The Falcons of Fire and Ice

CHAPTER Eight



In the later half of the thirteenth century a Mongol emperor was so passionate about hunting with falcons and gyrfalcons, that he ordered the sides of a valley near the palace to be sown with a huge variety of grains to help breed more wild partridge and quail for the hunt. Near his palace in Chandu he enclosed a park with rich grazing and many streams in which he kept deer and goats which were bred purely to feed the two hundred falcons kept there during their moult. He also kept eagles for hunting wolves.

Every year in March the emperor went to Manchuria for the great hunt, taking ten thousand falcons and an equal number of soldiers to guard the hunting birds. The emperor rode out in a pavilion covered with cloth of gold and lined with lion skins, which was borne by four elephants. Inside he kept his twelve favourite gyrfalcons and twelve favourite officers to amuse them. When those on horseback reported the sighting of game he would open his curtains and cast off the falcons.

When they finally reached the plains, a camp was set up for the falconers, nobles and the emperor’s wives, who also had their own falcons, and for a month they would disport themselves with hunting.

Each falcon bore on its leg a tiny silver tablet giving its owner’s mark, and a man known as the ‘guardian of the lost’ would set up his tent on a rise with a banner flying above it so that in the vast camp he could easily be seen. Any owner seeking a lost bird would go to him, and any man finding a lost falcon would take it to the guardian, so that the one might be reunited with the other.





Off the Coast of Iceland Isabela



Frist-frast – a pigeon’s wing used to stroke birds of prey. Stroking with the bare or gloved hands removes the natural oils from the falcon’s feathers and her feathers become soaked if it rains.



I am lying in a shallow pit. A searing pain, worse than I have ever known in my life, is burning through my chest. I can’t move. I’m too terrified even to try. I want to gasp for air, but I have to make my breathing as shallow as I can. I must make the men think I am dead. If they do they will go away. My baby is crying. But I can’t go to him. I can’t reach him to comfort him. They tore him out of my arms and I was powerless to stop them.

My baby’s cries cease and I know they have silenced him. None of my children are crying now. Perhaps they too are simply holding their breath until the men have gone away. They can’t be dead. Please don’t let them be dead! Even these murderers would not slaughter innocent children. I lie staring up into the darkness, listening to the wind wailing among the trees, waiting, biting back the pain.

The men have not gone. I can hear their breathing above me, hard and rough. I lie rigid, trying to stop myself doubling up as the pain surges back through me. Something heavy falls into my lap. I will myself not to move. Great clods of earth are raining down on my feet, my legs, my chest, my arms, my face. They are burying me in a grave, but I am still alive. I try to scream. But no sound comes. I push and push, trying to force the air from my lungs, but I cannot make a sound. I fight with every splinter of strength I have left.

My own scream woke me, and for a few minutes I lay trembling on my pallet, until the sound of the waves crashing against the timbers and the rolling of the floor convinced me I was safe in our quarters under the forecastle of the ship. Nightmares had haunted my sleep ever since we’d left France. I couldn’t seem to shake them off and I had no idea what they meant. Were they a bad omen?

I shivered in the biting cold and huddled deeper under the blankets. Since the departure of Dona Flávia and her husband in England, I had taken myself into the far corner of the passengers’ quarters, the spot once occupied by Dona Flávia, to try to find some shelter from the icy wind that flooded through the anchor holes. As we drew further north from the isles they call the Shetlands, the seas had grown stormier and the wind so bitter that I could no longer bear to be upon the deck. The boards were constantly slippery with rain, and the ship tossed so much that I was afraid of falling and hurting myself again.

The bruises I had received in France had all but vanished and my knee was healing well, but the slightest awkward movement sent a sharp pain flashing up my leg which often made me cry out before I could stop myself. One of the sailors, a kindly man, had fashioned me a crutch so that I could take the weight from my leg. But I was praying desperately for my knee to heal by the time we reached Iceland. How was I going to capture the birds if I couldn’t even walk far enough to find them?

Marcos, Vítor and Fausto had each come to me in turn, murmuring that they would gladly carry me to wherever I wanted to go on the ship, but I refused to allow them to carry me anywhere. All three of them made me uneasy. I almost longed for the return of Dona Flávia to shield me from their attentions, though her manner had grown colder to me after that night on the beach. Perhaps it was the way that Marcos the physician was constantly fussing round me, and not attending to her own imagined illnesses, but several times I heard her pass some remark loud enough for me to hear about wanton young girls and sluts, as if she thought me one of them. She never asked me what had happened in the forest. No one did, as if to do so would mean having to explain why they abandoned us on that shore.

I was relieved they didn’t ask. For I didn’t understand the events of that night myself, much less feel able to give an account of it to others. I could still hear that shriek in my head and I often woke in panic, thinking myself back in among those graves, until I realized where I was, and knew that the moan I could hear was only the wind in the rigging.

When I had fled that clearing, the shriek seemed to pursue me, as if something was rushing towards me in the wind, tearing after me like a kestrel stooping down on a mouse. Perhaps it was a hunting animal I’d heard, a vixen, even an owl, though none I know could have made that sound. Maybe it was just the wind shrieking in the branches. I’d once heard the wind whistling through a mountain cave and sounding almost human. But could I really have been that foolish as to flee from nothing more sinister than the wind?

But as I ran I’d been more concerned with looking back over my shoulder than with where I was going, until with a sickening jolt I found myself stepping into thin air. There was nothing I could do to stop myself falling. I landed at the bottom of a great steep-sided gulley. Dried leaves had formed a thick layer over the soil. But there were rocks sticking out of the leaf mould and it was against these that I hit my shoulder and in the same instant felt a searing pain as my knee twisted under me when I crumpled to the ground.

Stunned by the fall, I curled myself up into a ball and lay there whimpering, clasping my knee and fighting for my breath. For a few moments the pain in my leg was so all-consuming that I couldn’t think of anything else. If whatever it was I had heard in the forest was still shrieking somewhere, shock and agony blocked it out of my head. Then, as the full white-hot intensity of the pain began to subside a little, I heard a rustling of dead leaves and the sound of something slithering towards me. Some creature was scrambling down the slope into the pit. Still cradling my knee, I whipped my head around and saw the dark figure of a man standing behind me. In his hand was a thick branch. The figure raised the lump of wood high above my head, ready to strike down hard. I think I must have screamed. I covered my head with my arms, cowering away. I braced myself for the blow, but it did not fall.

After a few moments I glanced up, though I was afraid to lower my arms. The stick was still raised above me, frozen in the air, as if the man was debating whether or not to bludgeon me. Instinctively I hauled myself backwards by my arms, dragging my injured knee through the carpet of leaves, knowing even as I did so that retreat was useless. He only had to take a few quick steps to catch up with me and strike. But he didn’t move. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. He slowly lowered the branch and pushed back his hood, though it was still too dark to recognize him.

‘Isabela, are you hurt?’

He advanced a few paces and I shrank back, for he was still gripping the branch firmly in his hand.

‘It’s me, Vítor. I came to look for you. When you didn’t return to the cottage, I was concerned. I thought you might be lost or hurt.’

‘How … how did you find me?’

He made no answer but instead fell to his knees and, laying down the branch, reached for my injured leg. The gesture startled me and I jerked my leg away from him, a movement which sent waves of pain flashing up my body.

‘Your knee, have you cut it? Let me see.’

Reluctantly I held my leg still, but the moment his fingers felt it, though the touch was light, I gasped with pain and pushed his hand away.

‘I think you may have dislocated it,’ Vítor said. ‘But I don’t have the skill to straighten it. You need a bone-setter. We’ll have to get you back to the cottage.’

