Hawkmaiden (5 page)

She wasn’t certain that there was anything to anchor such a rope to until she remembered Kamen discussing his own ascent, and the “
knob the size of a hogshead
” that was at the peak of Rundeval.

The very idea made her dizzy, and she wondered for a moment if perhaps she was crazed, as some had whispered.  
What sane girl wanted to risk her life for the sake of a pet?  A pet that she couldn’t even be sure she could keep alive?  
From what Uncle
Keram told her, many fledglings died in captivity.  She could be risking her life for a dead bird, she realized.

No,
another part of herself reasoned,
you are risking your life for the chance at a live bird.  A great hunter.  A master of the winds.  

When she thought about it like that, there was really no question.  

She was going to get herself that bird.

*                            *                            *

The next few days were busy.  There were a lot of chores to do to prepare the Hall for winter and not all of them were pleasant.  While her slight size spared her from the laborious task of washing laundry in the huge kettle over a fire in the courtyard with her sister and cousins, her Aunt Anira (who had stepped into the role of her mother since the day Dara was born) always seemed to find other things for her to do.  Sure enough, Aunt Anira had a special assignment for her at the breakfast announcements.

This time, however, the task was not too objectionable.  Anira had thoughtfully given Dara a job suitable to her size, skill and ingenuity: repairing the nutwood cottages.  

There was a row of the tiny cottages against the far northeastern edge of the manor, up against the wood proper.  Unlike the cots near the center of the estate, where young families lived in a small hamlet behind the manor hall, these cottages were reserved for the elderly.  Pensioners who had served the estate faithfully but were too old and frail for regular work.  In other villages and manors, the old people were nearly cast aside after their productive years were behind them.  

But not in the Westwood.  The Master took care of all.  

The Westwoodmen worked for the estate even in their dotage.  The pensioners’ cots were close to a large stand of pecan and hazelnut trees intermixed with a few walnuts, cultivated over the decades as part of the manor’s economy.  In the autumn the pensioners did the tedious but necessary work of gathering up the fallen nuts for the estate, and in return the manor provided for them for the rest of the year.  Every month each cot was delivered a bag of flour, another of barley, and usually a little meat and some vegetables.  That was in addition to the little gardens the pensioners grew, the nuts they gleaned, and the gifts they received from the younger residents  of the manor.  A few even still hunted.

The cottages were very small, no more than fifteen feet on a side, constructed of sturdy poles and wattle-and-daub, with a thick lining of dried mosses to keep out the chill.  The roofs were thatched with stiff ferns that kept the rain out better than the river reeds the people of the Vale used.  A tiny fireplace with a clay chimney hugged the back wall of each cottage, allowing a fire sufficient to heat the cozy room, and two small windows permitted light inside, when the wooden shutters and leather curtains were thrown open.  The cottages were large enough for a bed, a small trestle table, a cistern, and a chest or two for their belongings and stores.  Most hung herbs and dried meat from the poles in their ceilings, and a few had hung ragged tapestries or trophies from their youth on the walls.

The cottage of one of the pensioners, Widow Ama, needed to be cleaned and repaired after the old occupant had quietly passed on in her sleep at the end of last summer.  Anira thought that the work was well within Dara’s capabilities.  It was the Master of the Wood’s duty to look after those who had spent their lives caring for the estate, and she was the Master’s daughter.

The pensioners’ cottages were a peaceful place, Dara decided as she walked down the trail into the nutwoods, but it was also a kind of sad place.  This is where people came to await death, she realized.  Her grandmother had lived here, she recalled, until she’d passed away.  As she waved to Old Kam, the grizzled and lame forester who lived in the second cot, she realized that he, too, was awaiting death out here in the nutwood.

Widow Ama had lived out here for three years, Dara remembered, as she neared the remote little cot.  It was dark and empty, of course – Ama had been burned weeks ago, in a quiet little ceremony.  She had been one of the Vale folk who had married into the Westwood, and for forty years, Aunt Anira had told her, Ama had been one of the hardest-working women in the manor.  While her husband ranged and toiled in the tanning sheds, she had been a stalwart of the manor hamlet, raising four children to adulthood in the process.

When her aging husband did not return from a hunting expedition deep in the mountains, she had taken to grief.  A few months later she had offered to move out of the large home she’d raised her family in and go live in serenity amongst the pensioners.  The Master of the Wood had agreed, and she’d spent the last few years of her life in this tiny home.

Her grown children had already removed her personal affects, those small things of sentimental value, but few Westwoodmen accumulated anything akin to the Vale folk’s ideas of wealth.  Unlike the agrarian manors in Sevendor, in the Westwood folk contributed their work to the Hall, and the Hall supported them from birth to death.  The wealth the community created, such as it was, got invested back into the welfare of the entire estate.  Her father may have been Master of the Hall, but apart from that he lived as much like the common folk of the Westwood as anyone.  He’d even ceded the large bedchamber he’d shared with his wife to his brother, when becoming a widower made it feel too large and empty.  No one had much in the way of personal wealth in the Westwood.

As a result, although the Westwoodmen were poor, by outside standards, their standards of living were much higher.  The Westwoodmen never went hungry, with the wealth of the forest to feed them.  They never were cold, with the Flame to warm them and the Wood to feed it.  Their purses might be empty, but their bellies were full and they slept safely at night, without fear from their neighbors.  That was security few in Sevendor could boast.

What was left of Widow Ama’s cottage needed to be cleaned and cleared, and made ready for the next tenant.  She could think of no one in the manor who might be considering such a move, off the top of her head, but Anira was not the sort to let the place sit abandoned.  

The narrow door to the tiny cottage was propped shut with a rock to keep the forest creatures out – raccoons and racquiels would delight in finding no one at home.  Two old clay pots, their usefulness for other purposes doomed by cracks or holes in them, contained flowers now dead in the cool autumn.  

