“You mean you could tell them?”
The hawks looked at one another. Their Matty was as much like a bird as a human being could be, but she didn’t understand that “tell” was not how nwamelk worked.
“Not tell, Matty.” Hearing her old name brought Marian back to a strange moment years before, that day when she had come back tired and happy after Marigold’s first free flight. Was that the first time when she had felt herself cross over the invisible border between human and hawk? Then she remembered another early instance. She had gone to bed but could not sleep and began to experience a peculiar state that was more like a trance than a dream in which she found herself separating from and seemingly perched above her own body. She had sensed a curious stirring in her shoulders and at the same time her vision had become unimaginably sharp. She had seen with an absolute clarity. And now she remembered another part of that odd time. She had in fact felt a faint pull in her head as if she knew for the first time exactly where she was, not just in her castle, not just in her shire, not just in England but on Earth! Perhaps this was what the hawks meant when they told her about nwamelk.
If only she could get Marigold to that first tree! Marian knew she would have to go with her merlin. There was no other way. But there were eyes out there. Eyes watching.
Chapter 29
TRAPPED!
The early signs of a hawk in a poor or low condition are often difficult to read. “Slitted eyes” can be very ambiguous, as they can indicate contentment as well as a digestive problem. If your bird refuses to eat, feed it sugared water and leave the hawk in a dark place for an hour.
IT HAD BEEN NEARLY three months since the news of King Richard’s capture. He was still alive, and so far no one had come up with money to ransom his life and freedom or to pay for his murder. But finally it was mid-March when the worst storms happen, as if winter is trying to have the last word. The wind howled and the night turned white with snow. The snow changed to sleet and the slashing wet wind drove the sleet slantwise across the night. Branches torn from trees sailed through the air.
Surely no one will be out on a night like this. And no one can see me if they are out, Marian thought as she made her way toward the greenwood with Marigold flying a short distance ahead. The merlin, who had no problem plowing through the wild gusts, circled back frequently to keep in sight of her mistress. “Mwup wup…I’m coming…I’m coming,” Marian muttered and thought again as she had so many times before, Would that I had wings!
At last they were at the edge of the forest and making their way toward the first of the trees. “Hwatz kruschick.” Marigold settled on her shoulder and Marian began to speak to her. She knew that words were no good for a hawk’s navigation, but she could still describe the tree if, God willing, the wind had not torn it down and Marigold would see that it was a different kind of tree. It was Marian’s notion that once Marigold had seen one of these forest lepers she’d recognize the others.
“Frymchisch, amrigod, frym chisch…” (See it yonder. Even on this foul night it looks strange, doesn’t it?) Marian said, spotting the tree several yards ahead.
“Hagge hagge,” Marigold replied. Marian felt delight course through her. The merlin understood. She saw. This was no drawing, no flat lines. Then a shrill cry cracked the air.
Marian felt the merlin flee from her shoulder as she herself dropped. The drop was not long and the landing not hard, but she heard a sickening snap over her head.
She was momentarily stunned. Then she screamed. “Cranaggg, Marigold! Flee, Marigold! I’ve been trapped!” Snared by a net, she’d been dropped into a cage of woven wattle. She felt something tight around her ankles. They had put jesses on her! She must have stepped into the loops and that was what had triggered the trap to open and snare her. It was too late. The locks and swivels of the jesses were beyond her reach. She closed her eyes. And uttered a prayer in a language no human had ever heard. “Gyllman ichtio, Marigold leschen me, leschen me gwap.”
Chapter 30
THE NEVER-ENDING NIGHT
Bating is a headlong dive of rage and terror by which a leashed falcon leaps from a fist in a bid for freedom. If not handled correctly, the bird can do permanent damage to its flight feathers, the primaries in particular.
THE TRAP WAS LARGE; large enough for a deer but fashioned like a wattle cage for a bird, a big bird with a large wingspan.
The wind had died down, and Marian heard first the footsteps and then the voices. She had not been in the trap long. She wondered if they had put traps everywhere in the woods. How long had they been waiting for her? Or was it her? Perhaps they’d been hunting someone else? Once she and the boys had built their tree houses throughout this same greenwood to watch for the prince’s and the sheriff’s men, and now with a ground trap they had snared her.
“She’ll be happy. This will earn us a nice fat pig.”
Marian knew immediately who they were talking about. There was only one “she” who would be happy with this bird being captured: the abbess.
A heavy cloth was thrown over the cage before Marian could see her captors. There was a jerk and she felt herself being raised. They began to walk with the cage and continued walking longer than it had taken her to walk from the edge of the forest to where she had been trapped. But she now heard another voice and the snort of some horses.
“You got her?” the new voice asked.
“We got her.”
“I don’t hear anything. Sure she’s alive?”
“This trap ain’t going to kill anything. But I’ll check.”
She was set down. The cloth was pulled back and a bloodshot watery blue eye peered down into the cage. “Missy, you all right in there, ain’t you? Won’t be long now.”
“Mweep phrynghiss bletchmig,” she muttered.
“Whatcha say there?”
