The Falcons of Fire and Ice Read online

  Finally, after we agreed that the money had to be found as quickly as possible if she didn’t want their deaths on her conscience, I left her house, clutching a basket of grapes and peaches ‘for dear little Pio’.

  Tomorrow I would pay a call on a friend of mine, a clerk, and get a document drawn up. Dona Lúcia would expect a written contract before she parted with a single crusado. My friend could produce the most impressive documents ornamented with great flourishes and couched in such obscure legal phrases that the Devil himself would sign away his own soul and not realize he was doing so. This clerk would draw up whatever I required for nothing. He owed me. He’d managed to pocket some nice little sums from his employer over the years, but he’d become greedy and careless, and was perilously close to getting himself arrested. I’d helped him point the finger of blame at another employee who even now was languishing in prison, but my friend knew that one word from me and he could find himself in that dungeon instead.

  ‘Just think, Pio,’ I said, as we feasted on the fruit in the stifling heat of my lodgings, ‘in five days’ time that bastard of an innkeeper will be bowing and scraping and begging us to accept the best wine his poxy tavern can offer. But I’ve a good mind never to set foot in there again. He can whistle for his money. Throwing me out as if I was a beggar instead of a gentleman. By rights he should be paying me to drink that muck he serves just to get rid of it. And I should sue him for giving me a bellyache every time I sup it.’

  Pio snatched another grape from my plate, and leapt up on top of the battered old cupboard to eat it, spitting the seeds at me. I popped a grape into my own mouth and, as if he thought I was stealing his food, Pio screamed at me in indignant fury, before finally turning his back on me and refusing to look at me at all.

  When he was in this mood, he was nearly as bad as Silvia. The sulky little witch was always flouncing and throwing tantrums. I didn’t have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of times she’d threatened to leave me. Now she had finally done it, but I knew she wouldn’t stay away for long, not once she got a whiff of the money.

  ‘How long do you reckon it’ll be before that whore comes crawling to me? Want to place a wager, Pio? A month, you say. I’ll bet you a whole barrel of figs it’ll be a week at most, you’ll see. Then she’ll be twisting her pretty little arms round my neck and begging me to take her back.’

  I lay back on the narrow stained straw pallet and stared up at the sagging beams above the bed. God, but I missed her. Silvia drove me mad when she was here with her whining and nagging, but when she was gone I was crazy with longing for her. I tried not to think about whose bed she was lying in now. And she would be lying with someone; she was not the kind of woman to spend even a single night alone. With that wild mane of raven hair, lithe brown limbs and full soft lips, not even a Jesuit could have remained true to his vows in her company.

  Even when we lived together I could only be sure that Silvia was faithful to me when she was actually in the room with me. Not even then sometimes, for she often had that melting look in her wide indigo eyes that told you she was thinking of someone else. I frequently became insanely jealous. But when I shouted at her or implored her to give the other men up, she only laughed at me. Jealousy made no sense to her, for she was easily bored and would wander from lover to lover like a fly aimlessly buzzing around a butcher’s stall. She couldn’t ever understand that a man wants to believe he is a woman’s only lover.

  What had made her stalk out this time, I couldn’t remember. We’d had a fight. But that was nothing new. Silvia loved to whip up a storm, to rage and scream and hurl her shoes at my head, and once even a full chamber pot. But if our fights were wild, our lovemaking afterwards was wilder still. All that fury in her exploded into passion and she rode me like a marauding Tatar until we both collapsed into sleep from sheer exhaustion.

  But there’d been no intoxicating gallop this time, that much I do remember through the brandy fumes fogging my head. When I’d finally awoken the next morning, with a tongue as furred as a donkey’s arse, she was gone. I was sure she’d return that night but she didn’t, and no one at the inn had seen her since.

  ‘But it’s only been four days, Pio. As soon as she hears I’ve got money to buy her dresses and jewels, she’ll slither back in here. Just you wait and see, Pio. All the soldiers in the king’s army couldn’t keep her away.’

