The Falcons of Fire and Ice

CHAPTER Seven



A French nobleman was suspicious that his wife had a lover. So he locked her up in a high tower, with only a narrow window at the top and walls no man could scale. Then he set his sister to keep watch on the tower whenever he was absent from it. But when the nobleman left the tower each day to go hunting, the woman’s lover transformed himself into a goshawk and flew in through the narrow window. There he turned into a man again and made love to the woman, before flying away. And so they continued for many months, blissfully happy in each other’s arms.

But the woman’s sister-in-law noticed the goshawk flying in and out of the tower. One day she followed the bird, and when he alighted on the ground, she watched him resume his human form. She told her brother, who fitted sharp spikes to the window, then pretended to go hunting. The lover, believing it was safe to visit the woman, transformed himself into the hawk and flew in through the window, and impaled himself on the spikes. The wounds were fatal and he died in his lover’s arms. But his beloved was already pregnant with his son and that infant grew up to become a great hero of France.





Coast of France Ricardo



Ruff – when the falcon strikes its prey without seizing it.



‘The men will row you ashore now,’ the ship’s master said. ‘Take your water kegs. There’s a stream and my quartermaster says the water is sweet. You can fill them before we return.’

‘Why are we disembarking here?’ the merchant demanded. ‘The bay’s deserted. There’s no town. Not even a house to be seen for miles. We must continue to a well-appointed harbour where –’

‘Where we can sleep in a decent bed on land and eat a meal that’s fit for civilized people,’ his wife finished for him. ‘Why should we set one toe on this desolate beach? How do we know you won’t just sail off and leave us there to starve? I’ve heard about such things – passengers being abandoned on some remote island to die, or sold to marauding pirates.’

‘You’d have to pay pirates to take that harridan,’ I muttered to one of the sailors waiting to help us to climb down into the shore boat.

He grinned, showing a mouthful of stubby, blackened teeth. ‘They wouldn’t take her if you gave them all the gold in the New World. A night with her and they’d be begging the judges to hang them.’

‘Senhora,’ the master said, in the tone of one who was barely restraining himself from throwing her overboard, ‘the ship will not abandon you because she will not be sailing tonight. Have you not seen?’ He gestured towards the towering clouds rising up over the distant headland. ‘There’s a storm coming. We know this coastline well. The nearest inhabited port is miles away, and with this wind against us, we haven’t a hope of reaching it before the storm breaks. If we attempt to sail any further we’ll be sailing straight into the storm and we’ll be caught out at sea when the full force of it hits us. This bay at least offers us some protection, though we’ll still take a beating.’

‘And you expect a fragile, delicate woman like my wife to spend the night on the beach in a storm?’ the merchant said, his expression as black as the gathering clouds.

The sailors sniggered. Dona Flávia was about as delicate as a whale.

The master spat copiously into the waves below. ‘She can stay aboard, if she’s a mind to, as can any of you, but I warn you now, you’d best make sure that you are lashed down as tight as the boxes and barrels, for once the ship starts being pounded, you’ll be thrown around so much you’re liable to get your brains dashed out on the bulkheads. And I hope you’ve a strong stomach, for if you’ve felt seasick before now, I can assure you that you’ll all be praying to drown once this ship starts plunging up and down.’

Dona Flávia shrieked and clutched frantically at Isabela’s arm as if it was a holy relic. ‘But if the storm is going to be so terrible, we’ll all be swept away by the sea if we spend the night on the beach. We’ll all drown!’

The master closed his eyes as if he was praying. ‘Then I suggest, Senhora, you don’t spend the night on the beach. The boatswain tells me there is a stone cottage among the trees beyond the beach. It’s not inhabited, but it will shelter you for tonight. Now, unless you want to ride out the storm on the ship, get into that shore boat before the wind grows any stronger else you’ll all end up at the bottom of the bay.’

I don’t know who invented the rope ladder, but whoever it was should have been made to dangle from it over a pit of vipers while men swung it violently to and fro, because that’s exactly what it felt as if I was being forced to do, as I clambered down from the ship’s towering side into the pathetically small shore boat below. The boat was not only bucking up and down, but also crashing into the side of the ship and then rolling away, leaving a great yawning gap of churning water just at the precise moment when you were trying to step into it.

I finally managed to hurl myself into the little craft, but not without banging my shin hard on the gunwale. I hunched in the boat, massaging my leg, as the wind dashed icy water into my face, and long before the next passenger had climbed down I was already soaked to the skin. I closed my eyes against the stinging salt, and the bloated, rotting face of that drowned woman rose up in front of me. Once again I was back in the tower of Belém, feeling the cold waves creeping up my legs. I opened my eyes rapidly.

Most of the passengers had climbed down into the boat now except the girl Isabela, and the merchant and his wife. Isabela already had her little foot on the ladder. I stood up, ready to help catch her as she descended. I hadn’t planned it, but it came to me as suddenly as the image of the drowned woman, that I could cause that accident now. One little push as she stepped down on to the gunwale of the boat and she would slip over the side, between the boat and the ship. With luck, she’d hit her head as the two vessels clashed together, and would sink like a lead coffin. The scene played out perfectly in my head as if it was already happening.

The girl stood on the bottom rung, both arms clinging to the ladder, gazing fearfully down as the boat was dragged back from the ship. As the sailors hauled on the ropes, trying to pull the boat closer to the ladder again, she raised her foot in readiness. I reached up to clasp her waist, but at that moment a wave lifted the boat, and I overbalanced. I found myself slipping over the side. I flailed desperately, but could find nothing to grab on to. Then I felt a strong hand seize the back of my doublet and haul me into the boat again, where I sat trembling with shock.

‘Do you want to get yourself killed, Senhor?’ the boatswain shouted. ‘Sit down and leave it to us. You nearly pulled the girl into the sea along with you.’

He put his brawny arm about Isabela’s waist and lifted her bodily into the boat, seating her firmly on the plank in front of me.

She took a few gulps of air to steady herself, then smiled trustingly at me. ‘Thank you for trying to help me, Senhor. It was very kind, but you shouldn’t take such risks for me.’

I tried to return the smile, hoping that she would not notice how my hands shook. But Isabela was already distracted by Dona Flávia’s shrieking descent. Her husband had insisted that a rope be fastened under his wife’s armpits, in case she should slip, though it would need the anchor windlass to winch her up again if she did.

