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.