Hawksmaid (7 page)

I
T WAS
M
ONDAY, THE
day after the mysterious reappearance of the chalice. It had disturbed them all, of course, for without theft there could be no thieves. Rich declared that it most likely had been taken to a silversmith for repair. Matty reflected on all this as she sat in her tree house, the one she had built by herself. The long slender branches of the willow hung like a veil against the day. She peered out through the lovely strands of ivy that she had woven into the tendrils of willow. She often came to the tree house to
think, bringing her birds, for it was quiet and afforded a good vantage point for spotting game.

On this day she had brought Moss along with Ulysses and Marigold. Moss fascinated Matty. The peregrine had aged significantly, and she was now nearly blind. Matty had not taken her out often of late. Her flight feathers had grown brittle and her molts had become less frequent, the regrowth thinner each time. And just as an old person often shrinks in stature, Moss's talons had shortened so much they looked more like chicken claws than the talons of a bird that was once the scourge of large hares. But while the faculties upon which a bird is so dependent seemed to have weakened, other aspects of Moss's being seemed to have grown stronger. She had become even more sensitive, almost intuitive. She could anticipate what Matty was about to do, as well as the other birds' behaviors. With stalwart Ulysses, Moss and her powers of intuition, and Marigold, so bold and aggressive, Matty felt that she could not be in better company or with stronger allies.

Moss now perched on her left shoulder, Marigold on her right, and Ulysses in his watch position high over the roof of the tree house. Matty looked up through the
canopy at the immense goshawk. His broad shoulders were squared and he had a keen look in his red eyes. She turned to Moss and spoke softly in the strange language that she shared with her hawks. “Four birds we are,” Matty whispered, “all perched in a tree. Moss and Marigold on my shoulders and me on a limb and Ulysses on the roof of my lovely little house.”

She no longer attached their jesses when they went out. It was her own version of the golden rule. They would never tether her, and she would never tether them.

It began to rain softly, and the tree house seemed cozier than ever. Once again she began to experience the sensation she had after Marigold's first flight. It began with the stirring in her shoulders. Except now that stirring did not seem so odd. She blinked and looked down at a leaf. What she thought was a small green bump or blister began to quake and a tiny worm no bigger than a pinhead squirmed out.
I am seeing like a bird.
She felt Moss turn to her, and with her beak gently begin to stroke her bare skin.
She's preening me! Have I grown feathers?

Her skin still looked like skin and yet it felt very different. Odd? But not odd! That was perhaps the
most astounding part. None of this felt peculiar or strange but so natural, as if two elements of Matty's being, of her spirit, were magically being woven together into a new living thing. But the sensation was fleeting. She felt a soft jolt and the mysterious fabric was softly torn asunder as Marigold suddenly puffed up and shivered.

Matty knew immediately that Marigold's reaction was not to the chill breeze that accompanied the rain. She could almost sense the danger herself, but not quite as her hawks were sensing it. From the top of the tree there was a
kak-kak
sound of alarm from Ulysses. Moss roused herself. Marigold seemed ready to fly off, but Moss shot her a severe glance.

Soft gurgling vocalizations drifted down from Ulysses.
“Gyruch garrrgh tosch, stasik malpee
.” (Permission to fly a short reconnaisance, requested.)

“Gyruch hyeh hyeh,”
Matty whispered back. To any human passing it would sound no different from the clucking of a very small flock of birds.

Ulysses had barely lifted off when, from behind the scrim of the willow's branches and the soft drizzle misting over the creek, Matty saw a shadowy figure.
The shadow man? After all this time?

“Ptschaw, chu chu
,” she whispered, stroking Marigold's back feathers. She felt her own heart thumping loudly. A figure swathed in a dark hooded robe was approaching the creek's edge. Matty watched as the figure knelt. So intent was the person on his business that he did not notice the goshawk hovering overhead. Was it in the kneeling that something familiar struck Matty? Was it the way in which the figure nearly prostrated itself on the bank of the creek that reminded her of—something—a gesture, a peculiar posture that did not belong in this wooded land? The figure held something in its hand. Just as it reached to stuff whatever it was under the embankment the hood slipped back and the head turned quickly.

Matty's heart almost stopped. Once again she felt that terrible sensation of peering into a void. The transparent eyes bore right through the screen of willows. Matty's breath locked in her throat. This was no shadow man. This was the abbess. These were the eyes of the abbess. But, even odder, Matty knew as surely as she had ever known anything that these were the eyes that had bored into her when she had taken Marigold on her first free flight. She remembered Fynn saying that he thought the abbess might be connected to the Bishop of
Hereford, and then Matty remembered Rich's words: “That makes sense. I heard, too, that there was a new abbess in the Nottingham abbey. How convenient for her to work with the sheriff. And the sheriff is owned by Prince John, who wants to own the church. Oh yes, it all begins to fit neatly, doesn't it. A devilish design of scoundrels and tyrants and rotten men of the cloth!”