  A bright green lizard scuttled across a patch of rotting wood above my head. Sweet Jesu, but it was hot. The sweat was trickling down my face and stinging my eyes. The stench of putrid fish guts, tar and dried seaweed wafted in through the broken shutters, but there was scarcely a whisper of breeze to cool the tiny room. I slapped at a bedbug crawling into my armpit and tried to settle myself more comfortably between the lumps in the straw mattress.

  Below my window, I could hear the rustling and squealing of the rats fighting among the rubbish, too insolent even to bother to wait for the cover of darkness. But for the first time in weeks I didn’t resent any of these daily torments. Only five more days and then I’d be out of here for good, with money jangling in my pocket and a belly full of rich food. Life was a tree laden with sweet ripe peaches for those who knew how to pick them, and I was about to pluck one of the juiciest.

  Iceland Eydis

  Mews – the building where hawks are kept, especially while they moult, or mew.

  My sister died today. I felt the life go out of her as I cradled her tightly to me. I had always thought the spirit took wing from the body like a beetle flying upwards to the light. First would come the shiver of death in the slow opening of the wings, testing, balancing, and then a sudden upward thrust and the soul would be gone.

  But it was not like that at all. It was water dripping slowly out of a cracked beaker. It was an icicle melting drop by drop. There was no moment of death, only a slow haemorrhaging of life, the heartbeat growing softer, a drum fading into the distance as the drummer walks away.

  Valdis didn’t speak, but I knew what she was thinking, I always knew. She was thinking of the mountain and of the river of blue ice that creeps from it so imperceptibly you cannot see it move, although you know it does. She and I used to watch it for hours when we were small children in the hope of seeing it change, but we never did. At night, tucked up together in the little bed we shared, we’d hold hands and listen to the ice-river singing to us under the bright cold stars. But some nights it did not soothe us with its lullabies. It crackled and cracked so loudly the boom of it would echo around us as if the mountains themselves were crashing into the valley. Then we clung to each other, afraid.

  That’s what Valdis was thinking of when she died, the nights of the blue ice. We always promised ourselves we would see that river again one day. One day we would leave this cave and climb up again to the light. We would run across the grassy plains, and slide across the frozen lake, and scramble over the sharp black rocks to reach the mountain where we were born. One day, we said … one day. We promised each other.

  Our mother brought us to this cave when we were both seven years old. That is the age at which the gift of second sight awakens in a child. I remember thinking how vast it was. First the descent through the slit in the rock, narrow as a woman’s crack, hidden from any mortal view unless you knew it was there. Then we climbed down and down over ledges and boulders into the darkness below and all the time the sound of rushing water grew louder, and the heat more intense.

  Finally we stood on the wide flat floor of the cave, bigger even than our cottage above the river of ice. The rocks were warm against our bare feet. At the far end of the cave a deep, clear pool of hot water bubbled up from an underground river far below. It streamed out into a second cave where narrow tunnels crushed and squeezed the water until somewhere far off, or so we were told, it finally thundered out of the rock and into the light.

  Valdis and I were terrified of that pool of steaming water when first our mother brought us here. We feared that some great beast lay at the bottom of
it, a dragon or monster, which would rise out of it while we slept and devour us. We tried to take it in turns to sleep, but in the end we both slept. The cave was too warm, the sound of the water too intoxicating to resist sleep for long. But now I am alone with that pool. Now there is no one to keep watch over me, sleeping or waking.

  For fifty years there has always been the two us. We were twins, constant companions, day and night, sleeping and waking. Not even lovers could know the closeness we felt. I used to look at people who were alone and wonder what it must be like to have only your thoughts for company, hear only your own heartbeat in the night, feel only your own breath in the darkness. My sister was as close to me as my soul is to my body, and I can’t conceive of life without her.

