The Falcons of Fire and Ice

CHAPTER Ten



The lord of Sassay was granted the right to hunt throughout the diocese of Evreux with a pair of male and female goshawks together with six spaniels and two greyhounds. He was permitted to carry his goshawks into the church of Our Lady of Evreux and could set them to perch on the main altar at whichever position was most convenient to him. So that his day’s hunting was not interrupted, he could order Mass to be said at any time that pleased him and the curé of Ézy could say the Mass at that church whilst wearing his hunting boots and spurs and with a drum beating instead of music.

The lords of Chastelas were granted the privilege of taking their place among the canons of the church of Auxerre carrying their sparrowhawks on their fists, wearing their swords as well as their surplices, carrying the amice (priestly stole) on their arms and sporting a hat covered in feathers. And the treasurer of this church could assist at Mass while carrying a sparrowhawk on his fist, a right he demanded because the treasurer of the church at Nevers had also been accorded this prerogative. For the hunting bird was deemed to be a bird of noble blood and therefore could no more be denied its place at the high altar in the church than could a lord or a king.





Isabela



Truss – when a falcon seizes the quarry in the air and flies off with it.



I was just beginning to think that Hinrik had been imagining the farmstead, when we crested a low hill and the horses ambled to a halt. Hinrik swivelled around on his horse’s back and pointed ahead of him. I could see nothing except some turf-covered hillocks, but then I noticed that a thin plume of lavender smoke was meandering from the top of one of them. As we drew closer, a wooden door became visible in the side of the hillock. Great boulders formed the base of the walls of the strange house, but higher up they seemed to be fashioned from nothing more solid than sods of earth pressed between thin strips of turf. Hinrik, sliding effortlessly from his horse, marched up and hammered with his fist on the great wooden door. The boom echoed back at us from out of the hillside.

The horses moved restlessly as we waited. Vítor was grasping the hilt of the dagger in his belt, though he had not drawn it from its sheath. From the stance of the others and the tension on their faces, I guessed their fingers had also strayed close to their knives. The wind cut through my wet clothes and I had to clench my teeth to stop them chattering.

Eventually the door was flung open and a man ducked out, closely followed by a small woman with a half-naked toddler balanced on her hip and a runny-nosed boy of about four or five clinging to her skirts. Hinrik spoke rapidly to the man whose gaze flicked over each of us in turn as he listened to the boy in silence.

Finally he took a step towards us. ‘Gerðu svo vel!’ The expression on his face was grim.

Vítor and Fausto glanced uncertainly at each other, their hands still on the hilts of their daggers. I tried to smile at the woman, but she merely stared sullenly at us, her shoulders hunched, wary. Her free hand crept down and grasped the shoulder of the little boy who peered around her legs, as if she was frightened we would snatch him away from her.

‘He says to enter,’ Hinrik said.

The man’s expression was hardly inviting, but Hinrik stepped confidently through the door, and rather more cautiously we followed. We squeezed through a small, narrow passageway until we emerged in a long room smelling of acrid smoke and damp. This hall must have occupied the whole length of the mound we’d seen from the outside. Wooden panelled berths were ranged down either side and heaped with patched wool blankets and old fox-fur skins which had lost most of their hair and stank. The roof was held up by several stout wooden posts placed at intervals down the length of the hall, and tiny cracks of light filtered down between the sods which covered the roof.

I couldn’t believe the blackened walls were just made of sods and touched one to find out. It really was earth, and wet earth too, blackened with mildew. The floor was covered with ashes from the fire as well as numerous fish and animal bones which had been stamped down into it to make a hard surface. A long fire pit had been cut into the middle of the floor, on which a couple of cooking pots bubbled. The smoke wandered out through a vent in the cobwebbed roof ridge, which was also the only source of daylight. A few stone lamps were fixed to the wooden posts, and from the dim mustard light and stench of stinging smoke coming from them I guessed they were burning fish oil.

The farmer motioned us to sit with a grunt and a jerk of his head, but we could see no chairs.

‘You sit there on the beds.’ Hinrik gestured towards the berths. ‘No!’ he yelped as I attempted to do so.

‘Men sit this side, on the port side, women must sit on the starboard of the badstofa … the great hall.’

I crossed to the other side and hesitantly sat down. The mattress crunched beneath me, releasing a smell of mouldy hay and dried seaweed. Opposite me on the men’s side, a wizened old man was hunched in the corner of the bed, a heap of patched and tattered woollen blankets pulled up to his chin, saliva dribbling continuously from his mouth on to the corner of the blanket. His red-rimmed eyes peeped fearfully over the top of the bedclothes, and his hands shook as he pulled the edges even higher up over his face.

We all stared awkwardly at one another in a silence that no one seemed to know how to break. The woman brought us beakers of watered-down milk, which Hinrik informed us was called bland, at least that’s what I thought he said. Even across the dimly lit hall I could see the expressions of distaste on the faces of Marcos and Fausto, though if Vítor also hated it, he was disguising it well.

The fishy steam from the pots, the smell of damp wool, musty earth and the smoke from the dried cow’s dung burning on the fire, created such a fug that I could hardly breathe. I almost longed to be back out in the cold air again. I was desperate to change out of my filthy, wet clothes, the skirts of which were beginning to steam at the bottom from the heat of the fire, though none of the Icelanders took any notice of my state. But there didn’t seem anywhere private I could strip off and I couldn’t bring myself to ask Hinrik.

The woman ladled the contents of one of the bubbling cooking pots into wooden bowls fashioned from staves and hoops, with hinged lids. These eating bowls were nearly as heavy as my mother’s cooking pots. We ate still sitting on the beds, grateful for the food to give us something to do other than stare at one another. I discovered I was ravenously hungry, but the food was almost as tasteless as the watered milk: dried cod, softened only a little by boiling in water, and flavoured with a sour white butter. I saw the woman watching me anxiously as I ate and I immediately felt guilty. I beamed at her, trying to look as if I was relishing every mouthful.

