The Falcons of Fire and Ice

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.

‘My mother came from one of the oldest Catholic families in Portugal,’ she would say. ‘You must always remember that and see that you light a candle every day, just as she did and her grandmother before her.’

I didn’t really understand then what Catholic was, but I could tell from the tone of my mother’s voice, and the way she lifted her chin when she said it, that this was something to boast about.

Mother would show me the black wooden rosary with the silver cross left to her by my great-great-aunt who was an abbess of a convent. And if I had been a good girl, she would unwrap a little square of silk and let me hold the tiny tin wheel, the emblem of St Catherine, once worn by one of my father’s ancestors in the Crusades when he fought under the Holy Cross. If she couldn’t be proud of her husband or her life now, she could at least take pride in her heritage.

Mother flapped her goose-wing brush vigorously over the shrine, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

‘Ana, my dear, must you start to clean so early?’ my father protested gently. ‘It’s not even light yet. Sit, rest, eat your breakfast.’

My mother turned on him, her hands on her scrawny hips, her dull-brown eyes for once flashing with life. I cringed for my father, knowing that even after twenty-two years of marriage, he had once again walked blindly into the hole she had dug for him.

‘Rest!’ she snapped. ‘When do I have time to rest? I suppose you have remembered that the girl who washes for me is sick again. Well, she says she is sick, but is it just a coincidence that her lover’s ship has put into harbour? She’ll be in bed all right, but mark my words, it won’t be her own bed, that’s for sure. If we had a black slave, like every other respectable family, I wouldn’t be wearing my fingers to the bone, waiting for some little slut to decide whether or not she can be bothered to work. The spice merchant’s wife says their slave paid for herself in half a year with the wages they saved by not having to employ a maid, and the slave they have costs practically nothing to keep for she eats less than a hound, and needs no meat. But no, you’d rather see your own wife work herself into an early grave than buy a slave.’

Father raked his fingers wearily through his hair. ‘Ana, please, no more. If this girl is not reliable then look for another, but I’ve told you I will not buy a slave. We’ve discussed …’ He shrugged, but did not finish the sentence, as if after all these years of trying to reason with her, he had simply exhausted his store of words.

He had never told me why he would not give in to my mother over this. It would have made his life so much easier. He said, whenever she pressed him, that we could not afford it, but I had to admit that my mother was right, poorer families than ours had at least one slave, for they were cheaper by far than hiring a man or maid by the hour. But my father’s reason for refusing remained unspoken, like so much else in our lives.

He pushed his half-eaten meal away and began to fasten his shoes.

‘And what about her?’ my mother demanded, as she replaced the objects on the shrine. ‘I hope you’re not planning to take her with you today?’

I mouthed a silent ‘please’ at him, begging him not to leave me behind, for I knew mother would be in a foul temper all day.

Father grimaced and shook his head.

I pressed my hands together in supplication. ‘Please, please,’ I mouthed silently again.

‘I … I have a falcon with broken feathers in its tail. I will need an extra pair of hands to hold the bird while I glue in new feathers.’

‘There are plenty of boys at the mews who can do that. Isabela should be here learning how to be a wife and mother, not playing about with those birds. Unless you intend to marry her off to some stinking stable hand.’

My father shrugged to show me he’d tried his best. ‘Perhaps your mother is right. She needs you more than I do today with the girl being sick, and –’

The bell of the courtyard door jangled and at the same time someone hammered on the stout wood. All three of us froze. We stared at one another. No neighbour or pedlar would knock so early or so insistently.

The bell clanged again, ringing over and over. From the thundering at the door, it sounded as if someone was beating on it with metal rather than with their fist.

‘It could be someone in trouble,’ my father said as he crossed the courtyard. But I don’t think even he believed that. For the long minutes it seemed to take him to cross the few flags of the courtyard, I felt as if I could see through the solid wood, see the hooded, black-robed familiaries of the Inquisition standing outside our little house. Had Dona Ofelia reported me for showing sympathy for a heretic? Had they come to question me?

Father’s hands were trembling as he fumbled to turn the key in the lock. Mother moved to my side and put her arm around my shoulders, drawing me close to her, breathing in short little gasps. Side by side we watched through the open door of the kitchen, as the lock of the courtyard door yielded, but even before my father had pulled it open, someone was flinging it wide from the other side.

A tall man in the king’s livery pushed his way into the courtyard, followed by two soldiers. I realized I had been holding my breath and it almost exploded out of me in relief. It was not the Inquisition. Father was wanted at the royal palace; that was all. Perhaps the young king wanted to go hunting or –

‘You are under arrest, Falconer, by order of the king.’

My mother gave a little shriek and started forward, but my father motioned her back. He drew himself up as straight as he could, though he was no match for the height of the officer.

‘Arrest? On … on what charge? May I ask what crime I have committed?’

