Hawkmistress! (33 page)

“Having no use for her, once ye’ found she wasna’ one of your lads,” said Jandria, with an ironical grin. Then she looked straight at Romilly.

“Can’t you speak for yourself, girl? What led you into the mountains in men’s clothes? If it was the better to seek a man, take yerself off again, for we want no girls among us to give us the name of harlots in disguise! We travel with the armies, but we are not camp-followers, be that understood! Why did ye’ leave home?”

Her sharp tone put Romilly on the defensive. She said, “I left my home because my father took the hawk I trained myself, with my own hands, and gave it to my brother; and I thought that not fair. Also, I had no will to marry the Heir to Scathfell, who would have wanted me to sit indoors and embroider cushions and bear his ugly children!”

Jandria’s eyes were sharp on her. “Afraid of the marriage-bed and childbirth, hey?”

“No, that’s not it,” Romilly said sharply, “but I like horses and hounds and hawks and if I should ever marry-” she did not know she was going to say this until she said it, “I would want to marry a man who wants me as I am, not a pretty painted doll he can call wife without ever thinking what or who she is! And I would rather marry a man who does not think his manhood threatened if his wife can sit in a saddle and carry a hawk! But I would rather not marry at all, or not now. I want to travel, and to see the world, and to do things-” she broke off. She was saying this very badly. She sounded like a discontented and disobedient daughter, no more. Well, so she was and no otherwise, and if Mistress Jandria did not like her, well, she had lived as a man before in secret and could do so again if she must! “I am not asking charity of you, Mistress Jandria, and Orain knows me better than that!”

Jandria laughed. “My name is Janni, Romilly. And Orain does not know anything about women.”

“He liked me well enough till he found out I was a woman,” Romilly said, prickled again by that thought, and Janni laughed again and said, “That is what I mean. Now that he knows, he will never see anything about you except that you should be wearing skirts and sending out signs, so that he will not be led unwitting into trusting you. He let down his guard before you, I doubt not, thinking it safe, and now he will never forgive you for it - isn’t that it?”

“You are too hard on me, Janni,” said Orain uneasily, “But sure you must see that Mistress MacAran cannot travel with men and live rough in a camp with hard men such as I command!”

“In spite of the fact that she has done so for a span of ten-days,” said Jandria, with that flicker of a wry grin. “Well, you are right, this is the place for her, and if she is good with horses and birds, we can always make use of her, if she is willing to live by our rule.”

“How do I know until I know what that is?” demanded Romilly, and Jandria laughed. “I like her, cousin. You can go and leave her to me, I won’t bite her. But wait, you said you had another charge for me.”

“Yes,” Orain said, “Lyondri Hastur’s son; Carolin. He was a student in Nevarsin monastery, and he came into our hands as a hostage - never mind how, it’s better if you don’t know. But I have given my word I will have the boy sent back to Thendara under truce-flag when the passes are open, and unharmed. I cannot go myself.”

“No,” Jandria said, “You certainly cannot; for all your head’s stuffed with old rubbish and ugly as sin, it adorns your shoulders better than it would adorn a pike outside Lyondri’s den! Yes, we’ll take the lad to Thendara for you; I may even go myself. Lyondri has certainly not seen my face since we danced together at children’s parties and would not remember it without long curls and bows in my hair.” She chuckled as at a secret joke. “How old is young Carolin now? He must be eight or nine.”

‘Twelve, I think,” Orain said, “and a nice child; it’s pity he got himself mixed up in this, but he saved my neck and my men’s and Carolin has cause to be grateful to his godson, so guard him well, Janni.”

She nodded. “I’ll take him south as soon as the passes are open, then; you can send him to me here.” She chuckled and gave Orain another of her quick, offhand hugs. “And now you must go, kinsman - what of my reputation, if it is known I entertain a man here? Worse, what of yours, if it is found out you can speak civilly to a woman?”

