The Falcons of Fire and Ice

The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland



Prologue





Anno Domini 1514 – Iceland



‘I killed them, Elísabet, I killed them!’

Elísabet heard the sobs tearing at her husband’s throat. She knew Jóhann was desperate for her to comfort him, begging her to assure him that no evil would come from the terrible thing he’d done, but she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even bring herself to turn and look at him. She stared at her own hand grasping the iron ladle. She watched her reed-thin fingers stir the dried stockfish in the steaming pot, as if her hand was a strange animal she didn’t recognize.

‘I had to do it, Elísabet … I had no choice.’

Her back snapped upright. ‘I begged you not to go. Did you listen? No, as usual you …’

But even as she turned to confront him, her eyes glittering with fear and rage, her words died away in a horrified gasp. Jóhann was standing close behind her in the tiny cottage, bathed in the mustard light of the fish-oil lamp. But if she hadn’t heard his voice, Elísabet would never have recognized the creature staring down at her as her husband.

His face was a mask of blood. It ran down his cheeks, and pooled in the creases of his skin, staining his pale beard crimson. Blood oozed too from numerous deep gashes on his arms and hands. Even his hair was soaked and matted with gore. If it hadn’t been for his clothes, which she had woven and stitched with her own hand, Elísabet would have sworn he was the ghost of some ancient Viking who’d perished in battle.

Jóhann’s legs buckled beneath him and he sank down on the wooden platform that served as both bed and chairs in the tiny room. That was enough to jerk Elísabet into action. Although her belly was swollen with child, she moved with a swiftness that she had not managed for weeks, hurrying to dip a handful of raw wool into the water pail and return with it, dripping, to her husband’s side. Gently she began to wipe the scarlet stains from his face, but even as she washed the blood away more ran from the wounds to cover the blanched skin. Jóhann, wincing, caught her wrist and, pulling the hank of wet wool from her fingers, pressed it to his forehead. He closed his eyes and, for a moment, Elísabet thought he was going to pass out, but he didn’t fall.

‘Did you …’ She swallowed hard. ‘Did you get the foreigner what he wanted?’

Jóhann reached beneath his shirt, flinching as the coarse woollen cloth rasped over the cuts on his hand. He pulled out a leather draw-string purse and let it fall on to the bed. The purse looked well stuffed, but that told Elísabet little about the value of the coins inside.

‘He has the chicks, both of them,’ Jóhann said wearily. ‘They’re alive … and strong enough to survive the sea voyage back to Portugal.’

‘But to kill the white falcons … the last white falcons on this mountain … Don’t you understand what you’ve done? Anyone who kills that bird is cursed until the day they die. You promised me, Jóhann, you promised that no harm would come to the adult falcons … You took an oath on the life of our unborn child.’

Elísabet touched her rounded belly where only the night before her husband had laid his own warm hand, as he’d sworn to her he would not hurt the birds.

‘The foreigner will pay good money for the chicks,’ he had told her. ‘The falcons will have more young next year and I’ll see to it that nothing disturbs them, even if I have to guard their nest day and night. But I must do this. I have to pay back the money I borrowed for the cattle, and with the baby coming, this is the only way we can survive. What else would you have me do?’

He meant the dead cattle, which had all perished the same summer he’d bought them when the cloud of gas from the volcano had poisoned the grass. Four years of misery and hunger for man and falcons alike, when the grass had withered and the ptarmigan, the prey of the white falcons, did not venture into the high valley. Before the poison cloud swept over them, a dozen white falcons had circled in the skies above the river of blue ice. But they had starved to death or flown away to the north, and the single pair that still soared over the frozen river had not laid eggs for three years.

‘Don’t you see, it’s a good omen,’ Jóhann had told her. ‘The falcons have bred once more, that means they know the ptarmigan are returning and the grass is sweet again. With the money I’ll get for the chicks we’ll be able to buy more cattle. The foreigners will give a heavy purse for the white falcons they sell to the royal houses of Europe.’ He laughed. ‘They say that kings will pay more for a single white falcon than for a whole palace.’

Elísabet stared down at her husband’s bloodied head. Last night Jóhann had been so sure that their luck was changing. Now look at him – was this the change of fortune he’d promised her?

‘But you swore to me, Jóhann, on our child’s life … Why … why have you done this to us? What possessed you to call down such evil on us … on your own family?’

Jóhann opened his eyes, but he didn’t look at his wife. He gazed fixedly into the flames of the cooking fire as a despairing man stares down at the sea before he drowns himself. Finally, and in a voice that barely rose above a whisper, he answered her.

‘We waited until the adults had gone hunting. I’ve never climbed so high up the cliff face before. It was a long, slow climb. Then, just as I was within a man’s length of the nest, the adult falcons returned. They began diving at me, slashing me with their talons, screaming at me till I was so deafened I couldn’t think. My arms were stinging from the gashes and my fingers were so slippery with my blood that a dozen times I nearly fell from the rock face. I realized I’d plunge to my death if I tried to carry on, so I climbed back down.

