for you to sit all the time on your perch, you must keep your wings strong.”

Prudence flapped away and circled at the end of the line, while Caryl cast out the lure, watching her swoop down. “See, she likes to play with it, even in the snow! Look at her!”

“You are happy,” Romilly said sourly, “Do you like the storm as much as that?”

“No, I would like to go out, but in this weather I have to stay indoors, and the arms-master cannot come, so I will miss my lesson at sword-play,” said the boy, “but I am happy because tomorrow is a holiday, and my father will come here to visit me. I miss my father and my brothers, and father is sure to bring me a fine gift - I am twelve years old and he promised me a fine sword, perhaps he will give it to me for a Midwinter-gift. And he always takes me walking in the town, so that I can buy spicebread and sweets, and my mother always sends me a new cloak at Midwinter. I have been working very hard at all my lessons, because I want him to be pleased with me.”

Lyondri Hastur? Here in the monastery? Her first thought was of Orain and Dom Carlo; the second of their king. Quieting her thoughts carefully, she asked, “Is your father here now?”

“No, but he will come for the holiday, unless this weather should keep him housebound a day’s journey away,” the boy said, “and Father is never afraid of storms! He has some of the old Delleray Gift, he can work a little on the weather; you’ll see, Father will make it stop snowing before it is night.”

“That is a laran of which I have not heard,” Romilly said, keeping her voice steady, “Do you have it?”

“I don’t think so,” the child said, “I have never tried to use it. Here, let me fly Temperance while you take Diligence, will you?”

She handed the lure-line to the child, trying to conceal her agitation. Alaric, too, should be warned - or would he try to take vengeance on his enemy, whom he regarded as murderer of his wife and child? She could hardly make conversation with the little boy. And halfway through feeding the birds, she saw the door from the stables open and Orain came into the court. She tried to motion to him to withdraw, but he came into the courtyard, saying, “Not finished with the birds yet, my boy? Make haste, I want your company for an errand in the town,” and Caryl turned and saw him. His eyes widened a little.

“My lord,” he said, with a courtly little bow, “What are you doing here?”