Matt and Noddle-Pete’s relationship

Matt and Noddle-Pete’s relationship is a lifelong companionship whose intimacy shows most clearly in its mixture of argument, teasing, practical care, and grief. Noddle-Pete speaks frankly when Matt resists hearing him; Matt may brush off his warnings, but when the old man weakens, he carries him close, and when he dies Matt’s public anguish reveals how much of Matt’s life had been bound up with his presence.

Counsel Against Division

Noddle-Pete repeatedly presses Matt to make peace with Borka. With the sheriff’s soldiers ranging through the woods, he argues that two rival robber bands, busy cheating each other and fighting over plunder, cannot withstand the authorities as effectively as a united band could. Matt dislikes the warning, though he acknowledges that Noddle-Pete is right in one respect. His resistance turns on the question of leadership: he insists that he is the mightiest robber chief and intends to stay chief, while doubting that Borka will accept that arrangement.

Noddle-Pete’s answer is characteristically direct. He tells Matt that he ought to be able to defeat Borka in single combat, proposing a contest that would settle their dispute and make Borka more reasonable. His plan is not merely to satisfy Matt’s pride: he hopes the rivals will become one band in Matt’s Fort, work together to mislead the sheriff’s men, and make the soldiers’ pursuit so difficult that they give it up. In their exchanges, Noddle-Pete is both Matt’s familiar critic and a practical strategist trying to turn the old feud toward collective survival.

Familiarity and Friction

Matt does not take Noddle-Pete’s advice consistently. After the two robber groups have been brought together and their raids begin to succeed, Matt visits Noddle-Pete each day to report how the new robber life is going. He is pleased with Borka’s work and describes their joint hauls and their success in fooling the sheriff’s men. Noddle-Pete mutters a warning against boasting before they are safely home, but Matt does not listen and soon leaves. The moment preserves their habitual difference: Matt is buoyed by success; Noddle-Pete remains wary of declaring victory too soon.

Their affection is carried in the same plainspoken manner as their disagreement. As he leaves, Matt calls Noddle-Pete a scrawny old dodderer, but pats him tenderly and urges him to put on some meat so his bones will be stronger. The insult is not a rejection; it is a familiar form of tenderness, made unmistakable by the gentle gesture and Matt’s concern for the old man’s frailty.

Care as Weakness Advances

When Noddle-Pete grows cold and weak, Lovis brings him hot, strengthening soups, but even the hottest soup cannot drive the chill from his bones. The household responds by moving him from his solitary bedroom to the stone hall: Matt carries him in his strong arms, and Noddle-Pete is given a place in Matt’s bed. Lovis moves over to share Ronia’s bed. The change turns Matt’s concern into direct, bodily care, bringing the old companion into the warmth of the family’s shared sleeping space.

Noddle-Pete jokes that he may at last begin to thaw, then creeps close to Matt like a child seeking warmth and comfort from a mother. The image reverses the strength implied by Matt’s large, warm body and Noddle-Pete’s dwindling one: for once, Matt’s physical power serves not the robber chief but the vulnerable friend leaning against him. As Noddle-Pete continues to fade, Matt cannot guess what is happening and anxiously asks Lovis what is wrong. She answers that it is old age; Matt’s immediate worry is whether Noddle-Pete will die of it.

Death and Grief

The household eventually gathers around Noddle-Pete’s bed: Matt, Lovis, Ronia, and the robbers keep watch as he lies still with his eyes closed. Unable to see a sign of life in the shadowed bed, Matt suddenly declares him dead. Noddle-Pete opens one eye to reproach him, insisting that he has enough manners to say goodbye before he goes. After a long silence and a few wheezing breaths, he opens his eyes again, takes leave of his friends, and dies.

Matt’s response is not contained or ceremonial. He paces the stone hall, weeping and crying out that Noddle-Pete had always been there and now is not. When Lovis reminds him that everyone is born and dies, Matt answers that he misses Noddle-Pete so much it cuts his heart. He accepts Lovis’s offer of comfort and asks Ronia to join them; he leans first against Lovis and then against Ronia, weeping for the companion who had been there all his life. The scene makes the relationship’s decisive fact visible through absence: Noddle-Pete’s place in Matt’s world had seemed permanent until the moment it was empty.

The next day, Matt and his robbers carry Noddle-Pete’s coffin to a burial place by the river as the first snow falls. Noddle-Pete had carved the coffin himself during his stronger years and kept it at the back of the costume chamber, explaining that a robber might need a coffin unexpectedly. Its long presence among the robbers’ belongings gives the funeral an especially intimate, matter-of-fact close: the man who had spent years advising Matt about the future had prepared for his own death, while Matt is left to confront how much he had relied on the friend who was always there.