Hawkmaiden

by Terry Mancour

  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 br
oken 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.”

  “Is it, now?” he asked, absently.

  “Yes, it has a leaky cistern and a hole in the roof. I can patch it enough to get through the winter,” she proposed, “and with some help I can repair it. But the place needs a lot of work,” she said, warningly. “Maybe I’m not the one who should be—”

  “It sounds like you have things well enough in hand,” Anira said, suspiciously, from behind her. “I’ll not pull someone off of more productive work so you can go play in the forest, Lenodara. You just keep at it until it’s done!”

  Dara did her best to look appalled. “But Aunt Anira! That will take weeks! Do you have any idea how much of a mess it is? The fireplace is cracked, the bed is rickety and needs to be replaced, the shutters have holes in them, the floor is filthy and needs to be completely stripped and re-done, the plaster inside is—”

  “That is quite enough, young lady!” her aunt said, with fire in her voice. “I don’t care if you have to be in the nutwoods every moment of your day for weeks, you will scrub and repair that cot until it’s fit for someone to live in. The Flame knows poor Widow Ama was fading, these last few years, and I’ve no doubt her place needs repair – those sons of hers barely went to visit her, the poor dear.

  “But it’s the manor’s responsibility to see it repaired, and repaired properly. You can take what you need from stores, and you can recruit help as you need to, but I want to have that cottage ready to live in by Yule. Do you understand me, young lady?”

  “Yes, Aunt Anira,” Dara said, meekly, as she bent over her stew.

  So I have my mews secured, she thought to herself, as she ate in silence, pretending to be feeling chastised. No one will want to go out there, not for weeks. And now I have the perfect excuse to be out there.

  She thought about all the details of her plan, including the other things she’d need. She’d paid close attention to her Uncle Keram’s stories about falconry, and she had a pretty fair idea of what equipment she would have to assemble.

  Jesses were no problem – she could get leather straps from the tanning shed and cut them to fit. She could make a perch out of wood, she knew, or borrow something from the long storage shed, where the broken furniture was kept. Constructing a hood or blind would be more difficult. The little leather “helmet” that fitted over a bird’s head to keep it docile was a very specialized thing. She knew it was made of leather, but she had little idea how to make one. The journey up the mountain would be tough, but most of the gear she could scrounge up easily enough: gloves from the workroom, her boots, a basket she could take from the storeroom to get the bird down, once she got it. That was the easy part.

  In the end she dismissed the problem for a later day. It seemed silly worrying about gear for a falcon she didn’t even have yet.

  Now that she had a mews, the next step was to capture the fledgling. That was the dangerous part, too – well, that and getting caught. She wasn’t certain which she feared most, plummeting to her death from a mountaintop or getting caught doing something she knew full well her father would object to.

  Yet she had to try. The very thought of the powerful raptor in flight sent shivers down her spine. She would have to move soon, too, she knew, else the fledglings would fly, and all her hopes would be dashed.

  The hard part, she realized, was going to be finding over a hundred feet of rope. That was her next task, she decided as she finished the bowl. She had to have rope.

  Chapter Three

  Stealing Rope

  Rope. Dara needed rope. A lot of rope.

  She measured the distance by eye several times, calculating in her head just how much rope she would need to get up the back side of the peak, and then to descend the front side to the cliff. She kept coming up with a hundred and twenty feet, minimum, that she would need to get the job done.

  The problem was that there just wasn’t rope of that size lying around the manor.

  The Westwoodmen were familiar with rope. The bridge that connected their estate with the rest of Sevendor was secured by giant ropes the size of her leg, specially made of hemp, cotton, and blackberry, woven in a pattern developed to support the great weight of the bridge.

  But that rope was far too thick for Dara’s purpose. More, it would have been ridiculously heavy, impossible for a girl of her size to carry up a mountain, she knew. There had to be another answer. The next morning, when Dara arose and went to the storeroom to collect supplies for her chores at the nutwoods cot, she discovered two coils of rope in the dusty room, each a disappointing twenty feet.

  Dara took them anyway, as well as a broom, a mop, a bucket, some rags, a pair of gloves, some tapers, a trowel, a hammer, a sheet of oilcloth, some beeswax, three thick iron nails, a pot of sticky clay, another of tar, and an old moth-eaten sheet destined for the rag bin. She packed it all in a wheelbarrow, then stopped by the kitchen to wheedle some food from her aunt to take with her for lunch.

  She did her best to look despondent and reluctant, when she reported to her Aunt Anira before she went. Dara loved her aunt like a mother – she was, in truth, the only mother Dara had ever known – but she seemed to constantly suspect Dara of being “up to something” whether it was climbing trees or throwing rocks into the chasm. The reluctant act worked, however. Anira gave her a wedge of cheese and a small loaf, and added a few small sausages as an afterthought, all the while insisting that the work would go faster if she kept focused on it.

  “You be sure to do a thorough job,” she warned, waving a spoon in her face. “No shirking. This will be a good task for you. You’ll be expected to keep your own home, someday. Best you learn what that entails.”

  Dara looked properly dejected, until she left the kitchen. She placed her lunch basket in the wheelbarrow and then took it down the trail toward the nutwood . . . and near to the harness shed.

  If there was any place that could be concealing rope, it would be the harness shed, she reasoned. The manor only kept a half-dozen horses, mostly ronceys that could be used either as beasts of burden or ridden to range the frontiers on this side of the bridge.

  Horses disliked going over the rope bridge and standing over the crevasse, so they rarely made the trip. Westwoodmen preferred to walk. The Westwood landscape was not well-suited to horses, due to the rugged nature of the land, but the few they had were kept in the stable near the cow byre. The harness shed, where saddles, bridles, blankets and such were kept, was next to the small stable.

  Dara let herself in as casually as she could, not even looking around to see if anyone was watching. That would just arouse suspicion, she knew.

  Instead she walked in, boldly, and then began searching the rich-smelling shed for rope. After pushing past the hanging bits and bridles, past the saddles hanging from the walls of the close little shed, she finally
discovered a peg in the back upon which were three coils of supple line, as thick as her thumb, in neat forty-foot coils.

  Dara knew at once that if she tried removing all three coils at once, someone would see her and start asking questions. Instead she contented herself with taking just one of the ropes, concealing it in the wheelbarrow under the oilcloth.

  The trip down to the pensioners’ cottages seemed to take forever, and the old wheelbarrow she borrowed seemed to have a mind of its own. It kept trying to steer itself off of the path, forcing Dara to wrestle it back. It was slow going, and she didn’t arrive until midmorning, covered with sweat and exhausted.

  And you think you’re going to climb a mountain? she challenged herself. You’re going to have to be tougher than that – stronger than that – if you want that bird!

  Once she caught her breath, she was filled with new resolve, despite her weariness. She opened up the cottage, kindled a fire, and got to work.

  She didn’t want to accomplish too much – she had to stretch this chore out, if she was to have use of the place for as long as she needed it. She tucked her precious coils of rope under the bed, for now, and unloaded the other supplies into the cottage. She did take the time to fit the oilcloth tarp over the hole near the cistern – it looked like it might rain soon – and tied it down well. She also heated up the pot of pitch on the fire, once it was hot enough, and smeared enough on the leak in the cistern to seal it.

  Satisfied that she had accomplished at least some work, she turned her attention to her real purpose. She sorted out the cleaning supplies from the climbing supplies and began assembling everything she thought she might need on her expedition. By noon, when she halted for lunch, she felt as if she had nearly everything but the rest of the rope.