“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.”