Hawkmistress! (11 page)

Now the set brought her face to face with Dom Garris again. He smiled at her and pressed her hand too, and she blushed, holding her own hands cold and stiff against his, just touching as the dance required. She was relieved when the set brought them back to their original places, with Alderic facing her. The musicians swung into a couple-dance, and she saw Dom Garris start toward her purposefully; she grabbed at Alderic’s sleeve and whispered, “Will you ask me to dance, Dom Alderic?”

“To be sure,” he said, smiling, and led her out. She said after a moment, returning his smile as they left Garris staring after them, “You are not a clodhopper at all.”

“No?” He laughed. “It has been long since I danced, save with the monks.”

“You dance in the monastery?”

“Sometimes. To keep warm. And there is a sacred dance at some of the services. And some of the students who are not to be of the brethren go into the village and dance at Festival, though I-” it seemed to her that he hesitated a moment, “I had small leisure for that”

“They keep you so hard at your studies? Domna Luciella said that Darren looks thin and pale - do they give you enough to eat, and warm clothes?”

He nodded. “I am used enough to hardships,” he said, and fell silent, while Romilly enjoyed the dance, the music. He said, as they separated at the end of the music, “You wear my flowers - I hope they pleased you?”

“Very much,” she said, then felt shy again; had he put the dorilys into her basket as the invitation Mallina said it was, or was it simply a stranger’s unfamiliarity with the countryside? She would have liked to ask, but was too bashful. But again it was as if he read her thoughts; he said abruptly, “Darren told me - I meant nothing improper, believe me, Mistress Romilly. In my country - I am a lowlander - the starflower, dorilys, it is the gift of the lord Hastur to the Blessed Cassilda, and I meant a courteous compliment in honor of the day, no more.”

She said, smiling up at him, “I do not think anyone would believe you capable of any improper innuendo, Dom Alderic.”

“I am your brother’s friend; you need not say Dom to me,” said Alderic. “After all, we have hunted and flown hawks together.”

“Nor need you call me damisela,” she said, “My brothers and sister call me Romy.”

“Good; we shall be even as kinfolk, as I am to Darren,” said Alderic. “Will you have some wine?” They had moved close to the refreshment-table. She shook her head and said ingenuously, “I am not allowed to drink wine in company.”

“Shallan, then?” He dipped her up some of the sweet fruit-drink. She sipped it thirstily. After the romping dance she knew that her hair was beginning to come down, but she did not want to withdraw to the giggling girls in the corner and pin it up.

“You are fond of hawking?” she asked him.

“I am; the women of our family train sentry-birds. Have you ever flown one, dcani - Romy?”

She shook her head. She had seen the great fierce birds, but said, “I knew not that they could be tamed! Why, they can bring down a rabbithorn! I should think they were no great sport.”

“They are not flown for sport,” Alderic said, “but trained for war, or for fire-watch; it is done with laran. A sentry-bird in flight can spy out intruders into a peaceful countryside, or bandits, or a forest-fire. But it is no task for sport, and in truth the birds are fierce, and not easy to handle. Yet I think you could do it, Romilly, if your laran was trained.”

“It is not, nor likely to be,” she said, “and doubtless you know why, if Darren has told you so much. Sentry-birds!” She felt a little shiver, half pleasant, trickle down her spine at the thought of handling the great fierce birds of prey. “I think it would be no harder to train a banshee!”

Alderic chuckled. “I have even heard of that in the far hills,” he said, “And banshee-birds are very stupid; it takes little craft to handle them, only to rear them from hatchlings and feed them on warm food; and they will do what you will, spying out game-tracks with the warmth left in the ground, and they make fine watch-birds, for they will scream terribly at any strange smell.”

Now she did shiver; the thought of the great, blind, flightless carnivores trained for watchman-duty. She said, “Who needs a banshee for that when a good Rouser hound is as useful, and much nicer to have around the house?”

