The Falcons of Fire and Ice Page 2

  The stranger’s placid expression did not change, but she tossed the cord on the ground between them. The scarlet and white cord lay among the rusty grass stalks, limp, inert. Then the stranger lifted her hand and without warning the cord reared up in front of Elísabet and slithered towards her. But even as she cried out, it burst into flame and vanished into smoke.

  The woman lifted her head and her eyes were as sharp and hard as the black rocks on the mountains of fire. ‘Remember this – in the days that are coming it is not my people you should fear. You have cursed your own babies and day by day, as they grow, so will your dread of them, until you and all your people will become more terrified of your daughters than of any other creatures on this earth. When that day comes, we will be waiting!’

  Chapter One

  Anno Domini 1539

  The queen of Spain once had a dream, that a white falcon flew out of the mountains towards her and in its talons it held the flaming ball of the sun and icy sphere of the moon. The queen opened her hand and the falcon dropped the sun and the moon into her outstretched palm and she grasped them.

  The falcon perched upon her arm and spread its wings. And, as it stretched them, the white feathers grew longer and wider until they enveloped the queen like a royal mantle.

  Then the queen dreamt that a traitor had entered her presence and at once the white falcon rose and flew to him. It alighted on the man’s shoulders and the talons of the falcon were so strong and sharp they severed the man’s arms from his body. Streams of blood poured out from his body and the queen knelt and drank the blood of the traitor.

  Lisbon, Portugal

  Enter – a term meaning to give a falcon the first sight of the prey which the falconer wants it to hunt and kill.

  On a bleak winter’s morning in Lisbon, in front of a howling mob, Manuel da Costa was burned alive. Only he died that day, a lone, pathetic figure on the pyre. He was a poor man, an insignificant man, a man that few would have troubled to mourn. But hundreds of men and women who even then were huddling behind closed doors would have chilling cause to remember Manuel’s death. And all through the bitter, blood-soaked years to come they would whisper into the darkness how on that winter’s day and in that very hour the devils of hell were made flesh and dwelled on earth.

  If young Manuel had only kept his head down, averted his eyes, held his tongue, if he had just kept walking, he might have stayed alive. And if he had survived, who knows, maybe the thousands of others who came after him might have lived too. But Manuel had no warning of the nightmare that was about to ensnare him. How could he?

  So, just as he did every day, one February morning, shortly after dawn, he closed the door of the tiny room he rented and hurried through the narrow, twisting streets of Lisbon. Even a passing stranger would have spotted Manuel’s occupation at once, for though he was only in his twenties his chest was already as round as a barrel from years of blowing glass and his olive hands scarred with a hundred healed burns.

  With his head hunched down against the wetted wind, Manuel would never have noticed the small crowd gathered at the far end of the square in front of the church had it not been for a small boy who ran headlong into him. With a curse worthy of a sailor the brat dodged around him and scampered across the square. Only then did Manuel lift his head to see what was attracting the lad. The crowd was swelling fast, with men, women and children hurrying towards it in twos and threes. As they joined the gathering, they simply stood and gazed at the church as if it was the most astounding thing they had ever seen.

  Manuel hesitated, torn between curiosity and his fear of being late for work. Curiosity won. He hurried across the square and joined the back of the crowd. An old woman, dressed in widow’s black, was trying to elbow her way to the front. Manuel knew her. She occupied one of the tiny squalid rooms two houses down from his own lodgings. He wasn’t surprised to see her here. If there was any trouble or misfortune anywhere in the neighbourhood she was always the first on the scene. He sidled closer to her.

  ‘What’s everyone looking so thunderstruck for?’ he whispered, then, just to bait her, he added with a grin, ‘You’d think the Virgin Mary had farted in the middle of Mass.’

  The old crone turned and glared furiously at him, crossing herself rapidly.

  ‘How dare you speak so of the Blessed Virgin? If your poor mother was alive today it would kill her to hear such wicked words on your lips.’