Dona Flávia thrashed wildly around with her foot trying to find the next rung. She looked like a cow attempting to dance. Isabela’s face was a picture of concern, though she was biting her lip as if she was trying to suppress her laughter, while the sailors and other passengers made no effort to conceal their grins.

Isabela was a pretty little thing. Her skin was a rich sweet caramel, lighter than my Silvia’s nut-brown body, but at least it wasn’t as pale as those insipid skins of the noblemen’s daughters who are constantly shielded from the sun and who are so colourless they remind me of fat white grubs dug up from the earth.

Isabela’s eyes were a greenish-blue and couldn’t seem to make up their mind which shade to be. Her hair, though dark and curly, was not the great silky mane that Silvia possessed, but the kind that tends to frizz up at the first sign of dampness. Her breasts weren’t Silvia’s either. I grant you that I hadn’t had the opportunity to examine them in any detail, but they swelled over the top of her gown perkily enough, though they were as small as half lemons in comparison to Silvia’s luscious ripe fruits. In short, she was not wildly beautiful or voluptuous, but she possessed the kind of sudden radiant smile that would entice any man to her side.

And had things been different I would probably have amused myself by seducing her. I might have found my task easier to accomplish if I had. But the moment I set eyes on Isabela I discovered that knowing you are going to murder a girl cools any lust you might feel as rapidly as water thrown over an amorous dog. The thought of killing a woman might excite some men, but not me, not if I was going to have to murder her in cold blood. It’s different, of course, if you don’t know that a woman will one day die at your hands, then you can enjoy her to the full. But if there was one thing I was certain of on this voyage it was that Isabela had to die and I was the one who would have to ensure that she did.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what answer I gave to the two Jesuits when they returned to the tower of Belém. It wasn’t the promise of the wealth they offered me. Naturally, if it had been a simple matter of theft or deception, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take their money, except, of course, to try to bargain my fee up. But murder, that’s an entirely different matter.

But it was the sight of that corpse which persuaded me to agree, knowing that after weeks of torment, one day the tide would rise and keep rising until it was over my head and then I would become that foul abomination lying on the paving slabs. You think I was a coward? Well, you just imagine descending into a crypt, gagging on the foul stench of maggots and decay, then lifting a coffin lid and seeing your own rotting face in that coffin staring sightlessly up at you. Picture that if you can, then tell me honestly, if you’d been offered a way out of that accursed tower, would you have chosen instead to hang there in chains, unable to move as the cold waves broke over you, and wait day after day for that fatal tide? Would you have chosen to stay and watch that body rot before your eyes? Would you?

The Jesuits had seen to it that I was bathed and given such clothes, bedding and money that I would need for the voyage. They had ensured not only that Isabela found a suitable ship, but also that I obtained a passage on the same one. The agent had been bribed with a generous purse not to demand papers or inquire too closely into the identity of his clients. The priests had done all they could to make things easy for me, as they said. What happened after that was in my hands. But the question was – how to do it? And I had no more ideas about that now than I’d had when I first boarded the ship.

Isabela must have felt me studying her for she suddenly turned and bestowed another of her smiles in my direction. ‘Poor Dona Flávia. I do believe she will kiss the ground when we reach England.’

And so would I. At least with her and her husband gone from the ship, I might be able to get Isabela alone. Every time I had tried, particularly after dark, Dona Flávia descended like a huge blubbery angel determined to defend the girl’s honour. She seemed to regard safeguarding Isabela’s virtue as her personal mission, though of course she made use of the girl as if she was her own daughter, sending her to fetch things from the sleeping quarters or massage oil of lavender into her temples when she declared herself unable to sleep.

But even if I could get the girl away from Dona Flávia I couldn’t just walk up behind her and pitch her overboard. There were always too many eyes on watch and though I had made a friend of one of the sailors by buying wine from him, paying double what the dog piss was worth, I was pretty sure even he would raise the alarm if I tried to throw someone into the sea. It had to be made to look like an accident.

Even when pig-boy and his father, and Dona Flávia and her husband had all left the ship, there would still be two other passengers who were travelling on to Iceland and those two men seemed equally determined to make friends with Isabela. Hardly surprising since she was the only girl aboard. But it was going to be hard to prise their attentions away from her.

The boat rocked alarmingly as Dona Flávia finally plopped down into it, gasping and wailing that she would never, never set foot on that rope ladder again. When her husband mildly pointed out that she would have to climb up it again tomorrow as there was no other way back on board the ship, she declared she would rather stay on the shore and live in the stone cottage for the rest of her life. The sailors smirked at one another and cast off.

By the time we reached the shore, though, no one was smiling or even had the energy to talk. With our rolls of bedding slung over our shoulders and little water kegs tucked under our arms, we staggered over the sand behind the boatswain, who carried a stout barrel hoisted on one shoulder, which I devoutly prayed was full of wine.

My clothes were sodden and the roll of blankets felt no drier. So much water had washed into the boat that my shoes had filled up and my numb toes were splashing about in their own private pools. The wind buffeted us so fiercely that it was hard for any of us to walk in a straight line. The blown sand savagely stung our skin and we were reduced to peering through our fingers to stop ourselves being blinded.

We floundered over a steep dune, our feet sinking in the loose sand, and saw, stretched out in front of us, an area of dry scrub and gorse which seemed to be growing right out of the sand. Behind that a dense forest rose up all around, obscuring any view of what lay beyond. The towering trees were already swaying and bending in the strengthening wind.

‘There you are.’ The boatswain nodded to a low stone building half-hidden among the bushes. ‘Nice little nest for the night.’

Dona Flávia gave a squawk that put me in mind of an affronted hen. ‘The captain cannot mean us to sleep in there. Have you brought us to the right place, my man? There must be a house somewhere, this is just a byre.’

She peered earnestly around the scrubland as if there might be a commodious mansion or castle in the vicinity which we had somehow failed to notice.

‘This is it,’ the boatswain said, with the cheerfulness of one who thinks watching other men being tortured is the height of entertainment. ‘Course, if you don’t fancy spending the night here, you can always come back with me and climb that rope ladder again.’