The meal seemed to be the signal to talk, at least for the men, with Hinrik translating. The farmer asked nothing about what had brought us to Iceland, but he wanted to know about life in Portugal, how many horses we had, how many cattle, what crops we grew. He seemed baffled when the men told him they lived in towns and had no need to farm.

All the time they were talking, I was barely listening. There was one thing I was desperate to learn, but I dared not ask directly for fear of arousing suspicion. Try as I might, I couldn’t think how to work the conversation round, so in the end I just blurted out the only thing that came to mind.

‘Hinrik, I’ve heard that the wild animals on this island are white as snow, because it is so cold. Is that true?’

The Icelanders stared open-mouthed at me as if amazed that I was addressing them. Hinrik thought for a moment, frowning, then answered without bothering to translate the question for the farmer.

‘Dogs … no, like dogs … foxes! They are white in winter. And great white bears, sometimes they come from Greenland on the ice. They must be hunted. White bears kill even a strong man with one blow.’

‘And birds, white birds, do they come here?’

Hinrik laughed. ‘Ptarmigan? Not down here, but up in the mountains there are more than there are gulls at the shore. Good eating, if you can catch them.’

‘I heard stories of a falcon, a white falcon. Is it true, does such a bird exist here?’

The boy shifted uneasily, then muttered something to the farmer. A long discussion followed and I could barely contain my impatience.

‘What’s he saying, Hinrik?’

‘He says where there are ptarmigan on the ground to eat there will always be white falcons in the sky above. They follow them. They are sisters. Strange sisters, for ptarmigan are worth nothing, but the falcons are worth sacks of gold. He says the Danes would sell their own wives and children for them. Two hundred white falcons they took last year. The hunters have to pay much money to the Danes for permission to capture the birds … He says how can a wild bird belong to any man? The falcons belong only to the sky. It is as crazy as a man saying he owns the fire in the mountains or the rain that falls.’

The farmer spoke again and whatever he said made Hinrik laugh. He turned to Marcos, Vítor and Fausto sitting beside him on the bed.

‘He says he hopes you have not come here to steal a white falcon. Last year, there was a boy from Bolungarvík. The Danes caught him with a sack. He swore inside was a white ptarmigan. But they opened the sack and pulled out a white falcon. The boy said he must have grabbed the wrong bird when the falcon attacked the ptarmigan. But they did not believe him. So …’

Hinrik put his hands round his throat in the manner of a noose. Lolling his tongue out and crossing his eyes, he made a gurgling sound which caused the farmer’s little son to giggle so much he almost tumbled off the bed.

My three companions laughingly assured him they would attempt no such crime, but Vítor’s smile faded rapidly and he stared at me, frowning as if he somehow knew why I had raised the question.

‘I was just asking,’ I said hastily, ‘because I’d love to see one of these birds flying. I’ve heard they are beautiful. Are there any nests in these parts?’

‘Not here, they nest in the north. When it is summer the hunters climb the rocks to take the chicks. Many men die. You know where a white falcon nests on a mountain, for the bones of the hunters lie at the bottom.’

The conversation drifted away to hunting. The woman fetched a leather bottle and poured a measure of thick liquid into beakers for each of the men. Whatever it was, they seemed to relish it much more than the bland and soon their eyes began to shine in the firelight and laughter came easily and grew louder, as they reclined and drank deeply whenever the woman refilled their beakers – all, that is, except Vítor, who had taken one sip and no more.

The more the farmer drank, the wilder his tales of his hunting prowess became. Through Hinrik, he regaled the men with stories about the wild horses he had captured, of the white bears he had fought and the foxes he had killed for their valuable pelts. He even told us that once, when he was a boy, he and his friends were tracking a huge fox which tried to escape them by crossing a great river of ice. This frozen river was criss-crossed by crevasses and ravines that were so deep and slippery that if a man tumbled into one he would never be able to clamber out again and would die of starvation, if he didn’t freeze first. His friends were too scared to venture on to the ice for they all knew of men who had fallen to their deaths down those treacherous crevasses, but the farmer was determined to get that fox, so he fearlessly went on alone to capture the beast and lived to tell the tale. He thumped his chest with pride as he recounted this story. He sounded just like the nobles at Sintra when they returned from their hunting, always full of impossible tales of courage and daring. I listened only because I was desperately hoping that when he’d drunk enough the farmer might speak again of the white falcons, but he didn’t.

I could not afford to wait till summer to take an eyas from its nest like the hunters, though I knew that would be the easiest way to capture a bird and give me the best chance of bringing it back alive. It would be too late to save my father by then. I would have to try to trap a pair of adult birds as they searched for their prey. Follow the ptarmigan, like the falcons. But where would I find the ptarmigan? And how would I recognize them? I’d never seen one before – was it as small as a swallow or as large as a duck? But I dared not ask more. I had already shown too much interest.

I rose as cautiously as I could and slipped across to the passage. Vítor’s head jerked up.

‘I need to relieve myself,’ I muttered.

I felt my way down the damp, narrow passage. It took all my strength to heave the great wooden door open, but outside all was quiet. Not a spark of light showed anywhere in the cold, clinging blackness. If I took more than few steps from the house, I would never find it again. I edged along the rough stones of the wall, hoping that my eyes would accustom themselves to the darkness. If I could take one of the horses, while the men were all occupied inside, then I could put as much distance as I could between myself and them, before anyone realized I was gone. The horse would surely be able to find the track even if I couldn’t. I had no idea where our packs had been stored, but if I couldn’t find them I would have to go without them. This might be the only chance I got.

The wall seemed to go on for ever, but eventually I came to the end and I stared out into the darkness, listening for the crunch of horses’ hooves as they shifted in the coarse grass, straining to hear the snorting and whining they make when they smell a human approaching, but I could hear nothing except the wind stirring the dried stalks and the sharp, insistent cry of some bird or animal I didn’t recognize.

Perhaps the horses had been stabled in the byre at the other end of the house. I thought I had glimpsed one earlier. I groped my way back along the wall, trying to find the door which would tell me I had reached halfway along. Then suddenly my hand connected with something soft and warm. I stifled a cry as I stepped backwards.