‘The charge is murder.’

My mother moaned, swaying so violently that I rushed to her side, fearing she was going to collapse. Even my father seemed too stunned to answer.

‘Murder, but who am I supposed to have murdered? When? Until yesterday I was waiting on the king in Lisbon and since then I have been nowhere alone, nowhere except to tend the king’s falcons.’

‘So you admit it,’ the officer said. ‘You admit that you were alone with the king’s birds.’

‘Yes, of course. Why shouldn’t I be? I am the Royal Falconer. The birds are my responsibility. I went to see that they had been well tended in my absence the moment I arrived back in Sintra.’

‘And had they been?’ The officer’s expression remained impassive.

‘Yes, the boys had been diligent in their duties. Perhaps not cleaning the dung from the wall behind the perches as well as I would have liked, but I will see to it that they do so this morning. I assure you that –’

‘So there was nothing amiss with the birds last night?’ the officer persisted.

The two soldiers were leaning against the wall, yawning and picking their teeth, evidently paying little attention to the exchange.

‘The birds were fit and well,’ my father said, his face showing his bewilderment. ‘One of the peregrines has damaged his wedge a little, but I will soon mend –’

‘And you personally locked the mews when you left?’

My father nodded. ‘I left one of my lads to sleep with the birds, as I always do, in case they should become disturbed during the night.’

‘Then it seems we have come to arrest the right man,’ the officer said. ‘This morning one of your other lads found the body of a gyrfalcon lifeless and cold.’

My father groaned, pressing his hand to his mouth, shaking his head sadly. I knew he was devastated. He loved every one of his birds as if they were his own children, but particularly the gyrfalcons, the royal falcon, rarest and most beautiful of all the hawks of the lure. But I still didn’t understand. The officer had spoken of murder and arrest, but what did the death of a bird have to do with that?

‘It happens,’ Father said with a sigh. ‘The gyrfalcon is a powerful bird, but also the most delicate. They can die without warning. Which one was it, do you know? Did the boy say?’

‘Oh, he told us, all right, Falconer, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It wasn’t just one bird. It was both of the gyrfalcons. The royal birds are dead. The most valuable birds in the mews are now so much carrion. Now, how do you account for that, Falconer? They both decided to fall off their perches at the same time, did they? So how did you kill them, Falconer?’

My father gasped in horror. ‘But I didn’t! I would no more hurt those birds than I would murder my own child. They’re my life. Something must have happened, a sudden illness … perhaps something frightened them … The lad who slept with them, he must surely tell you how this misfortune came about. Have you questioned him? What did he say?’

‘Oh yes, we questioned him all right, though we had to find him and untie him first. You see, he’d been bound, gagged and hidden behind some sacks of sand. He doesn’t remember being trussed up. What he does remember is settling down to eat his supper after you left. The usual fare except for an unexpected treat, a custard pastry had been left on his platter, the kind they sell in the market places of Lisbon. Naturally the lad being hungry, as they always are at that age, gobbled it up. Next thing he knows he felt dizzy and unaccountably sleepy. He collapsed and doesn’t recall a thing until he came round the next morning to find himself bound up … I noticed you keep a great many jars of herbs and flasks of potions in the mews.’

‘Every falconer does,’ my father said distractedly. ‘If a bird gets sick or it’s not thriving it must be treated at once. But have you discovered who drugged the boy?’

‘It must have been someone with great knowledge of herbs – someone who knew exactly what would keep a lad asleep for several hours so that he couldn’t raise the alarm and also which herb would poison a bird so swiftly that it would die in those same hours, isn’t that so, Falconer?’

Before my father could reply, the officer grabbed my father’s shoulder and spun him around, pressing his face into the rough stone wall of the courtyard. One of the two lounging soldiers finally sprang into action and bound my father’s wrists tightly behind him.

The officer pushed my father towards the open door. ‘You know what they used to do to a falconer who carelessly lost a valuable bird, don’t you? They sliced the weight of the bird out of the falconer’s own chest. If that was the punishment for letting a bird escape, what do you imagine they will do to a falconer who has deliberately murdered the king’s favourite birds? How much do you think a pair of gyrfalcons weighs, Falconer? I reckon there’s not going to be a lot of flesh left on your chest once they’ve finished, in fact I don’t reckon you’re going to have enough meat on your chest to equal the weight of those birds. So maybe they’ll just have to take the rest from your charming wife, or your pretty little daughter.’





Belém, Portugal Ricardo



Make in – to approach a falcon after it has made a kill.



‘Álvaro, Álvaro, wake up, you lazy dog!’

A clatter of stones hit the broken shutter of my window and pattered on to the wooden floorboards. Pio chattered angrily and retreated to the top of the cupboard. I groaned and turned over, trying to force my eyelids open, but shutting them against the cruelly bright morning sunlight.