For the first time I became aware of my surroundings. The gulley I had fallen into was narrow but long, shaped like the hull of a ship. The sides were steep and though in the darkness I could scarcely make out the top, I could see from the protruding tangle of roots above me that even if I could stand up, the top of the gulley would be a good two or three feet above my head.

Vítor rose and took another pace towards me. I cringed and grabbed the branch he had discarded, prepared to defend myself as best I could, but he stepped over me and felt his way along the gulley.

‘The sides are much less steep at this end and not so high,’ he called back. ‘This is our best way out.’

I heard his shoes scuffing through the leaves as he returned. Then without warning he slipped his arm around my back and I felt the fingers of his other hand sliding under my legs.

‘Don’t touch me!’ I swung the branch at him.

He leapt back and held up his hands as if to show me he meant no harm. ‘Forgive me, Isabela, I was only trying to lift you up. I’ll have to carry you. You can’t walk.’

I stared up at him. Just minutes before he had been standing over me with a branch preparing to smash my skull open. Now he was offering to carry me?

‘Get away from me. I can walk and I will!’ I dug the end of the branch into the ground and tried to lever myself up. He proffered his hand which I ignored. But though I leaned heavily on the branch I couldn’t manage to raise myself more than a few inches before I sank back down on to the leaves again. He offered his hand once more and this time I was forced to take it. I managed to drag myself to the end of the gulley, using the branch and his arm to steady me. But though the wall of the gulley was indeed less steep there, the top was still level with the top of my head and there was no way that I was going to be able to scramble over it.

As we stared at the bank the rain began to fall. Hard, heavy drops falling fast and furiously. Desperately I reached up to pull myself out, but found myself holding only a handful of slippery wet leaves. I groped through the leaf mould, trying to feel for a tree root that I could use to haul myself up, but I could grasp nothing solid except chunks of earth which came away in my hand. The rain was blinding me and I was on the verge of tears from pain and desperation.

Vítor grasped my wrist as I scrabbled frantically through the sodden leaves.

‘It’s no use trying in this rain. We may as well stay here until it’s light. Then I can find a way to heave you out. At least it’s sheltered from the wind down here.’

He swung me up in his arms and by this time I was too weak to resist. Every step he took jolted my knee and sent stabs of pain shooting through me so violently they exploded in white lights in my eyes. I allowed him to carry me back to the higher end of the hollow. There he set me down gently against the side of the gulley, removing his own cloak and wrapping it round me, though it was already soaked through. He scraped piles of wet leaves over my lap and legs to keep out the cold, before settling down to sit beside me. The rain beat down upon us. I knew I should offer to wrap the cloak around the two of us, but I couldn’t bear for him to touch me for I was in too much pain, and besides, I still didn’t trust him.

‘It was foolish to wander so far from the cottage and the beach,’ he said.

It was too dark to see the expression on his face, but I could hear the accusation in his voice. He blamed me for us both being out here. How dare he?

‘No one asked you to follow me. I could have found my way back. I wasn’t lost until that shriek startled me.’

‘Shriek? What shriek?’

‘You must have heard it. Anyway, you didn’t answer the question I asked you before. How did you find me?’

‘I heard something crashing through the bushes and I followed the sound.’

‘Rather foolish thing to do, wasn’t it? It might have been a wild boar.’

He snorted. ‘I can tell the difference between two legs running and four.’

I was still firmly grasping the branch. I lifted it a few inches. ‘And exactly what did you intend to use this for?’

The answer came swiftly. ‘Firewood. What else would I want to do with an old branch?’

It was obvious when he said it. He’d told everyone in the cottage he was going to find wood. Why should I doubt for a moment that’s what he’d been doing? And yet I still couldn’t throw off that image of him standing over me.

‘But when you climbed down in the gulley, you had the branch raised as if …’

I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t want to say what I feared aloud, as if the words, once uttered, would make it true.

‘As if I was defending myself?’ he finished. ‘Of course I was. It was dark. I could see something moving at the bottom of the gulley. And couldn’t be sure it was you. It might’ve been some wild beast.’

But I didn’t believe him. He had held that branch raised above my head long after he must have realized that it was me. Besides, only an idiot would climb down into a pit if they really thought there might be a savage animal trapped in it, and I had a feeling Vítor was no fool.

We spoke little more that night. He seemed to be lost in thought and I was consumed with pain. I huddled into the sodden cloak and as I pulled it tighter around me, my fingers brushed something hard on my chest, caught in the wool of my shawl. I grasped it and even without looking I knew what it was – the small white finger bone, encircled by the iron ring. On the top of the ring was a flat disc, and I could feel the faint lines of some letter or mark etched into it like the mark of a seal.

I felt like a thief. I should not have picked it up. To steal from the dead was almost worse than stealing from the living. I should take the bone back, return it to the grave and bury it once more, but even if I could have found the place again, I couldn’t walk there. The last thing I wanted to do was keep it, but I couldn’t just cast the bone away as if it was rubbish. What I held in my hand was part of a human being, a person, someone who had lived and been loved. It would be sacrilege to throw it away. The image rose up in my head of the girl at the auto-da-fé sobbing as she was driven to place the box of bones on the pyre, of her refusing to relinquish her grip on the box and them beating her until they had forced her to let go. I shuddered, and not simply from the chill of the icy rain.

I fumbled for the little leather bag I wore around my waist and pushed the bone and ring inside. I had no idea what I would do with them, but perhaps I could rebury them in the next graveyard I came across or lay them in the crypt of a church where they would be safe.

We lay in the gulley all night as the wind howled, the rain lashed down on us and the branches of the trees whipped and cracked all around us. Never had a night seemed so long or so dark. By morning intense pain and cold had left me barely able to move. My jaw had locked rigid, for I had been clenching my teeth so hard. As Vítor picked me up in his arms, I couldn’t even open my mouth to acknowledge him. I was dimly aware that it had stopped raining and the sun had already risen behind the trees.

Vítor carried me back to the end of the gulley and managed to raise me just high enough so that I could grasp the thick ancient roots of an oak tree, though my fingers were so numb I could scarcely hold on. Nevertheless, he was able to heave me over the lip of the gulley, and I collapsed on the sodden ground above. I no longer had the strength even to sit up.

Vítor heaved me into his arms and carried me back through the forest. Each time he stumbled a searing pain ran up my leg, making me cry out, though I tried to bite it back. Several times he was forced to set me down while he scouted around, trying to work out which direction the sea might lie in, but it wasn’t until we heard the faint sound of the trumpet in the distance that we were certain we were walking towards the shore. However, the notes, far from reassuring me, only renewed my fear. How long would it take us to reach the beach?

‘They will wait,’ Vítor said in answer to my unspoken question. ‘They won’t sail without us. They know I came to look for you.’

He set me down on the ground. ‘You rest here and I’ll run to the beach and explain that you’re hurt. I’ll bring some of the sailors back with me to help carry you.’

‘No!’ I grabbed his leg. ‘Don’t leave me here. What if you can’t find me again? What if some wolf or boar should scent me and attack before you can return? I can’t walk, never mind defend myself like this.’

But it was not the thought of wild boars or wolves that terrified me. For some reason, in spite of all his kindness since, I could not forget that image of him standing over me in the gulley. I knew I was probably imagining it, I told myself I was, yet I could not shake off the feeling that he had no intention of returning for me.

He hesitated and for a moment I almost convinced myself I was right, but then he scooped me up again and we struggled on. I roundly scolded myself for my doubts, and blamed them on the pain. People are like falcons, they lash out when they are hurt, believing everyone is their enemy, even those who are only trying to help them.

