Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(177)
“I wouldn’t. She’s hungry. I don’t think she gets her fair share of kills,” Matthew said. He looked sad again, even wistful. ?árka made low, chortling sounds and kept her eyes on Matthew.
“She likes you.” It was no wonder. They were both hunters by instinct, both fettered so that they couldn’t give in to the urge to track and kill.
We rode on a twisting path down into the river gorge that had once served as the palace moat. The river was gone and the gorge fenced in to keep the emperor’s game from roaming the city. Red deer, roe deer, and boar all prowled the grounds. So, too, did the lions and other big cats from the menagerie on those days when Rudolf decided to hunt deer with them rather than birds.
I expected utter chaos, but hunting was as precisely choreographed as any ballet. As soon as Rudolf released his gyrfalcon into the air, the birds resting in the trees rose up in a cloud, taking flight to avoid becoming a snack. The gyrfalcon swooped down and flew over the brush, the wind whistling through the bells on his feet. Startled grouse erupted from cover, running and flapping in all directions before taking to the air. The gyrfalcon banked, selected a target, harried it into position, and shot forward to hit it with talons and beak. The grouse fell from the sky, the falcon pursuing it relentlessly to the ground, where the grouse, startled and injured, was finally killed. The gamekeepers released the dogs and ran with them across the snowy ground. The horses thundered after, the men’s cries of triumph drowned out by the baying of the hounds.
When the horses and riders caught up, we found the falcon standing by its prey, its wings curved to shield the grouse from rival claimants. Matthew had adopted a similar stance at the Bodleian Library, and I felt his eyes fall on me to make sure that I was nearby.
Now that the emperor had the first kill, the others were free to join in the hunt. Together they caught more than a hundred birds, enough to feed a fair number of courtiers. There was only one altercation. Not surprisingly, it occurred between Rudolf’s magnificent silver gyrfalcon and Matthew’s small brown-and-white merlin.
Matthew had been hanging back from the rest of the male pack. He released his bird well after the others and was unhurried in claiming the grouse that she brought down. Though none of the other men got off their mounts, Matthew did, coaxing ?árka away from her prey with a murmured word and a bit of meat that he’d pulled off a previous kill.
Once, however, ?árka failed to connect with the grouse she was pursuing. It eluded her, flying straight into the path of Rudolf’s gyrfalcon. But ?árka refused to yield. Though the gyrfalcon was larger, ?árka was scrappier and more agile. To reach her grouse, the merlin flew past my head so closely that I felt the changing pressure in the air. She was such a little thing—smaller even than the grouse, and definitely outsized by the emperor’s bird. The grouse flew higher, but there was no escape. ?árka quickly reversed direction and sank her curved talons into her prey, her weight carrying them both down. The indignant gyrfalcon screamed in frustration, and Rudolf added his own loud protest.
“Your bird interfered with mine,” Rudolf said furiously as Matthew kicked his horse forward to fetch the merlin.
“She isn’t my bird, Your Majesty,” Matthew said. ?árka, who had puffed herself up and stretched out her wings to look as large and menacing as possible, let out a shrill peep as he approached. Matthew murmured something that sounded vaguely familiar and more than a little amorous, and the bird’s feathers smoothed. “?árka belongs to you. And today she has proved to be a worthy namesake of a great Bohemian warrior.”
Matthew picked up the merlin, grouse and all, and held it up for the court to see. ?árka’s jesses swung freely, and her bells tinkled with sound as he circled her around. Unsure what their response should be, the courtiers waited for Rudolf to do something. I intervened instead.
“Was this a female warrior, husband?”
Matthew stopped in his rotation and grinned. “Why, yes, wife. The real ?árka was small and feisty, just like the emperor’s bird, and knew that a warrior’s greatest weapon lies between the ears.” He tapped his head to make sure everyone received the message. Rudolf not only received it, he looked nonplussed.
“She sounds rather like the ladies of Malá Strana,” I said drily. “And what did ?árka do with her intelligence?” Before Matthew could answer, an unfamiliar young woman spoke.
“?árka took down a troop of soldiers,” she explained in fluid Latin with a heavy Czech accent. A white-bearded man I took to be her father looked at her approvingly, and she blushed.
“Really?” I said, interested. “How?”
“By pretending she needed rescuing and then inviting the soldiers to celebrate her freedom with too much wine.” Another woman, this one elderly with a beak of a nose to rival Augusta’s, snorted in disgust. “Men fall for that every time.”
I burst out laughing. To her evident surprise, so did the beaky, aristocratic old lady.
“I fear, Emperor, that the ladies will not have their heroine blamed for the faults of others.” Matthew reached into his pocket for the hood and gently set it over the crown of ?árka’s proud head. He leaned in and tightened the cord with his teeth. The gamekeeper took the merlin to a smattering of approving applause.
We adjourned to a red-and-white-roofed Italianate house set at the edge of the palace grounds for wine and refreshments, though I would have preferred to linger in the gardens where the emperor’s narcissi and tulips were blooming. Other members of the court joined us, including the sour-faced Strada, Master Hoefnagel, and the instrument maker Erasmus Habermel, whom I thanked for my compendium.