Hawksmaid (3 page)

Ulysses unfolded his enormous wings and flew straight up. Then, like a stone crashing down, he was on track of his prey. Matty's eyes locked on the gray-brown tail of a hare. She watched in awe as Ulysses
careened through the dense thickets, swerving and dodging in chase.
The mended feather is working!
Matty followed the swift motions of Ulysses's long tail as he ruddered through the narrow spaces. Although the distance between Matty and the goshawk was increasing, she felt as if something within her was reaching out to him. She sensed every wingbeat as if it were a heartbeat inside her own chest.

“Ki…ki…kuh…kuh.”
She was urging Ulysses on in the very distinct voice of a goshawk—low, subtle tones that seemed to say
You can do it! Onward!

Quickly, Ulysses sank his talons into the hare, snapping its neck.

U
LYSSES DROPPED THE HARE
at Matty's feet and stepped back, squaring his shoulders. He uttered a brief husky noise, then gave a short nod as if saluting his mistress. Matty nodded back and replied with a similar gravelly utterance.

“Well, Matty!” Lord William exclaimed. “I would say you did right by Ulysses with that imped feather and he's done right by us with this hare.”

“Yes, I was glad that the imp didn't break, but the rest of it—his flying—was amazing,” Matty replied.

Lord William shook his head in wonder as they headed back to the castle. “Before we lost everything, I had thought of getting a merlin. Too bad we don't have a merlin.”

“Why is that, Father?” Matty asked.

“Well, it is said that learning to fly a merlin is what makes the consummate falconer.”

“But aren't merlins called pigeon hawks?”

“Yes. It's strange. They are said to be in the same family, but merlins are as unlike pigeons as birds could be. Clever, ambitious, able to feign slowness in flight to fool their prey…but they're very difficult to raise. Many people try and then give up and let them loose, but by that time they are ruined. They don't survive very long in the wild when that happens.”

“Did you ever have one, Father?”

“Yes, long ago. A bright little fellow. My pride and joy.”

“What happened?” Matty asked hesitantly.

Lord William stopped walking. He turned and looked at Matty, his face suddenly grim.

“He was killed?” Matty grew pale. She somehow knew that the bird had not been killed by another animal—had not been taken down in flight by a
raptor or sprung upon by a hunting dog—but killed by a human.

“Who?” she whispered.

“Sir Guy of Gisborne.” Her father paused. “He seems to kill what he cannot have.”

“Kills what he cannot have? What else couldn't he have?”

Lord William stopped, pressed his lips together, and looked at Matty.

“Father, tell me, what else did Sir Guy want and could not have?”

“Your mother, years ago.” Lord William bent his head and began to speak rapidly. “He claims that she had been betrothed to him. She wasn't. She hated him and she loved me. In revenge he sent one of his servants to my mews to slay the merlin. Then he had it delivered to us on our wedding day.”

Matty gasped. “Fiends, Father. They are all fiends!”

“Yes, and he is Prince John's right-hand man, while the sheriff, I guess one would say, is the left.” Lord William resumed walking.

“Father, when will Richard come back? He means to be a good king, doesn't he?”

“Oh, yes, but he is occupied in France, fighting for the lands that belong to him. I have heard that in the past fortnight Prince John has plundered two castles to the north. Some say he even has the
church
in his pocket. You see, Matty, King Henry has grown old and feeble. When he dies, as the youngest son, Prince John has no inheritance while his older brother, Richard, inherits all his father's lands. And John is a very greedy man. As the saying goes, when the cat's away the mice will play.”

“But he's a rat!” Matty said. “If you had a son, it would be the same, wouldn't it, and I wouldn't have anything? I mean, that is the custom, isn't it? The oldest son gets everything.”

“Well, yes, but you're no rat.” Lord William paused. “However, I think I would have to give you my hawks—son or no son.”

“You really mean that?” Matty asked.

“I certainly do.”

Matty dipped her head and smiled. She felt a surge of deep joy rise within her. “You went to France to fight for Richard and his lands, didn't you—when I was a baby?”