The beach was deserted when we emerged from the trees, save for some gulls picking over clumps of glistening emerald seaweed and stranded starfish washed up on the wet sand. Vítor stopped and stared out to sea.

‘They’re setting sail. The bastards are leaving without us!’

He lumbered over the sand and down to the shore, the wavelets lapping over his boots. ‘No, no, come back! You can’t leave us here!’

I felt as if a great black curtain was slowly closing around me. Hunger, cold, pain and fear finally engulfed me and I knew no more.

I swam in and out of consciousness as they laid me in the shore boat, and was carried over a seaman’s shoulder up the rope ladder, passing out cold again when the ship’s surgeon with the help of one of the sailors wrenched my knee back into place. And I was told it was the ship’s surgeon who strapped my leg with wooden splints to support it as it healed. Marcos apparently declined to take any part in this procedure, saying he was a physician, not a common bone-setter.

Afterwards, though, Vítor, Fausto and Marcos behaved like lovelorn suitors, each insisting on mulling wine for me in case I should take a chill, pressing their blankets upon me and almost falling over one another to be the one to fetch me meals as I lay on my pallet. But all I wanted was to be left alone, and I was profoundly grateful to Dona Flávia when she insisted the three men joined her and her husband at the table for meals, leaving me alone in the passengers’ quarters, though I know full well that she did not do it for my sake.

And during those few precious times when I was alone I could not help repeatedly taking the bone with its iron ring out of my scrip. The ring was a plain band of iron, flattened into a disc on the top on which a simple word been inscribed – foi. Was it a name? Was this a lover’s ring? Who were they, buried out there in the wastes of that forest with no church nor shrine? Who had interred them there? Was it a kindness they had performed for the dead or a cruelty, a concealment of bodies that were never meant to be found?

Each time I touched that ring and bone I felt a strange sense of grief, as if I had lost someone I had known and loved, as if I had just watched them being laid to rest in a cold grave. It was a feeling of utter desolation, and more than that – a fear, a horror that some nameless force was about to descend upon me. I longed to cast the bone away, but even if I could have dragged myself to the ship’s rail, I knew I could never have tossed it into the sea. The bone needed a resting place and because I had taken it, I must give it what it craved.





Eydis



Rouse – the action of a hawk shaking its feathers.



I know she is drawing closer. I sense it. The draugr senses it too. I take up our lucet again, our cord-maker, our power. It will lead her to us. It must.

Our lucet is fashioned from a piece of deer-horn, but it was not carved by our hands. It is an ancient thing. The Vikings brought it on their long-boats when first they ventured to this land. When its owner died it was placed in the grave with her. And there it lay for hundreds of years, until a storm washed rock and earth and grave away, and we found it, lying among the brown bones and a scatter of amber beads.

Though we were scarcely five years old we knew at once what it was, for our mother had taught us the art of plaiting cords for our clothes, just as she had taught us how to cook lichen and clean pots. But our lucets were carved from rough pieces of mutton bone, not smooth and polished as a sea-washed stone, not curved as proudly as a horse’s neck … not a precious gift from the long-dead. We sensed even then our mother would fear to see it in our hands.

Now the cord I have woven twists from its twin prongs. It is long enough to reach the girl, but not yet long enough to pull her close. Each day I must add another finger-length to it. Each twist, each loop gently and slowly guides her footsteps to this place. Three strands of wool woven together to make a single cord – black to call the dead, green to give them hope, red to lend them strength.

I turn the stem of the lucet in my hand, twisting it always with the sun I cannot see but have never forgotten. And with each new knot, the cord tightens and tightens until she will feel it drawing her, and know it is the falcons calling her. Then she will come. She must bring them to us. For the dead who follow her are our only living hope.





Iceland Ricardo



Entraves or fetters – the equipment used to prevent a bird of prey flying away, comprising the jesses attached to the legs, a swivel and a leash with which to tie her to the perch or block.



It would just have to be that snivelling little wretch Vítor who gave Isabela the news that the coast of Iceland had been sighted, wouldn’t it? I’d heard the cry go up from the watch, of course, but they were always hollering orders at one another in their own jargon with the sole purpose of trying to make the passengers feel inferior, so that I had long since abandoned any pretence of listening to them. But on this occasion it turned out the incoherent bellows were because land had been sighted, and Vítor came thundering down the steps into our sleeping quarters to convey the glad tidings, urging us to come and look, as if this was an uncharted land and he had personally just discovered it.

I was the more annoyed because, for the first time, I had actually begun to believe I was gaining Isabela’s trust. There is a moment in every scam when you know that you have succeeded in putting a halter on your victim and may lead them to wherever you want to take them. At first they are wary of you, then comes suspicion, distrust and even hostility, but you must hold your nerve, persist. Gradually you will see they are listening to you, pricking up their ears, sniffing the air, and then they begin to edge diffidently towards you. They ask a few questions which suggest they are thinking about the prospect. They give you a tiny inadvertent nod of agreement, a hesitant little smile, and this is the beginning of trust, but only the beginning, mind you. Move too fast at this stage and they will shy away, never to return, but offer soothing words, compliments about their good sense and judgement and you’ll find them snuffling ever closer. Believe me, I have conned enough men and women to know the signs. And Isabela was almost there, almost willing to allow me to lead her.

It was imperative that I got her to trust me before we reached Iceland. If I didn’t, it was all over. For her to come off that beach alive was bad enough, but to come off with an injured leg which meant she was confined to the safety of sleeping quarters where no accident could possibly befall her, was nothing short of a disaster, especially with Vítor and his companion sticking to her like birds to lime.

‘Don’t you want to see your first glimpse of Iceland?’ Vítor urged. ‘Isabela, won’t you allow me to carry you up?’

‘No, no. I can manage.’ She brushed his extended arm aside.

For a moment I thought I glimpsed an expression of fear in her eyes. It was not the first time I had witnessed such a look since she had returned from the beach. What had passed between them that night? Had the bastard tried to force his oily little carcass on her?

Isabela levered herself to her feet, steadying herself against the bulkhead as the ship rolled. She limped to the bottom of the short flight of steps. Once more, Vítor put out a hand to try to assist her, but she pretended she hadn’t seen it, and with grim determination hauled herself up the steps.

Over these past two weeks she had daily practised walking until she was exhausted. Even the ship’s surgeon had told her to rest, and that was certainly a measure of the seriousness of his concern, for it was rumoured he’d once told a man on his deathbed to shift his arse and stop lounging about cluttering the place up. But Isabela took not a jot of notice. She was going to walk without a crutch and splints if it killed her. And give the girl her due, she’d done it, though it was obvious her leg still pained her, not that she’d admit that to anyone.

Sometimes her stubbornness reminded me of my Silvia when she was working up to a fight, though Isabela was not the kind of woman who would shriek dockside obscenities and hurl her boots at a man, more’s the pity. Sweet Jesu, how I missed Silvia. Without warning, the maggot-white, bloated face of that woman’s corpse swam up before my eyes and I pushed it firmly back down again before racing up the steps behind Vítor.

To be honest, I had no idea what sight was going to greet me on deck. I hadn’t given much thought to what manner of place Iceland was and I’d never had any desire to find out. Ask me to imagine parting a wealthy widow from her jewels and I would have no trouble in picturing such a scene in exquisite detail. But tell me to imagine a place I never really believed existed except in tales of drunken sailors and I could no more picture it in my head than I could see heaven. And, to tell the truth, since the day we set sail I’d never believed I would actually get as far as Iceland.