‘The foreigner was yelling at me. I didn’t know what he was saying, but I didn’t need words to understand he was furious. The Icelander who had brought him to me told me that if I didn’t go back up and get the chicks, they would tell our Danish masters that they’d caught me trying to raid the nest. He said the Danes would hang me on the spot.’

Jóhann looked up at his wife, his tired blue eyes pleading for understanding. ‘I didn’t want to do it, Elísabet, but … if I was to have any chance of capturing the chicks and getting back down safely, I had to drive the adults off. I thought if I shot an arrow at one of them, the other would fly away. I aimed for the male, which was flying low. I only meant to clip his wing feathers, but he crashed down on to the rocks. The female circled higher and higher, till I could no longer see her. I was certain she’d taken fright and had gone.

‘I started to climb back up to the nest, but just as I reached it she dived at me again. I was slashing at her with my knife, trying to keep a grip with my other hand on the rock. As if she knew I’d killed her mate, she fastened her claws on my shoulder, stabbing at my head with her beak. I was in agony and terrified she would blind me. I lashed out wildly with my knife. I didn’t mean to kill her, just to make her let go. Then I felt her collapse against me. But even though she was dead, her talons gripped my shoulder as fiercely as ever.

‘When I carried her chicks down from the nest her claws were still locked deep into my flesh. Her dead body was swinging from my shoulder. Even when I reached the bottom, her talons were still impaled in me. They had to cut them out of me, before they could tear her body off me … But I can still feel her talons gripping me. She won’t let go of me. She’ll never let go of me.’

He was sobbing, and Elísabet knew she should go to him and put her arms around him, but she couldn’t. She could see the white bird beating its wings against her husband’s face. She could hear its cry of fury. The whole room was suddenly full of flailing wings and the screams of murder, murder!

Elísabet fought her way out of the tiny cottage and ran as fast as her swollen belly would allow, but too soon she was forced to stop and gasp for breath. It was summer, but the great river of blue ice that lay below the cottage never melted, never moved. And now the chill, damp air rose up as if every breath she took sucked the cold towards her, turning her lungs to ice. She stared up at the clear blue sky above, but it was empty. Not a single bird flew, not a single cry was heard, as if every creature in the world had died with those falcons, the last falcons in the valley.

A boom echoed round the mountains, louder than a thunder clap. Startled, she stared down at the ice. A huge crack had opened in the frozen river, leaving a hollow in the ice like the inside of a giant white egg. Even as she gazed at it, Elísabet saw a great black shadow running down the valley, staining the sparkling blue-white ice until it was as dark as the bog pools. Terrified, she glanced up. It was only a cloud passing over the sun … only a cloud creeping out from behind the mountain … only a cloud where there had been none before.

Elísabet gasped as the child in her belly kicked. Tiny fists punched into her, thrashing furiously as if her child was trying to fight its way out. She could sense its fear, feel the small heart fluttering and racing like the heartbeat of a snared bird. But even as she listened to the tiny frantic pounding, she realized there was not just one heart beating in her belly, but two. Two little heads butted her. Two pairs of minute arms thrashed about inside her in their terror. She sank to the ground, pressing her hands to her belly, gently rubbing their little limbs through her skin, trying to comfort them as if she could grasp those frightened, angry little fists and calm them.

‘They know,’ a voice said behind her.

Elísabet twisted herself around as best she could. A young woman was standing in the shadow of a rocky outcrop. She was taller even than Jóhann and she held her back as straight as a birch tree.

‘An oath sworn on the life of an unborn child cannot be broken without a terrible price being paid. You should not have let him swear on the infants in your womb. If an oath was to be made, it should have been on your own heads, not on innocent lives. Your daughters are marked now. The spirits of the falcons have entered your belly. But I will do all I can to protect them if you entrust them to me.’

Elísabet stared aghast into the eyes of the stranger, eyes that were as grey and dark as a winter’s storm. She saw something else too in that handsome face, a tiny ridge beneath the nose where a groove should have been.

‘Get away from me,’ she screamed, desperately trying to scramble to her feet. ‘I know who your people are. You’re evil, wicked, every last one of your tribe. You’re child killers. Everyone knows what happens to the children you steal from decent people like us. I won’t let you near my babies. I won’t let you take them, do you hear? Get away from us!’

Her eyes wide in terror, Elísabet backed away, desperately making the sign of the cross over herself and her belly as if this would drive the stranger off.

But the woman regarded her impassively as she might have watched a screeching gull riding the wind. After a long moment, she reached beneath her shawl and unlooped a long knotted cord of white and red wool from about her waist. She drew the cord three times through her right hand, before holding it out to Elísabet.

‘This will help ease the birth and undo some of the harm that has been done. Loosen one knot each time the pains come upon you.’

Elísabet backed away, holding her hands behind her as if she feared the cord might fly into them unbidden. ‘I don’t want it! I won’t have it in my house. I’d never take anything you or your filthy brood have touched.’

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!’