“Oh, come, Janni-” protested Orain, but he rose to take his leave. He looked, embarrassed, at Romilly, and stuck out his hand. “I wish you well, damisela.”

This time she did not bother to correct him. If he could not see that she was the same whether in boy’s clothes or the name of a Great House, well, so much the worse for him; he did not sound like her friend Orain at all, and she could have cried again, but she did not, for Janni was staring appraisingly at her.

After the door closed behind Orain, she said, “Well, and what happened? Did he try and lure ye’ to bed, and recoil in unholy horror when he found out you were a woman?”

“That’s not quite how it happened,” said Romilly, moved to defend Orain without knowing why, “It was - he had been kind to me, and I thought he knew I was a woman, and wanted me so - I am not a wanton,” she defended herself, “Once I came near to killing a man who would have had me against my will.” She shivered and shut her eyes; she had thought she was free of the nagging horror of Rory’s attempted rape, but she was not. “But Orain was good, and I-I liked him well, and I only thought to be kind to him, if it was what he wanted so much.”

Janni smiled, and Romilly wondered, defensively, what was funny. But the older woman only said, quite kindly, “And you are a maiden still, I doubt not.”

“I am not ashamed of it,” Romilly flared.

“How prickly you are! Well, will you live by our rule?”

“If you will tell me what it is, I will answer you,” she said, and Janni smiled again.

“Well then; will you be sister to all of us, whatever rank we may bear? For we leave rank behind us when we come into the Sisterhood; you will not be My Lady or damisela here, and no one will know or care that you were born in a Great House. You must do your share of whatever work falls to us, and never ask quarter or special consideration because you are a woman. And if you have love affairs with men, you must conduct them in decent privacy, so that no man can ever call the Sisterhood a company of camp-followers. Most of us are sworn to live celibate while we follow the armies and the sword, though we do not force it upon anyone.”

It sounded exactly like what Romilly would have wished for. She said so.

“But will you swear it?”

“Gladly,” Romilly said.

“You must swear, as well, that your sword will always be ready to defend any of your sisters, in peace or war, should any man lay a hand on one who does not wish for it,” said Jandria.

“I would be glad to swear to that,” Romilly said, “but I do not think my sword would be any good to them; I know nothing about swordplay.”

Now Janni smiled and hugged her. She said, “We will teach you that. Come, bring your things into the inner room. Did that dolt Orain remember to give you breakfast, or was he in so much of a hurry to hustle you away from the camp that he forgot that women get hungry too?”

Romilly, still sore with rejection and pain, did not want to join Janni in making fun of Orain, but it sounded so much like what had actually happened, that she could not help but laugh. “I am hungry, yes,” she confessed, and Janni hoisted one of her bundles.

“I have a horse in the stable of the inn,” Romilly said, and Janni nodded. “I will send one of the sisters for it, in your name. Come into the kitchen - breakfast is long over, but we can always find some bread and honey - and then we will pierce your ears so that you can wear our sign and other women will know that you are one of us. Tonight you may take the oath. Only for a year at first,” she warned, “and then, if you like the life, for three; and when you have lived among us for four years, you may decide if you wish to pledge for a lifetime, or if you wish to go on your own, or to return to your family and marry.”

“Never!” Romilly said fervently.

“Well, we will fly that hawk when her pinions are grown,” said Janni, “but for now you may take the sword with us, and if you have some skill with hawks and horses, we will welcome you all the more; our old horse-trainer, Mhari, died of the lung-fever this winter, and the women who worked with her are all away with the armies to the south. None of the girls in the hostel now are even much good at riding, let alone for breaking them to the saddle - can you do that? We have four colts ready to be saddle-broken, and more at our big hostel near Thendara.”

“I was raised to it at Falconsward,” Romilly said, but Janni raised a hand in caution.

“None of us have any family or past beyond our names; I warned you, you are not my lady or Mistress MacAran among us,” she said, and, rebuked, Romilly was silent.