My plan, if you can call it such, was to somehow dispatch the girl long before we ever got this far and then to disembark at some civilized port and find a ship to carry me home. I’d thought it was going to be so easy – a ship tossing about in stormy seas, slippery decks, dark nights and a fragile young girl – it was an accident waiting to happen, so what could possibly go wrong? Iceland wasn’t even worth wasting a stray thought on. And if I had been forced to think of Iceland at all, the image that would have occurred most naturally would have been that it was … well … icy … covered in snow, I guess. But somehow black was never the colour that came to mind when I heard the name.

Now I joined the others at the rail and stared as dumbfounded as they. Before us was a scene that might have been the gateway to purgatory itself. Towering columns and jagged shards of black rock rose from out of the cobalt-blue sea. Huge waves crashed against these pinnacles with such violence that spray was flung high into the air, so that it looked as if a pall of white smoke hung permanently above them. What I could see of the land itself was nothing more than a hunk of craggy black rock which jutted out into the sea, like a splintered jaw, without a single blade of grass or even a smudge of moss to soften it. The roaring waves hurled themselves into the cracks in the rock with such force that great plumes of foam exploded upwards and the white water streamed in waterfalls back down the stone and into the churning sea.

The air throbbed with the screams of seabirds. The gulls were much like those that used to drag me from my sleep in Belém with their raucous screeches, but others were some of the oddest-looking birds I’d ever seen, small black and white creatures with huge red, blue and yellow beaks covering most of their faces. The cook and a couple of the seamen were tossing weighted nets over the side trying to capture them as they bobbed about on the boiling foam as serenely as ducks on a village pond.

‘Dinner, if you can stomach it,’ the boatswain said glumly, as he joined me at the rail. ‘Still, you’ll be supping on shore soon and after a few weeks eating on this isle you’ll think that puffin and ship’s biscuit is the food of angels.’ He laughed, evidently relishing the misery he thought lay in store for us.

‘You’re surely not going to try to land here?’ I said, staring with horror at the fanged rocks and crashing seas.

The boatswain regarded me as if I was an imbecile. ‘You’d best pray we don’t get within spitting distance of that shore else it’ll be us that’s the dinner … for the fishes. No, the captain’s heading for a bay further round the cliffs, only a piss-poor village there but that suits the captain fine.’ The boatswain lowered his voice. ‘There’s a few little trifles he wants to unload.’ He tapped his nose and grinned.

It wasn’t until almost dusk that we finally sailed into a long, narrow inlet, dropping anchor in the ghastly embrace of steep black cliffs which circled us on three sides and threatened any minute to clasp their long, bony hands and crush us. The sides of the inlet, though jagged enough to be scalable, assuming you didn’t slice yourself to ribbons, were so high as to hide any glimpse of the land that lay beyond, and I guessed to hide the ship from anyone staring out to sea, unless he was perched right on the cliff edge. That’s if there was anyone living on that godforsaken lump of rock, which I seriously doubted. But someone had been there. A small strip of white sail cloth had been lowered down from the top of the cliff and was fluttering in the wind against the black rock. It would have been easy to mistake it for a gull, if you were not expecting it to be there. But the captain evidently was. He had promised a gold coin to the first man to spot the signal, a pledge guaranteed to miraculously sharpen any man’s eyesight.

A ruby-red sun was sinking into the sea, staining the water, as if blood was seeping from a corpse. Then out of the dazzling light, the dark outlines of two small fishing boats emerged from around the headland and made straight for us. As soon as they came close enough they tossed ropes to the ship and remained fastened up just long enough to be loaded with bales, boxes and barrels, all lowered down to them by the sailors, though not until after they had sent up several large bales of dried cod and a good heavy purse which the captain took himself off with the ship’s master to count. I grinned to myself thinking of Dona Flávia’s many chins wobbling in outrage had she been here to witness such nefarious goings-on. The old she-whale would probably have burst her corsets in sheer indignation. I was almost sorry she wasn’t there.

It was dark by the time the boats slipped away, and we stayed at our anchorage for the night. It was too dangerous to navigate round these murderous rocks in the dark. I tried to get Isabela alone, but she insisted on eating her meal with all three of us at the table and afterwards it was impossible to shake the other two off. It was almost as if they too were trying to find a way to get her to themselves, but none of us succeeded in that.

At dawn we weighed anchor and sailed on for more than half a day, before finally docking in a small harbour at the mouth of a broad, flat river valley. The sailors had scarcely fastened the mooring ropes before six men scrambled over the ship’s rail and bounded on to our deck without so much as a by-your-leave to the captain. For a moment I feared we’d been boarded by pirates, but seeing the sailors exchanging covert grins with one another, I gathered that they had been expecting this.

The men stood back to back in a little circle on deck, thick staves grasped tightly in their hands. They were ragged, sullen-looking fellows, but tall and tolerably well-favoured. All of them had light brown hair and eyes of such a similar shade of grey, I supposed them to be cousins at least, if not brothers. A few onlookers had gathered on the rickety wooden wharf, more it seemed because they had nothing better to do than because they had any real business concerned with our arrival.

For a few moments the sailors and the Icelanders simply eyed one another as if each side was daring the other to make the first move. Then a small man pushed his way through the little circle. He was so much shorter than the Icelanders, I hadn’t even noticed him board the ship behind them. In contrast to the dull browns and greys of the Icelanders’ coarse woollen clothing, this little clerk, for that is what I assumed him to be, resembled one of those ridiculous puffin birds, dressed in a black and orange doublet and massively padded breeches which only emphasized the scrawniness of the little legs that stuck out beneath them. The outfit was crowned with an over-sized green cap decorated with a huge bunch of lace, which he had to hold in place to prevent the sea breeze snatching it off like a mischievous schoolboy and tossing it into the water.

The captain gave an exaggerated bow, which seemed to please the little man, though from the sly grins of the seamen, it was plain they thought he was taking the piss.

‘Woher kommen Sie?’ the clerk demanded, but was met only with blank stares.

He decided to attempt another language. ‘Hv … ’ He coughed. The remainder of the word was plainly lodged in the back of his throat like a fishbone. ‘Hvadan ert pú?’

The captain shook his head. ‘We’ll be here all night at this rate. Where’s that brat Hinrik?’

The ship’s boy who had christened Dona Flávia with pudding on our first night aboard was dragged forward by the cook. He stood trembling as if he’d learned long ago that the only reason any officer might send for him was to thrash him.

The captain laid a hand on the cringing lad’s shoulder.

‘Did you understand what the man said? Is he speaking Icelandic, your tongue?’

The lad nodded cautiously.

‘Then tell us what he is saying, boy,’ the captain snapped, barely able to contain his exasperation.

‘He wants to know where we are coming from.’

‘Portugal,’ the captain said, looking at the clerk. ‘PORT … U … GAL. We are Portuguese,’ he added, his hand sweeping around the crew.

The clerk’s face flushed angrily, though whether it was the captain’s exaggerated tone or nationality he took offence at was impossible to say. He barked something at young Hinrik, who dutifully translated it.

‘He says, only ships from Hamburg can trade in this port.’

‘Port, is that what he calls it?’ The captain gave a wry glance at the few squalid little wooden and turf huts scattered haphazardly along the edge of the shore in such disarray it looked as if some drunken giant had hurled them about as he lurched past. None of the crew was bothering to disguise their amusement.

The clerk sensed the mockery and puffed his chest up like an enraged toad, and muttered furiously to Hinrik.

The lad nodded gravely. ‘He says, the port is new. Soon it will be as good as Lisbon … better.’

Nothing could quell the bellow of laughter that erupted from the sailors.

Hinrik translated the clerk’s next furious diatribe.

‘He says, what business have you here? It is forbidden to land cargo or take on goods. Not even fish.’