  I knew we would die one day, every mortal dies, but I had thought we would die together. It didn’t seem possible that one of us could go on living when the other was gone. In truth I can’t even be certain that I do live. I feel numb inside as if my thoughts are frozen, my tears petrified as ice, and yet my body can still feel the heat of the water gushing through this cave. My eyes can still see the flames of the pitch torch burning on the rock wall and the glowing ruby embers of my little cooking fire. My ears can still hear the wind whistling over the slit in the rock high above, far out of my sight, playing the hole like a child plays the pipes. How can these things be when Valdis is dead?

  When she first brought us to this cave, our mother gave us little pallets stuffed with eiderdown to rest on, baskets of dried fish and whale meat, smoked mutton and sweet dried berries. She gave us lamps filled with fish oil and torches dipped in pitch. We had water aplenty in our underground lake.

  The blacksmith who bolted the chains deep into the rock wall was kind to us. He took great care to ensure that when he fastened the chains to the iron hoops about our waists they were long enough to let us walk to the water, even to allow us to bathe if we wished, but we were too afraid to enter that pool. He returned several times over those first few years to fit us with new hoops as we grew to womanhood, but we were never to see our mother again, not after that day she brought us here. And that was the last time we ever saw the sun or the moon.

  Others came, of course, bringing food and oil for our lamps, gifts of clothes or spring flowers. Everyone who comes brings an offering to us. They lay them out for our inspection and then they ask us their questions.

  ‘My red mare is missing, where should I look for her?’

  ‘My daughter has two suitors, which should she take as a husband?’

  ‘My husband has not returned from the sea, has he drowned or has he left me?’

  ‘Shall I buy my neighbour’s farmstead, will it prosper?’

  ‘My son has been murdered, who is his killer?’

  They want curses to punish their mothers-in-law, spells to defeat their rivals, blessings to protect their infants and cures for their ailing cows. We hear all life as it passes through here in their quarrels and triumphs, their griefs and their joys, but we do not see life, except in our visions. We do not live it.

  They are afraid of us, afraid of what we might do if the iron rings are removed from our bodies. They know it is only those rings that keep our spirits in this cave. If that iron ever broke, we could transform ourselves into falcons. We could fly into the blinding sunlight, or soar among the frosted stars, and like our mother who brought us to the cave, they are terrified of what we might do then.

  But in here we are tamed, their captives, and they need us, now more than ever, for a long shadow of evil creeps across the land. The Lutherans have destroyed the abbeys and monasteries, driven out the Catholic priests and executed the bishops. They raid homesteads and cottages, searching for the images of saints and the charms and amulets of the wizards and wise women that have protected the Icelanders since the old gods ruled this land. All the old certainties, the faith, the hope that people clung to down through the centuries, have been torn away from them. They are frightened. They are lost. They are defenceless. They need us. And I need Valdis.

  One day, my sister, one day we shall return to the blue ice. I will find a way back to the light. I will take you back. I swear to you on your corpse, I will not fail you.

  Chapter Three

  Tamerlane wanted to possess the power of his great enemy Khan Tokhtamysh. He knew that if he could steal the eggs from the khan’s prize gyrfalcons he could weaken the mighty khan and gain his strength. So Tamerlane bribed one of the khan’s guards to smuggle out the falcons’ eggs and give them to him.

  When the eggs hatched, Tamerlane reared the birds with his own hand. As the falcons grew, so Tamerlane became stronger, and the khan weakened. And thus it was that when next they met in battle the great Khan Tokhtamysh was defeated and fled.

  Sintra, Portugal Isabela

  Bow-net – a baited trap to catch a falcon, which springs around the bird when a peg is dislodged.

  ‘It was his own fault,’ my mother said savagely. ‘The old man should have confessed when he had the chance. Then they’d have given him the mercy of the garrotte before they burned him.’

  She scraped five sardines smoking and blackened from the griddle on to my father’s pewter plate, and set it down with such a heavy thump in front of him on the table that the candle flame trembled. I shivered, pulling my shawl tighter around me. The sun had not yet risen, and the tiny room was icy, as if the heat from the charcoal stove was being pushed back by the chill of the room.