“I’ll not argue that,” said Alderic, “and I would sooner climb High Kimbi in my bare feet than try to train a banshee; but it can be done. I cannot handle even sentry-birds; I have not the gift, but some of the women of our family do so, and I have seen it done in the Tower, where they use them for fire-watch; their eyes see further than any human’s.” Soft strains of music began again and he asked, “Would you like to dance this one?”

She shook her head. “Not yet, thanks - it is warm, the sun coming in like this.”

Alderic bowed to someone behind her, and Romilly turned to see Luciella standing there. She said, “Romilly, you have not yet danced with Dom Garris!”

he said scornfully, “It is like him to complain to my stepmother instead of coming like a man to ask me himself.”

Romilly! He is heir to Scathfell!”

I don’t care if he is heir to Cloudland Staircase or to Zandru’s ninth hell, if he wants to dance-” she began, but Dom Garris appeared behind Luciella and said, with his plump smile, “Will you honor me with a dance, Mistress Romilly?”

here was, after all, no way to refuse without being really rude. He was her parents’ guest, even though she felt he should dance with the women his own age and not hang around gawking at the young girls. She accepted his hand on her wrist to lead her out to dance. After all, he could not say or do anything rude in the full view of her father and her brothers, and half the countryside round. His hand on hers was unpleasantly damp, but she supposed that was not anything he could help.

Why, you are light as a feather on your feet, damisela- quite the young lady! Who would have thought it this morning, seeing you in your boots and breeches like a boy - I suppose all the young lads in the countryside are hanging around you, heh?”

Romilly shook her head silently. She detested this kind of talk, though she knew it would have made Mallina giggle and blush. When they had finished the dance he asked her for another, but she declined politely, saying she had a stitch in her side. He wanted to fetch her wine or a glass of shallan, but when she said she only wished to sit down by Darissa for a little he sat beside them and insisted on fanning her. Fortunately, by the time that dance was over, the musicians had struck up another ring-dance and all the young folks were gathering into circles, laughing and kicking up their heels in the rowdy figure. Dom Garris finally went away, sulking, and Romilly released her breath.

“You have made another conquest,” Darissa teased.

“Not likely; dancing with me is like grabbing at a scullery-girl, something he can do without committing himself to anything,” Romilly said. “The Aldarans of Scathfell are too high to marry into our clan, except for their younger sons. Father spoke once of marrying me to Manfred Storn, but he’s not fifteen yet, and there’s no hurry. Yet, though I am not high enough to marry, I am too well-born for him to seduce without reprisal, and I do not like him well enough for that.” She smiled and added, “The worst thing about wedding with Cinhil, should he offer for me, would be having to call that great fat slug brother. Yet kinship’s dues, I dare say, would at least make it unseemly for him to pay me more than the attention due a brother’s wife.”

“I would not count on that,” said Darissa in an undertone, “When I was pregnant with little Rafael, last year, he came and sought me out - he said that since I was already with child I need fear no unseemly consequences, and when I chided him, he said he looked backward to the old days in the hills, when brothers and sisters held all their wives in common … and surely, he said, Cathal would pay him a brother’s kindness and not care if I shared his bed now and again, since his wife was also big with breeding - I kicked his shins and told him to find a servant-girl for his bed if he could pay one to overlook his ugliness; and so I wounded his pride and he has not come near me again. To tell the truth he is not so bad-looking, only he whines and his hands are always flabby and damp. And-” she added, showing the dimples which were almost the only thing unchanged from the time when she and Romilly had been girls together, “I love Cathal too well to seek any other bed.”

Romilly blushed, and looked away; reared among animals, she knew perfectly well what Darissa was talking about, but Luciella was a strictly-observing cristoforo and did not think it seemly to speak of such things among young girls. Darissa mistook her blush. She said, almost defensively, “Well, I bear children without much trouble - I am not like Garris’s wife; she left no living children, and died in childbirth just before Midwinter. He has worn out three wives, Dom Garris, trying to get him an Heir, and I have marked that all his children die at birth - I have no wish to get myself with child by him or I should follow his wives into death, no doubt.