“Yes, twice, once before you were born and once
when you were an infant. I was not the only Englishman who could not tolerate the notion of Prince John ruling both here and in France. Richard is the better man. The whole world loves Richard. So what started as a family squabble became a war—one that we still seem to be fighting.”

 

That evening when Matty knelt, she prayed for her mother's soul as she always did. But then she prayed for more.

“Dear Lord, may good Richard the Lionhearted come home and make everything right and just and prosperous again.” Then she paused, opened her eyes, and looked up. She was not sure if it was right to ask God for the next thing. But the words simply bubbled up in her like a spring unlocked from winter's ice. “Dear God, my mother cannot come back and make me a fine lady, a lady suitable for love and marriage. I have no dowry for a wedding, but would that I had a merlin, I could become the finest falconer. Amen.”

SPRING 1189

M
ATTY CAME OVER THE
crest of the hill, knee-deep in the dry, brown winter grass, the peregrine on her shoulder. She stopped to look around and the falcon spread her wings. “
Kush, Moss! kush nyeep
…. Easy, Moss! I'm looking for the snare.”

For the past year, she had learned to hunt with all the hawks. Her father allowed her finally to go out alone whenever she liked. The hawks were still their main means of getting food, but she also got small
game by setting snares.

The fields, divided by thick hedgerows into squares, spread before her like waves in a patchwork sea. She looked out to where the fields met a dark band on the horizon. The band, which grew thicker and darker, marked the edge of the woods of Barnsdale. This was where Matty longed to be. But first she must check the snare. And then on to the forest, or the greenwood, as it was called when winter finished and the trees leafed.

Matty knew she had set the snare nearby.
It must be here somewhere,
she thought. So foolish of her not to have checked it yesterday. But yesterday she could not leave the castle until well after noon, and then she had been in such a rush to join Fynn and the boys because the weather was finally turning good. The snow, which had lain in frozen thick sheets like a knight's armor, had melted, unlocking the earth from winter's grip. You could
smell
the green. So at last they could all play again. She was anxious to play after such a long, hard, and horrible winter.

It had been one that sucked the life out of people, and if the bitter cold hadn't finished the job, Prince John had. For Matty, who was now eleven, it seemed that her life had been neatly divided into two parts:
before the raid and after the raid. Nothing could have been as awful as that day nearly two years ago when the sheriff and Sir Guy of Gisborne had ridden into their courtyard. But now not only had her father and every village in the shire of Nottingham grown poorer but also Prince John was determined to drain the life blood from this land for his own enrichment. If a lord resisted, his fields were burned and his loyal servants were slain. Peasants were left to starve.

Prince John had an ample supply of henchmen to help him plunder. The sheriff and lords like Sir Guy and others had not only managed to save their own skins by carrying out the prince's orders; they also enriched themselves.

This past month had been particularly harsh. There was not even a single hare to make a hearty stew. Lord William had long ago sold the last of their silver plates, and they now ate like peasants from trenchers, bowls made of hollowed-out stale bread. Matty watched as her father grew thinner and older before her eyes. She, too, had grown thin. That was why it had been careless and selfish of her not to check the snares she had set. But Matty Fitzwalter needed play as much as food. She needed adventure as much as a good, warm cloak.

But most of all she needed her friends on this fine early spring morning She longed to be heading to join the boys deep in the greenwood.

 

“Where is that snare?” Matty muttered as she searched on the other side of the crest. Moss lighted from her shoulder to the ground. “Where is it?”

Just at that moment she heard a thrashing, followed by a moan. “Right here,” a small rabbity voice creaked. “What a snare! You got me!” There was an eruption of snorts and giggles.

“Fynn!”

Fynn popped up from behind the bush. He had shot up several inches and become a gangly lad with wild dark-blond hair that set off the sharp blueness of his eyes. Dry grass stuck out from under his cap. His clothes were splattered with mud, and some winter-burned ferns were tucked here and there. He blended in perfectly with the land. In his hand he held the snare.

“Very funny,” Matty said sarcastically. “Was there anything in it besides you?”

“No, sorry. But Rich says there are some grouse flying at the edge of the greenwood. Come on, Matty.
The boys are waiting. The creek is really up. Did you bring your line and hook?”