‘Isabela, so there you are! Can’t see a bloody thing.’

The voice was slurred, but it was still recognizable. My stomach contracted. It was Fausto, the man who only a few hours ago had tried to kill me.

‘What do you want?’ I could hear my voice shaking.

‘You … looking for you. Wanted to speak to you alone. Tried earlier today … but you galloped off.’

If I yelled for help they’d never hear it deep inside that hillside. I tried to keep calm.

‘It’s cold. I’m going back inside. Whatever you have to say you can say it in there.’

‘You’re not going back inside.’ He stretched out his arm, barring the doorway.

I couldn’t push him aside. He was twice my weight and size. I could try to run. Once I was out there in the darkness, he’d never be able to find me, but suppose I stumbled into another bog? I shivered.

I fought to keep the panic from rising in my chest. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘Come with you, of course. I know you’ve no intention of going back in there. You’re going to look for them, aren’t you?’

‘What … look for what?’ I stammered.

‘White falcons.’ He lowered his voice to an exaggerated tipsy whisper, though there was no one to hear us. ‘That’s why you were asking the lad about them. First night on the ship when I told you about the eagles … could tell that you knew more about falconry than you were admitting. That’s why you came here, isn’t it?’

A wave of cold nausea rose in my throat. ‘I don’t know anything about birds … I came here to join my husband.’

He chuckled. ‘Come on, a husband who didn’t trouble to come to the ship to meet you? A husband who sent you no papers? If you were married to a Dane, you’d not have to leave here for the winter. I saw the look on your face when you heard you only have two weeks. There is no husband, is there? You can tell me.’

He attempted a clumsy pat on my shoulder. I shrank back.

‘We all have our little secrets, Isabela. Don’t you worry, I won’t breathe a word. Ssh!’ He leaned over me, pressing his finger to his lips. ‘Trust me, Isabela, I can help you get those birds. That farmer seems to think they’re worth a few escudos, and I’ll let you into a little secret of my own. I could do with a little gold right now.’

‘What happened to the diamonds? I thought you were planning to get rich finding those?’

‘There are no diamonds here.’

‘Then why come to Iceland?’

He deflated like a pierced bladder and slumped dejectedly against the wall. He was more dulled than actually drunk, his movements slow and clumsy. If he made a grab for me I might be able to dodge him. I tried to ease away from him a little, bracing myself to run as soon as he was off guard.

‘Planned to go to Canada to search for diamonds, but I was … had to leave Portugal in a hurry. Costs a lot to get passage to Canada. Long voyage. Couldn’t raise the money I needed in time.’

‘Why did you need to leave so quickly?’

‘Killed a man.’

He must have heard my gasp of fear.

‘Not murder, nothing like that.’ He seized my arm so suddenly I didn’t have a chance to pull away. ‘It was an accident … swear to you.’ He drew a deep breath and shook his head as if trying to clear the mist from his thoughts. ‘So happy that night. Can’t believe it all changed in the time it takes to draw breath … festival for Our Lady of Light in Sampaio. My friends and I, we just went to celebrate, same as everyone else. After the procession, people were drinking and eating in the streets. All the women were dressed in their prettiest dresses. My friend started talking to a girl, flirting with her. Everyone does it. It’s what festivals are for. Bit of harmless fun, that’s all. But her fiancé saw them together. He got jealous and shoved my friend away.

‘You know how it is, punches were thrown. All the lads started to take sides and join in. It was just fists at first. Then I saw one man draw a knife and come up behind my friend. I threw myself at him. There was a struggle. The next thing I knew a young man was lying on the ground, blood pouring from his guts. I was horrified. I started to back away, but someone yelled that I’d done it, and when I looked down, I saw my own hand was covered in blood. I ran then. I got away, but later I discovered the young man had died and, worse still, he was the son of a noble. His father was determined that he would settle for nothing less than the blood of the man who killed his son. No choice. Had to get passage on the very first ship I could find.’

After the events of that afternoon I found it only too easy to believe that Fausto had killed a man, but I did not believe it was an accident, any more than him kicking my horse had been.

Fausto was still gripping my arm. My fear spun into anger.

‘So you didn’t intend to come to Iceland to look for diamonds. That story you told us on board the ship about India and the eagles carrying up the diamonds from the ravine, that was a lie too, wasn’t it?’

‘No!’ he said hotly. ‘It’s completely true, I swear.’ He shuffled uncomfortably. ‘But it wasn’t exactly my story … a merchant told it to me. But I do know all about diamonds. I worked for a jeweller who set precious stones into necklaces, earrings, brooches and buckles for the wealthy. My master taught me how to read a stone, to assess its colour and weight, how to look for flaws and determine when and where it was cut. I can tell you what any stone is worth. If I can reach Canada, I can find diamonds. I can make a fortune. I just have to find the money to get there.

‘And if those birds are as valuable as that farmer seems to think … Look, this is a dangerous place for a woman alone. You can’t do this by yourself. But I can take care of you. We can find those birds together and I can help you sell them. That’s something I do know about, persuading men to buy … and there’s something else … something I must tell you. You see, the truth is –’

‘The truth is what, Senhor Fausto?’

Fausto spun round. The figure standing in darkness behind him raised the little fish-oil lamp, shielding the fragile flame from the wind with his hand. Although the light was feeble, it deepened the hollows under his cheekbones and made caverns of his dark eyes, so that his head looked like a pale skull suspended in the darkness.

‘Vítor!’ Fausto snapped. ‘What the devil do you mean, sneaking around eavesdropping on private conversations?’

‘I merely chanced to overhear your last remark, Fausto. I was, in fact, in search of the young lady. She had been gone so long I feared she might have met with an accident or was unable to find her way back. It was foolish of you to venture out here without a lamp, Isabela. The ground is treacherous enough by day, but at night you could blunder into any kind of peril and no one would hear your cries for help.’

He reached his arm round Fausto and extended his hand to me.

‘Come, let me escort you safely back inside into the warm.’

