Slowly, Matilda begins to master her duties, even if she still wishes Father Leufredus would return for her. None of these skills, of course, is particularly useful to Peg, but patience and a degree of firmness are essential to bonesetting, and Peg applies these qualities to the task of shaping Matilda into a proper apprentice. She is very good at fasting and lying prone on the floor to pray, and is inventive enough with her spoken Latin to create expressions of frustration such as " Saliva mucusque - or, "spit and slime." Matilda's talents include petitioning the saints for sympathy they answer her, almost never quite the way she hopes. (The reader also learns that Matilda's mother abandoned Matilda and her father when the girl was a baby.) She learned to read and write Latin and Greek from her father, and after his death, the manor priest, Father Leufredus, tutored her in theological matters. She is ill-suited to the job, as her education has been more intellectual than practical.
Matilda, 14 years old and raised at the manor where her late father was clerk, is left at Blood and Bones Alley where she is to be apprenticed to Red Peg the Bonesetter.
As with all of Cushman's books, Matilda Bone features a unique and memorable heroine. Karen Cushman returns to the Middle Ages, the setting for her Newbery Honor book Catherine Called Birdy and her Newbery Award-winning The Midwife's Apprentice, for her fourth novel, Matilda Bone. Rambles.NET: Karen Cushman, Matilda Bone Karen Cushman,
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