‘Álvaro! I know you’re up there!’

Another hail of stones, one bouncing hard off my back, finally made me sit up. Even so, it took me a few moments to realize that the idiot throwing stones was actually addressing me. I’d become accustomed to thinking of myself as Ricardo these last few days, so that I’d almost forgotten that up to then I had been Álvaro, at least to those who shared the miserable squalor of this quarter of Belém.

‘Álvaro!’

‘I heard you! I’m coming!’ I bellowed. ‘And stop chucking stones, you f*ckwit! You’ll have my eye out.’

I struggled out of bed and crossed over to the window. The acid from last night’s cheap wine rose up, burning in my throat, and I coughed violently as I bent forward to see who was disturbing me at this unholy hour. How anyone can face being up before noon is a mystery I have never fathomed. What is the point of mornings, you tell me that? The taverns aren’t open, the whores haven’t unlocked their doors, and cock pits are empty, so what is there to get up for?

I blinked down into the street below. It was crowded with jostling people trying to edge around one another with barrels and baskets. Women balanced trays of fruit or pitchers of water on their heads, men held live chickens fluttering under their arms, and donkeys swayed under the weight of laden panniers or huge mounds of hay. In the midst of all this bustle, a solitary man was standing resolutely under my window gazing upwards. He was being shoved forward and backwards as those on the move barged into him, cursing him roundly for blocking the path, but he was ignoring all of them.

He was a scrawny-looking fellow, with fleshy ears that stuck out between the locks of his straight hair, like the handles on a flagon. I dimly recognized him as one of the potboys from the inn. What was his name – Felix … Filipe … ?

He beckoned with a frantic flapping of his hand as if he was trying to bat at a wasp. But I had no intention of going down there until I knew what he wanted. Had the lousy innkeeper sent him to collect the money I owed? Did I owe this Filipe some money as well? I couldn’t remember, but it wouldn’t be the first time I laid a wager after one too many glasses and not recalled the incident. If I was honest, I’d have to confess I’ve been told of many things I’ve done when I’m drunk that I don’t have the slightest recollection of, but then the world is full of liars. And, as I always say, if a man can’t remember laying a bet, then he was in no condition to make one. If you are going to trick a drunken man into making a wager, you can’t expect him to honour it when he’s sober.

I peered cautiously out of the window again. ‘What do you want?’ I yelled down.

‘It’s your woman … Silvia. You have to come.’

My heart began to thump against my ribs. ‘Silvia, but … Wait for me. I’ll have to dress. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

I knew it! I knew Silvia would be begging me to take her back, and it couldn’t be for the money, because she didn’t know I was about to acquire such a sum. She was coming back because she loved me, adored me in fact, and she’d found she couldn’t live without me, any more than I could live without her. She’d lay down conditions, of course; she had her pride. She’d make me promise I’d never do it again, whatever it was she thought me guilty of, and I would swear to it on my mother’s grave. But we’d both know she wouldn’t have sent this lad to fetch me if she hadn’t already made up her mind to return.

I gathered up the soiled clothes from the floor where I’d scattered them as I’d lurched to bed. Although I dressed as rapidly as possible, without paying any attention to the way I looked, it still seemed as if the simple task was taking hours to accomplish. My hands were trembling so much that I fumbled uselessly with every button and lace. I even managed to put my breeches on backwards and then had to fight to take them off again.

As soon as I crossed to the door, Pio leapt from the cupboard on to my shoulder, expecting to accompany me as usual, but I gently swung him on to the bed.

‘No, Pio, not today. You stay here.’

Silvia did not much care for Pio. He had the habit of springing on her back without warning and pulling her hair. It particularly amused him to do so when her hands were full and she couldn’t defend herself. Once, when I was nearly choking with laughter watching her struggle, I made the mistake of telling her that he only did it because she squealed, and if she ignored him, he would tire of it. I think that was the time she threw my dinner at me, and the names she called that innocent little monkey couldn’t be repeated even in a dockside tavern.

So on balance it seemed diplomatic to keep Pio out of the way until after Silvia had agreed to return. But Pio wasn’t used to being left behind. He made another rush at me, squeaking with anxiety, but I quickly closed the door in his face before he could slip through and heard his screams of rage behind me as I clattered down the stairs.

Filipe was squatting against a wall, waiting for me. He rose swiftly as I approached, and with another agitated flapping of his hand strode off down the narrow street, weaving in and out of the crowd with such agility that, several times, I lost sight of him altogether. At the end of the street, I turned in the direction of the inn, assuming that was where Silvia would be waiting, but I felt a hand on my sleeve, tugging me in the opposite direction.

‘This way, she’s down by the harbour,’ Filipe said.