‘Does this ship look like a stinking cod-boat?’ the captain said. ‘Tell that donkey’s arse that I’m here merely to discharge passengers. Once they are safely ashore, I intend to sail for the isle of Guernsey where they welcome any chance to trade, no matter whose colours the ship sails under.’

Whatever Hinrik said to the clerk seemed to send him into a fit of near apoplexy. His gaze darted wildly about the deck like a fly trapped in a bottle.

‘Passengers! What passengers, how many?’ he demanded through Hinrik.

The captain gestured vaguely to where the four of us stood, surrounded by our bundles. The clerk gave a little squeak and scurried over to us. Hinrik hurried after him, eager to be of service. He was plainly enjoying his newly acquired power.

The clerk’s Icelandic guard glanced at one another and promptly wandered off to engage certain of the sailors in furtive conversation. They were soon pulling small wrapped packages from beneath their clothes, clearly bent on engaging in their own little scraps of illicit trade while their master’s attention was otherwise engaged. Barter is a language all its own that needs no translator.

‘You,’ the clerk pointed at Vítor. ‘You look like a merchant. You cannot trade here. It is not permitted,’ he said through Hinrik, as if we might have missed that point.

Vítor hesitated, then took a pace towards Hinrik and spoke in a low voice with several anxious glances towards the captain, who was in deep conversation with one of the Icelanders.

‘I have something to tell this man, but you must swear on your life that you will not repeat what I say to the captain or any of the men. This is only for the clerk’s ears. Understand?’

The boy nodded excitedly.

Vítor leaned closer still. ‘Tell him I am a Lutheran pastor.’

Hinrik looked startled, but he did as he was told.

The clerk drew back and gaped at him, open-mouthed. ‘A Lutheran … from Portugal?’ He could hardly have been more incredulous if Vítor had announced he was the ambassador from the lost African kingdom of Prester John.

‘There are a number of Lutherans in Portugal,’ Vítor said. ‘But they have to remain hidden for fear of the Inquisition, who has declared them, that is to say, declared us, heretics.’

Hinrik grinned. ‘He says you dress too brightly to be a Lutheran pastor.’

Since Vítor was clad in a tediously plain dark-green doublet, I thought the observation a trifle unnecessary coming from a man who was done up like the carnival king. But Vítor was as quick-witted and pert as a town whore for he already had an answer for that one.

‘In order to escape the country, I had to look like a Catholic. The captain would never have given me passage if he’d known the truth – that I was fleeing for my life. I’ve come here to seek sanctuary.’

All of us were gaping at Vítor with as much astonishment as the little clerk. Could this possibly be true, or was it as fanciful as his tale about looking for sea monks? I’d never believed that one.

The clerk, still staring boggle-eyed at him, seemed to recall his duty and spoke earnestly to the lad.

‘He says, why don’t you go to Denmark or Germany where you would make a good living. In Iceland …’ Hinrik trailed off and looked questioningly at the clerk, but the man was evidently unable to think of a single reason why anyone would seek refuge on the isle.

Vítor bowed his head. ‘I long to serve God by spreading his word to those who have yet to hear it. I understand that there are many in Iceland who are not yet convinced of the truth which Luther preached.’

‘They are not,’ the clerk said with evident feeling. He glowered over at the people still staring curiously from the quayside. ‘You will find no shortage of God’s work to be done here, though I would not wager a dried cod’s head on any of them having the wit to understand it.’

Hinrik glowered furiously at the clerk as he translated these words, but the clerk seemed blithely unaware that he was insulting the lad.

‘You are also Lutherans?’ the clerk demanded, glancing round the rest of us.

We shuffled and shrugged as if we didn’t believe in anything much, certainly nothing we’d cause trouble over, which in my case was certainly true. I’d had quite enough of churches and priests in my youth. I’d been bored by the former, and beaten by the latter. Now I believed in leaving God to get on with His own affairs, and I devoutly prayed He would extend the same courtesy to me.

The clerk peered at Isabela. She looked terrified, and I wondered what she was going to tell him.

‘Whose woman is she?’

I’d taken one pace forward, and I was just on the point of claiming her when Vítor leapt in.

‘She’s mine, my wife.’

The clerk did not appear to notice the darts of outrage all three of us shot towards Vítor. I saw Isabela open her mouth and for a moment I was sure she was going to deny it with the same fury she had displayed in the cottage before she went running off. But she seemed to think better of it.

The clerk nodded. ‘Good for a pastor to have a wife with him to tend to his needs. These Icelandic girls who hire themselves out as servants cannot be trusted to have the running of a house. They need watching every minute.’

He added more, but Hinrik was sulking and folded his lips, refusing to translate what I assume were even greater insults concerning the character of his countrymen.

Without even the courtesy of asking permission, the clerk began a thorough search of our bundles, even Vítor’s, for anything he feared we might be trying to trade. He was so intent on his task that he remained entirely oblivious to what was furtively changing hands between his own men and the sailors.

Hinrik, seizing his chance, clutched at Vítor’s sleeve. ‘Take me with you. I hate this ship. The captain is a wicked man. I am a Lutheran, just like you, a good Lutheran. That is why they beat me on the ship every day.’

‘Don’t lie to me, boy,’ Vítor said, firmly pushing the lad’s hand away. ‘You only get beaten when you’re lazy and clumsy, and from what I’ve observed, any punishment you’ve received has been richly deserved.’

Hinrik was not in the least abashed. ‘But you need me to tell you what people are saying and you need me to tell them what you want.’

‘He has a point,’ I said. ‘That popinjay of a clerk could have been asking us to marry his daughter for all the sense I could make of his gibberish. If they all talk like him, we’ll probably end up buying a three-legged donkey when we wanted a plump roast chicken.’

‘I seem to recall the cook saying the captain bought the boy from his father,’ Vítor said. ‘He will surely demand recompense to release the lad.’

Hinrik was looking beseechingly from one to other of us. ‘I cost almost nothing to buy. And I can do everything for you. Fetch water, cook.’

‘Don’t push it, lad,’ I grinned. ‘I’ve seen you round a cooking pot, remember? If we let you anywhere near it we’ll be poisoned, burned and scalded to death all in one night.’ I fished out a few coins. ‘I’m willing to offer that as my share for the boy. What do you say, shall we take the lad?’

After dithering like a couple of novice nuns, the other two men handed over an equal sum each and I went off to negotiate with the captain. Although he plainly wanted rid of the lad, he knew his value to us, and demanded an outrageous price.

I stalked away, making it plain that we had lost interest in the whole deal, but Isabela, bless her tender little female heart, pressed some money into my hand, though I suspected she could ill-afford it.

‘We must buy his freedom. He’s so wretched being at sea. It’s a prison to him. This is his home. He should be here. Please try to persuade the captain to let him go.’

I allowed myself to be coaxed into returning, although I had every intention of doing so anyway. For it had already occurred to me that Hinrik might be just the solution I needed to solve a far more urgent problem than mere language. After some hard bargaining with the captain I negotiated a price which meant that, what with the sum Isabela had forced on me, my share wasn’t needed, nor was half of Vítor’s … although I may have forgotten to mention that little detail to the others.

The clerk seemed determined to draw the search out for as long as possible, leaving every item in disarray on the deck, so that we were forced to repack them all over again. But finally, even he was satisfied, and with a stark warning not to sell so much as a single button, he herded us, together with a jubilant Hinrik, towards the gangplank.

Then, just as we were about to step ashore, he said something in an unnecessarily loud voice, a broad smirk on his scrawny face. He prodded Hinrik to translate.

The boy looked positively alarmed and it took several more prods before he would open his mouth.