He flung open what was left of the wooden door and dumped the barrel inside before emerging. ‘Stream cuts through the dunes over there. So you’ll not want for water. If the storm passes, captain’ll want to set sail first light, that’s if there’s no repairs to make. If it hasn’t blown over we’ll maybe be stuck here for a day or two, more even, so you’d best ration the food in case. But don’t go wandering off too far. When the captain’s ready to sail he’ll have the trumpet sounded and the shore boat’ll come back to take you off the beach. So make sure you stay within sound of the ship. He’s not a patient man, isn’t the captain. And he’ll not waste precious sailing time searching for any man or woman that doesn’t come back to the beach when the trumpet’s blown.’

Suddenly, this wild, empty corner of the world didn’t seem so bad. Maybe I wouldn’t need to kill the girl, after all. All I had to do was to ensure she didn’t get back on that ship. If she was left behind it would be up to her whether she survived or not. There was bound to be a town or village somewhere beyond the forest. If it took her two or three days to walk there, so much the better, there’d be no chance of her catching up with the ship or finding another. When I returned without her, I could tell the priests she was dead and there’d be nothing to prove she wasn’t. She’d never show up in Portugal again, not if she had any sense. Who in their right mind would walk back into the wolf’s lair, after they’d escaped? But if she perished from starvation here, then it wouldn’t be my fault. I’d have given her the chance to live. My conscience would be clear.





Coast of France Isabela



Wake – when a falconer sits up all night with a newly trapped falcon in order to tame her by keeping her awake.



We all crowded into the tiny one-roomed cottage, if indeed that was what this place had once been. But it must have been many years since anyone had called it home. Only the rotting remains of a table crouching in the corner and a faded red crucifix painted crudely above the door showed that humans had ever inhabited this place. The floor was covered in sand that had blown into small drifts against the far wall. The timber tiles on the roof were cracked, and the shutter had long since fallen from the only window. But its thick stone walls still provided some shelter, or at least a flock of goats had evidently thought so, for the floor was littered with their droppings and strands of their hair were caught on the stones of the wall.

For a few minutes no one in the party seemed to know what to do. We just stood there, clutching our bundles, staring around as if we expected an innkeeper to come bustling in and show us to our rooms.

Vítor set his bundle down against the wall. He glanced at me, then looked round at the other passengers.

‘We should quickly gather as much dry kindling and firewood as we can, enough to last for several days, and stack it in here before the storm breaks. We must separate and hunt for whatever we can find, especially thick branches of dried wood which will burn the longest.’

‘I hope, Senhor Vítor, you are not expecting me to go out gathering wood. I’m not a peasant,’ Dona Flávia said indignantly.

‘Naturally I did not mean you, Dona Flávia. I thought you might stay here and perhaps collect up the goat dung to clear the floor. The pellets seem dry and will burn –’

‘Me! Gather goat dung!’ Dona Flávia’s indignant shriek must surely have been heard back aboard the ship. ‘I’ve never heard anything so preposterous in my life, but what can you expect from a man who thinks it sport to see us all devoured by ferocious sea monsters?’

‘I assure you sea monks don’t devour –’ Vítor began, but was cut short by Marcos.

‘Dona Flávia, as a physician I would strongly advise that after your terrible ordeal getting here, you should not exert yourself at all, but simply rest as best you can in here.’

Dona Flávia beamed at him. ‘What a blessing it is to have someone who understands my frail constitution. Senhor Marcos, I insist you stay with me in case I should become faint. Besides, suppose pirates or Frenchmen should burst in upon me when I am alone. I’ve heard about the French, Senhor. Their men have an insatiable appetite for women.’

But I don’t think it was fear of Frenchmen or pirates that caused the look of panic to flash across the poor physician’s face.

‘I’m sure the boy will stay here and keep you company, Dona Flávia,’ he said hastily. ‘He’s a strapping lad, he’ll look after you. And he could also make himself useful clearing the floor of dung and heaping it ready to burn.’

‘Certainly he will,’ the boy’s father answered for him, glancing anxiously at his glowering lump of a son as if he had grave doubts whether the boy was equal to even this simple task.

Fausto picked two of the water kegs and, sidling up to me, murmured, ‘Dona Isabela, will you accompany me to fetch the water while the others search for wood?’

But though he spoke low, Vítor must have been watching him, for he rounded on him savagely.

‘Have you no sense? Isabela will hurt herself if she tries to carry full water kegs. Do you really expect someone of her slender size to heave great weights about?’

‘I’m quite capable of –’ I tried to protest, but neither man was listening.

‘Isabela can help me to gather wood,’ Vítor said.

‘And you think that easier work, do you? Hauling logs about,’ Fausto retorted.

‘I have no intention of permitting her to carry logs, you imbecile, just twigs and bracken for kindling.’

Furious, I turned on my heel and stalked out of the cottage. What gave them the right to debate what I was and wasn’t able to do as though I was a child? I was more than equal to the task of carrying a bundle of wood or a small keg of water, which scarcely weighed any heavier than a pail. What did they think I’d been doing all my life? Sitting around being waited on by servants? I was in such a temper as I strode towards the forest that I found myself deep among the trees before I even considered where I was going.

Though the trunks broke the strength of the wind, it howled through the branches above, making them bend and creak, and sending twigs flying off like stones from a catapult. If this kept up there would be plenty of wood to burn come morning. One thing was for certain, I was determined now I was not going to collect kindling twigs. I’d return with good stout branches even if I had to walk all night to find them. But the sky was already bubbling black with clouds and beneath the canopy of trees it was darker still. Every tree and herb, leaf and twig was turned to grey in the fading light. Any fallen wood that had lain all summer and was dry enough for burning had merged into one colour with the forest floor of dry leaves, and it was impossible to distinguish it at any distance.

As always when foraging, I convinced myself that if I took just a few more steps I would find what I was searching for, and so I just kept walking, another few yards, then another. Then suddenly as I pushed my way between two bushes I found myself in a small clearing. The ground was uneven, moulded into a series of long humps and hollows, as if waves had formed in the earth. Perhaps these were ancient fallen tree trunks which had over the years been covered by the leaf mould.

