Page 47 of The Hawk Laird
“It smells wonderful. But bread for a hawk? I did not think they ate bread.”
“They do not. ’Tis for something else. Jamie knows I have the way of making bread, though few Scots do. Milled wheat is hard to find, with the Southrons harrassing all Scotland and denying us their goods in trade.” She worked the dough while she spoke. “’Tis muckle hard to buy wheat from them, and Scottish wheat is a sparse crop. Jamie brings me milled wheat when he can. Hebrought me some a while ago, so I can bake bread today. If he stole this flour from the English, I do not want to know.”
“Stole it?”
“Well, he is an outlaw who doesna care for Southrons.” Alice shrugged. “Sometimes he and his men took supplies from Southron packhorses being led through the forest and gave the wheat and other goods round the countryside. You see,” she continued, “there are many Scots with empty larders and fields, and even homeless, because of the Southrons who come through the Lowlands, stealing and burning. Jamie says we are owed goods back in trade.”
“He is probably correct.”
Alice nodded, shaping fat, round bread loaves. “I make a good, chewy bread with wheat, barley, and oats, and hops to rise it. Eat your fill of it, lass, with good churned butter. You are all bones.”
Isobel blushed, and glanced at her thin forearms and the ribbed shadows along her breastbone. “I am hungry,” she admitted.
“And I will feed you well. First you will want to dress. Your gown and surcoat are mended and freshened, and folded there.” Alice set the loaves aside and covered them with a cloth. “Let me help you, since you have but one arm to use.”
Within a short time, Isobel was washed, dressed, and seated by the table with her right arm snug in a sling, and her left hand cradling a cup of warm spiced wine. Alice set a bowl of hot porridge on the table and stuck a wooden spoon in it.
“More porridge. It is most of what I have. When the bread is done we will take some to Jamie. Now eat.”
Isobel ate while Alice carried the loaves outside to a stone bread oven behind the house. When she returned, she refilled the porridge bowl, adding honey. Isobel finished nearly all that helping, too.
“Good lass! You are tall, but too slim. Jamie said you hardly ate for weeks during the siege.”
Isobel nodded, and began to answer Alice’s curious questions about the siege of Aberlady. Hearing thunder, she glanced toward the windows, two tiny openings covered in oiled parchment that let in faint grayish light. Rain battered the roof and the door.
“A soft rain,” Alice said. “We will get wet when we take the bread to Jamie.”
“Where is he?”
“A cave, not far from here, a walk through the greenwood and up a slope. He set it up for a mews long ago, and took the goshawk there. Can you walk on that ankle?”
Isobel stretched her foot. “It feels better. I can walk.” Hearing a flutter of wings, she glanced up.
Ragnell left her perch and flew across the room, landing on the back of a chair. Her silver leg and claw foot thumped down as she found her balance. The bird fixed Isobel with a gleaming red eye.
“She is not leashed to the perch?” Isobel asked.
“Ragnell flies where she pleases,” Alice said. “She is free to come and go, even outside.” She smiled. “She will not go far. She cannot live on her own out there, one-legged and spoiled to the fist as she is, and she knows it.”
“What happened to her leg?” Isobel asked.
“Ragnell was given to my husband as a wounded eyas—an infant bird taken from the nest to be trained. Nigel was a royal falconer, you see,” Alice said proudly, as she poured steaming, spice-scented wine into Isobel’s cup, and filled a second cup for herself.
Isobel nodded. “I know. Jamie told me about him.”
Alice picked up a leather glove and slipped it on, raising her hand. With a rapid fluttering, Ragnell crossed the room, wingsspread, to land on her mistress’s fist. “Ragnell had been attacked by a jealous merlin in another man’s mews. Nigel thought she would die, but she was a fierce wee hawk.”
Alice produced a bit of raw meat from a dish by the hearth, and fed the bird a morsel, wiping her fingers on a cloth. “Her wounded foot turned black and fell off. Nigel made her a false one, then others as she grew. She learned to fly and perch wearing the silver foot. She even learned to fly at quarry, though she does not prefer it. She’s spoiled to the fist and only feeds there. Lazy, silly bird,” she cooed.
Ragnell kakked and stretched down to clean her beak sideways on the glove. She opened her tail wide, shot a wet mute across the floor, and blinked at Isobel.
Alice made a disparaging sound. “She wants you to know she’s queen here. Nay, do not—I will clean it up. Lady Ragnell has trained me for her handmaiden, the price I pay for such noble company, I suppose. We are alone here, Ragnell and I, but for the cat, the goat, and the chickens. Ragnell has made a mewling servant of the cat, but so far the goat ignores her.”
“It must be pleasant to live alone with no one to answer to but yourself,” Isobel said.
“Pleasant some days. Lonely others.”
“Sometimes I think living alone would be like paradise. I have always obeyed someone—my father, our priest. Now my betrothed wants obeisance from me too. Mayhap I should go into the forest and live as an anchoress.”