‘He says … he says he cannot stop you going ashore, but it is not worth you bothering. He says … you should sail back with this ship and return next year … but you won’t, will you?’ the boy added desperately.

I was already so infuriated by the lengthy search that it was all I could do to stop myself putting my boot up the clerk’s arse and pitching him headfirst overboard.

‘Why,’ I inquired through gritted teeth, ‘do you imagine we’d journey all this way simply to turn around again and depart with the ship the moment we land? Do you honestly think we’ve spent weeks on a lousy, stinking ship, eating pigswill, and risking life and limb in storms, gales and every other horror the accursed sea can throw at us for the good of our health? Why the hell should we leave just when we’ve arrived?’

I suspected by the brevity of his speech that the boy only translated the last part of what I said, but it was evidently enough, for the clerk smirked triumphantly as if he had been so hoping we were going to ask him that question.

‘He says,’ Hinrik told us in a subdued voice, ‘because it is law that no foreigners can remain on Iceland during the winter months. You can stay only for two weeks more. If you are caught here after that you will be arrested. And any man who gives you shelter will be punished.’

We stared at him, dumbfounded. Isabela gasped in shock.

The clerk made a curt incline of his head towards Vítor. ‘I regret to say, that includes you and your wife also. You may be Lutherans, but you are still foreigners.’

The expression of sublime satisfaction on his face told us he was not actually regretting this in the slightest.

‘You and your wife should take a ship to Denmark and there wait out the winter. You can return in the spring, if you still want to.’

He shrugged, as if to say he thought it most unlikely that anyone would elect to venture twice upon these shores.

We followed him down the gangplank in stunned silence. The news had badly shaken all of us. I had the distinct impression from the grins that the captain was exchanging with the ship’s master that both of them had been fully aware of the law before they’d accepted the money for our passage, but what did they care? The only reason they’d wanted to carry passengers to Iceland was as cover for their real business of smuggling, and we had served their purpose well.

I was sorely tempted to tell the little clerk about the dried cod in the hold and what his own men had been doing behind his back, but I suspected I’d have a hard time proving where the captain had got the fish, and besides, for all I knew the clerk had deliberately prolonged that search to give his men the chance to trade and was taking a cut of the profits. I’d had dealings with enough sailors in Belém to know that you don’t interfere in their business unless you want to find yourself floating face down in the sea with a knife in your back.

I glanced at Isabela. She had turned very pale, and little wonder. She had just two weeks to find her falcons. I had no idea how difficult a task capturing falcons might be, but even I was pretty sure two weeks was cutting it fine. More to the point, I had just two weeks left in which to stage her accident, and right at that moment I didn’t have a single idea in my head about how to do that, especially as Vítor had now claimed her as his wife. I could hardly see him buggering off and leaving the two of us alone.

But I reminded myself that this morning’s events had not proved a complete disaster. We had Hinrik, and every crusado we had spent on buying the boy, or should I say they had spent, was about to prove well worth it. Since we all now jointly owned him, and we all needed his services, it was the most natural thing in the world that I should travel with Isabela without it arousing any suspicion on her part. After all, we could hardly cut the lad into four, now could we? Of course, the drawback to my sweet little plan was that the other two men also showed every intention of coming with us for the same reason, but for the moment I could see no way to prevent that.

So there you have it, my friend – three men, a girl and an urchin boy, setting off for God knew where in that bleak wilderness. And the only thing I knew for certain was that in two weeks I had to be on a ship out of here, and that meant by then the girl would be dead and her body rotting somewhere in this purgatory. All I had to work out now was how to get Isabela away from the others. If I could just find a way to get her alone, then killing her would surely be easy.





Eydis



Birds of the train – any captive bird used to train hunting hawks. Birds of the train might include pigeons, herons and kites. The birds were kept tied to a long line when they flew so that inexperienced falcons could learn to chase them.



She has come. I hear her first footfall on the land reverberating through my bones, as if a herd of wild horses is thundering over my head. She steps from the cold, wild sea to the fiery earth, pulled by my cord. But she is not helpless, not my captive. It is her will that drives her on as fiercely as my will calls her to me. And the dead follow her, restless shadows slipping through the dark waves behind her. They come because of her. They come because they must, drawn to her as she is drawn to me. She can sense them like whispers at her back, but she has not yet found the courage to turn and face them. I knot another finger-length of cord on my lucet. Slowly, gently, she will be guided to us.

Ari comes slithering down into the cave. I know his footsteps well now, that careless bounding down over the rocks and boulders, as if he is invincible, as is always the way with the young, then the pause, the nervous hesitation, as he braces himself to come around the rocky outcrop, fearful of what he might see.

He slings the sack from his shoulder and pulls out the contents – wind-dried stockfish, a few strips of smoked mutton and a good measure of peas shrivelled until they are hard as stones.

‘Fannar sent this,’ he says, as if I need to be told.

We read the seasons by the gifts they bring us. The weeks of eggs and fresh lake fish have gone. Berries and herbs have been eaten and grow no more. Now we enter winter, when everything will taste of smoke. There will be weeks when no one comes to us at all, because the snow lies too deep, endless days when the wind howls across the mouth of the cave and time is measureless. Often in the past, through those long winds of solitude, Valdis and I used to wonder if every man and beast had perished up there in the frozen world, and we were the only two who remained alive.

Finally, when we fear the snows will last for eternity, they begin to drip, and the drips become streams, and streams become raging torrents powerful enough to drag great boulders as easily as grains of sand. Then come the hungry weeks of spring, when store cupboards empty, the animals bellow in vain for hay in the byres and fishing boats cannot put to sea. The people come, but they bring nothing but apologetic shuffles. They are ashamed to come empty-handed, but we can see the misery in their hollow cheeks and protruding bones. They swear they will bring us gifts when the first birds nest again. They keep their word, and so begins the time of eggs once more. Thus it has been since the day our mother brought us to this cave. But this year will be different – my sister is gone and I am alone with the nightstalker.

The boy’s eyes dart sideways to the corner where the man lies. He knows it is dangerous to look, but he cannot help himself.

‘I know why you fear him, Ari.’

‘I don’t fear any man,’ he says, his chin jerking up like a child’s.

‘You should fear him. He is a draugr, a nightstalker.’

He flinches at the words, and hangs his head, but I can see he already knows this.

‘It is what you feared he was. Who is he, Ari? What name was he known by in life?’

He does not answer, nor will he look at me. I wait. He will tell me in his own time. The young, like the old, cannot be hurried. Finally Ari raises his head. His face is as pale as ashes in the torchlight.

‘I cannot be certain,’ he says miserably.

‘Tell me and I will know if it is true.’

‘A while ago … I was working as a deckhand on one of the local fishing boats. One of our lads happened to look back at the land and saw the way the clouds were building over the mountain. The wind was still only a cradle-rocker then, but we could see the warning, a wicked storm was brewing. We hauled in the nets and got to shore as quickly as we could. But some of the foreign fishermen, they couldn’t read the signs and kept on working their nets. The storm struck suddenly and it hit hard. Several of the foreign fishing boats were caught up in it, and saw that the safest course was to ride it out at sea well away from the rocks, but the men in one of the boats must have panicked and stupidly made a dash for the harbour. Likely they didn’t know this coast. They came too close to the cliffs and the wind smashed the boat straight on to the rocks and broke her back. Nothing anyone could do but watch it happen.’

A spasm of anguish and guilt wrinkles Ari’s face. It is hard to stand and watch men perish and know that had the bones which the gods cast fallen differently, it would have been you drowning in the waves.

‘Was any man saved?’ I ask him.

