Hawksmaid (4 page)

W
HEN THEY NEXT MET,
Hubie was bursting to tell them that he had seen the man again—the one he had glimpsed in the forest. Hubie called him the shadow man—and Will Scarloke suddenly exclaimed, “Treasure! He's burying treasure!”

The notion of treasure buried in the woods seized the boys. It made vague sense to Matty. Every week one heard of more nobles being robbed as well as treasures
disappearing from churches and cathedrals. Catching the excitement, she thought,
Maybe someone will try to hide the Star of Jerusalem!

“Near the creek,” Hubie explained about the second sighting. “I thought I heard rustling when I came down to fish. I glimpsed someone, or I thought it was someone, but it was misty that day. It was like a dark shadow disappearing into a thicket. My first thought was that it was royal foresters. But there were none of the colors of the prince. It was just this sort of shape—black and gray. No heralds, no banners flying like they always have.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps your stealing has caught up with you?” Matty asked. She looked directly at Fynn, for had he not recently brought down another deer?

“No!” all the boys chimed.

“They're not after petty thieves!” Rich said.

“And it's just one person, dressed all plain,” Will added.

“The better to catch a poacher of the king's deer,” Matty offered.

But the boys would hear none of it, and all began to speak. The air seemed to buzz with jeweled dreams
and wisps of gold. Where would they dig first? They might all go off in different directions. Caves were always a sure bet for treasure. They must first check all the caves.

“Dig, yes, under large rocks,” Will Scarloke decided.

“Stop! Stop!” Matty spoke loudly. “You are absolute fools. You're going to go digging holes all through these woods. How completely stupid! And what will Prince John's men or the sheriff's men think when they come riding through and their horses begin stumbling in these holes?”

“That someone's been digging for treasure,” Hubie said enthusiastically, then suddenly realized the problem.

“Precisely.” Matty nodded. Fynn lifted his chin slightly. He did not like the turn of events, even if Matty was right. He'd rather be wrong than bested by anyone. But the rest of the boys were now looking at Matty as if she possessed the wisdom of Solomon.

Matty knew exactly what they must do. They must be quiet and watchful like Ulysses the goshawk, perching high above the landscape and waiting, barely twitching a feather, ready to stoop at game rising from
the brush. But of course in this case the “game” would not be “stooped,” only watched.

“We should build a tree house,” Matty said. A stillness descended upon the group. The boys' eyes sparkled with anticipation, for the next best thing to treasure would be to have a tree house. “We should have several tree houses, and camouflaged so that we can watch Prince John's men and the sheriff's men and perhaps glimpse this shadow man,” Matty added. “But they cannot know.”

“Brilliant!” Will exclaimed.

“Yes,” Rich said. “Matty's idea is brilliant!”

“Well, it might work,” Fynn said huffily. But he knew that it was a great plan, better than anything he could have thought up. Fynn felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. He had to concede that all of them had been bested by a girl.

“
N
O
, R
ICH, NOT THOSE
hemlock boughs. They'll stick out like a sore thumb with all this white.”

Matty looked up from where she stood. In this part of the forest there were entire groves of bright white birch trees.

“Well, we're going to need more old man's beard,” Rich said.

Old man's beard was a kind of gray and crinkly moss that grew on the boulders near the creek.

The tree house in the birches was the fourth they had built in the last ten days. The plan had been to have five tree houses, one for each of them, strewn throughout the forest. In this way they could keep a close watch not just for treasure but on the royal foresters, too, if Prince John sent them.

The tree houses were lovely. Each one was made to blend with its surroundings. One had been constructed with a latticework of new green branches woven through with rushes and leaves. For another, in a sycamore that was unclimbable because of its bare trunk, they had designed a pulley system for raising and lowering a seat to where the branches began fifty feet above the forest floor. Then, high in an oak tree, they had woven a shelter made of vines and shredded bark that sat in the fork of two immense branches. In these leafy houses that seemed to float midst the trees, they wore tunics fashioned from bark strips and bleached reeds and helmets on their heads pieced together from broad leaves, so they, too, blended in perfectly. They could watch, yet never be seen. It had been Matty's idea that each tree house have its own set of clothes to disguise the watcher.