I obediently trotted after him. So she’d found a bed somewhere along the waterfront. But just whose bed had she found? She wouldn’t have spent this past week alone, I knew that. I felt the sharp spike of jealousy plunge into my bowels. Who was he? Some sweaty hulk from the docks, all muscle and no brain? One of those oily musicians who play in the inns and wink at girls, or a foreign sailor with gold in his pocket? Was that why she wanted to see me again, because her lover’s ship had sailed?

I realized I was clenching my fists and I was probably muttering furiously to myself, because a middle-aged woman with a pannier of fish on her back squashed herself hard against the wall to avoid me, her hands raised across her face as if she thought I was going to attack her. I smiled and bowed, but she scuttled away, throwing terrified glances over her shoulder.

I tried to calm myself. There was no point in asking Silvia where she had been or who she had been with, that would only start another fight. For both our sakes, it was safer to ignore it. I must kiss her, cajole her and woo her again. That’s what she wanted, to be the centre of attention, to be made to feel the most desirable woman on earth, and she was too. Sweet Jesu, my groin was throbbing just at the thought of her. It had been a week since I’d held her, and my body ached for her more than any drunkard craves his wine. I could picture her now, naked save for that amulet in the form of the eye of God which nestled unblinking between her sweat-beaded breasts. She was straddling me, her back arched, her eyes closed and her lips parted in a cry, my hands pushing up over her slim waist, towards those soft round breasts.

I was so consumed by the image that I would have walked straight past the shack, had Filipe not grabbed my arm again.

‘She’s in there.’

He indicated a rough wooden hut, thrown together from old ship’s timbers black with tar, and from driftwood bleached to ash-grey by the salt sea. The doorway was covered by a piece of frayed sacking and outside several nets lay drying over barrels. The stones around the hut were stained with rusty splashes of dried fish blood, and littered with empty mussel shells. It was a typical fisherman’s hut, the kind of shelter he would use to mend his nets and clean his catch. The place stank of fish guts, salt weed and cat pee. It wouldn’t be hard to persuade Silvia to abandon such a rat hole. However handsome her fisher-boy, her ardour would cool as rapidly as sea wind if she was forced to spend time in this hovel.

But Silvia would never admit that. She’d be in there now artfully posed, draped seductively over a bench, waiting for me. She’d try to look as if she hadn’t been waiting at all, but I’d just happened to come in whilst she was resting. She’d feign complete indifference until she considered she had punished me enough with her coldness. But she knew only too well it was that very aloofness and disdain that drew me to her like a dumb fish to a juicy worm, no matter how many times it gets hooked. Even though I knew every twist and turn of the game she was playing, I was powerless to resist it. I took a deep breath and pulled aside the sacking curtain.

But what I saw was not Silvia reclining on a bench. Light shining in from the broken board in the wall revealed two men sitting on upturned barrels, fishermen judging by the stench and filth on their breeches. In one glance I took in the grappling iron lying within a hand’s reach of one of them, and the sharp knife tucked in the belt of the other. Not that either of them would have needed weapons to attack a man, not with their great fists.

As rapidly as I had stepped in I backed out again, crashing straight into Filipe, who squealed as I trod heavily on his toe. But I was in no mood to apologize to him. The little rat had set me up. I’d get even with him later, but right now the only thing on my mind was to get as far away from that hut as fast as I could. I turned to run, but Filipe yelled after me, ‘Wait! They need to tell you about Silvia. Come back!’

I turned. The men had made no move to follow me. I hesitated, then cautiously edged my way back towards the hut, torn between curiosity and a healthy desire to stay out of danger. I am not a man who enjoys pain and besides, I needed my face to remain intact to earn a living, not to mention all my other appendages, of which I had grown rather fond.

‘What,’ I asked Filipe, ‘do those two cod-buggerers know about Silvia that you couldn’t have told me back at my lodgings?’

The tips of Filipe’s jug-ears turned scarlet and he squirmed like a schoolboy told to drop his breeches.

Comprehension dawned. ‘Ah, I see it. They want money for their information, that’s it, isn’t it? Well, you can tell them from me I haven’t got the price of my next meal, and even if I came into a fortune I wouldn’t give as much as a bag of goat’s droppings for information about that bitch. I don’t care where she is or what trouble she’s got herself into.’

Filipe cringed and darted an embarrassed glance towards the hut. It suddenly occurred to me that Silvia might be hiding somewhere near, waiting until the fishermen had been paid. I raised my voice so she could hear.

‘If she wants money, tell her to sell herself on the streets, she’s had enough practice. And when she’s sick of doing that, she knows where to find me, but she’d better hurry because if my bed gets any colder, I’ll be moving Bárbara in to warm it.’

I stole the name from the wind, for the truth was I didn’t actually know any Bárbaras, apart from an elderly aunt with a hairy black moustache, and I certainly didn’t intend inviting her into my bed. But I could have met someone since Silvia had left me and there was no harm in letting her believe I had.

