Catherine, Called Birdy

Birdy nearly witnesses a hanging of some accused bandits, which makes a great impression on her: Far from being the dangerous criminals she imagined the bandits to be, they were underfed children who likely were caught stealing food to stave off starvation. She runs off before the actual event, vomiting up her breakfast in distress.

On the way home, she witnesses a funeral procession of hundreds of people, many of them in soldier’s dress, and fears that the king is dead. Her mother informs her that it was not the king who died but his beloved Queen Eleanor. Birdy realizes that the tall man she saw grieving at the front of the procession was the king: “I had seen the king, finally, for the first time, and there was no cheering or celebrating or glee, only grief. I had cried with the king” (49).

Her brother Thomas comes home for the Christmas holidays and tells Birdy that the king and the members of his court have all decided to choose their own specific profanity separate from the common exclamations of “Corpus bones!” and the like. This encourages Birdy to engage in her own search for a special swear. Finally, her nursemaid threatens to “truss me like a goose and dump in the river if I continue in my quest for the perfect profanity.