“This way, Orain,” said Romilly, shoving him to the door of his room. Inside, Orain looked around, fuzzily, like an owl in daylight “Whe-”
“Lie down and go to sleep,” Romilly said, pushed him down on the nearer of the two beds and hauled at his heavy boots. He protested incoherently … he was drunker than she had realized.
He held her by one wrist. “You’re a good boy,” he said, “Aye, I like you, Rumal – but you’re cristoforo. Once I heard you call on the Bearer of Burdens . . . damn . . .”
Gently Romilly freed her hand, pulled his cloak around him, went quietly away, wondering where Dom Carlo was. Not, surely, still closeted with the Father Master? Well, it was none of her affair, and she must be up early to care for the animals and the sentry-birds. She shrank from sharing the sleeping quarters of the men who attended on Carlo and Orain, so she had chosen to sleep on the hay in the stables – it was warm and she was unobserved; she need not be quite so careful against some accidental revealing of her body. She had not realized, until she was alone again, quite what a strain it was to be always on guard against some momentary inadvertent word or gesture which might betray her. She pulled off her boots, glad of the thick stockings under them, rolled herself into a bundle in the hay and tried to sleep again.
But she found herself unexpectedly wakeful. She could hear the stirring of the birds on their perches, the soft shifting hooves of horses and chervines; far away inside the depths of the monastery she heard a small bell and a faraway shuffle of feet as the monks went their way to the Night Offices, when all the world around them slept. Had Orain some feud with the cristoforos that he would say he liked her, but she was cristoforo! Was he bigoted about religion? Romilly had never really thought much about it, she was cristoforo because her family was, and because, all her life, she had heard tales of the good teachings of the Bearer of Burdens, whose teachings had been, so the cristoforos said, brought from beyond the stars in days before any living man could remember or tell. At last, hearing the muffled chanting, far away, she fell into a restless sleep, burrowing herself into the hay. For a time she dreamed of flying, soaring on hawk-wings, or on the wings of a sentry-bird; not over her own mountains, but over a lowland country, green and beautiful, with lakes and broad fields, and a white tower rose above a great lake. Then she came half awake as a bell rang somewhere in the monastery. She thought, a little ruefully, that if she had had supper within the monastery she would have heard the choir singing-perhaps the only woman who would ever do so.
Well, they would be there for days, it seemed; there would be other nights, other services to hear. How lucky Darren was no longer here at the monastery – even from his seat within the choir, he would have seen and recognized her.
If King Carolin comes to the monastery, young Caryl will recognize him – Dom Carlo must warn him….
And then she slept again, to dream confused dreams of kings and children, and someone at her side who spoke to her in Orain’s voice and drowsily caressed her. At last she slept, deep and dreamlessly, waking at first light to the screams of the sentry-birds.
Life in the monastery quickly fell into routine. Up at early light to tend the animals, breakfast in the guest-house, occasionally an errand to be done for Dom Carlo or Orain. Two days later she had her new boots, made to her own measure, and with the pay they gave her – for now she had been in their service ten days – she found a stall where warm clothing was sold, and bought warm stockings so that she could wash and change the ones she had been wearing since Orain had given them to her. In the afternoon she wandered alone around the city of Nevarsin, enjoying a freedom she had never had in the days when she was still the ladylike daughter of The MacAran; in the evenings, when the birds had been tended and exercised again, after a frugal supper in the guesthouse, she would slip into the chapel and listen to the choir of men and little boys. There was one soprano among the boys, with a sweet, flutelike voice; she strained her eyes to see the singer and realized at last that it was small Caryl, the son of Lyondri Hastur.