Mattimeo characters

Also known as Mattimeo, Matthias Methuselah Cornflower

Appears from the start

The young son of Matthias, the Warrior of Redwall, and Cornflower. He has grown up as the warrior's son in an abbey that indulges him, and he knows it: he is quick-tempered, quick to fight the other young ones over slights real and imagined, and privately certain that he is destined for something greater than kitchen duties. He is also brave, loyal to his friends when it counts, and unhappily aware that he is not living up to the sword hanging in Great Hall.

Appears from the start

The Warrior of Redwall, once a clumsy novice and now a seasoned fighter and the Abbey's protector, keeper of Martin the Warrior's sword. Seasons of peace have made him a family mouse with a farmer's routine, and his chief worry at the opening of the book is his son, whom he suspects he has failed to discipline. He is patient until the moment he is not.

Appears from the start

Matthias's wife and the mother of Mattimeo, a fieldmouse who runs much of the Abbey's kitchen and household. Practical, calm and harder-headed than her gentleness suggests, she is the steady centre of the family.

Also known as the Cruel

Appears from the start

A fox who wears a silken harlequin mask over a face he lets nobody see, and who leads a band of slavers, weasels, stoats, ferrets and rats, working the roads and selling what they catch. He is patient, theatrical and vicious, and he plans in stages rather than lunges. He brings his band into Mossflower deliberately, and unlike an ordinary slaver he has a particular target in mind and a private reason for choosing it.

Also known as Brother Alf

Appears from the start

The Abbot of Redwall, formerly Brother Alf of the Abbey kitchens and still a keen fisher of the Abbey pond. Elderly, shrewd and unpretentious, he leads Redwall in the tradition of the abbots before him and takes a personal interest in the Abbey's records and its unruly young ones.

First appears in chapter 2

The badger of Redwall, older now but no less formidable, who has defended the Abbey once already in her lifetime. She is the Abbey's strength and its second authority after the Abbot, and she has no illusions about what visitors from outside may want.

First appears in chapter 2

The Abbey's resident hare, an old campaigner who talks constantly, eats prodigiously, and remains one of the finest trackers and scouts in Mossflower. He has appointed himself the trainer of Redwall's young ones, with mixed results.

First appears in chapter 2

The squirrel who has climbed for Redwall since Matthias was a novice, still the best in the country at getting up anything vertical. Her son Sam is one of Mattimeo's closest friends.

First appears in chapter 2

Jess Squirrel's son and one of Mattimeo's friends, a young squirrel who has inherited his mother's head for heights and her nerve, and who is generally the one who gets the group out of the tree it should not have climbed.

First appears in chapter 2

One of the twin churchmice of Redwall and the most level-headed of Mattimeo's friends, quick-witted and hard to frighten. She and her brother Tim are inseparable.

First appears in chapter 2

Tess's twin brother, a young churchmouse being trained as a recorder by his father, and one of Mattimeo's small circle of friends at the Abbey.

First appears in chapter 15

An enormous badger of the western plains who fights with a great double-bladed axe and has been searching for his stolen daughter with single-minded fury. He is a blunt, dangerous ally, and the loss of his child has left him with very little interest in anything else.

First appears in chapter 15

Orlando's young daughter, a badger maid taken from her home by slavers before the story opens. Steady and stubborn far beyond her seasons, she becomes the calm centre of the captives and the one who keeps them from turning on each other.

First appears in chapter 15

The leader of the Guosim shrews, the argumentative river tribe who travel Mossflower's waterways in logboats. He fought alongside Matthias in the war against Cluny and brings his shrews out again without needing to be asked twice.

First appears in chapter 12

A hedgehog of Mossflower, gruff and solitary, who joins the pursuit for reasons of his own after the slavers pass through his part of the woods.

First appears in chapter 26

A raven from the far north, commander of a war party of crows, rooks and magpies who have come south looking for territory. He is a genuine soldier rather than a bandit: disciplined, strategic and contemptuous of ground-dwellers, and he intends to take Redwall as his own roost while its warriors are away.

First appears in chapter 26

Ironbeak's second in command, a crow who claims the gift of foresight and whose visions his general takes seriously. Superstitious and increasingly uneasy about the Abbey and what may inhabit it.

First appears in chapter 38

An ancient polecat, bleached white with age, who rules a kingdom of pillared caverns hollowed out of the rock far below the southern lands. He is spoken of by his servants as a god and is never seen directly; his subjects work and die in his quarries, and slavers bring him fresh workers for payment.

First appears in chapter 38

A rat in purple robes who calls himself the Voice of the Host, speaking for the ruler of the underground kingdom and commanding its hooded guards. He conducts the buying of slaves and the running of the pits.