Hawkmistress! (15 page)

They were all silent, miserable, as they rode down the pathway from the peaks of Falconsward. Romilly rode last, staring in open hatred at her father, at Darren’s saddle where Preciosa perched restlessly. She sent out her consciousness, her laran - since the word had been used - toward Preciosa, but the hawk was too agitated; she felt only a blur of confusion and hatred, a reddish-tinged rage that blurred her mind, too, till she had all she could do to sit in the saddle.

All too soon they reached the great open meadow where they had flown their hawks that day - only then it had been Alderic with them, a friendly face and helping hands, not their furious father. Awkwardly, pinching her in his haste, Darren took the hood from Preciosa’s head, raised her on his fist and cast her off; Romilly, reaching out her senses to merge with the rising hawk, felt how fury dropped away as Preciosa climbed the sky, and she thought, in despair, Let her go free. She will never be mine again, and I cannot bear to see her mishandled by Darren. He means well, but he has no hands or heart for hawks. As she sank into the hawk’s mind and heart, her whole soul seemed to go into the cry.

Go, Preciosa! Fly away, fly free - one of us at least should be free! Higher-higher-now, turn and go-

“Romilly, what ails you?” Her father’s voice was filled with asperity, “Get your bird out, girl!”

She brought herself painfully back to the moment, her practiced hands loosing the embroidered hood. The little hawk, shining like a jewel in the red sunlight, angled off, high on the wind, and Romilly watched, not seeing - her eyes were blurred with tears, her whole awareness with Preciosa.

Higher, higher… now, down the wind, and away, away … free on the wind, flying free and away. … a last quick sight of the country, spread out below her like a colored picture in one of Rael’s schoolbooks, then the frail link snapped asunder and she was alone again, alone in her own mind, her hands and heart empty, and only the shrill tiny screaming of the small hawk striking at some little rodent in the long grass, lifting-the bird lighted on her saddle. With automatic hands she tore at the small carcass, letting the hawk feed from her glove, but her heart was empty.

Preciosa. She is gone. Gone. Never again….

Her father’s head was thrown back, scanning the sky where Preciosa had vanished. “She has gone long,” he said, “Romilly, do you usually let her fly out of sight?”

Romilly shook her head. The MacAran waited, frozen, and Darren’s head was thrown back, his mouth a round ‘O’ of dread. They waited. At last The MacAran said in a fury,

“You have lost her, damn your clumsiness! The best hawk in the mews, and the very first time you fly her, you have lost her, worthless son that you are, worthless brat good for nothing but scribbling… .” he raised his riding-crop and the whip came down over Darren’s shoulders. He yelped, more from startlement than pain, but the sound galvanized Romilly; she flung herself headlong from her horse and scrambled toward the men, throwing herself between her father and Darren so that the blows fell on her.

“Beat me instead,” she cried, “It’s not Darren’s fault! I lost her, I let her go - I cannot be free, I must be chained inside a house and robbed of my hawk, you damned tyrant, but I will not have Preciosa chained too! I bade her go with my laran - with my laran - you have driven Ruyven away with your tyranny, you have made Darren afraid of you, but I am not afraid of you, and at least you will never mistreat my hawk again, my hawk, mine-” and she burst into wild crying. Her father checked a moment as the first blow fell on her shoulders, but as he heard the flood of abuse, as the forbidden words Ruyven and laran fell on his ears, his face turned furious black, congested with wrath, and he raised the riding-crop and struck her hard. He raised it again and again; Romilly shuddered with the pain, and shrieked at him, incoherently, harder than ever; her father slid from his horse and stood over her, beating her about the back and shoulders with the crop until finally Darren flung his arms around his father, shouting and yelling, and then another voice; Dom Alderic, restraining her father with his strong arms.

“Here, here, sir - I’m sorry, but you mustn’t beat a girl like that - good God, Romilly, your back is all bloody - look, sir, you’ve torn her dress!” He wrenched the crop from her father’s hands. The man made no protest, letting his arms fall dazed to his sides. Romilly swayed, feeling bloody wetness on her back, numb and smarting, and Alderic shoved her father into Darren’s arms, coming to support her with his arm. The MacAran looked dazed, his wrath giving way to numbness; he looked hastily, in dismay, at Romilly’s torn dress where the crop had cut the stiff material into ribbons, and then away again.

