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Philip Walch was his favorite, because he only cared about the birds. Not who was in command, or how high or low anyone’s birth, or if you were English or Welsh or Norman. All that mattered were the birds and how you treated them.
“Do we have to sew his eyes shut?”
“They are not like men,” answered Phillip. “A falcon is calmed by the dark. Her fears do not live in the night.”
Her. Gryff looked down at the covered basket he’d insisted on carrying once they’d caught the falcon not far from its nest. He would have looked under the cloth to see it again, if Philip hadn’t warned him they must wait until they were back in the mews. Females were the fiercer hunters, everyone knew that.
“Where do her fears live, then, if not in the dark?”
This made Philip Walch smile, but he didn’t laugh at Gryff. He was never cruel. “She knows naught of fear, and never will. You have heard us speak of their fear when they are handled, if you move too fast or cause them harm. But it’s not fear such as we have. A bird will trust you, or it will not. Now she does not know or trust any man, and so we say she fears us. It is our arrogance, that we see our own fearful hearts in them so that we may say we conquer that fear.”
Gryff knew already that there was no conquering. Not with any of the falcons, or the hawks. It was a partnership, always: the man took care of the bird and in return, the bird would hunt for the man.
“Then why must her eyes be stitched closed?” he insisted. This was his chance to learn as much as he could and he intended not to waste it. His father gave each of his sons one spring and summer of their boyhood to catch and train a bird with the master falconer so that they could learn the art of it. But after that, Gryff must return to only hunting with a trained bird, instead of devoting every hour to their care and keeping.
“I see no greater merit in the old way of seeling closed the eyes. It’s the hood she’ll wear, and a dark room she’ll stay in, so that we need do no stitching.” They had reached the mews, and Philip pushed the door open for Gryff to enter. “It is done because she sees more in one glance than you will ever see in your life. All of this is strange to her, and is best she become accustomed slowly. You will see.”
They were careful in lifting her out, Philip’s hands gently closing over her wings and his voice soothing as he instructed Gryff to attach the jesses to her legs. It was hard to see in the gloom and Gryff sweated all the while, afraid of doing it wrong, worried she would bite him. She was only a little more than a baby, just beginning to venture from the nest when they caught her, but she looked at him with eyes that seemed ancient. It made him feel much younger than his seven years.
“There she is,” said Philip approvingly, when Gryff had attached the leash and handed it over. At a glance, the falcon seemed perfectly calm. But anyone could feel she was ready to bate and scream, to bolt away from them for as far as the leash would let her. Only Philip’s practiced hands kept her still.
Gryff found the hood and held it up.
“I will train her, truly?” he asked, and Philip nodded. He could hardly believe he’d be allowed that much time at the task, for it took weeks. Every hour of the day must be spent in the mews with her. He had heard Philip tell his father already that Gryff was possessed of a falconer’s steady temperament, unusually patient and observant for such a young boy. It made him glow with pride when he heard it.
“How long until she is tame?”
“You will both be trained, but is only you who will be tamed, little fool.” It was affectionate, but serious. There were few who were permitted to call Gryff a fool, though he was only a boy. But Philip could. “You could raise her from the egg and still she would not think you her master. Never will she truly need you. She will stay with you so long as it suits her. But she will never be tame.”
They began the long process of coaxing the falcon to accept the hood. All the while, Philip explained that the fiercer the creature, the more gentle must be the man, or they would never be in accord. This was why his father wanted him to learn this art, so that he would know what it was to be a servant to one who served you, to have dominance but never complete control.
Gryff looked at the bright eyes of the young falcon, and was glad it could never be tame.