I hesitated, not knowing which of the two men I feared more at that moment, but at least if Vítor was taking me back inside, he could not be intending to harm me, for now at any rate – not even he would be stupid enough to attempt to do so in front of a witness. Reluctantly I placed my hand on his and allowed myself to be drawn past Fausto.

Vítor’s thin, spidery fingers were even colder than my own. He glanced back over his shoulder as we squeezed down the musty passageway.

‘Isabela, let me offer you a word of caution. You would be well advised not to trust Senhor Fausto. I fear that he and the truth are not well acquainted. Such men wear a cloak of courtesy which often conceals a dagger of malice. You should try to avoid him as much as you can until we are able to rid ourselves of him.’

We are able to rid ourselves … So he intended to attach himself to me, maybe even get rid of Marcos and travel alone with me. It was almost as if Vítor was really starting to believe I was his wife. Was he planning to make it so? I had no experience of being wooed, but even I was sure that what I saw in Vítor’s eyes was certainly not love.

And as for Fausto, had he told me that story about killing a man to let me know that he was capable of murdering me too? Had he been about to make a more explicit threat before Vítor interrupted him? If I had not been certain before, what had just happened outside had me convinced that I must get far away from both of them as quickly as I could.

I lay huddled uncomfortably on the bed. The dried seaweed and mouldy straw which filled the pallet crunched deafeningly in my ear every time I or the woman and her children moved, releasing a sickening stench. I was determined to keep awake, but there was little danger of falling asleep. The three men lay hunched under the threadbare blankets and furs in the opposite bed stalls, with Hinrik, the farmer and his old father. I couldn’t see their faces, but I sensed that while the others might be snoring, Vítor, like me, was still lying awake.

The blood-red glow of the embers in the fire pit drew my gaze back to it. There was a whole landscape in miniature contained in that smouldering, blackened pit – rock-strewn valleys and mountains, with veins of fire running through them, dark caves and white ash peaks. As I stared into its depths, I could almost feel I was walking through those rocks, climbing the side of that mountain, sliding into the cave.

Krery-krery-krery!

I started up on one elbow, staring about the hall. The cry was so close that it was as if I was again in my father’s mews. But surely the farmer was not keeping a gyrfalcon hidden in his house, after all he had said about the dangers?

Krery-krery-krery.

It was fainter now, but insistent as if it was screaming from a distant mountain, yet was determined its cry be heard. But where? Hinrik had said there were no falcons in these parts, and besides, the white falcon did not hunt at night.

I half-sensed a movement, and turned my head back to the fire pit. An elderly woman was standing in front of it. In the owl-light of the hall I couldn’t see her clearly, only the shape of her blocking out the fire beyond. Was she wife to the old man in the bed? She was holding a little child by the hand, trying to push her behind her own body. She raised her other arm over her face, cringing, as if trying to ward off a heavy blow. Then, as if the blow had fallen, she crumpled into the darkness of the earth floor and was gone, leaving behind her only a cold, damp breeze which lifted a tiny flake of white ash in the fire pit and sent it soaring into the shadows above. Had I just imagined her there? Without knowing why, my fingers reached for the white finger bone hanging in the bag around my neck.

Krery-krery-krery.

I could barely hear it. It was only the breath of the scream, not the cry itself. But it was enough.





Ricardo



Summed – when a falcon has fledged and grown all her flight feathers, or has grown new feathers after the moult, and is ready to fly.



I woke with what tasted like a beggar’s armpit in my mouth, and my head ringing like a blacksmith’s anvil. It took a few moments to realize where I was, and even longer to work out that I was lying with someone’s foot halfway up my arse and a hairy arm draped across my head. I struggled out of the tangle of groaning bodies, balding furs and musty blankets.

There was no sign of Hinrik, but the old man snored on in his corner of the bed, propped upright just as he had been last night. Even his own farts didn’t wake him. The farmer’s wife was stirring a great pot over the fire, and shot us a look of disgust that would have outdone even my Silvia’s scathing glances, and, as all the saints know, Silvia could floor a man at twenty paces with one of her withering looks.

As her husband and my two companions struggled upright, she silently handed each of us a bowl of what looked like grey glue, so thick and glutinous that I was certain it could never be coaxed from the bowl. I managed a couple of spoonfuls before the whole mess tried to crawl its way back up my throat again. I dashed out of the hall and only just made it through the door before my breakfast made its bid for freedom.

I leaned weakly against the turf wall and drew in great gulps of cold air. What the devil had been in that drink last night? I didn’t remember a thing, except for a dim memory of hating Vítor for some reason, but then that didn’t tell me much. I’d loathed the man since he first set foot on the ship.

Hinrik sauntered around the back of the house. He grinned when he saw me. ‘It was a good night, yes?’

I groaned and rubbed at my eyeballs which were as swollen and raw as if they’d been skinned. How had he managed to sleep in that fug of smoke and look so lively in the morning? The impudent puppy plainly found my misery hilarious. I would have kicked his arse just to remind him I owned him, if I could have trusted myself to do it without falling on my own backside, but the lesson would have to wait until the ground stopped tilting.

I stumbled over to a trough and dashed some water on to my face. How it hadn’t frozen, I don’t know, for it was far colder than ice. I can only guess that it was so thick with slime and dirt that nothing would make it freeze. Every animal on the farm seemed to have pissed in it, but at least the cold cleared my head a little.

Vítor emerged from the doorway. ‘Have you seen Isabela?’ he demanded as I walked back towards the house.

His face was the colour of a squashed slug and he seemed to be holding his head very stiffly as if it was thumping as much as mine, which was at least some consolation. But it couldn’t have been from the drink, for he’d taken hardly any last night, though sleeping in that fug was enough to make anyone bilious.

‘Isabela, where is she?’ he repeated impatiently.

‘Isn’t she inside?’ I said, staring around vaguely.

I couldn’t recall seeing her since I’d woken, but then it had taken all my concentration just to get my limbs to move in a vaguely co-ordinated fashion.

‘I’d hardly be asking you if she was,’ Vítor snapped. ‘Hinrik, have you seen her?’