Filipe was flapping at me like an agitated duck. ‘No, no, don’t say such things. Silvia is … I didn’t know how to tell you. That’s why I brought you here. I thought you should see for yourself. If it is her, I mean. I think it is … I’m sure it is.’

He ran back to the shack and held the sacking curtain up, pointing to something lying on the floor inside. A cold hand seemed to have thrust itself inside my chest as I realized what he was trying to say. But it couldn’t be true. I would have known. I would have felt it.

Slowly, on legs that felt as heavy and dead as ship’s timbers, I edged towards the door. The two fishermen hadn’t moved from their barrels.

The older of the two removed the long strip of dried fish he was chewing, and waved it at the curtain. ‘Drop it. Don’t want everyone seeing our business.’

Filipe nudged me inside and, following hard on my heels, dropped the sacking back in place.

Between the two fishermen a long bundle was stretched out on the floorboards, wrapped in a piece of old sail cloth. I hadn’t even noticed it when I’d first entered, in my shock at finding the fishermen inside.

‘Caught her in the nets this morning. Knew there was a floating corpse even before our nets snagged her, could see the gulls following something.’

The younger of the two men leaned down and peeled back a flap of the sail. I tried to stifle a cry as I reeled backwards into Filipe, the bile jumping into my throat. The body had evidently been in the sea for some time. I could only see its head and shoulders, but it appeared to be naked. The eyes were open but milk-white, the face grotesquely swollen and bloated. The skin was peeling away. Something had been nibbling at the lips and nose and they were half-eaten away, revealing sharp white teeth. Salt crusted the matted black hair, turning it grey even as I stared at it.

Gagging, I clapped my hands to my mouth, trying to stop myself vomiting. The two fishermen glanced at each other with undisguised contempt for my weak stomach. I stared up at the broken roof boards of the hut, and when I could finally trust myself to speak without retching, I shook my head.

‘That’s not Silvia. It looks nothing like her.’

Filipe laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I know she’s swollen up in the water, but look at that amulet round her neck. It’s the eye of God. Silvia always wore –’

I did not look. ‘Thousands of women wear that amulet,’ I snapped.

‘But most wear a crucifix too, and that eye is much larger than –’

‘It isn’t her, I tell you. Some woman jilted by her lover probably. Hundreds of women a year drown themselves over men or unwanted brats or just from plain melancholy. Women are like that; they always have to make the dramatic gesture.’

‘’Cept this one didn’t drown herself,’ the old fisherman said quietly. ‘Not unless a corpse can rise and walk down to the sea. I reckon she was dead long before she ended up in the water. Look at those black marks about her neck. Plain as anything she’s been strangled, she has, had the life throttled out of her, then her body dumped in the sea.’

I couldn’t bring myself to look again at the body. I knew I’d be sick if I did. All three men were watching me intently. I could read the question written in their faces. But surely they couldn’t think that I would …

‘Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t hurt Silvia. I swear I never laid a finger on her. She’s alive. She’s found some other fool to take her in, but she’ll be back as soon as she becomes bored with him, you’ll see.’

Filipe shook his head sadly as if I was some dim-witted child. ‘Look at her, Álvaro, really look at her. It is Silvia. I’m … I’m not saying that you –’

‘No, no,’ I screamed at them. ‘That creature is not my Silvia. Don’t you think I’d recognize my own lover? It’s not her, I tell you. It’s some old witch, a monster. You don’t know Silvia like I do, a woman like that with so much life in her, so much passion, can’t just die. I’d know if she was dead. I’d know it!’

I turned and tried to push through the sacking, and only succeeded in tangling myself in it. In the end I ripped it from the doorway and strode out.

As soon as I got outside I did vomit. Two women walking along the waterfront crossed themselves and rapidly retreated back the way they’d come, as though they feared to pass me in case I had the plague. I was shaking violently, but I forced myself upright and staggered back towards my lodgings, trying to obliterate that grotesque face from my head, but the image was seared on to my eyeballs.

It couldn’t be her. Why on earth would they even imagine it was? There were hundreds of dark-haired women in Belém, and who was to say she even came from this town? Why, she could have been thrown into the sea miles up the coast and drifted here, or even fallen from a ship. It wasn’t her. My Silvia was not dead.

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t asked the fishermen what they were going to do with the body. Would they quietly dump it back in the water? They often did with corpses, safest way. No one wanted the trouble of reporting it, never mind losing a day’s work answering all those questions. And no man wanted his family threatened or worse if the murderer got to hear that he had reported a body. But if too many people already knew about the corpse, the fishermen would have no choice but to hand it over to the authorities.