Dara pushed aside the rock and opened the creaking door.  The mustiness of the room, tinged with the lingering scent of death, nearly overwhelmed her, but once the cottage aired out it wasn’t so bad.  She opened the shutters to both tiny windows to help that process.  That also allowed enough light inside the dark little room to see the extent of the task before her.  

It was bad . . . but not nearly as bad as it could have been.  The few belongings left behind by the widow’s family had been carelessly left scattered across the room, much of it piled on the table in no particular fashion.  The fireplace was bursting with ashes, and the hard dirt floor of the house was littered with debris.  Widow Ama had not been a fussy housekeeper in the last few years, Dara noted.

She began by cleaning the ashes from the fireplace – a task every Westwood child knew by heart – and kindling a small fire.  The chimney needed to be cleaned, she noted, but it was clear enough for the moment.  Once she’d laid the fire and added tinder, it only took a few seconds to strike it into life with the flint and striker left behind.

Soon the tiny little flame was crackling and dancing, adding just enough heat to the air to burn away the chill and just enough light to make Dara’s task look impressively daunting.  With a sigh, she got to work, after warming her hands in front of the flame.

It didn’t take long to put the few remaining possessions out of the way.  The old clay chamberpot she tucked under the bed, the battered teakettle she returned to the fireplace, and assembling the Widow’s few spoons and knife in her cup was simple.  She removed the larger pieces of trash from the floor and piled it all outside the door for later disposal.  

She’d noticed a musty smell that she tracked to the leaky clay cistern.  Built into the wall next to the fireplace, the clay tub held four or five gallons of rainwater . . . but a leak had rotted out the pole under it, which had allowed a hole to open in the roof.

With a critical eye Dara assessed the damage.  The entire pole would have to be replaced, she decided, which would be a bit of a job.  Until then, a piece of leather or oilcloth could be used to stop the leak, but until it was replaced the cottage would not be respectfully usable – certainly not up to her aunt’s standards.  

Worse, the constant dribble of water had eroded the clay of the wall.  That would have to be patched, too, Dara decided.  She made note of it, and continued cleaning.

Unlike her older sister, Linta, who could not go ten heartbeats without speaking, sometimes, Dara did not mind the quiet and solitude of the remote cottage.  Indeed, she reveled in it.  Things were always so busy around the Hall, with someone always telling her what to do or where to be, but here, in the quiet of the nutwoods, Dara was perfectly comfortable.  She even hummed – poorly off-key – as she swept the bare floor clean of the remaining trash and dust with an ancient besom.

That’s when she realized she wasn’t alone.  
She felt eyes on her.

She glanced up quickly to the door, just in time to see a tiny furry head duck out of the way.

“Hello?” she called.  “Are you visiting?”

She went to investigate, and saw a furry ringed tail disappear around the corner of the cottage.  She froze.  In a moment, a tiny black nose peeked around the corner, followed by two little eyes in a bandit’s mask.

“Hello, little raccoon!” she smiled.  This close to the manor she hadn’t been worried about one of the predators of the forest sneaking up on her, but it was always a possibility.  “Aren’t you supposed to be a night walker?” she asked the furry little animal, as it tentatively stepped toward her and chittered.

He seemed to be questioning her.

Perhaps, she reasoned, he had been an acquaintance of Widow Ama.  Elders often doted on pets, and the pensioners frequently kept a cat or small dog for company, but perhaps the widow had made animal friends in the wood, instead of supporting them on her meager allowance.

“She’s gone, now,” Dara explained to the raccoon, who chattered again.  “She’s . . . she’s
passed on
,” Dara said, not knowing just how one explained the concept of death and the afterlife to a raccoon.  “Were you a friend of hers?”

The raccoon ignored the question when it spied the pile of garbage.  Not seeing Dara as a threat, it walked right up to the pile and began sorting through it with his clever paws, sniffing every piece with interest.  

“Try not to make too much of a mess,” she cautioned.  “But take what you like.  How many days have you been by here without seeing anyone, I wonder?” she asked, aloud.  The raccoon, for all its friendliness, had no answer for that.

Dara brushed dirt off her hands, realizing that the sun was already beginning to set behind the ridge.  No wonder the creature was out and about – she’d been so busy she’d forgotten the time.  It was near to dusk.  The manor’s dinner bell began pealing in the distance, emphasizing the lateness of the day.

“Time to go!” she said, returning inside to bank the fire, and gather up a few things to take back to the manor hall.  She had a mental list of things that she’d need to make the place homey – most could be gotten from the manor’s store rooms.  But it would take a while, she knew.  Especially with that broken pole and the hole in the wall.

In fact . . . this place would likely be empty all winter long, Dara realized.  The perfect place to, say
, train a baby falcon,
she reasoned.  

With a growing sense of excitement she closed up the cottage against the weather, departing the same time as the raccoon, who had gathered an armload of old apple cores and chicken bones.  “See you tomorrow!” she called, happily, as she propped the door closed again with the rock.  

She had her mews.  Once she captured the bird, she had a safe, private place to train it.

*                            *                            *

Dinner was already being served by the time she ran back to the manor, venison stew with plenty of potatoes and beans, with cornbread.  There were close to forty people in the hall around the Flame when she arrived.  Her sister Linta grudgingly spooned her out a bowl before she found a trestle near her father’s chair, his wounded leg propped up on a stool in front of him.

“Where have you been, Dara?” he called to her, concerned.  “Not to see some boy, I hope?” he teased.

Dara blushed but ignored the teasing.  “I was down in the nutwood,” she explained.  “Anira sent me to the pensioners’ cots.  Widow Ama’s cottage.  It’s a terrible mess.”