“Mweep phrynghiss bletchmig,” Marian repeated. She was not sure why these old hawk curses that she had learned in the mews came back to her. She knew how to curse in English but only hawk came out.
“I think her brains done been addled. But she looks all right.” He threw the cover back over the cage.
She felt herself being lifted and set down again. But this time not on the ground. She could tell by the sound that there were planks beneath her. She guessed they’d put her in a cart and soon she heard the creak of the wheel. The cart lurched forward. Her heart raced. She had to think of something. Would Marigold have flown back to tell the others? Of course. She must have. No, maybe she would have stayed to see where they were taking me.
The trip seemed endless. She drifted off to sleep for short periods of time, but then she awoke and felt the jesses around her ankles and a fury started to rise in her. She tried to calm herself. Hawks could not hunt when they were in a fret. She really had to think like a hawk now. But she was not the hunter, she was the hunted. Not the predator but the prey. The cart jolted to a halt and panic swept through her. Once more she felt the cage being lifted and carried for a short distance. A heavy door was opened and a low voice wormed through the darkness. “Put it down.”
She felt a bump as the cage was dropped to the floor. Then there was the sound of feet retreating, a heavy door creaking shut, and finally silence. But she knew she was not alone.
She heard a heavy tread on the floorboards, a sigh, and the groaning sag of a chair as someone sat down. She could feel the awful transparent eyes piercing the cloth that covered her cage. Her heart roared in her chest. Never had she felt such tumult, such anger. A mixture of terror and defiance welled up inside her, and Marian lurched madly. There was a sharp yank on the jesses that cut through her thick stockings. She yelped. There was another violent jerk that twisted her leg painfully. Pain shot up her calf all the way to her hip. The awful presence moved closer.
“I demand to be let out!” she shouted with all the dignity she could muster. And then she heard a harsh laugh and felt a sharp poke from a stick.
“Shut up!” A woman’s voice seared
the air.
“What is this about? I demand to know!”
“You demand? You demand?” The voice was scalding.
Suddenly the cloth was removed. A scaly hand reached between the bars of the cage and grabbed her just under the jaw. The fingers dug into the skin of her cheek. She gasped as she looked up. What she saw looked more like a mask than a human face. There was a waxen shininess, as if the face had melted. But no matter, the eyes had remained the same, two transluscent voids. The lipless mouth was a smear across the face. I did that, Matty thought. And the memory of that shriek she had heard when she had knocked over the candle rang clearly in her ears. I did this to her and now she will take her vengeance.
The abbess’s voice remained low and calm but full of strange heat.
“I understand you are a falconer, milady. I understand that the first stage in the training of a hawk is called manning him, or her, as it is.”
Hearing those words, something hardened in Marian. She would not let this woman frighten her. She lifted her chin and looked straight at her tormentor with dark insolence.
The abbess sniffed and averted her eyes but continued speaking. “I understand that the bird is never left alone, that the trainer shall make the falcon accustomed to him—or her.” She gave a dry little laugh. “Furthermore, the creature remains hooded at all times until it is completely within the power of the trainer. Godfrey!” She called out sharply. Marian heard the door open.
“Yes, Abbess.”
“The hood!”
In the moment when they hooded her, Marian recognized the abbess’s fatal error in what was to be her training. For she tasted her own blood. The blood that trickled down her cheek where the abbess’s nails had dug into her skin was proof to her that she would never be brought within the abbess’s absolute power. The art of true falconry—teaching with patience and respect—called for the falconer to hold the bird firmly and gently so it would not be injured.
Through the shadowy days and nights that followed, it was this taste of her own blood that sustained her determination to never succumb to the power of the abbess. She would never be tamed.
The hood they placed on Marian was of dark stiff leather, with a slit through which they fed her. Their intention was to keep her awake, yet deprived of vision. Thus they’d wear down her resistance so that after days, she would be so starved for light and so desperate to see the world that finally, like a falcon, she would capitulate and climb willingly and lovingly on to the “falconer’s” glove and reveal the location of the rubies. But, in fact, the abbess had grown soft over the years with the wines and rich meats the sheriff and the prince had provided in exchange for many of the abbey’s treasures and she could not stay awake herself. Marian realized this shortly into the first night when the abbess yawned loudly and ordered another sister to come in and watch her. Soon that sister was also asleep, snoring softly through the night. So it was no problem for Marian to sleep in brief snatches and generally keep her strength up. She would never climb on to the perch, the promise of being unhooded and set free that the abbess held out in exchange for the secret of the rubies’ whereabouts.
The abbess’s strategy for extracting this information was crude, but she’d begun that first evening. “There is a way, my dear, that we can shorten your training considerably. I shall let you ponder it, but first you need to know that we know that you are not simply Matilda Fitzwalter, daughter of the late Lord William, who fought in England first for King Henry and then for his son Richard in France, but you have several other identities as well. You are, of course, the clumsy serving girl, one Marian Greenleaf. You were at one point also known as the Nut Brown Girl by some, for you played with a certain Robert Woodfynn and Hubert Bigge and others in the greenwood and turned brown from the sun. Robert, of course, became Robin Hood and now leads his Merry Men including Hubert Bigge, now called Little John. There is one young maiden, Maid Marian, I understand, who sometimes disguises herself as a boy. An adolescent boy who has but a trace of a mustache but who nonetheless stole a ring from the Bishop of Hereford’s finger.”