Would Filipe swear on oath it was Silvia? If he did, I’d be the first person they would come looking for, and unless I could produce Silvia alive, there was no way I could prove my innocence. I had to leave my lodgings and leave now, today, before they came looking for me. It occurred to me then that Filipe had shown me the body to give me the opportunity to flee. If he was hoping for a reward for reporting the crime, then it would doubtless salve his conscience to give the man he was condemning to death a fighting chance to escape.

And I did have a chance, a damn good one. Dona Lúcia had promised to give me the money tomorrow. All I had to do was stay free for a night and a morning, then I could leave this town for good with a small fortune, enough to take me so far away from Belém they’d never find me.

I ran back to my lodgings and threw some clothes into a leather bag. Not all of them, of course. If Filipe did lead the authorities here, it must look as if I might return at any moment, and with luck they’d stay here to lie in wait for me.

Pio leapt for my shoulder, and I kissed him and stroked his tiny head, but I knew I couldn’t take him with me. You can’t sit in the dark corner of an inn or pass down a street with a monkey on your shoulder, without some child remembering.

I opened the shutter and placed him next to the window.

‘Go on, Pio, take yourself off.’

But he only turned his sad brown eyes on me and sat there squeaking plaintively. He was still sitting there, watching me, as I closed the door.

With the closing of the door, Álvaro vanished. Tomorrow Ricardo would charm the money from Dona Lúcia and then a third man, a stranger, would leave Belém for good. What he’d be called I didn’t yet know, but I had all night to work on that. As for Silvia, my poor little Silvia … no, no I couldn’t think about that now. I must keep my wits about me. All I had to do was stick to my plan; it was simple enough.

But the trouble with even the best-thought-out plans is that other people make them too.





Iceland Eydis



Tiercel – the male hawk, from the Latin ‘tertius’ meaning ‘a third’, for the male is a third smaller than the female.



I sensed the two men coming. Now I hear them scrambling down the rocks. There is another with them, someone both living and dead. I sense life and yet the life is not in this world.

I pull the veils over my sister’s face and my own. When people come to consult us we always keep ourselves veiled. They prefer it that way, not seeing our faces, as if they know their secrets will also be kept concealed. They are frightened of our naked gaze. We might see too far inside them. We might curse them with our stares. Our veils are their shields against us.

There is only one woman who has never feared us, Heidrun, an old, old friend. She told us she had watched over us whilst we were still in our mother’s womb, though my mother had never spoken of it to us. The first time I recall seeing Heidrun was the night that Valdis and I became seven years old. We’d been sleeping in the bed we shared and had woken in the dark to find Heidrun sitting in the room.

We had not been afraid. It seemed to us that we already knew her and had been expecting her to come. She had put her finger to her lips and held her hands out to us, pulling us from our bed and leading us out of the cottage right past where our parents lay sleeping. It never occurred to us to protest or ask her where we were going. We followed her as trustingly as if she were our own mother.

The year was drawing towards the end of summer, and though it must have been the middle of the night the sun hovered only just below the horizon, washing the sky behind the mountains with a shimmering pearly glow. It was neither dark nor light, but that strange owl light where rocks and people have no shadow and no substance, just an outline so thin and grey you think they might dissolve like smoke.

Heidrun strode over the short, springy turf and we scurried along behind her. I don’t know how long we walked, but we were neither cold nor tired, though we were climbing all the time. She led us between two towering rocks, black and sharp, that looked to us like crouching men, and we finally emerged in a valley which we had never entered before.

A turf-covered longhouse rose out of the valley floor. It would have been invisible had it not been for the lights blazing out from the open doorway. Heidrun reached the doorway and stood aside, smiling and motioning us to enter. Clinging tightly to each other, we edged inside. The longhouse was full of people, young and old, adults and children. A great fire blazed in the centre, musicians were playing, and the table was spread for a feast.

All eyes turned to us, and there was welcome written on every face. It seemed that they were all there to celebrate our birthday. A priest with a grave face but gentle voice gave his solemn blessing over the food and over us, for we had in that very hour become seven years old. Then we were whisked up to sit in a great chair that held the two of us side by side, and food was pressed into our hands – cakes sweetened with honey, fish so fresh and tender they must have been pulled from the lake no more than an hour before, and pungent pieces of shark that had been long buried in the earth till the flavour was as rich and strong as molten lava.

As we all ate, the musicians sang and soon the dancing began. People joined hands and danced in a circle around our chair of honour, their heels thumping on the earth floor. The wooden pillars of the hall vibrated to the pulse of that drum, which was covered with white bear skin and beaten with a long yellow bone. The rhythm of the dancers and drum was intoxicating, hot and heavy. The eyes of the dancers glazed over and their heads flopped forward or back, and still the drummer beat on and on, like the hammering of a mighty dragon’s heart.

The black ravens of the Lutherans had forbidden the circle dance, but it was still danced in those hidden valleys, even sometimes on the mountain tops to welcome the sun as our ancestors had done since the days when old gods ruled. Valdis and I had never seen the dance before, only heard it whispered about among the hired men and women who came to work on the farmstead. Our parents never talked of such dangerous things for they lived in constant fear of the Lutheran ravens.