In the dim light I saw what I took to be several branches sticking at odd angles out of the ground. They weren’t exactly logs, but they were definitely thicker than kindling. I picked my way towards them between the humps, but as I came closer I saw these were not branches at all, or rather they had been, but someone had lashed them together to make three crosses, still standing at drunken angles. There had once been more of them, for there were fragments of others scattered about and half-buried under the leaves.

It was only when I saw them for what they were that I realized just where they had been placed. The humps were not decaying tree trunks at all, they were graves. Six long ones and two shorter graves beside them, perhaps even a third, though it was so tiny it was hard to be sure. Were these smaller ones the resting places of children? What were they doing out here so far from any church or charnel house? Perhaps they were the graves of the people who once lived in the deserted cottage. But what terrible disaster had overtaken them? And who buried them and made such hasty crosses for their resting places?

From sheer curiosity I knelt down and peered at one of the crosses to see if there was any name or date inscribed there. But there was nothing. These people had been buried without names. Then I saw something pale half-buried in the leaf mould. It stood out starkly in the sickly light of the coming storm. Without even thinking about what I did, I began to brush away the dried leaves and scooped it into the palm of my hand before I registered what it was. I peered at it, then froze. It was not the sight of the iron ring lying in my palm that shocked me, but what was inside the ring. It was a white finger bone, still with scraps of parchment-like skin clinging to it.

Behind me, even over the moaning of the wind, I heard a long-drawn-out shriek of rage and at the same time the snapping of twigs as if something was running fast towards me. I scrambled to my feet and whirled round. Something was moving behind the bushes, something was hiding there. Still clutching the bone, I ran. I didn’t know where I was going except that it wasn’t back towards the cottage, because whatever it was that was pursuing me was coming towards me from that direction, as if it was driving me from any place of refuge. I pelted through the trees, stumbling over roots, tearing my skirts on bushes and my hair on branches.

The wind was roaring overhead and my own progress was so noisy that I couldn’t hear how close the creature was at my heels. At any moment I expected to feel sharp claws fastened on to my back, teeth sinking into my legs. My blood was pounding in my ears and my breath rasping in my throat. I turned as I ran, trying to get a glimpse of what it was that was hunting me. Then, with a sickening jolt, my foot stepped into nothing. The ground fell away and I was tumbling down and down.





Coast of France Ricardo



Sharp set – a hungry hawk. A bird should be kept sharp set before it is taken out to hunt.



I could hear Isabela crashing through the forest even above the wind. Damn it, every creature in there must have been able to mark her progress as she blundered into branches and tore through bushes. You wouldn’t think such a dainty little thing could lumber about so clumsily, but she was plainly as terrified as I. That shriek was chilling enough to turn your guts to ice. Unlike her, though, I couldn’t run. I cowered down behind the bush where I was hiding and tried desperately to work out where the hell the cry had come from. I peered into the gloom, trying to get a glimpse of the beast that had uttered such a cry, but the branches and bushes were being whipped back and forth so fiercely by the winds that even if a bear had been rampaging through the forest, I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish it from a tree in that gloom.

The noise of Isabela’s flight had almost faded into the distance now. The evening was growing darker by the minute and I was desperate to get back to the cottage before I lost my way entirely. Spending the night lying in goats’ shit with the great she-whale and pig-boy was beginning to feel strangely enticing compared to a night out here alone in the storm. But I dared not move until I knew what it was that had made that noise.

Then I heard a long-drawn-out scream. I’d heard enough screams like that in my time to be quite certain it was a woman’s cry, a woman in pain, a woman terrified. It was far away, but I knew it was Isabela. Whatever that beast was, it must have caught up with her and seized her in its jaws. I almost started in the direction of the sound, thinking I should do something to help her. But I quickly pulled myself together. If she was hurt, dead even, wasn’t that exactly what I wanted? Besides, who knew what had attacked her? Judging by that unearthly shriek, it was a monster no man alone could hope to tackle.

But the girl had conveniently drawn it away from me, and now was the time to run for it while it was safely occupied devouring its kill. Then a chilling thought occurred to me. If there was one monster out there, might it not also have a mate, even a pack? Although it made my flesh crawl to think of it, it also pushed me into action. I had to move and move now. I certainly didn’t intend spending the night alone in a forest full of slavering beasts. With luck, if there were more of them, they’d be drawn to the corpse by the smell of blood.

I rose cautiously and peered about me, trying to work out which way I’d come. The trouble was, I’d been so intent on following the girl that I hadn’t taken much notice of landmarks, and one tree was beginning to look dismally like another in the dark, not that they didn’t in daylight. I’ve always loathed the countryside, and this evening’s events had certainly done nothing to endear it to me.

I edged out from behind the bush and started off at an ungainly trot back in what I hoped was the direction of the stone byre. The wind swirled among the branches, plunging down through any small gap in the trees, sucking up fallen twigs and dried leaves in stinging spirals. Then the rain began to fall, big fat drops plopping down through the branches. I hurried as fast as I dared, peering around me all the time in case that beast, having tired of the girl, had doubled back and was now stalking me. But after I almost pitched headlong several times over tree roots and crashed painfully into branches, I realized that I was in grave danger of breaking a leg or knocking myself unconscious. And if I did, I’d be at the mercy of any passing predator who fancied an easy meal. So I forced myself to concentrate on getting clear of the trees as quickly as possible.

The rain was pouring down now. Between the darkness and the rain driving into my eyes I could only see my own hand, white as a maggot, moving in front of me as if it had become detached from my body and was its own creature. The leaves were now so wet under foot that several times my feet slipped from under me and I had to grab at branches to steady myself, but finally I burst out from the trees into the scrub. I staggered backwards as the full roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves on the shore exploded in my ears.

I could see no sign of the cottage and began to fear that I had emerged from the forest on to a different shore altogether. I clawed my way up the nearest dune on my hands and knees, for there was no way I could stand upright against the immense force of the wind. At the top, lying on my belly, I peered out into the bay. Even in the darkness and blinding rain I could see the great white foaming tops of the black waves as they reared up, racing towards the shore. But I could make out nothing else. I scrubbed the water out of my eyes with my sodden sleeve. Then finally, to my great relief, I glimpsed them, tiny pinpoints of yellow light rising up over the water, and sinking down again to be hidden from view by the great black roll of the sea. I watched them rise two or three times more, just to assure myself it was the ship’s lanterns I could see. At least now I knew I was on the right beach, unless of course there was some other ship riding out the storm.

