At the back of the hall another woman appeared. She was slender and pretty, and, Romilly thought, about Orain’s own age, forty or more, though her dark, close-cropped hair had faded, with streaks of grey at the temples.
“Well, kinsman,” she said, “What’s that ye’ve got wi’ ye’?” She had the country accent Orain had learned to conceal “And what brings ye’ into this country in winter? King’s business, I hear – and how’s himself?” She came and gave him a quick, breezy embrace and a haphazard kiss somewhere on the side of his face.
“The king is well, Aldones be praised,” said Orain quietly, “and with the Aldarans at the moment. But I have two charges for you, Janni.”
‘Two?” Her salt-and-pepper eyebrows went up in a comical grimace. “First of all, what’s this, boy or girl or hasn’t he or she made up its mind?”
Romilly, with a scalding blush, bent her eyes on the floor; the woman’s good-natured mockery seemed to take her in and sort her out and discard her as useless.
“Her name is Romilly MacAran,” said Orain quietly, “Don’t mock her, Janni, she travelled with us through the worst climate and country in the Hellers and not one of us, not even myself, knew her for a girl. She did her full share and cared for our sentry-birds, which I’d never known a woman could do. She brought them through alive and in good condition, and the horses too. I thought she was a capable lad, but it’s even more extraordinary than I thought. So I brought her to you.”
“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?”