But would she come all the way from Nottingham unless she had something very important to hide? Something very precious? Of course not! It made, as Rich had said, perfect sense.

Matty was not sure how long the abbess stared at the tree, but gradually she came to realize that the woman had not seen her. The abbess had been forced to twist her head and body in order to reach under the embankment. But the awful feeling, the same one she had experienced in church, washed over her again as she caught sight of those odd eyes. Nothing living had such eyes. Nothing!

M
ATTY HAD BEEN SO
frightened that she had waited several hours until dark so she could leave her perch under the cover of the night. Her mind swirled with confusion. She must find the boys and tell them that the shadow man was no man at all but a shadow woman—the abbess. But she must first get home because her father and Meg would worry about her being out this late.

“Night hawking?” Lord William inquired as she appeared in the keep.

“Oh, just a bit. First the boys and I were out gathering flowers for the church,” she lied. “You know, May nineteenth, St. Dunstan's Day, is in just two more days.”

St. Dunstan had been the archbishop of Canterbury and a beloved man. In the wooded swampland the rare flowers called St. Dunstan were named for him because he had loved music and its petals were shaped like harps.

She ate some cold porridge and immediately went to her bed. Now she had to wait until everyone was asleep, which would not be long, and then she would sneak out. Matty had a tried and true, albeit smelly, method for accomplishing this. The garderobe. The garderobes, or toilets, in many castles were stacked in the outer parts of the towers. There might be one garderobe for each floor where a space had been carved out of the wall for a shaft that opened onto a pit. The pit had an access port at the base for cleaning. Rocks had been set in a steplike pattern, projected within the shaft, offering perfect hand- and footholds. It was not a pleasant journey down the fifty-foot shaft, but no one
would have dreamed that a sensitive young maiden would ever subject herself to the odors and indignities of such a place in order to sneak out. But that was exactly what Matty had done on several occasions. Since she, her father, Meg, and Hodge had begun living the up-and-down life in the tower there was only one main staircase by which she could descend and on that she would be at risk of disturbing everyone.

Matty waited until she was sure everyone was soundly asleep. Even the birds were still for the night. As she reached for her cloak, Marigold stirred. But Moss, who perched next to the little merlin, moved closer and made a throaty clucking in the back of her throat as if to say
calm down, calm down. Give your mistress a moment.

The weather had been warm, and the garderobe was very smelly. Although it was nearly dark, Matty's eyes soon accustomed themselves, and she could pick out the shapes of the stones. She had practically memorized the best handholds, and she quickly covered the first twenty feet downward. She was just beneath the second floor when she heard a shuffling sound. She froze, plastered to the reeking walls. A bit of light fell from above, then a muttering.

“Deus vult!”
God wills!
Matty mouthed the words. As old Meg sat down on the commode, Matty squeezed her eyes shut. The last thing she wanted to see was a withered bottom. Matty felt herself blushing. Had poor Meg known that Matty was frozen to the curved wall just beneath her, the old woman probably would have died of shame.

It took Meg forever to do her business and shuffle out of the garderobe. But finally she was gone. Matty lost no time getting the rest of the way down and out of the castle into the clear fresh air. She breathed a few deep lungfuls and set off in the direction of the Woodfynns' cottage.

Crouching behind the fence of the chicken yard Matty whistled softly—once, twice. After a pause, she whistled twice more. The sound, similar to the peep of a wood thrush, was the signal that she and all the boys used when they wanted to rouse one another. But there was no answer. She turned suddenly when she heard a rustling in the bushes behind her, then caught her breath as a bent figure stepped out of the brush.

“Disturbing the peace are ye!” the voice cawed.

“Oh no, madam,” Matty replied. The woman carried a crook like that of a shepherd and on one arm
was a basket. She was wrapped in a shawl that covered her head and was so bent over that her nose nearly touched the ground.

“How do you know I'm a madam and not a miss? And what's a decent girl like you doing abroad at night? Gets my pins in a twist to see a decent girl out at an indecent hour.”

Matty was suddenly suspicious. “I might ask the same of you.”

The woman suddenly dropped her crook and reared up to twice her height while sweeping off her shawl.

“Ta-da!”

“Fynn! You scoundrel!”

“Good disguise, isn't it? Got me into the royal dairy and look what I picked up—nice round of cheese. But what may I ask are you doing here, Matty? Decent lass as I was saying. Although you don't smell that lovely.”

“Had to come by way of the garderobe.” She paused. “Fynn,” she said softly, “I have some news.” She paused dramatically. “The shadow man—remember him?”

“Yes?” His eyes widened with expectation. The blueness of Fynn's eyes was remarkable even on a night dark as this.

“'Tis not a man at all but a woman.”

“What?”

“'Tis the abbess we saw at church some Sundays ago.”