  She hobbled around to the other side of the crowd, darting poisonous glances at him. Manuel grinned broadly at the outraged expression on her face. That would give the old witch something to complain about.

  A man standing on the other side of Manuel pointed through the heads of the crowd to a notice pinned to the door of the church.

  ‘What’s it say?’ he demanded.

  Manuel shrugged. He’d never learned to read much more than his own name, but even if he had been a scholar, at that distance it would have been impossible to make out the words.

  The question was taken up by others who were unable to get close to the door. They began insisting that those at the front should either move aside or tell them what had been nailed up there. So, in scandalized tones, the ripple of the words spread back through the crowd, passing from mouth to mouth until it reached Manuel’s ears.

  The Messiah has not yet come. Jesus is not the Messiah.

  Manuel was as shocked as any in that crowd. It was one thing to make jokes, but what was nailed on that door was nothing short of blasphemy. Even as the words spread through the crowd, an angry buzzing began. Strangers and neighbours alike were demanding to know who could have committed such an outrage.

  Manuel felt a cold shiver of unease. It never took much to inflame a crowd in Lisbon. If a few hotheads started whipping up the anger of the mob, they would turn violent in minutes. And he knew only too well whom the crowd would turn on first. Somehow, the Old Christians of Lisbon could always tell if you were a Jewish convert. They could scent the presence of a New Christian and would attack with the savagery of a pack of wild dogs.

  He broke away and hurried off in the direction of the glassblowers’ works. As he scuttled through the streets he passed two more churches and saw to his disquiet the same heresy nailed to their doors and other angry mobs beginning to gather around them.

  By noon everyone in the city knew that the blasphemous proclamation had been pinned not only to every church door in Lisbon, but also on the very door of the great Cathedral itself, and King João had offered a reward of 10,000 silver crusados to anyone who could discover the author of this evil.

  That night when Manuel returned to his lodgings, he found the house packed to the rafters with frightened men and women. Men and women like himself who were Cristianos Nuevos, New Christians, or, as the Old Christians mockingly called them, Marranos, meaning pigs. They were Jews fled from Spain, or their descendants, who had been forced to convert to Christianity, and now practised the Catholic faith. But to the Old Christians they were filthy foreigners come here to take their jobs, their homes and their women, and no matter how much the New Christians swore they were now good Catholics, they still remained what they had always been in the eyes of the Old Christians – Christ killers.

  Manuel squashed himself into the darkened doorway of one of the rooms. Jorge, the physician, was holding forth amid a crowd of men all murmuring nearly as loudly as the crowd outside the churches.

  Jorge held up his hands for silence, raising his voice to make himself heard.

  ‘There is no cause for fear. The Pope issued a bull declaring all New Christians free and cancelling all the charges brought against us. He’s forbidden the Inquisition to act against those of us who were forcibly converted or against the children of converts.’

  ‘But for three years only.’ Benito’s white beard trembled as he rasped for breath. ‘Those three years are now ended. I have lived through it all before in Spain, trust me, you cannot rely on the promises of kings or popes. It will happen here, as it did
there. Our people will be rounded up and murdered one by one till not so much as a newborn infant remains alive.’

  He swept his clawed hand around the room. ‘Are you all so blind? Don’t you see they will blame us for these notices on the churches; who else will they blame? Who else do they ever blame? Every Catholic in Portugal will soon be screaming for our blood. The king will have all the backing he needs to unleash the dogs of the Inquisition. It is no secret he hates us. He is looking for any excuse to purge Portugal of us. Who knows, maybe King João himself nailed the notices to the churches deliberately to turn his people against us.’

  At that, several of the men leapt to their feet, shouting at the old man to be quiet. Weren’t they in enough danger already without him adding the charge of slandering the king to their troubles? They glanced anxiously over at the shutters. They were fastened tightly, but all the same, you never knew who was listening outside on the street.