So now, as she went to gather some more old man's
beard, she remembered to take extra to tuck into their hair.

Of the houses they had been working on so far, this fourth one was Matty's favorite. It was like a twig cage covered almost completely with delicate green moss and silvery lichen. If she were to have a very fine dress, Matty thought, it would not be one sewn from beautiful silks with golden threads and French embroidery. Instead, she would have a skirt woven of moss and lichen. And rather than fine embroidery she would weave in woodland flowers like snow lilies, primroses, and bleeding heart. To Matty's mind that would be a dress fit for a queen.

As she approached the birch grove with her armload of moss, she saw that Will, Fynn, Rich, and Hubie stood in a tight cluster. She didn't know if it was the boys' posture or the way Will slowly turned his head toward her—not quite looking at her but still seeing her—that caused an immediate sense of alarm, alarm mixed with frustration.

Periodically the boys decided that she was not fit company. They always tried to be very kind as they patiently explained. “No, Matty, nothing personal. It's just that you're a girl.”

This seemed very personal to Matty, and there was nothing she could do about it. Deep in her bones she knew that this was one of those moments.

“Matty,” Fynn said. His brow was creased with concern, his voice gripped in tension. “We've seen the shadow man again.” He paused. The other boys turned to watch her.

“So?” snapped Matty.

“So, we think it best that you not be about for a while.” Fynn's square chin flinched and then he set his jaw firmly. Matty was furious. She had seen the set of that jaw before when Fynn made up his mind about something. She would not give up so easily.

“But that's the whole point—to see the shadow man or whoever it is. And there's still the other tree house to build. It was my ‘brilliant' idea—remember!”

“Matty, it's simply too dangerous,” Will Scarloke said. “For a girl, that is.” He shifted his eyes quickly as he saw the fire in Matty's eyes.

“God's kneecaps, you are a pack of fools!” she hissed. Turning away from them, she plunged into the woods. She would build the fifth tree house herself. How could they stop her?

And she knew exactly where she would build it.
Near the creek, there was a stand of willows, one with spreading branches perfect for a tree house. She would make her walls of feathery willow branches and lace them together. It would not only be the prettiest of the tree houses but also the most concealed, for even after the willow leaves dropped, the thin whiplike branches would make a perfect screen.

She went to work immediately. It did not take her long to fix a small platform. The next step would be cutting the willow fronds from the trees by the creek. They were just this week unfurling their narrow, long leaves. She was not sure how long she had been working, but it was at least her fifth or sixth trip back from the creek banks with her armload of willow branches when she spotted Fynn near the base of the tree. He was wearing a new hat, more of a green hood, and looking up at the half-finished tree house.

“What are you doing here?” She let the bundle drop at her feet. He immediately ran over to pick it up. “I don't need your help, as you can well see.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Fynn stopped halfway as he bent down and looked up directly into her eyes.

What is this?
she wondered. The incredible blueness of his eyes sometimes shocked her. They seemed set off
by this new green hood that he had evidently fashioned out of a sleeve torn from his tunic with some leaves stuck into it. Did he know how blue his eyes were? She was furious with herself for even pondering such a stupid question. “How did you find me anyhow?”

“I track deer, remember?”

“I'm not a deer.”

“I know. They can't build tree houses.”

“Oh, thank you for the compliment. I'm overwhelmed.”

“Yes, me, too,” Fynn said, and glanced up at the tree house.

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about how this is a better tree house, or it will be when it's finished, than any of ours.”

“Am I supposed to thank you now?”

“Not yet.”

Matty frowned and looked at him narrowly. “What do you mean, ‘not yet'?”

“Well, I haven't apologized for my beastly behavior.”