“My older sister went for a time to Tramontana Tower when she was a girl, and she said she had heard there about the days of the old breeding-program, when the Aldarans had some strange gifts of loran, but they were bound, in their line, to lethal genes - do you know what those are? Yes, of course, your father breeds his own horses, does he not? And Cathal has them not, but I think Dom Garris will leave no heir, so one day my sons by Cathal will inherit Scathfell-” Darissa rattled on.

“And you will rule the roost as their mother,” said Romilly, laughing, but then Rael came up and pulled them into the set-dance, saying they had not enough women to make up a second set, and she dropped that line of thought.

The dancing and feasting went on all day, and before midnight The MacAran and Lord Scathfell and the rest of the older people, with their ladies, retired to rest, leaving the young people to their dancing and merry-making. Rael was taken away by the governess, also the protesting Mallina, who was comforted only by seeing that her friends Jessamy and Jeralda were also being sent to bed. Romilly was tired, and almost ready to go with the children - she had, after all, been awake before daylight. But Alderic and her brother Darren were still dancing, and she would not admit that her brother could stay awake longer than she could. But she saw, with a little sinking awareness, that Darissa was leaving the hall - pregnant as she was, she said, she needed her sleep.

I will stay close to Darren. In my brother’s presence Dom Garris cannot come too near for comfort … and then she wondered why she was worrying; he had, after all, offered her no word out of the way, and how could she complain, after all, of a mere look? Nevertheless, the memory of his eyes on her made her squirm; and now she thought about it, she realized that all this day and evening she had been somehow, in the back of her mind, aware of his eyes on her.

Is this, then, laran?

I would rather not dance at all, I would rather sit here and talk about hawks and horses with my brother and his friends….

But Cinhil claimed her for a dance, and then she could not in courtesy refuse Dom Garris. The dancing was a little wilder, the music faster, now that the elderly and more staid people had left the hall. He whirled her about till she was dizzy, and she was conscious that his hands were no longer decorously on her sleeve but that he was holding her somewhat closer than was comfortable, and when she tried self-consciously to squirm away from them he only chuckled and eased her closer still.

“No, now, you cannot tell me you are so shy as that,” he said, and she could tell from the flushed look of his face and the slight slurring of his words that he had drunk over long of the stronger wine at the high table, “Not when you run about with those lovely long legs showing in breeches, and your breasts showing through a tunic three sizes too small, you cannot play Lady Modesty with me now!” He pulled her close and his lips nuzzled her cheek, but she twisted indignantly away.

“Don’t!” And then she said, crossly, “I do not like the stink of too much wine on your breath, and you are drunk, Dom Garris. Let me go.”

“Well, you should have been drinking more,” he said easily, and guided them in the dance into one of the long galleries that led away from the hall. “Here, give me a kiss, Romy-“

“I am not Romy to you,” she said, and pulled her head away from him, “and if you had not been spying about where you had no right to be, you would not have seen me in my brother’s clothes, which I wear only in the sight of my little brothers. If you think I was showing myself to you, you are very much mistaken.”

“No, only to that haughty young sprig of the Hali’imyn who was squiring you to the hunt and hawking?” he asked, and laughed. She said, twisting her rumpled hair free, “I want to go back to the hall. I did not come out here with you of my own will, I just did not want to make a scene on the dance floor. Take me back to the hall, or I will shout to my brother now! And then my father will horsewhip you!”

He laughed, holding her close. “Ah, on a night like this, what do you think your brother will be doing, then? He would not thank you for calling him away from what every young man will be about, on Midsummer-Night. Must I alone be refused? You are not such a child as all that. Come, give me a kiss then-“

“No!” Romilly struggled away from his intruding hands, crying now, and he let her go.

“I am sorry,” he said gently, “I was testing you; I see now that you are a good girl, and all the Gods forbid I should interfere with you.” He bent and dropped a suddenly respectful kiss on her wrist. She swallowed hard, blinked back her tears and fled from the gallery, back through the hall and upstairs, where she bundled off her festival gown and hid beneath her warm quilts, sobbing.