  ‘What was the point of holding out? All that needless pain. It was his own fault he suffered. You tell me, what was the point of it?’ It was the only question she had asked since Father had told her about our neighbour Jorge, and she just kept repeating it, as if the answer held the key to all the mysteries of the world.

  ‘You can’t simply confess,’ my father told her. ‘They won’t believe you have repented, unless you give them the names of others.’

  ‘Not when he was already sentenced to death. Once he’d been handed over to the king, they couldn’t do anything. He could have recanted on the pyre. Then it would have been over in a trice. But no, he wouldn’t do it, would he, the stubborn old fool.’

  I shuddered. We had returned from Lisbon only yesterday evening, a full three days after the burning, but I could still smell the stench of that bonfire.

  Mother banged another plate down in front of me, causing the three salt-crusted sardines on it to leap as if in a bid for freedom.

  ‘Jorge was a good man, a brave man,’ Father said quietly. ‘To endure the flames rather than betray anyone else, that takes the courage of a saint.’

  Mother snorted her contempt. ‘A saint! Is that what you think? He was a heretic, a Christ killer. It was the Devil in him who stopped him confessing his sin, that’s what it was. To even think of comparing a man as evil as him with a saint who died for the true faith is … is … is obscene!’

  ‘He was our neighbour. Don’t you remember how kind he was to little Isabela when she was a child? She loved him like a grandfather.’

  ‘And how many times did I warn you not to let her go round there? Filling her head with his silly stories and goodness knows what else. I warned you not to let her go mixing with Marranos, and now I’ve been proved right. They pretend to be good Catholics, but all the time they are practising their devilish rites in secret and plotting to murder us all in our own beds.’ Mother rounded on me. ‘You stay away from the lot of them, do you hear? Isn’t it bad enough your father can’t provide a decent dowry for you? How do you think you are ever going to get a good, respectable husband, if anyone finds out you are mixing with these converts? And now you have seen for yourself how dangerous it is to make friends of these pigs.’

  ‘But, Mother, Jorge was a good man, a great physician. You used to take me to him yourself when I was sick, and don’t you remember that time when you –’

  ‘Enough, Isabela.’ Father shook his head, warning me not to continue.

  ‘Who reported him, that’s what I want to know!�
� I burst out angrily. ‘Who would even think of doing so, betraying a harmless old man?’

  ‘Harmless!’ Mother snapped. ‘He was a heretic, and you heard what Father Tomàs said in Mass. Anyone who does not fight against heresy is himself guilty of betraying our Blessed Lord. It’s our duty to God and the king to report these people. Our duty, do you hear?’

  ‘But who –’

  ‘Please, Isabela.’ Father’s tired eyes begged me to let the matter drop. ‘Jorge is dead. All the words in the world cannot change that. Let us speak of something else.’

  I glared at him, torn between wanting to punish my mother for her contempt of that poor old man and not wanting to hurt my father. But in the end I said nothing and vented my anger by stabbing furiously at the belly of the little charred fish. There was much which was never spoken of in our household for fear of upsetting my mother. It was the eleventh commandment in our family.

  Mother crossed to the small shrine in the corner of the room and picked up the statues of the Virgin Mary and St Vincent of Saragossa clutching the gridiron on which he was martyred. She moved the statues reverently to one side, then gathered up an assortment of rosaries, dried flowers and candles. Shoving aside my father’s half-eaten breakfast, she laid them on the table in front of him. My father grabbed his plate just in time to prevent the faded and crumbling wreath falling into his griddled sardines, and retreated to a bench in the corner to continue eating.

  The shrine was my mother’s pride and joy. She dressed it according to the feasts and festivals as diligently as if it was an altar in the great Cathedral in Lisbon. My earliest memories were of her holding me up in her arms in front of that shrine, gripping my chubby fingers painfully tight as she helped me light a candle to the Holy Virgin.