‘Sea dragged them all down before any of us could even whisper a Hail Mary for them.’ He stares into the flames of the fire. For a while he says nothing more, then he begins again.

‘Next morning, when the storm had passed, there was splintered wood and rope from the wreck tossed up all along the shore, that and dead fish, not much else. It was as if the boat was an egg that had been stamped on. It made your guts churn to think of the power that could do that to great timber beams.’ He shakes his head like a dog with sore ears, as if to rid himself of the memory.

‘Nothing man can create can withstand the fury of the sea when she is determined to destroy it.’ I glance back at the wreckage of the man in the corner. ‘But what does this storm have to do with him?’

Ari’s head also turns momentarily towards the man, but he averts his gaze. ‘Every woman and child in the village was racing to gather as much wood as they could for the fire, before their neighbours snatched it. So it wasn’t long before they came across the bodies of three of the drowned fishermen lying sprawled over the rocks, half-tangled in their own nets. Two more were washed ashore further down the coast. Five corpses in all. I don’t know if that was all of the hands aboard or if the sea had taken the rest as her dues.

‘The pastor came down to the harbour and told us to take the corpses up to the store cellar next to his house and lay them in there … though it wasn’t so much a request as a command, as if we were his servants,’ Ari adds indignantly. His loathing for Lutherans is plainly as deep as Fannar’s.

‘The gravediggers set to and started to dig a grave in the churchyard, but the pastor stopped them. Made them dig a mass grave outside the village on unconsecrated ground, waterlogged, wasteland it is, the kind you wouldn’t even lay your dog to rest in. Said the men were Catholics, idolaters who shouldn’t lie with good Christian folk. He could tell that from the crucifixes and amulets they were wearing.

‘Once the bodies had been dumped into the pit which was already oozing with stinking water, he sent the gravediggers home and said he would fill in the grave himself that same night. It’s my betting he was afraid that some in the village might secretly try to anoint the corpses with holy oil, or pray for their souls, even hold a service for them, so the pastor wanted to make sure they were buried quickly before anyone got the chance.’

Ari gestures towards the body of the man lying in the corner of the cave, but he studiously keeps his gaze turned from him.

‘That’s when I first saw him, or at least I thought I had. I would have sworn on my mother’s life he was one of the corpses that I’d helped carry up to the pastor’s store cellar. I mean, I had hold of the man’s ankles and his dead face was in front of me all the time we were carrying the body up the rise. A man’s features get burned into your mind, when you have to stare at him for that long.

‘But a few weeks later when I was working on Fannar’s land, I saw a man walking along the track. Right from the first moment I glimpsed him, I knew I’d seen him before, even though he was a foreigner. That’s what made me take such an interest in him – I was trying to remember who he was. I was so sure I knew him that I was on the point of climbing down to the track to greet him.

‘But the Danes got there first. Before I’d taken more than a couple of steps down the hillside, I spotted them walking towards him. I could tell from their jeers there was going to be trouble. They surrounded him and started beating him. So I ran for Fannar. By the time we returned he was unconscious. It was only when Fannar and I went to tend him that I remembered where I’d seen him before. Seeing him lying there, so near to death, was like seeing his drowned corpse all over again.

‘But I kept telling myself I must have been mistaken. The man I’d seen was long dead and buried in a grave. I’d carried him to the pastor’s house myself and I knew he was as blue and cold as any corpse could be. There wasn’t a breath of life in him. So how could a man who was dead be striding, full of life, along a track? It was impossible!’

I do not ask the lad if he could be mistaken. I know with absolute certainty he is not.

‘The pastor who buried him, Ari, what do they call him?’

‘Pastor Fridrik.’

‘Fridrik of where, Ari?’

The lad’s brow furrows as he tries to remember. ‘Borg … Fridrik of Borg, that’s what one of the gravediggers told me. Said it was a pity he hadn’t followed his father’s example and murdered himself, for he was turning out to be just as miserable a bastard as the old man was.’

‘So Fridrik has returned, has he?’ I murmur to myself, but the boy hears me.

‘You know him?’

‘If his father was the farmer Kristján, then I know a little of the family, though not much of the son.’

‘Was the old man as sour as they say?’

‘I never spoke to him, but I knew his wife. She sometimes came to Valdis and me when her sons were infants for cures and charms. But each time she came we could feel more sorrow in her. She complained that Kristján treated her no better than a hired maid, even in his bed she was of no more worth to him than a brood mare, and she spoke the truth, we were sure of that. But every story can be told in many ways and we believed that Kristján wasn’t entirely to blame. Even he must have noticed his wife was deeply in love, but not with him.

‘We saw that she was set on a path from which there would be no turning back, and so it proved to be, for one day she ran off with her lover, Kristján’s own brother, abandoning not only her husband but also her sons, who were still only children. It filled the gossips’ mouths for weeks. Every man or woman who came here was chewing some new little gobbet of it. Kristján’s humiliation made him a bitter man and any shoot of tenderness he might have had even for his own children withered inside him.

‘Over the years we heard stories of his sons leaving the farmstead one by one as soon as they were old enough, unable to endure their father’s violent temper. With no kin left to help him, and no hired man willing to work for such a brutal master, the farm fell into ruin and finally Kristján hanged himself in his own byre. As for Fridrik, all we know is that for a while he worked as a hireling, then one day he boarded a ship and disappeared. But that must be more than seven years ago … So now he is back from across the water and a Lutheran pastor …’

I lean forward. ‘Tell me, Ari, on which day of the week were the corpses of the drowned fishermen found, can you remember?’

He stares at me, evidently puzzled by such a question. ‘How should I remember that … ? No, wait, it must have been a Friday, for though we’d lost a day’s fishing on account of the storm, we did no fishing the next day either, for no fishing boat’ll put to sea on a Friday. That’s how we came to be ashore when the corpses washed up and could carry them up from the beach, else we’d all have been back at sea … Why, what does it matter what day it was?’

‘Because if a corpse is to be raised using the black arts, it must be on Friday night before Saturday dawns.’

Ari swallows hard. His voice is trembling a little. ‘You think he was the man I saw drowned and someone raised his corpse? But how?’

‘There are many ways to accomplish that. But if the corpse is newly dead, the sorcerer writes the Lord’s Prayer on a parchment using the feather of a water rail for a quill and his own blood for ink and he must carve the troll runes upon a stick. Then he must lay the stick on the corpse, rolling it as he reads the prayer he has written. Gradually, the body will stir, but before it gains its strength, the sorcerer must ask the corpse his name. If the corpse regains his strength before the question is asked or answered, then the sorcerer will never be able to master it and the draugr will kill him.

‘The draugr’s nostrils and mouth will bubble with grave-froth and this the sorcerer must lick off with his own tongue and place a drop of his own blood in the corpse’s mouth. Then great strength will come upon the draugr and he will attack the sorcerer and wrestle with him. If the sorcerer wins, the draugr must do his every bidding, but if the draugr wins, he will drag the sorcerer back down into death with him. It is an extremely brave or an extraordinarily bitter man who would risk raising the corpse of an adult man like this one, who would have enormous power. Most sorcerers fear to raise anyone except children whose strength they can master. Whoever raised the corpse of the drowned fisherman must have had a good reason for needing a grown man to do his bidding.’

‘Who?’ Ari asks. ‘Who would do such an evil thing?’

I am certain I know, but I will not tell the boy. It is the worst of crimes to poison the young with hatred.