By the time I eventually found the cottage and burst in through the remains of the wooden door, my limbs and face were so wet and numb with cold that even the draughty interior of the cottage felt like a hot summer’s afternoon in Portugal.

I was greeted with howls of protest as the wind rushed in with me, swirling the sand on the floor into a dust storm and almost extinguishing the flames of the small fire. The merchant hurried over and fought to close the door, stuffing the dislodged cloth back into the gaps in the wood.

‘Have you found them?’ Dona Flávia demanded, the moment she had finished an exaggerated bout of coughing.

I stood speechless, dripping on to the floor. Rain was running into the cottage in half a dozen places through the cracked tiles on the roof and forming small puddles on the sand. The party were all huddled round a small fire in the far corner of the room where the roof tiles seemed to be least damaged, warming their hands. A small pot was bubbling on the edge of the fire, the steam smelling distinctly of salt pork and ship’s biscuit.

‘Well? Did you see them?’ Dona Flávia demanded, taking not the slightest notice that I was half-drowned and near dead with cold.

‘Who?’ My teeth were beginning to chatter. I shuffled to the fire and rudely pushed between pig-boy and his father, crouching down to hug the pitiful heat from the flames.

‘That poor child, Isabela, and Vítor, of course,’ Dona Flávia said, waving her hand around the little circle as if even a blind man could see they were not there. I would have been more startled if I had seen Isabela sitting by the fire, but I was too sodden and numb to register who else was present apart from the great she-whale herself, of course. No one could fail to spot her.

‘Are they missing? And in this terrible storm? What happened?’ I tried to sound suitably appalled, and fancied I made a convincing job of it. But although the absence of Isabela was no surprise, I can’t say I was exactly distressed that Vítor was missing too. Come to think of it, it was poetic justice – a map-maker getting himself lost. I almost giggled, but fortunately my face muscles were too stiff with cold to permit a grin.

Pig-boy’s father shook his head gravely. ‘When Senhor Vítor brought the wood for the fire and discovered Dona Isabela had not returned, he feared she’d met with some accident or could not find her way back, so he went to search for her.’ He glanced towards the door which was rattling violently in the wind. ‘A hopeless task, and I fear that, noble though the gesture was, on a night such as this it may cost the poor fellow his life.’

The merchant grimaced. ‘I should have gone with him, perhaps the two of us –’

‘A fine thing that would be, running off in the middle of the night to search for a girl we barely know and leaving your own wife unprotected and at the mercy of the storm. Goodness knows what may be lurking out in those woods.’ Dona Flávia shuddered, as did I when I remembered that shriek.

As if to make quite sure that her husband would not even think of trailing out after Isabela, Dona Flávia sent pig-boy to fetch some wooden bowls that had been packed into the provisions barrel the sailor had brought ashore and began to ladle out portions from the steaming cooking pot. Hers, of course, was the largest measure, though on this occasion not even the pig-boy seemed anxious for a greater share.

Ship’s biscuit had been simmered in water until it formed a lumpy porridge that was so thick and gluey it had to be vigorously shaken from the spoon in order to persuade it to relinquish its hold. I was trying hard to convince myself that the black pieces in the greyish mess were burnt biscuit and not boiled weevils. The merest hint of any kind of flavour was provided by a few strips of salt pork which had mostly found their way into Dona Flávia’s and her husband’s portions. We all gazed at it in dismay, for hot was the most charitable thing you could say about the mess that lay suppurating in our bowls.

‘How much wine did the sailor leave us?’ I asked, hoping for something pleasant that would wash down the glutinous lump stuck in my throat.

The merchant shook his head glumly. ‘He left no wine, just biscuit and pork. May the Blessed Virgin, in her mercy, still this storm before morning. I can’t stand many more meals of this.’

‘If you don’t like it, you certainly don’t have to eat it, husband.’

Dona Flávia seized the half-finished bowl from him and began scraping the contents back into the cooking pot.

‘I’d like to see anyone do better with mouldy biscuit and pork that’s too tough even for shoe leather, but I’m sure I won’t bother again. Perhaps you think that girl Isabela can whip up a meal more suited to your tastes. Well, perhaps she should have tried instead of running round the forest in the middle of the night like some common harlot. And her a married woman, or so she claims.’

‘My dear,’ her husband said, consternation written across his brow, ‘I’m sure that poor child isn’t still out there by choice. No one –’

‘You men always fall for that helpless act. But take it from me, she’s not as innocent as she looks. I’ve seen her sneaking off to have whispered conversations with that Vítor, who thinks it’s so amusing to torment me with his tales of monsters. He was very keen to go after her tonight. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had arranged a tryst before we even landed.’

‘On a night like this?’ the merchant said incredulously, and as if to give credence to his words, the wind ripped another wooden tile from the roof with a resounding crack. A stream of freezing rain poured in through the hole, forcing pig-boy’s father to struggle to his feet and pull his blankets away from the puddle before they were completely soaked.

Nothing much was said after that. Dona Flávia had plainly decided to punish her husband, and indeed all the men in the room, by refusing to speak, which was a blessed relief to the rest of us, though not to the merchant, who kept glancing nervously towards his wife as if she was a loaded cannon that might fire at him without warning.

We tried to dry our bedding around the fire, only succeeding in making it steam a little. But we rolled ourselves in the blankets as best we could and bedded down for the night. Pig-boy’s father, who was still anxious that two of our party were lost in the storm, said that we should hang one of the lanterns outside to guide our missing couple back, but I managed to persuade him that the wind would smash it even before he had closed the door and he reluctantly conceded that the gesture would be futile.

Exhausted though I was, I found it impossible to sleep. I was not accustomed to nodding off without a good measure of wine in my belly, save for those nightmare days chained up in the tower of Belém, and, believe me, I had not been doing much sleeping there. But even if I’d drunk half a keg of wine, the roar of the wind and the drumming of the rain and the constant splashing of the water into the puddles on the floor would still have kept me awake. Trying to sleep on the ship was bad enough with the creaking timber and crashing waves, but the rolling, once you got used to it, was somehow soothing, and I found I was missing it.