The pulse of that drum must have soothed us, for stuffed with food and drunk with the music, we fell asleep in that great carved chair. Heidrun and others carried us back to our home, and slid us back into our bed as quietly as we had been taken from it. Our parents never knew we had gone. They would never have permitted us to go to such a place. But when we woke on that morning of our seventh birthday, our mother saw what she had long dreaded to see in our eyes, and that was the day she brought us to this cave.

The men are anxious, afraid. I wait for them, crouching in the shadows against the wall of the cave. It will be the first time anyone has come to our cave since Valdis died. The stench of her rotting corpse grows a little stronger each day. In the heat of the cave it can hardly do otherwise. They say if you live with a smell night and day you cease to notice it. It is true that for a brief time it floats away from you, circling like an anxiety that you try not to dwell upon, but like your fear, it is always there, ready to force itself upon you again when you least expect it. But there are stronger stenches in the cave, so everyone tells me, the smell of bad eggs from the hot-water pool and a lifetime of our excrement accumulating in a dark corner. Maybe those smells will be strong enough to mask the odour of decay.

I do not want them to know she is dead, not yet. They will feel orphaned. Only one voice to guide them, can that ever be as certain as two? They trust two voices; the unity comforts them, assures them that our predictions will come to pass. And they will ask themselves what the death of one of the oracle sisters portends. They will believe it is a bad omen for them and for the land. And that much is true.

I need time to grieve before I can strengthen myself to help them deal with her passing. Her death means so much more to me than just an omen, a sign from the spirits. For that is all we are to them, that is all we have ever been since we were brought here – a sign, an oracle, a twin voice that speaks the same word.

The first of the men, a young, agile lad, lowers himself down through the slit and seems almost to be bounding down the rocks until he is nearly at the base. Still I cannot see him for the passage that leads to the entrance is hidden from the cave by a rocky outcrop. I hear him call up and a rope slithers and thumps down towards him. They are lowering a bundle down into the cave, but it is not dried meat or wood. I know the sounds of those. A second, heavier man climbs down with careful deliberation, as a man moves when his joints are stiffening with age.

The two of them come into view around the rock. Between them they carry a bier, fashioned from birch poles, covered with sheep skins hastily lashed together with leather thongs. The man who lies on it does not stir, not even when they lay the bier down in front of me.

The older of the two men I know. Fannar, he is called. He has a small farmstead in the next valley. He has visited me a few times over the years, wanting remedies for barren ewes, a sick child, even a feud with his wife’s brother. The younger man I have not seen before. Most likely he is one of the hired hands who travel the country offering to work for any farmer or fisherman that will take them on for a few weeks or months. The clothes of both men are beaded with tiny drops of water. It must be raining up there in the world. It has been so long since I have felt the cool patter of raindrops on my face. I miss it.

Fannar briefly nods to me by way of a greeting. He nods also to Valdis.

‘She is sleeping,’ I explain.

The boy jerks back when he first catches sight of me, then he recovers himself. Fannar must have warned him about my appearance, but still I know it comes as a shock even when they have been warned. I am not offended. I have seen that expression on the faces of others ever since I was in my cradle. The boy will get used to it in time. Now he is politely looking away as if he does not want to be caught staring. Which is worse, I wonder, when they stare or when they refuse to look? But either way, I know they mean no disrespect.

Fannar jerks his chin towards the bier. ‘He’s hurt bad. Can you help him, Eydis?’

I shuffle closer. The long chain fastened to my waist rasps and clangs over the rock as I drag it behind me. The man’s face is swollen with bruises. His eyes are blackened and puffy, his nose clearly broken and perhaps his jaw too for it hangs open at an odd angle. His hair is matted with dark fluid. Blood has pooled in the creases either side of his nose and dried on the black stubble of his skin. Beneath it, his complexion is as blanched as a man’s trapped in ice.

‘Who is he?’ I ask.

Fannar grimaces. ‘A foreigner, we reckon. He’s the look of one of those men come up from Spain or Portugal to fish for cod in these waters. Though he’s a good way inland for a fisherman. What cause would he have to come here? Cod don’t graze on the mountains. Most of the foreigners venture no further than the villages along the coast or the Westmann Islands, especially now that the black devils are swarming everywhere.’

He spits on to the floor of the cave as if the very mention of the Protestant clergy brings a foul taste to his mouth.

Fannar continues. ‘Anyhow, the boy here says some Lutheran lads ran into him along the track, gave him a right hammering. I reckon they were Danes, bound to be. Arrogant young goats. Come here and think they can lord it over us whose families have farmed these lands since Thor and Odin ruled the heavens.’

