CHAPTER TWO
Romilly stared out the window, her head in her hands. The great red sun was angling downward from noon; two of the small moons stood, pale dayshine reflections, in the sky, and the distant line of the Kilghard Hills lured her mind out there in the sky, with the clouds and the birds flying. A page of finished sums, put aside, lay before her on the wooden desk, and a still-damp page of neatly copied maxims from the Book of Burdens; but she did not see them, nor did she hear the voice of her governess; Calinda was fussing at Mallina for her badly blotted pages.
This afternoon, when I have done flying Preciosa to the lure, I will have Windracer saddled, and carry Preciosa before me on ray saddle, hooded, to accustom her to the horse’s smell and motion. I cannot trust her yet to fly free, but it will not be long….
Across the room her brother Rael scuffled his feet noisily, and Calinda rebuked him with a silent shake of her head. Rael, Romilly thought, was dreadfully spoiled now – he had been so dangerously ill, and this was his first day back in the schoolroom. Silence fell over the children, except for the noisy scratching of Mallina’s pen, and the almost-noiseless click of Calinda’s knotting-pins; she was making a woolly undervest for Rael, and when it was finished, Romilly thought, not without malice, then she would only face the problem of getting Rael to wear it!
Her eyes glazed in a drowse of perfect boredom, Romilly stared out the window, until the quiet was interrupted by a noisy wail from Mallina.
“Curse this pen! It sheds blots like nuts in autumn! Now I have blotted another sheet!”
“Hush, Mallina,” said the governess severely. “Romilly, read to your sister the last of the maxims I set you to copy from the Book of Burdens.”
Sighing, recalled against her will to the schoolroom, Romilly read sullenly aloud. “A poor worker blames only the tool in his hand.”
“It is not the fault of the pen if you cannot write without blots,” Calinda reproved, and came to guide the pen in her pupil’s hand. “See, hold your hand so-”
“My fingers ache,” Mallina grumbled, “Why must I learn to write anyway, spoiling my eyes and making my hands hurt? None of the daughters of High Crags can write, or read either, and they are none the worse for it; they are already betrothed, and it is no loss to them!”
“You should think yourself lucky,” said the governess sternly, “Your father does not wish his daughters to grow up in ignorance, able only to sew and spin and embroider, without enough learning even to write ‘Apple and nut conserve’ on your jars at harvest time! When I was a girl, I had to fight for even so much learning as that! Your father is a man of sense, who knows that his daughters will need learning as much as do his sons! So you will sit there until you have filled another sheet without a single blot. Romilly, let me see your work. Yes, that is very neat. While I check your sums, will you hear your brother read from his book?”
Romilly rose with alacrity, to join Rael at his seat; anything was better than sitting motionless at her desk! Calinda bent to guide Mallina’s hand on her pen, and Rael leaned against Romilly’s shoulder; she gave the child a surreptitious hug, then dutifully pointed her finger at the first hand-lettered line of the primer. It was very old; she had been taught to read from this same book, and so, she thought, had Ruyven and Darren before her – the book had been made, and sewn, by her own grandmother when her father had first learned to read; and written in the front were the crudely sprawled letters that said Mikhail MacAran, his own book. The ink was beginning to fade a little, but it was still perfectly legible.
“The horse is in the stable,” Rael spelled out slowly. “The fowl is in the nest. The bird is in the air. The tree is in the wood. The boat is on the water. The nut is on the tree. The boy is in the-” he scowled at the word and guessed. “Barn?”