Hawkmistress! (3 page)

“The other hawk flies free to hatch more of her kind,” she said, “I released her myself at dawn. And this one has not been mishandled, Father-“

At the words and movement the hawk bated again, more fiercely than before, and Romilly gasped, struggling to keep her sense of self against the fury of thrashing wings, the hunger, the blood-lust, the frenzy to break free, fly free, dash itself to death against the dark enclosing beams… but it subsided, and Romilly, crooning to the bird, sensed another mind touching hers, sending out waves of calm … so that’s how Father does it, she thought with a corner of her mind, brushed a dripping lock of hair out of her eyes and stepped toward the hawk again.

Here is food, come and eat… nausea rushed through her stomach at the smell and sight of the dead meat on the gauntlet. Yes, hawks feed on fresh-caught food, they must be tamed by starvation into feeding on carrion….

Abruptly the touching of minds, girl, man, hawk, broke, and Mikhail of MacAran said harshly, “Romilly, what am I to do with you, girl? You have no business here in the hawk-house; it is no work for a lady.” His voice softened. “No doubt Davin put you up to this; and I’ll deal with him. Leave the meat and go, Romilly. Sometimes a hawk will feed from an empty block when she’s hungry enough, and if she does we can keep her; if not, Davin can release her tomorrow, or that boy of his can do something for once to earn his porridge! It’s too late tonight for her to fly. She won’t die, and if she does, it won’t be the first hawk we’ve lost. Go in, Romilly, get a bath and go to your bed. Leave the hawks to the hawkmaster and his boy-that’s why they’re here, love, my little girl doesn’t need to do this. Go in the house, Romi, child.”

She swallowed hard, feeling tears break through.

“Father, please,” she begged, “I’m sure I can tame her. Let me stay, I beg of you.”

“Zandru’s hells,” the MacAran swore, “If but one of your brothers had your strength and skill, girl! But I’ll not have it said that my daughters must work in mews and stable! Get you inside, Romilly, and not another word from you!”

His face was angry and implacable; the hawk bated again, at his anger, and Romilly felt it surging through her too, an explosion of fury, frustration, anger, terror. She dropped the gauntlet and ran, sobbing with rage, and behind her, her father strode out of the mews and locked it behind him.

Romilly went to her room, where she emptied her aching bladder, ate a little bread and honey and drank a cup of milk from the tray one of the serving-women brought her; but her mind was still with the chained, suffering, starving hawk in the mews.

It would not eat, and soon it would die. It had begun, just a little, to trust Romilly … surely, the last two or three times it had bated, before her father had disturbed them, it had quieted sooner, feeling her soothing touch. But now it would surely die.

Romilly began to draw off her shoes. The MacAran was not to be disobeyed, certainly not by his daughter. Even Ruyven, six feet tall and almost a man, had never dared open disobedience until the final break. Romilly, Darren, Mallina-all of them obeyed his word and seldom dared even a look of defiance; only the youngest, spoilt little Rael, would sometimes tease and wheedle and coax in the face of his father’s edicts.

In the next room, past the glass doors separating their chambers, Mallina already slept in her cot, her pale-red hair and lacy nightgown pale against the pillow. Lady Calinda had long gone to her bed, and old Gwennis drowsed in a chair beside the sleeping Mallina; and although Romilly was not glad of her sister’s illness, she was glad that the old nurse was busy about her sister; if she had seen Romilly in her current state - ruefully, Romilly surveyed her filthy and sweat-soaked clothes - there would have been an argument, a lecture, trouble.

She was exhausted, and thought longingly of clean clothes, a bath, her own soft bed. She had surely done all she could to save the hawk. Perhaps she should abandon the effort. It might feed from the block; but once it had done that, though it would not die, it could never be tamed enough to feed from the hawker’s hand or gauntlet, and must be released. Well, let it go then. And if, in its state of exhaustion and terror, it would not feed from the block, and died … well, hawks had died before this at Falconsward.