‘She’s gone. She took some smoked puffin meat. The breakfast was not cooked then. Too early.’

Vítor leapt forward and seized Hinrik by the shoulders, shaking him till his teeth rattled. ‘She’s left? All by herself? You stupid half-wit, why didn’t you wake us? Why did you let her go?’

Hinrik was goggle-eyed with fear. I dragged Vítor off the boy and both of them stood there panting. The lad looked on the verge of taking to his heels.

‘You saw what happened yesterday,’ Vítor yelled at him. ‘She doesn’t know how to look after herself in this place.’ He took a deep breath as if he was making a great effort to regain control. ‘How long ago did she leave? Which way did she go?’

Hinrik was watching Vítor apprehensively as if he thought he would launch another attack at any moment.

‘Before the sun was up. She went …’ The lad tentatively gestured along the track which led in the direction of the mountains.

‘Did she say where she was going?’ Vítor demanded impatiently, looking as if he was about to try to shake the information out of him again. ‘Didn’t you ask?’

‘Look, we’re wasting precious time standing around here,’ I said. ‘Let’s just saddle up and go after her as quickly as we can, before she gets herself into any more danger.’ I turned to the farmer who was stumbling out of the door, his face as crumpled and creased as a whore’s petticoats. ‘Hinrik, ask him to bring us our horses, will you, quick as he can.’

Hinrik translated and the farmer spat on to the ground and muttered something. Clearly the drink had left him with a foul hangover.

‘He says fetch them yourself,’ Hinrik said.

I felt my own temper rising as fast as Vítor’s. ‘Then where are they?’

‘He says back with their owner by now.’

‘But we are the owners,’ Vítor said indignantly. ‘We paid a great deal for those beasts.’

‘How are the horses to know that?’ Hinrik giggled, then, catching sight of Vítor’s face, abruptly stopped himself.

‘Tether does not hold them,’ he said. ‘He says you should have taken them to the stone fold and hobbled them. Horses return home first chance they get. Everyone knows that.’

Vítor railed furiously at the lad and followed it up with a hard clout across the boy’s head which, thinking he fully deserved it, I made no attempt to prevent. But finally, even Vítor could see that no amount of shouting or raging was going to recover the animals. In the meantime, as I reminded him, Isabela was getting further away.

We assembled our packs, abandoning all but the essential items we could carry on our own backs, and set off in pursuit of Isabela, with Vítor still muttering that the farmer had probably stolen our beasts himself and was hiding them somewhere until we were safely out of sight. If he hadn’t been so anxious to find the girl, he said, he would have searched every inch of the place and would most assuredly do so when he returned. There was only one consolation in all this, and that was that Isabela had apparently been forced to depart on foot as well, so that I was sure it wouldn’t be long before we caught up with her.

The Jesuits were not joking when they said this would be like a pilgrimage. Climbing up the steps of some monastery on your knees would be less painful than marching over that terrain. I’m used to city streets, not dirt tracks, and when I wasn’t sinking knee-deep in freezing mud, I was barking my shin on a rock, or flaying my legs on thorns. One of the sailors told me that when Satan saw that God had created the world, he was jealous and demanded the right to create just one little piece of land himself. He laboured hard for a week, throwing into it all the skills he had to create a piece of hell on earth, and the country he made was Iceland. Never was a truer story told.

After several hours of walking, I was almost at the point of refusing to take another step when we heard laughter and raised voices carried towards us on the wind almost at the same time as we saw the men ahead of us on the track. All four of us hesitated and peered warily ahead to see what might be amusing them.

When you live by your wits in the streets of Belém or Lisbon, you learn to read a crowd. Not that this was a crowd – I could dimly make out three, maybe four, figures – but still it becomes second nature to peer round the door of a tavern or pause before entering a square. You sense, just by the way people are gathering, that trouble is bubbling up like foul water in a ditch. Then, unless you are itching to get your nose smashed or a dagger in your back, you know it’s time to slip quietly away before anyone notices you. I’m fond of my face and want to keep its features exactly as God made them.

But there are some men who have the brains of bulls. Wave anything in front of their squinty little eyes and they’ll charge at it, without even bothering to look to see if they are making straight for a spear. Vítor, instead of turning away, simply quickened his stride.

I ran a couple of steps and grabbed his arm, pulling him round.

‘This way,’ I whispered. ‘Quickly, take cover behind those rocks. If we cut across behind this rise we can avoid them and rejoin the track further up.’

Vítor jerked his arm away. ‘They’ve got hold of someone. It’s obvious they mean mischief,’ he added as a cry of pain cut through the bellows of raucous laughter that drifted back towards us.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘So let’s avoid a fight and go round them. We can’t afford any delays if we’re to catch up with Isabela. Besides, we don’t even know if they’re armed, and there are only three of us.’

But at that moment we heard a shout. It was a woman’s voice and she was yelling in our own tongue.

‘That is Isabela,’ our companion shouted.

In a trice he was throwing off his pack, and with his hand already drawing his dagger, he had sprinted past Vítor and me down the rough stony track with a bellow loud enough to make one of the men turn round. Vítor and I struggled to disengage our own packs, tossing them over the rocks on the edge of the track before we followed him.

Isabela was pinned down on the grass by three youths. One of them, his face covered with the red pimples of adolescence, was kneeling astride her, trying to yank up her skirts, and a second was standing on one of her wrists, holding her to the ground while she fought desperately with her free hand to fend off her attacker.

The third youth had wheeled round to face us, a short-bladed knife in his hand.

‘Let her go,’ I demanded.

‘Hvem er du?’

I’d no idea what he said, but there was no mistaking the insolent tone. I looked round for Hinrik, but the wretched little coward was nowhere to be seen. I only hoped he was hiding and hadn’t run off, not that I would blame him after the way Vítor had yelled at him.

A squeal from Isabela, as the bastard ground her wrist hard into the ground, recalled me to the point.

‘Leave her alone!’

‘Hun er Katolik.’ The youth pushed his cabbage face close to mine. ‘KATOLIK!’ He stepped back and jabbed the knife upwards.

