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.
“D
o 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.
Chapter 4
MATTY’S BRILLIANT IDEA
Frequent access to bathing water is essential for the health of a hawk’s feathers. An ointment composed of equal parts crushed garlic, wormwood, and pine resin is serviceable for the common abrasions that hawks might suffer on their legs from chafing jesses.
WHEN 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.
Chapter 5
FOUR TREE HOUSES
Like all living things hawks have their seasons. There are times of yarak and times of molt. In times of yarak the birds are keen and eager, and when molting they can be cranky and dispirited. A good falconer is sensitive to the hawk in all its moods, through all its seasons.
“NO, RICH, 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.