Matty was taken aback. She cocked her head and looked at him steadily. “Yes, you were a beast.”

“Indeed, beastly, as I said.”

“Well, I accept your apology for your utter beastliness.”

“You had to say ‘utter,' of course.”

“Well…just beastliness then.”

Fynn inhaled sharply. “Look, are we going to stand here and just toss the word
beastly
back and forth or what?”

“What do you mean by ‘or what'?”

“I could help you with this, help you finish the tree house.”

Matty opened her eyes wide with amazement. “Let you help
me
finish my own tree house! Oh, that's rare, truly rich, Fynn. You just told me I am building the best tree house of all. So I let you help me, and then you take the credit.”

“I wouldn't take the credit. Never.” His brow furrowed, and the bright blueness of his eyes suddenly seemed tarnished.

“Well, share it then. No! Fynn, I don't share. Not this!”

A dark ruddiness flushed Fynn's cheeks. He closed his eyes tight.

“What's wrong with you?” Matty asked.

He began to speak with his eyes still clamped
shut. “I'm telling myself not to get angry. I came to apologize.”

Matty stepped closer to him and picked up his hand and squeezed it lightly. “And you did apologize and I thank you. But, Fynn, I just want to build my own tree house, that's all.”

1190

T
HE FRAGILE BLUE OF
the afternoon sky turned orange and then red as the sun sank until it broke like a bloodied yolk on the horizon. As twilight came, purple shadows like a bruise began to spread across the countryside and the Fitzwalter castle loomed dusky against the gathering clouds. The long, darker shadows of the turrets stretched across the barren field, reaching for her, or so it seemed to Matty. Something curled inside her, grew tight and cold as she approached her home. Were it not for the hawks and her father and Meg, there would be nothing to draw her to the castle. “Three years,” Matty whispered to herself. Nearly three years had passed since
that horrible day, and yet after two scouring winters one might still find bloodstains on the flagstones of the bailey. She always thought of this as she drew near the castle on her return from hunting.

For Matty, the castle represented a place of cold, dark stone that was the opposite from the world of the dense forests, the broad moors, meadows, and open fields she had come to know through falconry and with Fynn and his friends. Inside the castle there was nothing soft or yielding. Light, when it did finally pierce through the arrow-slit windows, fell like shards of glass on the granite. The shadows of the turrets lay like tombstones and seemed to press the very air with their weight.

Matty picked her way carefully across the drawbridge spanning the moat. It hadn't been lifted since the raid. The tower mews that had fallen victim to the catapult had never been rebuilt. The wreckage remained where it had fallen, for there were no servants or villeins left to repair or move it and her father and Hodge were much too old to carry rocks. This, in a sense, had been a blessing, for at Matty's suggestion a new mews had been improvised right in the keep, the strong central tower of the castle, where they now lived. Indeed the keep's topmost room, under the conical roof, was Matty's own
chamber. Here, at least, the arrow-slit windows were in abundance, offering light and fresh air. It was almost as good as the old hawk house and in some ways better. She could be near the birds all the time. But as she walked through the bailey to the keep, she was struck by the loneliness of the castle. Before the raid her father had been a proud feudal lord, with over fifty men-at-arms and one hundred villeins, who lived and worked within the walls of the castle and its surrounding fields as part of their labor service to Lord William.

The Fitzwalters' castle had been full of life then. Walk into the bailey any time of the day or night and there was hustle and bustle, the banging of the blacksmith in his forge, the quacking of geese being marched toward a feeding trough by Meg. The boy who tended the kennels would run out to show Matty the first of a new litter of puppies. The cart of a villein loaded with the share of turnips and root vegetables due her father might have just pulled up at a storage cellar, and a dairymaid would be at the churn. But now they were all gone. Had it ever been real? Matty often wondered. It was as if it had been a play and all the actors had vanished from the stage.