Yet, whatever I call myself, I am Romilly MacAran of Falconsward. I was not boasting of my lineage, only telling her how I came to be so trained - I would hardly have learned it at some croft in the hills! But if she chooses to think I was boasting, nothing I would say can change it, and she must think what she likes. Romilly felt as if she were old and cynical and worldly-wise, having arrived at this much wisdom. She followed Janni silently along the corridor, and through the large double doors at the end of the hall.

Her lineage too must be good, for all her refusal to speak of it, since she spoke of dancing with Lyondri Hastur at children’s parties. Maybe she too has been warned against speaking of her past.

It was a long and busy day. She ate bread and cheese and honey in the kitchen, was sent to practice some form of unarmed combat among a group of young girls, all of whom were more adept than she - she did not understand a single movement of the ones they were trying to teach her, and felt clumsy and foolish - and later in the day, a hard-faced woman in her sixties gave her a wooden sword like the ones she and Ruyven had played with when they were children, and tried to teach her the basic defensive moves, but she felt completely hopeless at that too. There were so many women - or it seemed like many, though she found out at dinner - time that there were only nineteen women in the hostel-that she could not even remember their names. Later she was allowed to make friends with the horses in the stable, where her own was brought - she found it easier to remember their names - and there were a few chervines too. Then Janni pierced her ears and put small gold rings into them. “Only while they are healing,” she said, “Later you shall have the ensign of the Sisterhood, but for now you must keep twisting the rings so that the holes will heal cleanly, and bathe them three times a day in hot water and thornleaf.” Then, in front of the assembled women, only a blur of faces to Romilly’s tired eyes, she prompted her through the oath to the Sisterhood, and it was done. Until spring-thaw of the next year, Romilly was oath-bound to the Sisterhood of the Sword. That finished, they crowded around and asked her questions, which she was hesitant to answer in the face of Janni’s prohibition that she must not speak of her past life, and then they found her a much-patched, much-worn nightgown, and sent her to sleep in a long room lined with half-a-dozen beds, tenanted by girls her own age or younger. It seemed that she had hardly fallen asleep before she was wakened by the sound of a bell, and she was washing her face and dressing in a room full of half a dozen young women, all running around half-dressed and squabbling over the washbasins.

For the first few days it seemed to Romilly that she was always gasping behind a group of girls who were running somewhere just ahead of her and she must somehow keep up. The lessons in unarmed combat frightened and confused her - and the woman who taught them was so harsh and angry of voice. Although, one afternoon, when she had been sent to help in the kitchens, where she felt more at home, the woman, whose name was Merinna, came in and asked her for some tea, and when Romilly brought it, chatted with her so amiably that Romilly began to suspect that her harshness in class was assumed to force them all to pay strict attention to what they were doing. The lessons in swordplay were easier, for she had sometimes been allowed to watch Ruyven’s lessons, and had sometimes practiced with him - when she had been eight or nine, her father had been amused by her handling of a sword, though later, when she was older, he forbade her even to watch, or to touch even a toy sword. Gradually those early lessons came back to her, and she began to feel fairly confident at least with the wooden batons which served in practice.

Among the horses in the stable, she felt completely at home. This work she had done since she was old enough to rub soapweed on a saddle and polish it with oil.

She was hard at work polishing saddle-tack one day when she heard a noise in the street outside, and one of the youngest girls in the house ran in to call her.

“Oh, Romy, come - the king’s army is passing by at the end of the street, and Merinna has given us leave to run out and see! Carolin will march southward as soon as the passes are open-“

Romilly dropped the oily rag and ran out into the street with Lillia and Marga. They crowded into an angle of the doors and watched; the street was filled with horses and men, and people were lining the streets and cheering for Carolin.

“Look, look, there he goes under the fir-tree banner, blue and silver - Carolin, the king,” called someone, and Romilly craned her neck to see, but she could catch only a glimpse of a tall man, with a strong ascetic profile not unlike Carlo’s, in the instant before his cloak blew up and she could see only his russet hair flying.