“Of course.” She plunged her hand into a cloth bag that hung from her waist and drew out a neatly coiled line with a hook stabbed into a cork.

“So we can get some fish! And my mum, she sent along some honey.”

Well, honey would be nice,
Matty thought. What Matty and her father and the two old servants, Hodge and Meg, needed more was some meat.

“And, oh, I nearly forgot. I brought you some pickled pigs' feet.” He held up a pouch.

“No! Fynn, you didn't!” Matty's eyes darkened. Pigs were scarce these days. The only pigs that had been slaughtered recently had belonged to the cousin of the sheriff, who raised them for the priory in Barnsdale.

“It's just the feet!”

“You must be off your game if you didn't get the bacon as well. Did you steal it from the sheriff's cousin, or did you march right into the priory?”

“None of your business, Matty. I got it. Now do you want it or not?”

She thought of her father and Meg and Hodge and reached for the pouch. “You know you're going to get
caught one of these days, Fynn. Your luck will run out.”

“They're not going to discover their loss for a while. I left a nearly identical pouch in its place.”

“But an empty one.”

“No. I'm too clever for that. Filled it with deer guts. Who's to say it won't be delicious? I might have invented a new dish. Pickled deer guts.”

“From a deer you brought down illegally in the royal forest, I suppose.” Matty had worried about Fynn's thievery ever since he'd stolen that prize hen and her eggs two years ago. And even though he took only from the well-off to give to most needy, it seemed that his boldness had increased with the value of the goods he plundered. First eggs, now pigs' feet, and before that deer from the royal forest. He was no longer satisfied with a small prize. He left that for the boys. Rich was fairly good with a slingshot, and Will Scarloke could sneak up on a sheriff's man in a crowd on market day and relieve him of a pouch of gold coins without disturbing as much as a thread on the fellow's cuff. What they stole by and large was small, but they were as cunning as any London street cutpurse.

Matty knew that the recent deer was not the first
Fynn had taken, even though his father was a forest warden. Her family as well as others had been the recipient of prime cuts of venison that mysteriously appeared in their larders. She laughed at the memory of Fynn's face when she had caught him in her larder during a downpour when no one in their right mind would have been abroad.

Hunting in the royal forest was punishable by imprisonment or worse. Often the culprit was tortured and the torture might include the chopping off of a finger or two. The sheriff's men and the royal foresters particularly delighted in separating a hunter from his bowstring finger. Still, she knew that nothing she could say would discourage him.

He looked enormously pleased with himself as he flashed her a dazzling smile. “You have to admit, Matty, I've got style.”

“You've got gall is what you've got, Robert Woodfynn.”

 

They set off down the hill. They were near the bottom when Matty felt Moss peck gently at her ear. She scanned the tall grass. Just above it two grouse were rising. Quickly she pushed up her sleeve and raised her
arm to the command position, curling her hand into a fist. Moss moved from Matty's shoulder and set down gently on the leather falconer's glove that sheathed her arm.

It was known throughout Barnsdale that Lord William, the best falconer in the region, passed his skills on to his daughter. Many said that Matty now surpassed him. The summer before, the villagers had even taken to calling her the Nut Brown Girl, for she roamed the countryside so constantly with her hawks that her skin had turned as dark as that of the peasants who tilled the fields. But Matty felt the truth in her bones. She would never be better than her father until she had reared a merlin. She had read what was known about the shrewd, stubborn birds in his spare book on falconry.

Thinking all this, Matty unleashed the jesses. A husky sound came from the back of her throat.
“Chahh!”

Moss spread her wings and lifted off in flight.

Quickly the peregrine's wings became a blur as she skimmed after the grouse. The hawk anticipated their rate of ascent perfectly. Matty could almost feel Moss's muscles tighten for the kill. And then there was a flash
as the peregrine went into a dive at a stupefying speed and snapped a grouse from the air. In a split second, drops of the grouse's blood flared against the pale sky. “Amazing!” Fynn whispered as Moss banked steeply to return with her catch.

