The death of Noddle-Pete

The death of Noddle-Pete turns a long-anticipated departure into a shared loss at Matt’s Fort. As the old robber weakens, his bed becomes a place where family and comrades gather; his final words make the farewell his own, and his death exposes how much the fort’s daily life and Matt’s emotional world have depended on his enduring presence. The loss continues into winter, when grief changes the mood of the whole community.

Decline and Farewell

Noddle-Pete’s decline becomes visible in the routines of the household. He settles into a bed where he can watch Lovis at work, receive the robbers as they return and recount their deeds, and hear Ronia speak of the time she and Birk have spent in the woods. He says he likes this arrangement while he is waiting, but Matt cannot tell what he is waiting for. Instead, he notices that Noddle-Pete seems to be crumbling away, and asks Lovis anxiously what is wrong. She answers that it is old age; Matt, unwilling to accept the implication, asks whether Noddle-Pete will die of it.

As Noddle-Pete fades, Ronia spends more time beside him. He usually lies with his eyes closed, opening them now and then to look at her and ask whether she will remember what she knows. Ronia says she will if she finds the right place. Noddle-Pete assures her that she will find it when the time comes. This exchange gives their parting an intimate dimension: even as his own life approaches its end, he turns toward what Ronia will carry forward.

At last, one night, Matt, Lovis, Ronia, and the robbers keep watch around Noddle-Pete. He lies motionless with his eyes closed. Matt searches for a sign of life, but shadow falls across the bed despite the firelight and Lovis’s candle; unable to see anything, he suddenly declares that Noddle-Pete is dead. Noddle-Pete opens one eye and reproaches him: he is not dead yet, and has enough manners to say goodbye before going away. The interruption briefly restores his authority over the farewell. After closing his eyes for a long time, he opens them again, takes leave of his friends, and says that now he will die. Then he does.

Matt’s Grief and the Household

Ronia has never seen anyone die. She cries, but also thinks that Noddle-Pete has been so tired lately that perhaps he can rest somewhere unknown to her. Her response holds sorrow beside an attempt to understand death as an end to weariness, without pretending that she knows what comes after it.

Matt’s grief is less restrained. He walks up and down the stone hall weeping and cries that Noddle-Pete has always been there and now is not. Lovis answers that no one can always be present: people are born and die, as they always have. Matt cannot be consoled by that general truth. He shouts that he misses Noddle-Pete so much it cuts his heart. When Lovis offers to hold him, Matt accepts, and asks Ronia to join them too. He leans first against Lovis and then against Ronia, weeping for the companion who had been part of his life for as long as he could remember.

The death also gathers together losses that had already altered Matt’s household. Ronia had left, answering a question about what to tell Matt with the word “Nothing.” Later, she asks Little-Snip whether Matt laughs anymore; Little-Snip says nobody has heard him laugh since Ronia leaped across Hell’s Gap before his eyes. Lovis tells Ronia that Matt calls for her every night in his sleep, though he will not mention her when awake. These details do not make Noddle-Pete’s death the cause of the estrangement, but they show the fragile emotional setting in which the old robber’s loss arrives: Matt has already been living with absence, and now the companion who shared his life is gone as well.

Burial and Continuing Loss

The next day, Matt and his robbers carry Noddle-Pete’s coffin to a place by the river. The first snow of winter falls in soft, wet flakes onto the coffin. It is one Noddle-Pete carved himself in his stronger years and kept at the back of the costume chamber for a long time. He had remarked that a robber might need a coffin when he least expected it, and in recent years had wondered aloud why it was taking so long. His old preparation, once accompanied by impatience, now becomes the object in which the community carries him to burial.

The death does not end with the funeral. Its weight lies over Matt’s Fort throughout the winter: Matt remains glum, and the robbers are downcast too, because Matt’s mood determines whether the fort is sorrowful or glad. Noddle-Pete’s importance is therefore registered not only in Matt’s personal mourning but in a change shared across the band. The household and the robber community lose someone whose presence had been woven into their ordinary evenings and their sense of home.

Ronia seeks refuge with Birk in the winter woods, where skiing down the slopes lets her forget her sorrows for a while. Returning home brings them back when she sees Matt brooding before the fire. He asks her to comfort him and help him in his grief. The request gives their reunion a new emotional circumstance: the father who had become estranged from her now openly needs her, and she is asked to share the work of mourning. The death thus leaves no simple resolution; it remains present in the fort’s winter quiet, in Matt’s grief, and in the family’s effort to bear that grief together.