Besides, I couldn’t stop thinking of Isabela. When I had followed her out into the forest I hadn’t much of a plan. My original idea, when we landed on the shore, had been to accompany her as she collected wood or water, and in doing so coax her away from the others and then dump her like a sack of unwanted puppies, far enough from the beach so that she couldn’t find her way back. Naturally I realized that if I was able to find my own way back to the cottage, so would she, and probably quicker than me too, since she no doubt had more experience with that purgatory they call the countryside. So I knew I’d have to stop her returning somehow, tie her up perhaps. She’d get herself free eventually, but by then the ship would have sailed.

But I hadn’t reckoned on her stalking out of the cottage alone, spitting like a cat whose tail’s been trodden on. It was all the fault of that gormless, slug-brained ninny Vítor. Did he have no idea how to handle women? Tell any female that she can’t do something and that is precisely what she will insist on doing. He’d nearly ruined everything. In that mood she certainly wasn’t going to let anyone walk with her.

I had followed her as soon as I could, but it was sheer luck that I stumbled across her standing in the middle of that clearing. I had already taken the precaution of picking up a good stout branch that I’d found. If she saw me with it she would not be suspicious, she would assume I was collecting wood. I’d hidden behind a bush, waiting for her to move back into the trees. I crouched there ready, with the wood grasped tightly in both hands. I didn’t intend to kill her, just knock her out. But when she knelt down in that clearing and bowed her head, she looked like a prisoner meekly awaiting the executioner’s axe. It was as if she was inviting me to do it, begging me even. I stood up and had almost taken my first step into the clearing, when we both heard that unearthly shriek.

Now I felt strangely miserable. I liked the girl, even if she was a heretic. God knows I was no saint myself. I honestly hadn’t meant for her to die. I’d hoped it wouldn’t need to come to that. But I knew she had to be dead now, or would be by morning. Even if that animal, whatever it was, had merely wounded her, lying out there in this rain and biting wind she would surely perish in a few hours. But at least I could console myself with the fact that she hadn’t died at my hand.

But would the Jesuits believe she was dead? Would they expect some proof – bloodstained clothing, a severed hand? Nothing would induce me to go back into the forest and look for her corpse. Besides, they hadn’t asked for proof. An accident, they said, well away from Portuguese soil. Just ensure she doesn’t return. Well, they’d got their accident all right.

And I would have my pardon, not to mention a house and money, enough money to make Silvia crawl out from whatever sweaty bed she was holed up in. Silvia wasn’t dead, she couldn’t be. If only I could remember something, anything. If I could just picture her in my head walking out of that door alive. Her throat, I could see her slender throat, the fragile pulse beneath her jaw. Had I put my hands about that long, slender neck? Had I squeezed until that tiny throb was stilled?

I groaned as I felt an urgent stirring in my groin. I turned over, pressing myself into the hard cold floor, and tried to kick the image of Silvia’s lithe, naked body out of my head. I would find her. I would leave the ship at the very next port and buy passage on the first boat sailing back to Portugal. I could be home within the month and holding her in my arms.

I must have drifted off into sleep eventually, for I woke sweating from a dream in which Dona Flávia was ladling out soup into bowls, and when I dipped a spoon into mine and raised it, I saw the decaying, bloated head of the woman’s corpse balanced on my spoon gazing up at me, the rotting lips parting, begging to be kissed.

I sat up, stifling a cry. A pale light was filtering through the holes in the roof, but apart from the occasional drip where water still dribbled through, the puddles beneath the holes lay still. It had stopped raining and the wind had died down too. The storm had blown over.

We were manfully attempting to swallow the remains of the biscuit and pork porridge, which, though it scarcely seemed possible, had grown even more foul having festered in the pot overnight, when we heard the distant sound of the trumpet signalling that they were launching the shore boat from the ship. Dona Flávia hurried to the door and wrenched it open.

‘Hurry, husband, we must be on the shore before they think we have all perished and sail without us.’

She waddled out of the door with such eagerness that I wondered if she had entirely forgotten that she was going to have to scale that rope ladder again. Her husband collected his wife’s water keg as well as his own, together with their blankets and several other items Dona Flávia had abandoned in her haste to get to the shore, and the rest of us gathered up our own possessions and extinguished the fire.

Outside pig-boy’s father stared anxiously at the forest. ‘What of Senhor Vítor and Dona Isabela? Should we not wait for them?’

‘We can’t wait,’ I told him. ‘You heard the ship’s master; the boat will sail without anyone who doesn’t return at the signal.’

‘Then we should search for them. They may not have heard the trumpet and if they are lying hurt, unable to move …’

Last night I had convinced myself she was dead, but that certainty had ebbed away with the passing of the storm. If Isabela was still alive and she heard the trumpet, then she might have got her bearings from the sound and be even now making her way towards us. I couldn’t risk that.

I took his arm and pulled him around away from the forest. ‘Senhor, that forest is vast. Even if they still live, they could be anywhere. We could search for days and not find them and the ship will not wait.’

‘But … we cannot just abandon a young girl,’ he protested, twisting his neck around to stare once more into the trees.

The merchant staggered past us, donkey-laden with his own possessions and those of his wife.

Pig-boy tugged at his father’s sleeve, whining like a five-year-old. ‘Come on, Pa. She’s only a dumb girl. I’m hungry and I’m not eating any more of that stinking cowpat we had for breakfast.’

His father looked mortified and began a stumbling apology to the merchant for his son’s rudeness.

But the merchant grinned sheepishly. ‘Believe me, I’ve no more appetite for my wife’s cooking than the boy has, but I beg of you, don’t tell her I said so.’

Heaving his many burdens more firmly over his shoulders, he staggered up the sand dune and the rest of us followed.

The shore boat was already bobbing in the shallows of the bay by the time we reached the water’s edge. The sea was sparkling in the sunshine, the tiny waves pouncing playfully on the sand, like harmless kittens. To see the ocean now you might easily be convinced the raging storm of barely a few hours ago had been nothing more than a fevered dream. Once we had all waded out and clambered into the boat, Dona Flávia being carried by two burly sailors who grunted with the effort, the boatswain counted us.

‘Where’s the girl? There’s a man missing too. Miserable-looking fellow, never buys any wine, what’s his name?’