Fynn's mouth dropped, but no words came.

I
T WAS AGREED THAT
Fynn would rouse the other boys and the five of them would meet at a cave near the edge of the greenwood not far from where Matty had observed the abbess. Matty would head straightaway to the cave. The others would fan out, taking different routes. It was too risky for a group to travel together. The sheriff's men had been thick at
night to catch poachers in the forests.

Soon Matty was walking down the road that bordered the field she would cut across to the greenwood. The moon, more than a sliver, less than a wedge, ducked in and out of the thick clouds that raced across the sky. Eerie tinkling sounds drifted down the road. “A leper's bell! God's knees!” Matty muttered. She had not a penny on her. Indeed, all that she had was a stale bun that she had swiped from the larder earlier that evening in case she got hungry, or rather, hungrier. She was always hungry. Meg had traded one of the two rabbits Morgana had caught the previous week for some flour and had done a bit of baking. Matty had been planning on the bun as a snack for herself. The hunched figure approached.

“Alms? Alms?” The words came out from a dark void encircled by a deep hood. A staff with a bucket attached was clutched with the remaining finger stubs on the stump of the leper's hand. The figure stopped downwind of Matty as was the rule for lepers. “Alms, milady?” The leper extended the staff with the bucket on the end.

“No alms, sir.” As Matty spoke, she drew out the bun and dropped it in the bucket. She could not resist
peering into the hood.

The wreckage of what was once a face hid within the shadows. The nose was gone and what remained was a single cavity through which a hissing wind blew. One eye had vanished behind a boulder of bubbling flesh.

“I am no sir, kind lady. I was a woman, once a girl like you.” The woman must have had this disease for a while. Perhaps the cruelest part of leprosy was that it moved slowly, taking its victims bit by bit. Matty wondered if the woman was on her way to see Nelly Woodfynn.

“I am sorry, so sorry,” Matty whispered.

“No need to be sorry, child. I am nothing now, not woman nor man, not young nor old, not human nor beast.”

Pain gripped Matty's heart. For one instant she felt every shred of suffering this woman had ever experienced. “And what be your name, madam?”

The leper didn't reply immediately. Matty heard instead a sharp intake of breath, like wind whistling down a deep gorge.

“My name was Helena, kind child.”

“Helena,” Mattie said softly. Helena was one of
Matty's favorite saints. Daring and adventurous, she set off for the Holy Land to find the true cross. “Madam, your name is still Helena.”

“God bless you, child!” But the words, like dry leaves, seemed lost on a freshening breeze.

Matty rushed off.

 

The boys were waiting for her at the cave. Clouds had thickened and obscured the moon, but their eyes grew quickly accustomed to the darkness and Matty, who knew the way well, led them to the creek bank near the willow tree house.

“You say, Matty, that she did not carry a shovel or spade. That she just put a parcel under the bank?” Rich asked.

“Yes, it was along here.” The five of them were beneath the embankment and walking along the edge of the creek.

“It's like hunting for a needle in a haystack,” Will said.

“Look, look,” Fynn said suddenly. “The grass has been smashed on top and there is loose dirt all along here. Bless this abbess, she's as easy to track as a horse-drawn cart through mud. This is no shadow! I'll
wager whatever she hid is right there!” He pointed to a spot where the creek had cut away deeply at the bank and the ground overhung like a shelf. He poked with a branch. “It goes back far.”

“Far as an arm can reach,” Matty said quietly.

“Don't seem to be any animals there. Though it might be an otter's den. Who wants to reach in?”

“I do! I do! Me!” There was a chorus of voices.

“Back off, lads!” Fynn spoke sharply. “I should never have asked. It's plain who should reach in.”

There was a sudden silence. The three other boys stepped back, and then they all looked at Matty.

Matty shrugged slightly as if to say,
So now I get my due for building that tree house.
“All right,” she replied, and dropped to her knees. “I wish we'd brought a torch.”

“You want the whole world to know!” Hubie whispered.

Matty reached in with her arm, feeling among the twigs and debris that must have been washed in when the creek was high.

“Anything?” Will said eagerly.

“Nothing unusual.” But just as she said the words her fingers touched something that was not mud or
rock or wood or damp leaves. It was hard and metallic. As she ran her fingers over the top, she felt a design.

When she drew the narrow box out, they stared down at it. The lid was embossed with a design of a palm that they recognized as the symbol of pilgrims who had journeyed to Jerusalem.

“It's a reliquary box,” Rich said. His voice could not belie his disappointment. They were all disappointed. The box was so small—what possible treasure could it hold save a few strands of hair or perhaps some fingernail scraps from a saint who died in the Holy Land?

“Well, open it,” Will said.

Matty wiggled the lid a bit and it started to lift off. In the same moment the sky cleared and the moon, though still only a wedge, poured a stream of silver that illuminated the creek bank. They all gasped.

In the box five immense rubies glittered.