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A t first among the Normans, only Will paid him any attention to at all – and that was because he wanted to learn Welsh. Will never said that, of course, he just always greeted Gryff in the language and then fumbled for words beyond the simple greeting, obviously hoping for help.

Gryff pointedly answered in Norman French, or in English when he wanted to practice that language.

He never spoke in Welsh anymore. He wanted everyone to forget he was from Wales.

Not that they ever would – all they did was remind him how backward he was.

Savage and poor and stupid, worthless even to his own father.

Well, they never said that last part, but they didn’t have to.

“My mother is Welsh,” said Will, who at ten years old could not be expected to understand how little his mother mattered to this conversation.

“There are Welsh and Norman and English at my home in Ruardean and all are treated as equal. They are all alike except in their speech. It’s not like that here. ”

Will reminded Gryff of his little brother Owain, never wanting to leave his side in work or in play, imitating Gryff in every gesture.

Will didn’t have a brother, and he’d been brought here to foster under Lancaster when he was only a baby.

He didn’t have a father, either – not one he’d ever known – and he barely even knew this home he spoke of with such authority.

“It’s not like that here because Lancaster’s wife is more Norman than he is himself, and all the household too.

” Gryff stabbed at the dirt with his wooden sword and wished he had a real one.

The master at arms said he wasn’t ready for it yet, but Gryff knew it was because he was Welsh.

He’d overheard the men saying that he shouldn’t be taught to fight at all.

“Lancaster would never marry a Welshwoman, nor let her rule.”

Will shrugged. “They say my father is mad. Better my Welsh mother rules than a madman.”

“It’s your Norman uncle who rules,” Gryff corrected him, angry suddenly. “They don’t give marcher castles over to Welsh people. There’s naught in Wales like these manors, we could never – they could never build anything this grand.”

Will just used the tip of his own wooden sword to dig up a clump of earth, and didn’t look at him. It was obvious he disagreed but didn’t want to argue. “Do you want to go see the destrier?” he asked instead.

It had become a favorite thing to do, visiting the new war horse that had been brought to Lancaster’s stables. Not that Gryff would ever get to ride a destrier in his life. Will would. He’d also probably get a real sword before Gryff did, even though he was younger.

“Nay, I want the kitchen. There will be pears in confit left, and Agnes will have saved some for me.” Agnes was the cook’s daughter and had taken a liking to him.

Will began to follow him as he headed through the tilting yard toward the kitchen. Gryff frowned at him. “You know well you cannot come with me. Kitchens are for servants.”

“ You’re not a servant.” He got that mulish look, just like Owain used to before a tantrum. Will wouldn’t start shouting and insisting to come along, though. He was too smart for that.

“I am no servant,” Gryff agreed. “But nor am I the son of a great Norman lord. Go you to the hall and call for pears confit, and the kitchen will bring it to you fresh.”

He walked away and tried not to care that he’d seen the hurt in the younger boy’s face.

He liked Will but he wasn’t sure if Will really liked him , or just wanted to pretend to be Welsh.

He was too young anyway. Ten years old was practically a baby.

In two years, Gryff would be fourteen and that was the age of manhood.

He wondered if that meant they’d send him back to his father in Wales in two years.

He’d asked how long he would remain hostage and no one could give him an answer.

It had stopped mattering to him because he didn’t want to go back to Wales.

It was a backward place, and poor, and there was nothing there for him.

They were still fighting now, the Welsh Prince Llewellyn against the English king.

The Welsh would lose because they always lost, and then they would have even less and the king would treat the people even worse.

It was stupid. Gryff was glad now that he’d been sent to the Normans.

Everything was better here. The food, the buildings, the horses, the weapons.

Five months he’d been here, and he’d seen enough to convince him that he should obey his father’s command to learn everything he could of Norman ways.

Not to please his father, but to please himself.

In the kitchen, he had to wait to get Agnes’ attention.

There was a boy there, about Gryff’s age, pleading with her and almost shouting about some bit of meat that was cooked wrong.

He wasn’t rude about it. He was just desperate.

Agnes was saying that she’d happily give him a bit of pigeon pie instead.

“That’s no help!” the boy despaired. “It must be from the duck she killed, and it shouldn’t be cooked at all.

I was to keep it apart from the meat for the kitchens and bring it to the hawk-house myself.

Father will skin me like a rabbit, she’s his favorite falcon.

Haven’t you got any fresh offal, at least? ”

“I’ve the pigeon pie or a nice roasted capon.”

“You can’t give her cooked meat!”

Gryff said this at the same time and in exactly the same scornful tone as the boy, who looked at him, startled. It made Gryff embarrassed somehow. He could feel the heat creeping into his cheeks as they both looked at him.

“A falcon cannot eat cooked meat,” he explained to Agnes. “And you must not wait too long to feed her. It doesn’t have to be the same duck she killed, though. Any duck, as long as it’s not cooked.”

Agnes pointed to the larder and said they were welcome to find one. The boy passed by Gryff on his way out of the kitchen, paused, and announced, “You’re coming.”

They found a fresh duck laid out on the cold stone and though the other boy declared it insufficiently fat, he scooped it up and said they would go to the hawk-house now.

Gryff had been avoiding the place, because everyone seemed to expect him to go there.

But he followed now, for lack of a good argument against it.

The boy was named Hal. He talked without stopping and walked almost too quickly and he had skin dark as night. When he demanded to know Gryff’s name and where he was from, the answer actually made him stop in his tracks.

“But the best falconers are from Aderinyth, and the gyrfalcons!” Hal said, and Gryff could not help but be pleased at the look of awe. “The peregrines too, of course, and once we had some goshawks. How many nests are there really? My father says it must be at least a hundred.”

“No one knows,” mumbled Gryff.

It wasn’t a lie, really. There might be more than the three gyrfalcon nests they knew of, and the eighty-two nesting places of other kinds of falcons and hawks that his family knew.

But the number of them and their locations were a secret known only to a select few.

It was the only wealth they had, and the Normans would steal it if they could.

Gryff didn’t care about keeping any promises to his father, or keeping Welsh secrets safe. But he stayed silent about the nests.

When they came to the hawk-house, Hal went immediately to his father and confessed everything about the missing duck and its replacement, then moved on quickly to introduce Gryff and say where he was from.

Gryff barely heard any of it. He hardly even noticed Hal’s father at first, though the man was taller than anyone he’d ever seen and had a voice so deep it would shake mountains loose from the moorings of the earth.

He just looked at the row of birds on their perches and breathed in the familiar smell and could not move.

“That’s Amabel,” came the deep voice of Hal’s father who, he was to discover, was the master falconer.

Amabel was a gyrfalcon, snow white and in perfect health, sitting peacefully on her perch with one leg tucked up under her feathers.

The price of her, when sold, might have kept a family for a year.

More, even. Gryff could not help but think of Philip Walch, pointing at the place in the cliff where the nest of the whitest gyrfalcons hid, explaining how blessed they were to have such rare birds.

She was beautiful and perfect. She looked like an old friend, patiently waiting for him here in a quiet corner of this strange new home. To look at her made his heart ache.

“God give you good, Amabel.” He whispered the greeting in Welsh, because in that moment it was the only way he knew how to be.