Fannar, like most crofters, has always resented Danish rule of Iceland, but out here in the interior it never really affected their lives until the Danish king forced Lutheranism upon them. It is the Danes who have driven out or slaughtered the Catholic priests, monks and nuns; closing the abbeys; destroying the altars, books and holy objects, and forbidding the Catholic Mass or any rites of the old Church. That was when the resentment of Danish rule really began to boil in their veins. Now any Dane who is foolish enough to travel alone on dark nights in these parts will be fortunate indeed to see the dawn.

I turn to the lad, who is staring with fascination at the water bubbling up in the hot pool. He is short but stocky, built like an Icelandic horse for stamina and distance. He still has the soft, fair cheeks of a girl, but a beard of sorts is trying to colonize his chin and looks set to be the same red-gold hue as his thick, shaggy tangle of hair.

‘You saw him attacked, boy? Why did they beat him?’

He glances back at me, his chin raised so as not to look at the bloody pulp of a man which lies on the ground between us.

‘They were walking towards him on the road. They started joking about him even before they came close, how he looked like a foreigner, with his dark skin and all. Then they saw the crucifix about his neck. They circled him and told him to take the crucifix off, throw it into the dirt and piss on it, but he wouldn’t. They tried to take it from him, but he fought back. He was strong, far stronger than any man I’ve seen. He fought like Thor himself. But there were seven or eight of them and they all had long, stout staves. He was unarmed. They told him they were going to teach him a lesson in the true faith. They were battering him from all sides. I saw what they did, but I … I was afraid to try and stop them.’ He flushes and bows his head, shamed by his cowardice.

Fannar slaps the lad’s shoulder. ‘Don’t blame yourself, son. If you’d tried to interfere, you’d be lying there bleeding alongside him. They’d have killed the pair of you. You did the best thing you could, lad, in running to fetch me. Eydis and Valdis’ll take good care of him.’

‘I wish we could. But he needs help beyond our skill, Fannar. It’s a physician, a bone setter, he wants.’

‘Can’t risk fetching a physician,’ Fannar says. ‘They left him for dead. If they know he still lives, he’ll be arrested for practising the old faith, and any that try to help him will be made to suffer too. Try what you can, Eydis. I don’t know if any power on earth can raise him to his senses again, but you’re the only hope the poor soul’s got. I’ll pray to the Holy Virgin for him. And I’ll pray too that those Danish bastards rot in hell for what they’ve done,’ he adds with a scowl.

I send them both away with instructions to bring me the herbs I will need and some dried mutton so that I can make him a broth if he wakes, for I judge that it will be a while before he can chew, if he ever can again.

Now that the men are gone I move close to him, preparing to strip him so that I can examine him properly. I reach out a hand towards him, and hear a clicking and rasping of wings. A mass of black beetles emerges from the dark recess of the cave and takes flight above me. Although many beetles live in the crevices of the rocks, I have never seen them flying together before. They circle over the body, round and round, faster and faster, like a whirlpool of black water. I try to flap them away, but they will not be deterred. They keep spinning round the man, as if they are trying to bind him in ropes of smoke.

I become aware of another sound, like the frightened scream of some tiny dying creature. One of the beetles alights on my shoulder. I try to shake it off, but the scream rises higher and higher, until my eyes water from the pain of it.

‘Let him die, Eydis. Do not touch him. Let him die. He must die.’

The voice is so faint, so high-pitched, that I can scarcely make out the words. But I recognize that voice. I would have sworn it was my own, yet it is so far off I know it is not coming from my head.

I turn to try to catch the beetle in my hand, but the man suddenly screams as if he is being torn in two. His body convulses in agony. Beneath his closed eyelids, I can see his eyes flicking back and forth as if he is trapped in a terrible nightmare. I have to help him. I cannot simply leave a man to die. I might not be able to save him, but at least I can make his last hours comfortable.

I cross to the underground pool, pulling my chain behind me, and scoop out a bowl of hot water. Then, returning to the injured man, I moisten a rag intending to wipe his bloody lips. The black beetles stop circling. They fly up and swarm about my face, their sharp wings scratching and beating against my skin. I raise one arm to fend them off, while with the other I lay the wet rag to his face.

The instant I touch him with my fingers, the beetles scatter, scuttling back beneath their rocks, vanishing as if they are fleeing from a predator. I stretch out my hand again to wipe the bloodied face when, out of the corner of my eye, I see something moving. A huge shadow is oozing over the wall behind the body of the man, spreading like a dark stain until the whole side of the cave is engulfed by it. I cannot move. The shadow bursts from the rock and roars across the cave, snuffing out the burning torches as if the flames have been doused with water. The cave is plunged into darkness and silence.

A tiny shrill voice echoes around me. ‘Sister, my sister, what have you done? You have betrayed me, Eydis. You have damned me!’