  ‘Enough, enough.’ Jorge waved the men back to their seats. ‘Benito has a point. There are some who will try to blame us. So it is up to us to make certain we are not blamed. Now listen,’ he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, ‘tonight …’

  But Manuel did not wait to hear what they would do tonight. He’d grown up in this community and he knew that the old men would still be arguing about what they would do ‘tonight’ come daybreak. All he wanted to do was sleep. Dawn would come only too quickly and, with luck, by then the people of Lisbon would have found some new scandal to divert them.

  But the following morning found another notice pinned to the Cathedral door. This time the crowd that rapidly gathered around it read the proclamation:

  I, as the author, declare that I am neither Spanish nor Portuguese, but I am an Englishman, and even if 20,000 gold escudos were offered, my name will never be discovered.

  The crowd read it, but they did not believe a single word of it.

  Two nights later, Manuel woke with a start as the light from a lantern shone full into his face. Even as his mind registered the fact that this was the middle of the night, a wave of cold fear washed over him. As his eyes struggled to adjust to the light, he was dimly aware of four hooded figures looming over him. He could hear their breathing like the hissing of snakes.

  Manuel tried to scramble out of bed, but his legs became entangled in the bedclothes and he tripped, sprawling at the feet of one of the black-robed figures. The man stared down at him as if he was a beggar whining for alms. His face was concealed by a pointed black hood, and in the lamp-light his eyes glittered through the slits, the eyes of a cobra rising to strike.

  ‘Manuel da Costa, by order of the Grand Inquisitor you are to accompany us for questioning.’

  Sheer terror washed through Manuel, almost emptying his bowels. ‘No, no, please, you have the wrong man. It’s a mistake. Why would you want to question me? I know nothing … I swear, by all the Holy Saints, by … I … I am a good Catholic. I go to church regularly every week. I never miss Mass. Never miss confession, you ask anyone.’

  ‘A good Catholic does not blaspheme the Holy Virgin.’ The hooded man raised a warning hand as Manuel opened his mouth to protest. ‘We have a dozen witnesses who will swear they heard you mocking the Virgin even as you denied with your own hand that her Son was the true Messiah.’

  They dragged Manuel down the stairs – they had to, for his legs had buckled and he couldn’t manage to stand, much less walk. From behind the many doors they passed along the street there came only the sound of silence as heavy as a stone coffin lid. All lights were extinguished. All shutters closed. All doors barred.

  Only the old widow, her eye pressed to a crack in the wood, watched and chuckled. Ten thousand crusados they’d promised her. It was a fortune, more than enough to move away from this street of pigs into a respectable district and live in comfort for the rest of her life. They had explained that she would only get her reward if the accused confessed his guilt, but she didn’t have the slightest twinge of concern about that.

  And Manuel did confess, of course … after his muscles and tendons had been ripped from his bones on the rack; after every joint in his limbs had been slowly dislocated by the ropes biting into his thighs, shins, wrists and ankles. Day and night without sleep, they whispered, shouted and cajoled, until they had even him believing that he must have nailed those notices to the church doors.

  But, as his inquisitors said, his admission of guilt was not enough, not nearly enough to demonstrate his repentance, for how could one man alone have nailed those notices to the churches all over Lisbon in one night without being seen? Manuel must have had accomplices, unless the Devil himself aided him. He had only to name those men and his suffering would be over, his pain ended. They would let him rest.

  Give us a name, any name, that is all we want – JUST ONE NAME.

  He could have named his friends, his acquaintances, even his enemies, especially his enemies, most did. He could have uttered any name at all that surfaced in his pain-crazed mind, uttered it without even knowing if he was dreaming or speaking it aloud. But although Manuel prayed with every fibre of his being for an end to his torment, his inquisitors could not make him name another soul. Now, that kind of defiance takes a rare courage.

  In the end, they carried him to the square. There, in front of a blood-crazed mob, they sliced through his wrists, separating skin and flesh, muscle and bone, severing the hands with which those foul words had been written. In truth he scarcely recognized the pain of the knife, for what was left of his limbs was already half-dead from the rack. He had thought himself in so much anguish that he could feel no greater torment, but when they tied him to the stake, and he felt the burning flames licking around his body, he knew that he could. The Inquisition had, as always, left the most exquisite agony to the last.