“It was my mother’s jewel!” Marian shot back.
“There are other jewels that concern me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. Don’t be fresh with me, girl. For years you and that gang have been spotted in and about the Barnsdale forest, especially down by the creek. I am talking about the rubies. Where are they?”
“I don’t know!”
“How could you not know? You little liar.” There was a phlegmy sound and something hit the hood.
“You spat on me!”
“I’ll do worse.” There was a sharp yank on the jesses, and Marian screamed with pain.
“You spat on me, you draw my blood, and yet you think you will tame me? Woman, you know nothing about falconry.”
“But I know about pain and how it can loosen tongues.”
“And you think you can get the truth through torture? Why would I not say anything—tell any lie to stop pain?” She heard the abbess inhale sharply and then get up to leave.
But each day the abbess returned to ask where the gems were hidden, and each day Marian said nothing. She had been kept hooded, and her ankles were raw and bleeding from the rope burns of the jesses, yet she still refused to be tamed. She sat erect in the middle of the cell, tethered to a ring in the floor by a chain attached to the jesses, her head held high and defiant. The training was most definitely not proceeding on schedule. Marian did not seem tired and she would not bate. As each day slipped into dusk and dusk to night and one night into another, Marian sensed the abbess’s growing panic to find the jewels.
One day she heard the abbess enter the cell, sit down heavily in the chair, and sigh. Marian lifted her hooded head a bit higher. “You are a very proud girl. Too proud,” the abbess observed. “But,” she continued, “you are a girl, not a bird. That perhaps has been my error.” Marian did not deign to reply. Just then the sound of a leper’s bell could be heard.
“Ah!” exclaimed the abbess and clapped her hands gleefully. “You know of course we have a leprosarium attached to the abbey? The sound of a leper’s bell signals a new arrival.”
Marian did not respond, but the abbess spoke with a new energy. “My work in this hospital has been widely praised. Even the pope has written to the Bishop of Hereford commending me. I believe the letter said that the hospital of this abbey offers ‘a matchless spiritual blessing for the region.’” She paused as if to reflect. “Yes, those were his exact words. I had a special chantry built, and the lepers are required to spend several hours each day praying for the souls of their benefactors. So not only have I provided for the health of those afflicted with leprosy but at the same time I have provided for the health of my own soul.”
“Through forced prayer—hah!” Marian laughed scornfully.
“Oh, you’re laughing, are you? Well, perhaps you need to take a closer look at this hospital and in doing so—who knows, Maid Marian, you might provide for the health of your soul.”
Marian turned her head. Despite the hood she felt as if she were staring directly into those terrible eyes, set like pale lifeless stones. “I would rather burn in hell than share one moment in any heaven that would welcome you.”
There was a long silence, then Marian felt her head being wrenched around.
“Don’t toy with me, girl!” The abbess’s fingers dug into her neck. “I do believe it is time to unhood you!”
“Is it?” Marian replied quietly.
“Yes. A funeral for the living dead is about to commence. I have new plans for you and your ‘training.’” She ripped off Marian’s hood. Marian blinked in the dim dawn light. The abbess’s translucent eyes shimmered with a fiendish gleam.
Chapter 31
THE LIVING DEAD
The last sanctuary, inviolable, incorruptible for the abused hawk, is death. Many a mishandled bird has chosen to die.
THE ABBES
S DRAGGED MARIAN to a window. Marian’s eyes closed at the sudden glint of the rising sun as it reflected off a silver cross borne by a priest on the road below. Behind the priest was a small procession winding up the road to the abbey.
“You see!” rasped the abbess, pointing to a pathetic creature at the end of the procession, “There she is. Face eaten away, one foot half gone.”
Head bowed, her frail body supported by a crutch, the leper moved slowly. Strapped to her back were two wood planks and a bag of nails for the coffin she would be required to build soon after she entered the abbey hospital. Apparently she didn’t have the strength to carry any more than this, for the rest of the planks were carried by men in the procession.
“And now to the chantry!” announced the abbess almost gaily.
In the chantry, no one stood close to the creature. A black cloth had been draped over two trestles in front of the altar where the leper knelt to hear Mass and make her last confession. The arrangement of the cloth and the trestles looked precisely like a funeral bier upon which a coffin would be set.
The priest was an elderly man, whose voice was weak and barely audible as he chanted, “Libera me, Domine.” It was a chant for the dead, for a departed soul, and yet the woman lived.
The service was not long. When it concluded, the leper limped to the door of the church from which she would be led to the hospital. Before she left the church, the priest at the door signaled her to stop. Marian felt herself break into a cold sweat when she saw the priest stoop, reach into a bucket and pour some earth over the woman’s remaining whole foot, as one would pour dirt onto a coffin in an open grave. Muttering in Latin, the priest then spoke his final words to the leper: “Tu eres morte ad vivendi pero vivendi ad Domine. Thou art dead to the living but alive again for God.” He tied a black ribbon on to the leper’s crutch.