But never one with whom I had gone so deeply into rapport. …

And once again, as if she were still standing, exhausted and tense, in the hawk-house, she felt that furious frenzy building up again … even safely tied to the block, the hawk in her terrified threshing could break her wings … never to fly again, to sit dumb and broken on a perch, or to die … like me inside a house, wearing women’s clothes and stitching at foolish embroideries. …

And then she knew she would not let it happen that way.

Her father, she thought with detachment, would be very angry. This time he might even give her the beating he had threatened last time she disobeyed him. He had never, yet, laid a hand on her; her governess had spanked her a time or two when she was very small, but mostly she had been punished with confinement, with being forbidden to ride, with harsh words or loss of some promised treat or outing.

This time he will surely beat me, she thought, and the unfairness surged within her; I will be beaten because I cannot resign myself to let the poor thing die or thrash itself to death in terror….

Well, I shall be beaten then. No one ever died of a beating, I suppose. Romilly knew already that she was going to defy her father. She shrank from the thought of his rage, even more than from the imagined blows, but she knew she would never be able to face herself again if she sat quietly in her chamber and let the hawk die.

She should have released them both yesterday at dawn, as Davin said. Perhaps she deserved a beating for that disobedience; but having begun, it would be too cruel to stop now. At least, Romilly thought, she could understand why she was being beaten; the hawk would not understand the reasons for the long ordeal till it was finished. Her father himself had always told her that a good animal handler never began anything, with hawk or hound or horse, that he could not finish; it was not fair to a dumb creature who knew nothing of reason.

If, he had told them once, you break faith with a human being for some reason which seems good to you, you can at least explain to him or her. But if you break faith with a dumb creature, you have hurt that creature in a way which is unforgivable, because you can never make it understand. Never in her life had Romilly heard her father speak of faith in any religion, or speak of any God except in a curse; but that time, even as he spoke, she had sensed the depths of his belief and knew that he spoke from the very depths of his being. She was disobeying him, yes; but in a deeper sense she was doing what he had taught her to think right; and so, even if he should beat her for it, he would one day know that what she had done was both right and necessary.

Romilly took another swallow of water - she could face hunger, if she must, but thirst was the real torture; Davin usually kept a water pail within reach when he was working a hawk, and Romilly had forgotten to set a pail and dipper within reach. Then she slipped quietly out of the room. With luck, the hawk would “break” before dawn - would feed from the gauntlet, and sleep. This interruption might lose the hawk, she knew - if it did not soon feed, it would die - but at least she would know that she, who had confined it there, had not been the one to break faith and abandon it to death.

She had already left the chamber when she turned and went back for her flint-and-steel lighter; doubtless, her father or the hawkmaster’s boy would have extinguished the lantern and she would have to relight it. Gwennis, in the room beyond the glass doors, stirred and yawned, and Romilly froze, but the nurse only bent to feel Mallina’s forehead to see if her fever had broken, sighed, and settled back in her chair without a glance in Romilly’s direction.

On noiseless feet, she crept down the stairs.

Even the dogs were sleeping. Two of the great grey-brown hounds called Rousers were asleep right across the doorway; they were not fierce dogs, and would not bite or attack even an intruder unless he offered to hurt them, but they were noisy creatures, and in their friendly, noisy barking, their function was to rouse the household against intruder or friend. But Romilly had known both dogs since they were whelped, had given them their first solid tidbits when they left off sucking their dam; she shoved them slightly away from the door, and the dogs, feeling a familiar and beloved hand, only snuffled a little in their sleep and let her pass.

The light in the hawk-house had indeed been extinguished. As she stepped across the doorsill she thought of an old ballad her own mother had sung in her childhood, of how, at night, the birds talked among themselves when no human creature was near. She found she was walking tip-toe, half expecting to overhear what they might be saying. But the birds in the mews where the tame ones were kept were only hunched forms on the blocks, fast asleep, and she felt from them only a confused silence.