Ari draws up his knees and clasps his arms tightly around them, staring into the flames of my cooking fire. ‘I heard my grandfather speak of a nightstalker that was sent by a jealous neighbour to terrorize a blacksmith and his family. He arrived one night as a stranger seeking shelter. They offered him their hospitality for they didn’t know what he was. But soon he made their lives a torment. He turned their winter stores of smoked meat rancid and the dried fish rotten. He caused every iron tool the blacksmith fashioned to crack, and every horseshoe he made to lame the horse it was nailed to until the whole neighbourhood was furious with the blacksmith and refused to bring their horses to him. My grandfather said the nightstalker kept the whole family constantly awake with his shrieking and singing of drunken songs, but he wouldn’t leave. Then, when they finally realized what he was, the blacksmith and his brothers circled him with sharp knives so he couldn’t escape, then they struck off his head with a great axe and burned the body.’

‘I know that the draugr in this cave has been conjured to do far worse than break tools or spoil stores. It is not animals he has been sent to destroy, Ari, but men.’

It pains me to frighten the lad, but I must make him understand why I am about to ask him to undertake a task for me that will place him in such danger.

Ari moans and brings his fists up over his head. ‘It’s all my fault. I should have let him die on the track. The Danes were right to attack him. We must kill him now, before he regains his strength. Cut off his head and burn the body, like my grandfather said, that’s the only way to destroy him.’

Ari struggles to his feet and pulls the knife from his belt.

‘No, Ari!’ I shout. ‘No, don’t hurt him. He must live.’

But the lad takes no notice of me. Although I can see he is terrified, I know by the hard set of his jaw he is resolved to see it through. He thinks it is the only way to undo the harm he has done. He starts across the floor of the cave, his knife raised high in both hands.

‘If you spill one drop of his blood, Ari, we will curse you to the grave and beyond.’

He ignores me, and I know that even if I utter a curse it will not stop him. But just as he reaches the man, there is a great clicking and whirring. A dense cloud of black beetles rises into the air and buzzes around Ari, dashing their sharp wings against his face over and over again. He flails his arms wildly, trying to beat them away. The knife flies from his hands as he staggers blindly across the cave.

‘Sit down, Ari! Sit and they will leave you.’

But so great is his panic that I have to shout twice more before I can persuade him to crouch down on the ground.

He kneels, hunched over, covering his head with his arms. The beetles fall back to the floor and scuttle back into the cracks in the rock.

Ari sits trembling for several minutes before he finally manages to find his voice again. ‘Eydis, I … I don’t understand. Why did you stop me? Why do you want this creature of hell to live?’

‘We don’t, Ari. We swear to you we would give our lives to see him destroyed, but for now he must live. His spirit has left his body. If the body is destroyed while the spirit is absent from it, his spirit will remain among the living and there will be no way to banish it. Not even the sorcerer who conjured up the corpse from the dead will be able to send the spirit back to the other world. The spirit will be capable of doing as much harm as the draugr itself, maybe more. Until the spirit returns to the body, we cannot risk destroying the corpse.’

Ari raises his head, despair etched into his face. ‘Then what can we do? Tell me what to do to put things right.’

‘Listen to me, Ari, the corpse is growing weaker. Soon it will be too weak for the spirit to return. We must heal the body. We have a jar of the fox fat we need and the dried herbs, but there is one ingredient, the most important, we do not possess. We need to prepare some mummy.’

The boy looks blank, as well he might. The ingredient is too costly for a hireling like him ever to have seen, never mind used.

‘Mummy is the render from a human corpse. It is one of the most powerful physics there is. The merchants bring a little in from Germany for the wealthy Danes, but it is costly, far beyond what most farmers could ever hope to pay, even if there were any for sale.’

A look of apprehension crosses the boy’s face. ‘You want me to steal some … from a Dane?’

‘No, lad. Even if we could discover who had some on his shelves, we could not risk you breaking into the house of a Dane. You would be caught and hanged without question. No, we must make it ourselves. But to do that we must have a corpse, or rather the head of one, for it is the render from the head that is the most powerful … Ari, listen to me carefully, we need you to break open a grave. You must choose the grave of someone not too long dead, so that some of the flesh and brains will still remain. You must cut off the head and bring it to me.’

He gags and the blood drains from his face so swiftly I fear he is about to faint.

‘Surely there must be something else that would heal him?’ he begs. ‘A root … a herb? It doesn’t matter how rare it is, only tell me what to look for and I promise I’ll search every mountain and valley. I won’t rest until I find it.’

‘Ari, believe me, I would not ask you to do such a thing if there was any other physic that would work.’

‘But to open a grave!’

‘If we cannot heal the corpse, then this man’s spirit will continue to serve the master who conjured it. To go to such lengths to raise a draugr, Ari, must mean whoever did this is planning great evil. Who knows how many men, women and children this spirit will drag down into the grave before his work is finished?’

The lad nods, his brow creased in anguish. I can see he is steeling himself to the task out of guilt for what he has unwittingly unleashed. I loathe myself for putting him through this, but there is no other way and no one else I can ask.

‘Ari, you must find the skull of a dog and place it in the grave so that it will placate the spirit of the man or woman and stop them seeking vengeance. But you must do this soon, Ari, time is running out. If we leave it too late …’

Ari lumbers to his feet and stumbles across to the passage.

‘I … I won’t fail, Eydis. I promise I won’t fail,’ he says, but he does not turn around and look at me.

‘Ari, take great care. Don’t let anyone catch you.’

The Lutherans care little for the dead. They say no Masses for their souls, neither do they anoint the corpses, nor sprinkle holy water on the graves. They do not even lay food or drink on the graves to welcome the spirits of the dead back on All Hallows’ Eve. But if they were to discover anyone attempting to open a grave they would accuse them of stealing bodies for the black arts and would hang the man or drown the woman, even if there was no proof they had removed anything from the corpse.

Ari clambers out of the cave with the heaviness of an old man. It is as if his youth has vanished in a single breath.

Laughter crackles from my sister’s lips, then stops abruptly.

‘So, Eydis, now you make a grave robber of the boy. My master would be proud of you. He has a great talent for dark arts. He has studied long and hard to acquire his knowledge and he will use all he has learned, you can be sure of that, for he has a passion, my master, a hatred burning him up. Ambition, all-consuming ambition is a goblet of acid that he daily drains to the last scalding drop. He would be delighted that you are going to such lengths to help him achieve what he desires, that you are taking such pains to cure my corpse.

‘But, Eydis, you must have realized that all your tender efforts will be wasted. I won’t return to my own corpse. I like being in Valdis’s body. I feel so close to you, my sweet sister. It is lonely being dead, so lonely. Can you imagine what it’s like lying down there among the bitter, angry dead, in cold black water, the grave mould slowly creeping across your tongue? I won’t go back.’

The moon is rising. Death is riding. Eydis, Eydis. He chants the words like a mocking child.

I try to ignore the taunt, though the tone of the sing-song voice makes my flesh crawl. ‘Fridrik raised you. He placed his bitterness on your tongue and his hatred in your mouth. But understand this. However strong you are, we are stronger. We will not let you live in her. We will not let you use her to destroy countless innocent lives.’

Eydis, Eydis, sister mine, the grave is cold, but we shall lie together and you shall kiss my rotting lips all through the days of the dead and into the darkness beyond.

He laughs, and I feel a strange tingling between my thighs and fingers rubbing my breast, though no hands are touching me.

My sister’s head rears up towards my face, and her dead lips part. ‘Caress me, Eydis. Kiss your master.’

I turn my head sharply away, but I cannot restrain the hands that are invisible. I cannot stop the fingers probing me, stroking me, for it is like trying to push away an icy wind. I roll myself into a ball, trying to repel him with my mind, but I cannot escape from his loathsome touch.

‘You will surrender yourself to me, Eydis. Sooner or later, you will let me enter you too.’