Once Matty's family had lived throughout the
castle. But after the raid, as the hard times swept the land, servants left. Fires could not be kept burning in all the great fireplaces, and one by one the rooms of the castle had been closed. They seemed destined to live shrunken lives with only the dimmest memories of another time.

Matty looked up at the two other towers that jutted out from the castle and formed the main gatehouse, or barbican. There were no guards in the towers. Nor had there been since the raid, although she often thought about what a fat lot of good they had been. Her father suspected that they had been in the pay of the sheriff and had been the ones to sabotage the drawbridge. But who was really to blame? If the two ignorant tower guards had been bribed by the sheriff, were they at fault? No, in Matty's mind any blame rested firmly on the shoulders of Prince John. Prince John with his dreams of conquest that were nothing like his brother Richard's dreams of conquering the Holy Land for Christians. Now that old King Henry had died, John wanted to conquer England for himself.

Everyone in the shire, be they noble or peasant, was teetering on the edge of starvation. Matty had to go out every day to hunt as the pottage simmering on the fire
grew thinner and thinner with more water and less meat. Matty had found a worm in her trencher from a rotten potato thrown into the thin stew. The worm had crept out and been boiled.

“Meg,” Matty called as she came into the keep, “I brought a duck. It's not much.”

“Don't worry, dear. We'll make do.” Matty's old nursemaid took the duck and with her other hand, touched Matty's cheek. “Thank you, child.”

“No rabbits yet, eh, Matilda?” Lord William's voice came out of a shadowy corner where he was mending some jesses for the hawks.

“None in the snare, Father.”

He sighed, then tried to sound more hopeful. “Well, another two weeks, they'll be plentiful and you can bet that Ulysses will give them a run for it. Moss, too, for that matter.”

“Yes. Soon the rabbits will be scampering,” Matty replied. There was a clinking sound from another corner. On a stool Hodge worked on a hauberk, a chain mail shirt. Hodge had awakened one morning that winter not recognizing his own wife. The years of marriage had somehow been forgotten. He thought he was once more preparing his master, Lord William,
for battle on the French fields under the command of young Prince Richard. Since that morning, Hodge had spent endless hours mending and re-mending the same sleeve.

Matty's eyes slid toward the old man. He seemed a symbol of everything that had been lost, perhaps most of all lost hope. Why should she believe that things would change for him, for any of them? It could only get worse, especially when winter set in again. But it was not yet spring. Why was she already anticipating winter? Only the most desperate thought of winter on the brink of spring.

Matty helped Meg prepare the paltry meal. The one good thing about so little to eat was that one did not linger at the table. There were no dishes to wash since they began using the bread trenchers. One just wiped them and kept using them until they fell apart.

“May I be excused?”

“Yes,” Lord William said, “but first tell me about the hawking. How did Moss fly?”

Meg and Lord William both looked at her. Their eyes had a dim light, like the guttering flicker of a candle.
Give us something…give us any shred of hope.
It was not simply hawking they wished to know about.

“No news of King Richard?” her father whispered as if the very words might shatter.

Much had changed and yet not enough. After Richard had returned from France to receive his crown in the autumn of the year 1189, peace had somehow been brokered with his brother Prince John. William Longchamp, the Bishop of Ely, confidant of Richard and priest to his mother, Queen Eleanor, had been appointed the chancellor. He was the most important official next to the king, and hopes for change and prosperity were high. But within a scant two months of Richard's return came of the fall of Jerusalem to the Saracen leader Saladin. The king had hardly settled in before he left for the Third Crusade to the Holy Land, and Prince John had become more ruthless than ever.

Meg and her father strained for hope.

“No rumors?” Meg asked. “You didn't pick up any rumor when you be out hunting?”

Matty was tempted to say that hunting was not like going to town and that ducks and rabbits don't exactly speak. She merely shook her head. “Sorry,” she said softly. “Haven't heard a thing.” She got up to leave. “Maybe…” but the words dwindled off and no one was looking at her now.