“Hello, Miriam,” I whispered. She had opaque obsidian eyes and ayellow beak that faded to gray at the tip. She was not human at all. I was amazed that this ancient thing perched on my fist—an alien knot of sinew and feather and lethal tendons and claws, furred and pulsing with restrained strength—was the same graceful creature that could float on air.
“Why doesn’t she fly away?” I kept my voice quiet. My fist might have been a tree. Her magnificence had turned me into scenery.
Henry reached out and stroked her chest with the back of his finger. “She’s trained.”
“As one does with a hound?”
Henry shook his head. “When you train a falcon, they imprint—they come to view a falconer as a provider. Or a parent. There’s a sense of trust and dependence. I—we, the falconers—are a source of food. But if the bird gets too high, it might fly away.”
I looked up into the sky, which, though above us, felt bottomless. “How high?”
“Highmeans heavy.” Henry paused and helped me cast Miriam off once more. She flew back to the branch—the same movements as before, in reverse. “Fat. If a bird is overfed, then it doesn’t have a need to come back.”
“So, you starve them?” Already I was Miriam’s advocate.
He laughed. “There is nothing more pampered than a captive hawk. A starving bird doesn’t have any energy to fly. We weigh them every day to ensure they’rekeen. It’s the repeated promise of food, and our follow-through on that promise, that keeps them coming back.” He cocked his head and looked at me. “You’re very curious.”
If only in my mind, Agatha inserted herself just then, to tell me that being curious was not a virtue. So, instead of asking another question, I nodded toward Miriam and just said, “She’s lovely.”
“That she is,” Henry agreed, looking at her on the branch.
“So very lovely,” I burst out with more feeling.
He glanced at my face, then to the bird, and back again. “You’re interested in the falcons.”
I nodded, pressing my lips together.
“You see those little leather anklets, there, on her legs? They always stay on. They are used to connect to her jesses—which are those leather straps hanging from her feet. Those connect her to the glove, which is called a gauntlet, or to her perch, back in her mews.”
I tried to memorize each word.
Watching my face, he continued: “There’s a brass bell on her, attached with a bewit, which is another kind of leather strap, so she can be found easily when we’re hunting.”
I settled back, leaning against a tree, waiting for more. And Henry indulged me:Eyaseswere young birds andpassagerswere older ones.Hoodswere the small helmets that covered the bird’s eyes. Hawks did not defecate, theymuted. Astoopwas a headlong dive in pursuit of prey. I said nothing, consuming every detail in greedy silence.
Such was my first lesson in falconry.
In secret, Henry continued to teach me about the raptors. Because the best times for bringing out a falcon were early in the morning and late in the afternoon, I was able to complete my midday lessons with Agatha—never be alone in the company of a man without a chaperone,never introduce yourself first,never, never, never—and then blatantly disregard them in a field with a boy and a bird without rousing any suspicion.
My family would not have wanted me to be around Henry unchaperoned. And his would not have wanted him spending time with the brewer’s daughter. He had just had his seventeenth birthday and they had started treating him like a man, assigning a new set of duties and expectations, pulling him into long council sessions that he sat through in a stiff-backed chair. But he, still savoring the vestigial taste of freedom, wanted to pass his mornings in misty inlets and his afternoons with a bird on his arm.
If anyone knew we were spending so much time together, our lessons would have come to a swift end. (Here, an echo of all the stories ofunwed women—the various brutalities and shames.) But I did not feel I was doing anything wrong with Henry. I was accustomed to spending time around men. I revealed to him the best places for collecting nettles and elderberries and mullein. I took him to the largest rock with footholds that had been worn into it centuries before. I demonstrated how to spy on his own family members and explained where I had hidden to observe their mews.
It was this last revelation that piqued his interest, and one day, later in the season, he asked me to show him. I took him the back way up to his own property, along the boulder-strewn creek, past the penned sheep, through a copse of hazel trees, to the exact spot where I had furtively watched the falconers in their daily ministrations and careful attentiveness to the birds.
“Here?” Henry gestured to a large shrub that provided some cover.
I nodded. “Yes, right here, or over there”—I pointed to a thicket of gorse—“where you have a better view of the yard.”
“And it wasn’t boring?”
I pursed my lips. “No more boring than sewing even stitches in a hall.”
He looked amused. “Did you ever watch me here?”
“No,” I lied. “But—”
“Shhh,” he shushed me. Then, in a murmur: “They’re coming!”