He said numbly, “I-I did not know what I was doing - I am in your debt, Dom Alderic. I-I-” and his voice failed him. He swayed where he stood and would have fallen, but Darren held him upright. The MacAran stared at Romilly, and said harshly, “I lost my temper. I shall not forgive you, girl, that you caused me to forget myself so shamefully! Had you been a boy, I would still beat you senseless! But soon enough your husband will have charge of you, and if you speak to him like that, I doubt it not he will break your head in two! Get out of my sight!”

Romilly stumbled; Alderic pushed her toward her horse. “Can you ride?” he asked in an undertone.

She nodded, numb, tears bursting out again.

“You had better get back to the house,” he muttered, “while he is still in shock at what he has done.”

The MacAran stood, still shaking his head in dismay and wrath. “In all the years of my life,” he said, “Never have I laid hand on a woman or girl! I shall not forgive myself, nor Romilly for provoking me!” He stared up into the sky where the hawk had vanished, and muttered something, but Romilly, under a push from Alderic, rode away blindly toward Falconsward.

When she stumbled into the house, and into her rooms, her old nurse met her with dismay. “Oh, my lamb, my little one, what has happened to you? Your back-your riding-dress-“

“Father beat me,” she mumbled, breaking out into terrible crying, “He beat me because Darren lost my hawk….”

Gwennis soaked the remains of the dress from her back, dressed the broken skin and bruised flesh with oil and herb-salve, put her into an old robe of soft cloth, and brought her hot soup in her bed. Romilly had begun to shiver and felt sick and feverish. Gwennis was grumbling, but she shook her head and demanded, “How did you come to anger your father so much? He is such a gentle man, he must have been beside himself to do something like this!” Romilly could not speak; her teeth were chattering and she kept crying, even though she tried and tried to stop. Gwennis, alarmed, went to fetch Luciella, who cried herself over Romilly’s bruises and cuts and her ruined habit, and nevertheless repeated what Gwennis had said - “How in the world came you to anger your father like this? He would never have done a thing like this unless you provoked him beyond bearing!”

They blame me, Romilly thought, they all blame me because I was beaten….

And now there is no hope for me. Preciosa is gone. My father cares more to be on good terms with Aldaran than he cares for me. He will beat Darren ruthlessly into shape because Darren does not have my gifts, but he will not let me be what I am, nor Darren what he is; he cares nothing for what we are, but only for what he would have us be. She would not listen to Luciella’s kind words, not to Gwennis’s cosseting. She could not stop crying; she cried until her eyes were sore and her head ached and her nose was reddened and dripping. And at last she cried herself to sleep.

She woke late, when the whole of Falconsward was silent, and the great violet face of Kyrrdis hung full and shining in her window. Her head still ached terribly, and her back stung and smarted despite the healing salves Gwennis had put on it She was hungry; she decided to slip downstairs and find some bread and cold meat in the kitchen.

My father hates me. He drove Ruyven away with his tyranny, but Ruyven at least is free, learning to be what he must be, in a Tower. Ruyven was right; at least, out of range of my father’s iron will, he can be what he is, not what Father would have him be. And suddenly Romilly knew that she, too, must be free, as Preciosa was free in the wild to be what she was.