The peregrine landed and dropped the bird at her mistress's feet. Matty crouched, speaking unintelligible words in a low, husky voice. Quickly severing the grouse's head, she put it in front of Moss, who puffed up her feathers greedily, stood on one leg, and then seized her prize. The rest Matty put in her cloth bag. Again she felt Fynn's eyes upon her.

Hubie Bigge had roused Fynn's temper the other day when he said that Matty was as good with a hawk as Fynn was with a bow. It pleased her as she recalled Hubie's praise. Was Fynn thinking about what Hubie had said now?

“Come on,” Fynn said impatiently. “Let's join the boys. They'll be waiting.”

 

“Ah, the feathered murderess and her accomplice have been at it again!” Will Scarloke said cheerfully as he spotted the bloody bag hanging from Matty's belt. The boys were at a large boulder near the creek where they
were fishing.

“Don't call Moss that, Will. It's so rude,” Matty said.

“Do you suppose, Matty,” Will asked in the next breath, “that we could have a bit of down from Moss?”

“After you've called her a murderess! I wouldn't dare ask!”

“I agree with Matty,” Rich Much said as he fiddled with his own fishing lure. “Very rude to insult her bird and then beg a feather.” He pushed back his dark hair and squinted at the lure. “You know, this is very lovely, this lure—very elegant, I'd say, with this thistledown on it.”

“Forget elegant! Will it catch fish?” Hubie Bigge asked. “I don't need feathers or dog hair. I got me own hair. It's red. It's wiry. It can't be beat for trout—better than mayflies or stone nymphs.”

“I prefer a robin's feathers,” Fynn said, “but hedgehog bristles serve well, too. Use them for fletching all my arrows and they works for fishing.”

“That's the problem with your fishing, Fynn,” Hubie said. “You think you're shooting an arrow and not casting a lure. It's not an attack.”

“It's a deception,” Will added with great authority.

Hubie scratched his head. His brow crinkled with sudden concern. “Hey, Fynn! Fish don't count, right?”

“Don't count for what?”

“Don't count as animals like harts and hinds. Your father and the other gamekeepers won't be on our tails, right?”

“Of course not. Are you daft? What do they care about a few trout?”

“I just wondered.” Hubie glanced back over his shoulder slightly nervously. “Because when I was coming across the creek upstream, I swore I saw a man. But he jumped back in the shadows.”

“Maybe he wasn't one of the gamekeepers but one of the king's forest officers,” Rich said. “They know Fynn's father's been too soft with the locals. They're sending in some of the sheriff's men. At least that's what I've heard.”

“But Fynn's father's gotten tougher,” Will said. “Hauled in old Harry the cobbler. Found arrows in his house and a trap with harts' hair.”

Fynn sighed. “Fishing isn't a problem. So don't worry about my father or the sheriff's men. They don't
care about fishing.” He fiddled with his lure, trying to attach some bristles to it.

But Matty understood Fynn and saw a shadow cross his face. He wasn't as unconcerned as he would like them to believe. She knew that he was not going to forget about the figure in the shadows. Fynn, of course, had the most to fear from being caught. His father might turn a blind eye, but the sheriff's forest officers would not.

The boys and Matty sat now under the budding branches of the tree near the creek, working diligently on their lures for the fish they knew would be rising as the day grew warmer. Matty carefully picked through the train of Moss's tail feathers and shook out a small clump of loose down. “Here you go, Will. This should do for more than one fishing lure.”

“Yes, that will do,” Will said. “Hubie, might you spare me some of your wiry hair for binding this?”

Hubert's face clenched as he pulled out a strand, then another, and another. In all he pulled out five.

Matty smiled. This was what she loved about being in the forest with her friends. They were all different but equal, and they shared everything, even hair! She wished it could be this way forever. She wished that
they could always be here in the greenwood, smelling the wet bark on the trees, feeling the spongy moss that fleshed the earth and draped the rocks. In another few weeks the leaves would unfurl, casting lacy shadows and spreading an emerald light through the woods. It was early spring that Matty loved best with its promise of summer, more game, and more food. She knew she would give anything to freeze those moments in the dappled light of the greening forest.