‘Skrub af, gamle! Eller skal du ha’ taesk?’

I may not have understood the words, but I all too nearly got the point. I think, roughly translated, he was inviting me to leave before I got a knife between my ribs. The ill-mannered youth looked back at his friend who was kneeling astride the writhing Isabela and gestured impatiently at him with his blade.

‘Skynd dig nu, eller lad mig komme til.’

There’s one thing I’ve learned about fighting – if you really can’t avoid it, then make damn sure you get your blow in first. As the youth turned his knife and, more foolishly, his attention away from me, I grabbed his wrist and twisted. The knife flew out of his hand and at the same time I brought my knee up hard into his balls. It’s a girl’s trick, I know, but I make no apologies, for believe me it works most effectively and, unlike a punch, avoids any risk that your opponent will be able to deliver a counter-blow to your own jaw. He yelped as he sank slowly to his knees and rolled on to his side, clutching himself between the legs, his eyes screwed up in pain.

My two companions must have launched themselves at the two youths holding Isabela, for when I looked up I saw that the youth who had been standing on her arm was now crouching on the grass holding his face as the blood ran from between his fingers, whilst Vítor had grasped the lout who was straddling Isabela by his hair and was holding the point of his dagger at his throat. Isabela winced as she massaged her bruised wrist, but was unable to move because of the lad still kneeling astride her.

The youth I had kneed was struggling to rise again, so I stamped as hard as I could on his foot, just to give him something else to whimper about, then helped Vítor drag his prisoner back off Isabela. I lifted her to her feet as she struggled to straighten her skirts. She wasn’t sobbing as most women would have been, but her face had blanched and she was breathing in noisy little rasps.

I’m no saint, as you have possibly deduced by now, but rape is the one crime I despise. Whether it was what the bastards had tried to do to her, or Isabela’s refusal to give way to tears, I don’t know, but I suddenly felt an overwhelming tenderness towards her. Not that I would have admitted that to anyone, you understand.

Vítor still held the kneeling youth tightly by the hair, but he moved the knife so that the point of the blade was pressing into the young man’s closed eyelid. A knife in the eyeball was a rather nasty touch, I thought, but nevertheless it was certainly effective for none of the youths was daring to move.

‘Collect up their knives,’ Vítor ordered.

I did so. Two were plain but serviceable. The third had an exquisitely carved bone handle and I discreetly slipped it into my belt under my cloak.

When I had led Isabela far enough away from the youths for them not to try to grab her again, Vítor released the man he was holding.

‘Take your two friends and go.’ He pointed out across the rough pasture in a direction which would take them well away from the track. ‘Go! Go!’

The three youths hesitated, their pride evidently smarting worse than any injury we’d inflicted. I could see they were itching to fight, but finally realizing we were armed and they were not, sense got the better of them and they limped off in the direction Vítor had indicated.

As they moved away, the youth whom I had kneed in the balls turned around, his face twisted in hatred.

‘Vi kommer igen, og naeste gang slaar vi dig ihjel!’ He drew his finger slowly and menacingly across his throat, and spat on the ground as if to seal the promise.

I watched them walk away, then turned to Vítor, grinning. ‘I may have misunderstood, of course, but I get the distinct feeling he wasn’t inviting us to share a flagon of wine with him. Now, you see, this is where it might have helped if you had told him you were a Lutheran pastor, Vítor, instead of threatening to put that poor fellow’s eye out with your knife. Do remind me to give you some lessons in diplomacy some time.’

Vítor scowled, but before he had time to reply Isabela came up to us. She was still nursing her wrist, which was grazed and bore the scarlet imprint of the man’s shoe. She did not look at any of us, but held her back very stiffly.

‘I would like to thank you all for your assistance,’ she said, as if she was some noblewoman about to toss us a coin apiece for moving some furniture for her. ‘But it was quite unnecessary to put yourselves in danger on my account.’

Her performance was magnificent. I could have kissed her!

She glanced over to where the three lads could still be seen in the distance. ‘Did they mean … do you think they will return?’

‘I’m sure they’ll try,’ I said, ‘and if they’re anything like the louts I’ve encountered before, they’ll probably bring a rabble of friends back with them. So I suggest we collect our packs and get out of here … Hinrik! It’s safe, they’ve gone. You can come out now, you little canary.’

The top of a tousled head raised itself from behind a nearby rock, and gradually the rest of the lad emerged, somewhat sheepishly, and edged towards us, keeping, I noticed, well out of arm’s reach of Vítor. He studiously avoided looking at Isabela.

‘Did you hear what the youths were saying?’ I asked him.

The lad nodded. ‘They were Danes. I only know a little Danish … but I think … he is going to kill you.’

‘I think we’d managed to work that one out for ourselves. Anything else?’

The lad hung his head, then, barely raising his hand, pointed vaguely in the direction of Isabela.

‘Katolik – Catholic … That is why …’

There was an uncomfortable silence, broken by – you’ve guessed it – Vítor, who cleared his voice as if he was about to deliver a sermon.

‘Isabela, you must see from this incident that you cannot travel alone. We must stay together.’ Seeing Isabela about to protest, he added more firmly, ‘No traveller, man or woman, should cross this land alone. There are too many hazards of which the foreigner can know nothing. Remember the accident you had yesterday? If there hadn’t been someone on hand to help you, you would have most assuredly drowned.’

At the mention of the incident yesterday, Isabela darted a piercing glance at me, as if to say she knew full well it wasn’t an accident. But nevertheless, visibly shaken, she consented to walk with us, or rather, she didn’t refuse.

We continued along the track at a much slower pace than before. Isabela was plainly making for the mountains in pursuit of those birds of hers. With every step we took, I could see her scanning the hillsides and the air for them. I even found that I was beginning to do it, though I’d no idea what I was looking for, except that obviously it wasn’t those black things flapping about and cawing, which was all I could see.

I was certain that at the first chance she got, Isabela would slip away from us again, just like those wretched horses. I had to convince her that I would help her find what she was looking for. I’d convinced women before that I was madly in love with them or that I could make a fortune for them. It was all about trust, after all. Get someone to trust you, and you can persuade them of anything.