‘Senhor Vítor,’ Dona Flávia supplied. ‘And as to where they are, we haven’t laid eyes on them since last evening. We think they went into the forest. Doubtless Senhor Vítor went hunting for more of his monsters. He’ll probably return with a savage-toothed manticore or basilisk and insist they are perfectly harmless pets.’

‘Went off with the girl, did he?’ The boatswain winked at the other sailors. ‘In that case I don’t reckon it was monsters he had on his mind.’ He jerked his head at the young lad, Hinrik. ‘You, boy, get up to that stone cottage and collect the provisions barrel and while you’re up there give a good holler into the forest. Listen to hear if they shout back, but don’t linger too long and don’t go wandering into those trees. Master’ll keel haul me if I lose one of his crew, even one as useless and bone-idle as you.’

We watched Hinrik trudge up the beach and disappear from sight. He seemed to be gone an age. I felt the tension knotting my stomach tighter. What if he had heard something in the forest and had gone to investigate? I could stand the suspense no longer. I stood up and tried to pick my way over the plank seats towards the boatswain.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ the boatswain yelled. ‘Sit still, can’t you, you’ll have us all in the water!’

I flopped awkwardly down on to one of the seats. ‘Listen, my good man, the lady is becoming chilled and we are all hungry. I think you should take us back to the ship at once.’

‘Oh you do, do you? Well, if you think I’m going to row you lot all the way across the bay with one man short at the oars, and then row all the way back for my lad, you’re an even greater blockhead than you look.’

‘How dare you speak so to a paying passenger,’ Dona Flávia snapped. ‘He was only thinking of my comfort and he is quite correct. It’s outrageous that we should be kept waiting like this. If your boy –’

The merchant interrupted his wife. ‘Look, the young man is returning, my dear.’

All eyes turned to Hinrik who was weaving down the beach towards us, staggering under the weight of the provisions barrel awkwardly hoisted on his shoulder. I let out a huge sigh of relief. He was alone.

Despite the fact that the ship and boat were not rocking anywhere near as violently, Dona Flávia’s progress up the rope ladder was no less ungainly than it had been coming down. In fact it was worse, since she now had to heave her bulk upwards. Men heaved on the rope from the top and the boatswain, much to her indignation, grabbed her great hams and pushed from below, and finally she was hauled on to the deck. To make matters worse, she had insisted on going first, so the rest of us were obliged to wait below on the bobbing boat, until we could follow her up that swaying ladder.

The other passengers all made at once for their quarters in search of their own supplies of food and wine. But I was too anxious to think of eating. I stood on deck watching the distant shore. Hinrik had said he’d called and whistled several times, but there was no answer. That was it then. Isabela and Vítor had vanished. The ship’s master was barking orders. Men feverishly cranked the windlass to haul up the great anchor, while high above me, the gromets, as they called the apprentice seamen, were already swarming over the rigging.

I willed the seamen to hurry. Just a few more minutes and we would be sailing out of the bay and all my problems would be marooned for ever on this shore. That old familiar thrill shuddered through my belly, as it did whenever I was certain I was going to win on the throw of the dice. It was all over and I hadn’t had to do a thing.

Naturally, that would not be the story I would tell the Jesuits. I wasn’t going to give them any excuse not to pay me what they had promised. I would confess to her murder. Confessing a sin you haven’t committed is no crime. There were saints who confessed to sins of pride and lust, greed and faithlessness every day. How could they be saints and have committed those sins? It was merely excessive humility on their part. Yes, I’d confess sorrowfully to her murder. They’d ask me how I’d done it, of course. And I would tell them that I –

My breath turned to stone in my throat. There was someone hurrying down towards the beach. Vítor, was it Vítor? He was clutching what looked like his bedroll in his arms. Suppose Isabela was following behind him? He might have run on ahead to alert the ship. I turned sharply away. Maybe no one else would see him. The sailors were all intent on their tasks. The anchor was clear of the water. They were just securing it. I searched for the ship’s master. He was standing on the forecastle, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun as he squinted up into the rigging. Give the order to set sail, I willed him. What was he waiting for? Everything was ready. Go! Go!

As if he heard me, the order came: ‘Set the mainsail.’

But the words were barely out of his mouth when that ship’s brat, Hinrik, scampered up the steps like a monkey and tugged on his arm, gesticulating wildly towards the shore where Vítor stood. I haven’t ever in my life felt a greater urge to strangle a lad than I did at that moment.

I turned once more and looked again at the man standing on the shore. As he waded out into the shallows, I realized that the bundle in his arms was not blankets but something far more substantial. A woman? Was it Isabela? If it was, she was not moving.





Iceland Eydis



Haggard – a wild falcon which is more than a year old when it is captured and has passed through its first moult, or mew, and therefore has its mature plumage or livery.



I wake suddenly to find Heidrun looking down at the man. I did not hear her enter the cave. I never do. She is just as I remember her though it must be five years or more since I’ve seen her, tall and slender, her back as straight as a razor cut. Her hair is as grey as the cloud over the mountains and her eyes, I know, are the colour of the winter’s sky, though she does not turn to greet me.

‘He should not have lived, Eydis. You knew that. You sensed that.’

‘But I do live,’ the dark voice growls from Valdis’s lips.

‘I did not know his spirit would enter my sister, Heidrun. Tell me how I can force him to release Valdis. You know these things.’

The dark voice laughs. ‘It’s no good pleading with her, Eydis. She is as powerless to force me out as you are, my sweet sister. Tell me, woman. You walk through the world. You know all that passes. I charge you to tell me the truth of it. Did the farmer Jónas do what I told him?’

Heidrun turns and for the first time looks at Valdis and me. Over all these years she has hardly changed since the first time I saw her when she took us to the circle dance on the night of our seventh birthday, the night of our awakening. She has an angular but handsome face, though where most people have a groove above their upper lip, she has a ridge. But now her pale eyes are cold with a fury I have never seen in them before.

‘Pétur’s mares were seized with fright and they all galloped madly off, running further than any horse would ever do had it merely been affrighted by a human whipping it or a noise startling it. Pétur and his sons tracked them on foot for two days, but by the time they found them it was too late. They’d run over the edge of a cliff and smashed themselves on the rocks at the bottom. When Pétur’s sons climbed down they found some of the mares still lived, but their bones were so badly broken they could do nothing to help them except cut their throats to put them out of their pain.’