I wonder if they are telepathic among themselves, she wondered, if they are aware of one another’s fear or pain? Even the leronis had not been able to tell her this. Now, she supposed, most of the birds, at least, were head-blind, without telepathic awareness or laran, or they would all be awake and restless now; for Romilly could still feel, beating up at her in waves of dread and fury, of hunger and rage, the emotions of the great verrin hawk.

She lighted the lamp, with hands that shook. Father had never believed, then, that it would feed from the block; he certainly knew that no hawk would feed in darkness. How could he have done that? Even if he was angry with her, Romilly, he need not have deprived her hawk of its last chance at life.

Now it was all to do again. She saw the dead meat lying on the block; unpecked, untouched. The hawk had not fed. The meat was beginning to smell rancid, and Romilly had to overcome her own revulsion as she handled the dead thing- ugh, if I were a hawk I wouldn’t touch this carrion either.

The hawk bated again in its frenzy and Romilly stepped closer, crooning, murmuring calm. And after a few seconds the thrashing wings quieted. Could it be that the hawk remembered her? Perhaps the interruption had not wholly wrecked her chances. She slid her hand into the gauntlet, cut a fresh strip of meat from the carcass and held it out to the bird, but again it seemed that the disgust of the dead smell was more sickening and overpowering than it had been.

Was she feeling, then, what the hawk felt? For a moment, in a dizzy wave of sickness, Romilly met the great yellow-green eyes of the bird, and it seemed to her that she was badly balanced on some narrow space without any proper place to stand, unfamiliar leather chafing her ankles, and that some strange and hateful presence was there, trying to force her to swallow some revolting filthy mess, absolutely unfit to eat … for a split second Romilly was again a child too young to speak, tied into her high chair and her nurse was spooning some horrid nasty stuff down her throat and she could only struggle and scream….

Shaken and sick, she stepped back, letting the dead carcass fall to the floor. Was that how the hawk regarded her? She should have let the hawk fly, she could never live with such hatred … do all the animals we master hate us like that? Why, then, a trainer of horses and hounds is more evil than a molester of children … and he who takes a hawk from the sky, to chain it on a block, he is no better than a rapist, a violator of women… . But the bating, struggling hawk was off her perch this time, and Romilly moved forward, patiently adjusting the block so that the hawk could find a secure place to stand, until it found its feet and balanced securely again.

Then she stood silent, trying not to trouble the hawk even with breath, while the battle went on inside her mind. Part of her fought with the chained hawk, terror and rage contending for place, but Romilly, in her own struggle for interior calm, filled her mind with the memory of the last time she had hunted with her own favorite falcon … soaring upward with it, striking, and something inside her remembered clearly that sudden feeling, which in herself would have been pride and pleasure, as the hawk fed from her glove … and she knew it would have been stronger still if she herself had trained the hawk; that pleasure in accomplishment, that sense of sudden union with the bird, would have been deeper still.

And she had shared the delight, inarticulate, impossible to frame in words, but a joy deep and swelling, when her favorite bitch brought her puppies to her; the animal’s pleasure at the caress was something like the love she felt for her own father, her joy and pride at his rare praise. And even though she had felt the real pain and fear when a young horse struggled against bridle and saddle, she had shared in the communion and trust between horse and rider, and known it for real love, too; so that she loved to ride breakneck, knowing she could come to no harm while the horse carried her, and she let the horse go at her own pace and pleasure, sharing the delight in the running….

No, she thought, it is not a violation to teach or train an animal, no more than when nurse taught me to eat porridge, even though I thought it nasty at first and wanted nothing but milk; because if she had fed me upon milk and babies’ pap after my teeth were grown, I would have been sickly and weak, and needed solid food to grow strong. I had to learn even to eat what was good for me, and to wear clothes even though, no doubt, I would sooner, then, have been wrapped in my blankets like a swaddled baby! And later I had to learn to cut my meat with knife and fork instead of gnawing at it with fingers and teeth as an animal would do. And now I am glad to know all these things.