I watched Isabela striding ahead of me up the track, her eyes fixed on the sky. I sighed. I could make her trust me if I really wanted to. I’d done it a dozen times before and to women far more astute in the ways of the world than she was. So why every time I approached her did I find myself doing it with all the finesse and skill of a half-witted dung collector? Was it because I knew in the end there was only one reason for me to win her trust, and that was to get her alone and murder her?

Yet if I didn’t bring about her death, if she returned to Portugal with those birds, then I would be forced to spend the rest of my life in exile. I had a simple choice. I could either kill her and enjoy a life of luxury in my own homeland, or I could spare the life of this wretched girl who meant absolutely nothing to me, and drag out my remaining days in poverty and misery. There was no contest. Isabela had to die. So why was I making this so hard for myself?

Pull yourself together, Ricardo, and just do it! Do it and get it over with once and for all!





Eydis



Bating – when a hawk becomes angry or agitated, flapping its wings wildly and flinging itself off the perch or fist, often resulting in it hanging upside down from its straps or jesses.



‘I’ve brought what you wanted,’ Ari shudders, as he hands me a sack.

I will not open it in front of him. It would be cruel to make him look at it twice over. Time enough to prepare the head once he has gone.

‘I took it from …’ He gnaws at his lip. ‘I meant to take it from the mass grave where all the other foreign sailors had been buried, but I was afraid of arousing the anger of so many dead men, and strong men at that. I was afraid they’d drag me back down into the grave with them.’

Beneath her veil Valdis’s lips move and a mocking voice fills the cave.

It is lonely in the grave, Ari. It is dark in the cavern, pressed down by stench and decay. Your eyes are blinded in the endless night, Ari, in the endless night.

Ari shrinks back in terror.

‘Stop your ears against him, Ari. It is dangerous to listen to him. He will poison your mind with misery. The dead are jealous of the living and that makes them cruel.’ I try to pull him back to the purpose. ‘You said that you did not take this head from the sailors’ grave. Where then?’

Ari is still staring fearfully at the body of my sister, but finally he manages to wrest his attention back to me.

‘There was an old woman, died of the spring hunger for she’d no family to care for her. There was no marker on her grave, but I could still see the scar on the earth. I stole the sexton’s spade and used it to separate the head from the body. That was right, wasn’t it, Eydis? The corpse can’t rise if the spade that buried it is used to cut off the head, can it?’

‘You did well. But did anyone see you?’

Ari squats down, warming his hands over the flames of my cooking fire, although to me it feels warmer than ever in the cave.

‘No one, I’m sure of that. I took one of the farm dogs with me and I left him on the track that leads to the graveyard. He’s a good watchdog, he can hear a mouse running a mile away. I knew he’d bark at once if anyone approached. There was a moon, so I could see well enough to dig, and I only had to uncover one end of the grave, and then used my hands to feel for …’ He gives another convulsive shudder, pressing his fist to his mouth as if to stop himself retching. ‘Feeling is better than seeing. Once you’ve seen a thing, you cannot shut it out from your dreams … then I placed the dog’s skull in the grave, just like you said.

‘But I knew if they saw the ground had been disturbed they’d dig the body up, and then they’d see the head was missing. They’d question everyone. So when I filled the hole in again, I scattered some scraps of meat over it and let the dog loose to hunt for them. If they notice the fresh soil, they’ll see all the paw marks and think it was just a stray dog or fox churning up the earth, digging for bones.’

‘You are a bright lad, and a brave one.’

I am impressed at his resourcefulness. I know how much I have asked of him. He has risked his life to bring me what I asked and not many men twice his age would have the stomach to open a grave.

He gestures towards the sack. ‘Are you sure this will keep the nightstalker’s corpse from dying?’

‘It is the only thing that can.’

‘And his spirit will return to his body as soon as it has healed?’

Valdis’s head swivels sharply towards him. ‘Eydis has been lying to you, Ari. She knows I won’t go back into that corpse. She hasn’t the knowledge or the power to make me return. Why would I go back? We all know why she is so anxious to have me return to that body, because the moment I do, she will attempt to destroy me. Not that she would be able to, but I don’t intend to let her try. Don’t you see, you risked your life for nothing, you stupid little boy? All you’ve done is useless. Did you really think a woman could master me? She didn’t raise me from among the dead. No one may command me.’

Ari has risen to his feet. He is staggering back away from Valdis, his arms raised protectively in front of his face as if every word the mocking voice utters is a hammer blow.

‘Go!’ I shout at Ari. ‘Get out of here now!’

Ari turns his face to me, a mask of fear and anguish. ‘I can’t … I don’t know what to do … I can’t leave you alone with that. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I should have left him to die on the road. I should have left him floating in the sea. I’m sorry … so sorry.’

‘Ari, you must trust me. It will come right. But now you must go from here and leave me to work.’

‘Yes, go, Ari, go!’ the voice mocks. ‘And when you return you will see I have mastered her. It will be my voice coming from her lips. You will see, little Ari. You will see what mischief you have done, what terror you have unleashed, and there will be nothing you can do to stop it. Every day my spirit grows stronger and soon I will spew out over this land, like a river of molten lava. Think about that, little Ari. Think about all those who I will destroy. Where should I start, do you think? With your mother, your sister?’

‘Get out of here, Ari,’ I shout at him. ‘You must trust me.’

He runs, clambering up the rocks and out through the slit with such haste, a shower of stones clatters back down into the passage. But the mocking laughter pursues him.

I stir the embers in the fire and add several pats of dried dung from the heap. I need a good steady heat for the next three days; the flesh and skull must dry out completely before I can grind them into powder. Though I am desperate to finish this as quickly as possible, it is not a task that can be rushed.

I worry that the head might have little flesh on it now, if the woman died last spring. Gingerly I peel back the edges of the sack. Long grey hair still clings to her pate. The head stinks and oozes with the slime of decay, but enough flesh still adheres to the skull to prepare the physic I need.