‘And Jónas’s daughter?’ I ask her.

‘Frída recovered, as you knew she would. If Jónas had listened to you, she would have come to her senses without the need for any healing herb or charm save that of time. You read her malady well. The cloud came from the mountain, not Pétur.’

‘And does Pétur know who slaughtered his mares?’ I ask.

‘He will,’ Heidrun says with an icy certainty. ‘His thoughts are creeping towards that knowledge even now. When he returned from tracking the horses, Pétur was in such a rage, he made all in his household swear on the Holy Book to say what they knew of the matter. His serving girl tearfully confessed that she had slipped out to meet her lover and thought she saw in the distance a man crouching near the stream where the mares come to drink. She couldn’t be sure and, besides, didn’t want to alert her master for fear he would demand to know why she was wandering abroad when she should have been about her work on the farm. Pétur’s sons searched the place where she said she had seen a man and found the death coin glinting in the stream. It will not take long for Pétur to discover who placed the coin there, and when he does, he will take revenge on Jónas and all his kin.’

This is exactly the outcome I had dreaded. If Pétur took revenge, then Jónas and his family would retaliate. Such blood feuds have been known to last for generations and involve even distant relatives and hired help from both farmsteads.

‘I tried to stop Jónas,’ I tell her. ‘But he would not listen.’

Heidrun’s expression is grim. ‘You had the power to stop him, but you didn’t. For as long as you and Valdis spoke with one voice, you needed no more than words to control the people. Even a gentle shower of rain if it continues long enough will persuade a man to cover his head, so you let your words fall softly on them and they hurried off in the direction you sent them. You had grown used to that and thought nothing more was needed. So you’ve let the power you were born with shrivel up like an unused limb. But now you must fight to make your words heard.’

My sister’s black eyes stare up at Heidrun. Her peeling lips part as the voice speaks through them.

‘Eydis can’t fight me. I tell the people what they want to hear, and so they will do it. Prince or pauper, priest or pagan, a man will always listen to the words that echo the desires of his own soul, and he will act on them.’

‘Who is it that speaks through my sister’s mouth, Heidrun?’ I ask her, trying desperately to ignore the mocking voice. ‘You above all must know.’

‘He was not born on this isle. Every man, woman and child whose birth blood has fed this land is known to me by name, but not those who come from over the water. The boy, Ari, knows where he comes from, I think, but he will not speak of it. He is afraid.’

‘And so he should be,’ the dark voice says with pride.

Heidrun ignores him. ‘But though I don’t know his name, I know what he is. He is a draugr, a nightstalker.’

A cackle of mocking laughter pours from my dead sister’s lips and echoes from the walls of the cave as if the man has a hundred brothers hovering behind him in the shadows.

A deathly fear grips me. I sensed from the moment they brought him to me that his life was not of this world. But I refused to trust my own gift. As long as I could convince myself he was only a man, I could go on believing that if only I could make his body live, then his spirit would leave my sister and possess its earthly home once more, but now I know it will take far more than that to force him out of her.

‘Heidrun, tell me what to do. Tell me how to save Valdis.’

She walks across to the pool of bubbling water and for a long time says nothing as she gazes into its clear depths. The palms of her long hands move over each other as if she is grinding something between them.

I wait in silence. Valdis’s head swivels round in the direction of the pool. The draugr is waiting too.

At last Heidrun turns back to face us. ‘You know already the man’s body must be kept alive, if his soul is to leave your sister, for only when his body and spirit are reunited can the wrong which has been done to this man be undone and he can be freed. But his body can’t live long without his spirit inside it. Soon it will be past the point where the spirit can re-enter it. You must heal the physical wounds, and you can. You possess that knowledge and skill, if you will use it.’

Once again she makes the grinding motion with her palms. ‘But, Eydis, you must know that only those who are themselves dead can force his spirit to return to the body, only they can control him for he comes from the realm of the dead. You must summon a door-doom, a door-doom of the dead who walk. They shall pass sentence upon him. Only their judgment can rule him. I cannot help you bring their spirits here. I don’t have the power over them, but you do.’

‘But I do not. You above all people know that I do not!’ I seize my chain and strike it furiously against the iron hoop about my waist. The clang echoes from the walls of the cave. ‘Have you forgotten, Heidrun, I am bound by iron? They did this to us so that we would have no power.’

‘No power to send your spirit out into the world. But there is much you can do in this cave.’ She points with a long, sharp finger towards my sister. ‘Remember, a band is fastened about her waist too. As long as she is bound by iron, so too is the spirit that infects her. You and he are matched in your limitations and your strength. Only your fear of him can make you weaker.’

‘But she does fear me,’ the dark voice growls. ‘Even bound by iron I am three times stronger than her. I can sense her every feeling. I know her most fleeting thought. I know her more intimately than any lover and can be that too – her lover, her master, her destroyer. I have not even begun to show her what I can do.’ Valdis’s head twists around to gaze first at Heidrun and then at me with those great cavernous black eyes.

But Heidrun ignores the voice as if it had not spoken. She walks away across the cave floor as noiselessly as she entered. Is that all she is going to tell me, all the help she will offer me? Does she not understand that I am trapped alone with this creature? I need her. I desperately want to beg her to return, but I cannot, for then the draugr will know how much I fear him.

Heidrun pauses beside the rocky outcrop which screens the passage to the entrance. ‘If he escapes this cave he will bring terror and death to every hovel and farmstead across the land. Where he crosses a threshold by night not a man, woman or child in that dwelling will be found alive come dawn. Where he walks along a path, no human soul who crosses that track will live long enough to reach home. You must send him back to his body, while you are both bound by the iron. That is your only hope and it is the only hope for the hundreds of innocent men, women and children who will lose their lives if you fail. If he is freed from the iron, neither you nor anyone will be able to stop him destroying every living thing in his path.

‘But there isn’t much time, Eydis. The mountains are stirring again. The rivers of fire will run. Remember the black cloud that struck Jónas’s child? You spoke the truth about that cloud. You know what it means. The mountain has spoken, and soon the pool in this cave will answer it. When it does, you will know time is running out – for all of us.’