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On their legs they had strings of leather, called jesses, with rings attached. When a hawk was being trained, a long thread was fastened to these rings to draw the bird back again, but when it was well educated, it would obey the voice of the falconer and return when it had performed its flight.
She tried another it was the rootless shed where the hawks had been once kept, as appeared from a perch or two not yet completely rotten, and a lure and jesses which were mouldering on the wall. A third door led to the coal-house, which was well stocked.
Nearer the castle, and bending their way towards it, marched a party of falconers with their well-trained birds, whose skill they had been approving upon their fists, their jesses ringing as they moved along, while nearer still, and almost at the foot of the terrace wall, was a minstrel playing on a rebec, to which a keeper, in a dress of Lincoln green, with a bow over his shoulder, a quiver of arrows at his back, and a comely damsel under his arm, was listening.
"That as you list that as you list, young man," said the falconer, with glee, counting out and delivering to his young friend the supply he had so generously offered, and then adding, with great cheerfulness, "Now you may go through the world; for he that can back a horse, wind a horn, hollow a greyhound, fly a hawk, and play at sword and buckler, with a whole pair of shoes, a green jacket, and ten lily-white groats in his pouch, may bid Father Care hang himself in his own jesses.
Then the prie-dieu, where the beads had hung and the little wooden shield with the Five Wounds painted upon it that was gone; and in its place hung a cupboard where he kept a crossbow and a few tools for it; and old hawk-lures and jesses and the like. Then he lay back again, and thought. Had he then behaved unworthily?
I wear jesses like a falcon, and ring whenever I move: he who comes near my room may hear a queer kind of dance. I have a little basket hung up so that the mice may not injure it; it can hold five loaves.... While I eat them little by little, I suffer great cold."
Was it so soon then that she was setting aside the will of her father, who trusted and loved her so well, and who lay out there in the chancel vault? Ah! she had no right here in this room Hubert's room now, with his cap and whip lying across the papers and the estate-book, and his knife and the broken jesses on the seat of the chair beside her. There was his step overhead again.
The hoods and jesses were ready, very prettily adorned with red morocco leather and gold thread; the mews were ready too, with partitions in trellis-work of my own making, everything was ready except the peregrines!
Owen expected the bird to fly away, but, continuing to approach, the falconer stooped and reaching out his hand, drew the partridge towards him, knowing the hawk would not leave it; and when he had hold of the jesses, the head was cut from the partridge and opened, for it is the brain the hawk loves; and the ferocity with which this one picked out the eye and gobbled it awoke Owen's admiration again.
And so they went on for three or four hours, encouraging their birds, whooping the death of the quarry, watching with all the sportsman's keenness the soaring and stooping of the peregrines, the raking off of the goshawks; listening to the thrilling tinkle of the bells, and taking back their birds to sit triumphant and complacent on their master's wrists, when the quarry had been fairly struck, and furious and sullen when it had eluded them two or three times till their breath left them in the dizzy rushes, and they "canceliered" or even returned disheartened and would fly no more till they had forgotten till at last the shadows grew long, and the game more wary, and the hawks and ponies tired; and the boys put up the birds on the cadge, and leashed them to it securely; and jogged slowly homewards together up the valley road that led to the village, talking in technical terms of how the merlin's feather must be "imped" to-morrow; and of the relative merits of the "varvels" or little silver rings at the end of the jesses through which the leash ran, and the Dutch swivel that Squire Blackett always used.
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