  Chapter Two

  Anno Domini 1564

  According to Norse legend, at the birth of the world an ash tree was created, Yggdrasil, the tree of life, of time and of the universe. On the topmost branch sits an eagle, and perched between the eyes of the eagle is Vedfolnir the falcon, whose piercing gaze sees up into the heavens and down to the earth, and below the earth into the dark caverns of the underworld.

  All the good and evil this falcon sees he reports to Odin, the father of gods and men. For the falcon and the winds are one, and the winds blow across every blade of grass on the earth and every wave that foams on the sea. There is no escaping the wind.

  Lisbon, Portugal Isabela

  Stoop – the rapid descent of a falcon from a height on to its quarry.

  ‘You must not avert your gaze, Isabela. Whatever you see, whatever you hear, don’t let your face betray you. You must look as if you approve of everything that is done.’

  My father had given me the same instructions at least a dozen times, and every time he said it, it made me more nervous, certain that I would not be able to control my expression. For the only thing he and my mother could agree upon was that I always wore my feelings on my face.

  Though dawn was only just breaking over the rooftops of Lisbon, my hands were already sticky with sweat. The bread and olives I had eaten sat in a hard lump in my stomach. I’d felt too nauseous to face breakfast, but my father had stood over me, forcing me to eat for fear I might later draw attention to myself by fainting. It wasn’t lack of food that was likely to make me faint, but being laced into the rib-crushing corset and farthingale petticoat, with its many whale-bone hoops. Together with heavy, voluminous skirts, the whole contraption swayed so alarmingly whenever I moved, I was sure I was going to tip over. Simply crossing the room was like trying to take half a dozen over-excited puppies for a walk.

  Back home in Sintra, I never wore such things, but my father was determined that today at least I must look like a lady. My mother had snorted at the very idea, and for once I was forced to agree with her. Nothing could have induced me to dress up in this cage had I not seen the desperate anxiety in my father’s eyes. Whatever was troubling him – and it
had been for weeks – it was far more serious than me not disgracing him by dressing, as my mother so kindly put it, like a dung collector’s brat.

  Father peered into the mirror, adjusting the scarlet cap on his head, so that the three white falcon feathers were plainly visible from the front, his badge of office as the Royal Falconer. He turned and studied me, his head on one side, frowning in concentration as if I were one of his hawks and he was deciding whether or not I should be flown.

  Conscious of his critical gaze, I smoothed my new skirts. Father had selected the colour of my gown himself. It was emerald green, much to my mother’s disgust. She always complained that my skin was too dark for a well-bred Portuguese lady and the green, she said, only emphasized it. But for once my father overruled her. Green was the colour of the Holy Order of the Inquisition and we had to be seen to show our loyalty.

  Father shook his head. ‘Where do the years go? It seems only yesterday, you were a wild-haired little chick. I blinked and here you are now, sixteen years old, a woman already. How did I miss that?’

  ‘If I’d had feathers you’d have noticed,’ I teased.

  He smiled, but it didn’t soften the lines of anxiety permanently etched around his eyes. He was only in his forties, but lately he had begun to look like an old man. He reached out, grasping my shoulders gently.

  ‘You are truly a beautiful young woman, and yet to me you are still only a child, my child. I hate myself for making you do this. But we must all act our parts in this play today, even the young king, him most of all.’

  I knew little King Sebastian well, for he spent as much time as he could at the summer palace in Sintra with my father and the falcons. He was only ten years old, yet he had more riches than any boy in the world could dream of possessing. But the only thing he seemed to care about was his falcons. He loved those birds even more than my father did. If ever their sovereign was missing, the servants always knew where to find him. There he’d be with the falcons, but most especially with the pair of royal gyrfalcons, those exquisite white falcons with their great dark, liquid eyes. Sometimes the way Sebastian looked at them reminded me of that rapt expression of adoration on my mother’s face whenever she knelt before the altar of the Holy Virgin.