Shaking, she pulled an old knitted vest over her sore back, and put on the old tunic and breeches she had worn. She slipped quietly along the corridor, her boots in her hand. They were women’s boots; a woman, she had heard all of her life, was not safe alone on the roads, and after the way Dom Garris had looked at her at Midsummer, she knew why. Ruyven’s room was shut up, all his things as he had left them; noiselessly she slipped inside, took from a chest one of his plainer shirts and an old pair of leather breeches, a little too large for her, shucked off Darren’s too-tight ones and dressed in Ruyven’s ample ones; she took a cloak too, and a leather over-tunic, slipped into her room again for her own hawking-glove. Remembering that Preciosa was gone, she almost left it behind, but she thought, some day I will have a hawk again, and I will remember Preciosa by this. At the last, before she slid her old dagger into its sheath, she cut her hair short to the nape of her neck, and as she stole outside, thrust the braid deep into the midden, so they would not find it. She had locked Ruyven’s door again, and they would never think to look among his old clothes and count the shirts. She would carry her habit with her, so they would be looking for a girl with long hair in a green riding-habit, not a nondescript young boy in plain old clothes. Slipping into the stable, she put an old saddle, dustcovered and hidden behind other discarded bits of harness, on her own horse, then thought better of it and left him in the stall. A black horse, a fine well-bred one, would betray her anywhere as a MacAran. She carried the saddle carefully outside and made a small bundle of it with her tack and her girl’s clothes. She left it there and slipped quietly into the kitchen - in the summer, all the kitchen work was done in an outer building so the building would not be too hot - and found herself meat and a cut loaf of bread, a handful of nuts and some flat cakes of coarse grain which the cook baked every day for the best of the dogs, the breeding bitches and those who were nursing pups… they were palatable enough and would not be missed as other breads might be, since they were baked by the dozen, almost by the hundred … a handful would never be counted. She rolled them in a kitchen towel and tied the neck of the improvised bag, then put her boots on, went outside and carried bag and saddle to the outer pasture, where old horses and culls were left to grass. She scanned them for a horse who would not be missed for some days - let them think she had gone afoot. Finally she decided on an elderly hack who was used only once in a great while, when the old coridom, now retired and seldom out of doors at all, visited the far pastures. She clucked softly - all the horses knew her - and he came cantering quietly to the fence. She murmured to him, fed him a handful of coarse vegetables, then put the saddle on his back, and led him softly away down the path, not mounting till she was well out of earshot of the walls. Once a dog began to bark inside the castle and she held her breath and fiercely willed the animal to be silent.

At the foot of the hill, she clambered into the saddle, wincing as her fresh bruises were jolted, but setting her teeth against the pain and wrapping herself hi her cloak against the midnight chill. Once she looked up at Falconsward on its crag, high above her.

Bearer of Burdens! 1 cannot, I cannot - Father is sorry, he beat me, this is madness, I should go back before I am missed….

But then the memory of Darren’s face as she gave him the hawk, of her father’s rage, of Ruyven’s set, despairing eyes the last time she had seen him, before he ran away from Nevarsin… . No, Father will have us what he wishes, not what we are. The memory of Dom Garris handling her rudely at Midsummer, the thought of how he would behave when she was turned over to him, his wife, his property to do with as he would-

She set her face like iron. Had there been anyone to see, at that moment, they would have marked; she was very like her father. She rode away from Falconsward without once looking back.

Book Two: THE FUGITIVE

CHAPTER ONE

On the third day it began to snow. Romilly, who had lived all her life in the foothills of the Hellers, knew that she must find shelter quickly; nothing alive could survive a storm, even at this season, except under cover. The wind whipped like a knife, and howled along the trees lining the path like the voices of ten thousand devils. Briefly she considered retracing her steps to the little hill-farm she had passed early that morning, and asking shelter there … but no. The farmers there might have been among those who came, now and again, to Falconsward, and even in her boy’s dress might know her for The MacAran’s daughter. She did not know them; but she had never been this far from her home, and was not sure where she was.

She knew vaguely that if she followed this trail, keeping to the north, she would come at last to Nevarsin, where she could take the road to Tramontana Tower. There she would find her brother Ruyven - or if he had been sent elsewhere by the leroni who ruled in the Towers, she could find news of him. It was in her mind that she might seek the training of her laran within the Towers, as the leronis Marelie had invited her to do some years ago. Alternatively, she might remain in Nevarsin for the winter - she had lived in the Hellers long enough to know that travelling in the winter, by the roads she must take to Nevarsin, was a dangerous enterprise, undertaken only by the mad or the desperate. Surely in Nevarsin she could seek to find work somewhere as a hawkmaster’s apprentice, or with some blacksmith or horse-keeper as a stableboy-for she had no intention of revealing herself as a girl. She had seldom been away from her own home, where even the kitchen-girls and washerwomen were treated kindly and properly supervised by Domna Luciella, but the very way they reacted to this treatment told her how rare it was, and one of the women, who had worked as a tavern wench for years, had told many stories of the treatment she was apt to receive. Romilly did not doubt her own ability to care for herself and to keep unwelcome hands off her; but even the lowest stable boy was paid more than any cook-woman or tavern maid, and Romilly had few skills to lift her above the lowest scullery-maid’s tasks. All she knew was horses and hawks, and the supervision of servants. Dressmakers and children’s nurses, she knew, could earn higher wages, but even the thought of working as a sewing-woman made her smile, remembering the botchery she made of her sewing, and for a child’s nurse they would want to know much more about her than she would be willing to tell. No, if she chose to stay in Nevarsin for the winter she would remain a boy to all appearances, and seek work in stables or mews.