‘Forgive me, Mother, that I disturb your rest. Forgive me, Mother, that I take your bone. Forgive me, Mother, that I steal your flesh. I take from the dead, to return to the dead one who should not have been called forth.’

I lower the head as reverently as I can into a clay pot and cover it with a thick layer of hay torn from my pallet, then set it close to the glowing embers, so that the heat will warm the pot and mummify the contents. The head must dry, but not burn.

A shriek of laughter erupts from my sister’s lips. ‘You’re wasting your time, Eydis, Eydis.’

His voice grows more powerful as he becomes accustomed to my sister’s mouth. Her tongue moves as if it is his own. His foul breath vibrates in her throat. But it is my feet which tread on Fannar’s mutilated corpse; my reflection I see in Ari’s horrified eyes as I lumber towards him. The monstrous shadow falling across the threshold of a thousand dwellings. The screams that tear my soul into a million burning shreds. The awful, chilling silence.

I force myself to fight the images, drive them from my head. If I even once allow that terror to engulf me he will possess me as surely as the raging sea drowns the land. I will not surrender to fear. I am the stronger. I will be the stronger.

The creature is silent now. He is trying to read my thoughts. I can feel his spirit prowling round me looking for a way in, trying to guess what I am planning to do. But he dares not enter me, not yet. He fears that if he does I will learn his name and I will use it. He knows he must wait until I am weaker. We are both waiting, watching for our moment, our one chance to overcome the other, and there will be only one chance.

The foul steam rises from the clay pot and spirals up into the roof of the cave. An old woman, her cheeks hollow with hunger, her lips withered with age, hangs in the vapour of her own head. She stares out through the smoke at me, surprised, fearful even, as if I am the shadow on the wall of her childhood.

‘There is nothing to fear, Mother. You are the first, the first to be summoned to the door-doom of the dead.’

‘You are the last, Mother, Mother,’ the harsh voice mocks. ‘You are old, feeble. Do you really imagine you can command me? Mother, Mother, will you return to the grave with me? I should enjoy that. I will tear your skin from your wizened old back slowly, slowly as if I was peeling a plum, and you will feel the agony of it every hour, except that no hours pass in the grave. Time will run out, but torment never will.’

The old woman’s mouth opens wide in terror.

‘We will not let him enter your grave, Mother,’ I tell her. ‘Others are coming, you will not be alone.’

‘But they will not come in time, Eydis, Eydis. The mountain is stirring. The pool is answering.’

The draugr raises Valdis’s head and blows through her dead lips, a violent gust that shatters the ghost of the old woman, tearing the grey shadow of her into a hundred pieces and sending the wisps of vapour swirling up into the darkness above.

The old woman cannot stand against him alone. I grasp the iron ring about my waist, cursing it, cursing those who have bound me. I cannot reach out beyond the cave and bring the dead here. I can only call the girl, and if she does not come soon … The pool is answering, just as Heidrun said it would. The water is growing hotter, the heat building in the rocks under my feet and in the air. With every passing day, the steam hangs a little more densely over the pool. Bubbles of gas are popping from it, as if the great monster beneath it we have always feared is finally wakening. Soon the water will begin to boil. I know what that will mean for me, trapped here in the cave, unable to escape the scalding steam.

My grandfather often told us of a lake he used to swim in as a boy. The water was so warm that he was able to swim even when the snow lay thick upon the ground. The lake sides were very steep and they said that it was so deep in the middle of the lake that no one had ever been able to reach the bottom and whatever was lost in there could never be found. Some said the lake reached so deep that those in hell could look up and see the blue of it and imagine it was the sky.

One day, my grandfather and his friends had been swimming naked as usual, diving and chasing one another like seals. He had clambered out and to dry himself he had begun to kick about a calf’s bladder which he had fashioned into a ball. All his friends climbed out too to join in the game, all that is but one of them who had swum further out than the others. He was swimming back towards the shore when he began to scream, thrashing about in the water. His friends laughed, thinking he was playing the fool, but then they saw his face and arms were scarlet, and blistering.

My grandfather ran to the edge and prepared to dive in to rescue his friend, but just in time his companions grabbed him and pulled him back. Seeing the dense clouds of steam rising from the surface, my grandfather bent down and touched his finger lightly to the water. He drew it back with a shriek of pain. The water was scalding hot. His friend was being boiled alive.

But that was only the beginning, only a warning of what was to fall upon them. For fire and rock exploded from the mountains of Hekla, Herdubreid and Trölladyngja. Great torrents of red molten lava rushed down the mountainsides and into the valleys, hot ash and smoke shot into the air poisoning the land and suffocating people and animals alike. I know this. I have seen the bones of those who perished piled up like great scaffolds on the wasted lands.

My family survived. But the day the lake boiled, the skin was burned from my grandfather’s finger, a burn so deep the finger withered up, blackened and useless until the day he died. Every time he looked at it, he felt again the searing agony of body and heart. And now I realize that the monster in our pool is far more terrible than even the one Valdis and I feared as children. My grandfather could run from his burning lake, we cannot.

And when our pool boils, nothing will be able to survive in this cave, not the mice or the beetles, not the corpse and not me. If I cannot escape this cave, I will die in agony, scalded alive, like the boy in the lake. But I cannot leave Valdis. I swore I would take her body back to the river of ice so that her soul can be released to fly, I promised her. But if the draugr is not gone from her by then, I cannot take her from this place and release that monster into the world to destroy and murder. I will not leave her alone with that creature. I never left her side in life. I cannot abandon her in death. I will die in here as she has, chained to this rock. I press my hands together to keep them from shaking at the terror of it. Will I have the strength to do it?

I stare into the embers of the fire as the clay pot bakes. Three days before I can even begin to heal the draugr’s corpse. Three long days and nights of waiting. But how long will it be before the monster in the pool starts to roar. Weeks? Days? Hours? Minutes? How long can I survive in the cave as the water boils and steam rises ever more densely? I need time, enough time to find a way to send his spirit back, but however desperately you plead for it, time is not always granted. The water that drips from a leaking bowl will not run back into it again.