The Falcons of Fire and Ice (12 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Four

When the French King Philip II was laying siege to Acre, his prize gyrfalcon broke its leash and flew up to perch on the city walls. He sent an envoy requesting the bird’s return, which, not surprisingly, was refused. The bird was delivered to the Saracen leader, Saladin, who was camped with his army outside the city.

Philip was so anxious for the bird’s return that he dispatched a procession to Saladin accompanied by trumpeters, heralds and envoys offering 1,000 gold crowns for the safe return of the gyrfalcon. Saladin, however, regarded the capture of this white bird as a most auspicious omen for his troops and flatly refused to return it even for that sum.

Sintra, Portugal Isabela

Falcon
– the female of any species of hawk, as opposed to the tiercel or male. It is also used to refer to the category of long-winged hawks in general.

The knock came again at dawn, four days after my father’s arrest, but this time it was for me. They’d only sent one soldier, for I was only a girl, what resistance could I offer? They hadn’t reckoned on my mother, who clung to me with the tenacity of an octopus. As soon as he had prised one hand off me, she clamped on somewhere else. In the end the soldier had to hold her off with the point of his sword.

‘Don’t be so eager to join your daughter, Senhora. Your turn will come all too soon and I promise you, then you will wish it hadn’t.’

He did not bind my wrists but instead gripped my upper arm and led me up the hill through the narrow twisting streets towards the king’s summer palace.

I was trying desperately to fight down my fear, though every muscle in my body was aching to tear myself from his grip and flee. The only way I could keep from crying in terror was to force myself to think about the place I was in now and not what was awaiting me. I told myself to remember the town as it looked on that morning, for I might never see it again.

The ridge of Sintra was swaddled in a soft white mist that intensified the silence of the early morning. The rocky plain below was hidden by the fog, so that it felt as if Sintra had drifted off high in the sky among the clouds, like a child’s kite that has broken its string. The air was soft and moist, laden with the scent of resin from the pine groves and the perfume of the camellias whose pink blossoms lay so thick upon the path that it felt as if a carpet lay beneath your feet. From the walls of the houses and gardens, lush dark green ferns and soft fat cushions of moss dripped with moisture. How could I leave this? How was it possible that pain and death should be hiding amongst such intensity of life?

We were already at the palace. I tried to turn and take one last look behind me, but I stumbled and would have fallen on the steps had the soldier not hauled me painfully up by my arm. We passed under the arch of the arcade, as dark as the mouth of some great cave, where water dripped into a great basin, echoing like the tolling of a single bell. Then out into the courtyard behind. The red tiled roofs of the cluster of buildings were all but hidden by the mist, but I’d seen them often enough to know they were there, as were the two great white conical chimneys that carried the smoke and steam from the roaring kitchen fires high into the air, so that it should not blow into the windows of the royal chambers. The clatter of plates and irons in the kitchens and stables mingled with the soft tinkling of the many fountains that studded the patios in front of the chambers, but these sounds drifted towards me like ghosts without substance.

Servants loomed out of the mist, vanishing again as they hurried off about their tasks. A few glanced at me, but those that did quickly averted their eyes. I thought I saw one of the boys from the mews, but as soon as he saw me he fled around the corner of a building as if he thought I had the evil eye. The soldier suddenly pulled me into the shelter of a building and held me there as two of his comrades marched past, as if he didn’t want to be seen by them. Then he dragged me forward again.

In the far corner of the palace grounds stood a square white tower. The soldier ducked under the low doorway and led the way up a narrow, winding staircase, until we reached a thick, stout door. He pushed me through it and slammed the door behind me.

I stood too terrified to move, trying to make sense of what little I could see in the dim interior. There were no windows, save for some thin slits in the wall far too high for anyone to reach and too narrow for anything but a songbird to escape that way. The thin blades of light scarcely did more than illuminate the beams high above me.

Ever since my father’s arrest I had been conjuring in my mind the horrors that might lie behind a door like this, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness I saw with relief that the room contained nothing but a long wooden table with two high-backed chairs placed at either end. It seemed too commonplace to be real. Yet, as I stood there, I felt the coldness of the stone walls eating into my flesh and I began to understand that it is not always necessary to inflict pain to induce fear.

The door opened again and the soldier leaned in. ‘I’ve relieved the guard, but he won’t be gone for long, so you must hurry.’

The bewilderment I felt must have been written on my face, for he stepped further into the room. ‘Your father asked me to bring you here. He wants to see you. They’ll be taking him to Lisbon any day now; he may not get another chance. Come on, hurry.’

‘I thought you’d been sent to arrest me.’

He grinned. ‘Your father didn’t want your mother to know he sent for you. It’s you he wants to see, not her. Only way I could think of to get you here without her following. Worked, didn’t it? Bet you thought you were going to find yourself in chains.’ He chuckled gleefully as if he’d just pulled off some great practical joke.

I tried to smile, since he obviously expected me to admire his ingenuity, but my face was frozen. My legs were still trembling as I followed him back down the stairs. When we reached the level of the courtyard, the soldier unlocked another door with a great iron key and, darting anxious glances out through the archway, he motioned me inside.

‘Watch your step when you get to the bottom, those stones are slippery. Always wet down there.’

Behind the door the steps continued down beneath the tower, until I found myself standing in a long passage lit by burning torches in brackets on the rough stone walls. The walls were black with mould, and an overpowering stench of excrement, urine and rotting straw burned my nostrils. The soldier led me past several low doorways in which were set iron grilles. I couldn’t help stealing a quick glance through one of them, but the interior was too dark to see what lay inside, though something or someone did, for I could hear the straw rustling and a kind of whimpering moan – whether it was animal or human was impossible to tell.

At the furthest end of the passage the soldier stopped and, selecting another key from the great ring of them in his hand, wiggled it into the lock. The lock was evidently rusty for he needed both hands to turn it. He jerked his head, motioning me in, before he pulled the door shut again and turned the key once more. I could barely stand upright in the tiny cell, which was no longer or broader than it was high. The only light seeping through the small iron grille came from the burning torches a way up the passage, and at first I could see little except the dim smudge of the walls.

‘Isabela, my dear child! He brought you. I was afraid he would not.’

The voice came from the floor, but it was in darkness. I crouched down to avoid blocking the light from the door, and as my eyes adjusted I saw my father sitting on a heap of straw with his back to the rough stone wall.