The Falcons of Fire and Ice

  ‘Is that so? A gentleman?’ A cold smile slid across Carlos’s mouth. ‘Well, as luck would have it this Henry Vasco is coming to Belém this very day to deliver some cargo to be shipped to Goa. Why don’t you and I pay him a visit? I’m sure he will be delighted to see an old acquaintance such as yourself.’

  I rose with as much dignity and control as I could. ‘That will be delightful, Senhor Carlos, shall we say seven this evening? Now, dear lady, I must beg you to excuse me. I have some urgent matters to attend to.’ I bowed. ‘Till this evening, Senhor Carlos.’

  I began to back towards the door, but Carlos was already on his feet with his drawn sword in his hand, the tip of the blade pointed exactly at my heart as if he could see it thumping in my chest.

  ‘I’m afraid your business will have to wait, Senhor Ricardo. I have a mind to pay my respects to this friend of yours immediately.’

  He took a step closer. I backed away and collided with a heavy wooden chest.

  ‘Come now, Senhor,’ I said. ‘Sure … surely you would not be so ill-mannered as to draw a blade in the presence of a lady? If you are so eager for me to come now, you have just to say the word and I will be only too delighted to accompany you. There’s no need to use force, I assure you.’

  All the time I was speaking my hands were groping behind me over the chest, trying to find something I could use to defend myself. My fingers closed on a cold, heavy object. With one swift movement I hurled it at Carlos.

  The statue of the saint hit him on the nose and he staggered backwards. Dona Lúcia screamed and the dog started barking, but I didn’t stay to watch. I turned on my heels and ran through the archway into the passage beyond, making for what I hoped was the door to the street. But I must have turned the wrong way, for I found myself facing a staircase that led upwards. I started to retrace my steps, then I heard Carlos bellowing above the yapping of the dog.

  ‘Guard the doors, damn you, don’t let him escape.’

  Footsteps were hurrying in my direction. There was only one way to go. I scrambled up the stairs and just managed to flatten myself into an alcove at the top as servants rushed through the hallway below. My heart was thumping so loudly I was sure it was echoing off the walls.

  ‘Search the house! I want him found!’ Carlos bellowed. I could tell his temper had definitely not been improved by that bang to the nose.

  Something warm and soft touched my hand. I jumped, barely suppressing a squeal. Dona Lúcia’s maid pressed her fingers to my lips. She peered cautiously over the rail of the stairs. I didn’t need to look. I could hear crashes and shouts as the slaves and servants searched every conceivable hiding place below, and the excited barks of that nasty little dog as it waddled round behind them.

  The maid tugged urgently on my arm and pulled me across the passageway into a room, locking the door behind us. I found myself standing in a sumptuous bedchamber. The floor was tiled in a delicate mosaic of jewel-bright flowers, fish and frolicking dolphins. Images of saints and innumerable depictions of the Virgin Mary smiled serenely down at me from all the walls. A silk rug lay to one side of an enormous bed, which was piled high with cushions and draped in light gauze hangings, whilst on a carved black table a silver mirror was drowning beneath an ocean of delicate glass phials, gilded bottles, ivory combs and silver brushes.

  ‘The mistress’s bedchamber,’ the maid whispered, though I could see that plainly enough for myself. ‘Hers and that dog’s.’ She picked up one of the silver-backed hairbrushes. ‘That’s his, the spoilt little brute. She brushes him with this, but she won’t even give me so much as a wooden comb for my hair.’

  ‘I can’t hide in here,’ I said, aghast. ‘If I’m found in her bedchamber, that nephew of hers is going to run me through on the spot.’

  She gave a little giggle. ‘I think he’s planning to do that anyway.’

  ‘I’m glad you find it amusing,’ I snapped. ‘But it’s my life hanging by a fingernail. How am I going to get out of here?’

  Instead of answering, she moved closer and, standing on tiptoe, she slid her hand around my neck and pulled me down towards her, kissing me full and passionately. I put my arms around her, feeling the warmth of her hot little body against my legs. There was a familiar stirring in my groin and she nuzzled in to me. For a few blissful moments, I entirely forgot that I was being pursued and could think of nothing else except the delightful little creature in my arms. Well, to be more truthful I wasn’t actually capable of thinking at all, I had just given myself up to the thrill surging through me.

  But my cock went as limp as a drowned kitten as soon as I heard the furious shouts outside the door of the chamber.

  ‘Quickly,’ the maid said, pulling me across the room. She thrust me out on to a narrow stone balcony. ‘You’ll have to climb. Go on,’ she urged.

  I stared down into the courtyard below. ‘I can’t go down there.’

  Several of the servants were peering hopefully behind the pots of the miniature orange and lemon trees as if I might somehow be concealed behind them.

  ‘Not down, stupid, up. You’ll have to get up on the roof. If you stand on the balustrade then you’ll be able to heave yourself up. Once you’re up there you can cross to one of the roofs of the other houses and climb down to the street.’

  ‘I’ll break my neck.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘If he catches you, he’ll probably cut your head off anyway.’

  ‘There must be some other –’

  I broke off as someone rattled the door of the bedchamber. Now here was an interesting choice – death by falling from a roof or death at the hands of an apoplectic, sword-wielding maniac. Which, I wondered, was the more attractive proposition?

  I clambered on top of the balustrade, praying that none of the servants below would look up. I tried to swing myself up on to the roof above, but was fearful of bringing the tiles clattering down.

  ‘Wait, you’ll never do it like that,’ the maid whispered. She grasped the balustrade to steady herself. ‘Stand on my shoulder.’

  I wasn’t at all sure she could bear my weight, but there wasn’t time to debate the matter. I placed one foot on her little shoulder and pushed hard. She gave a gasp, but managed to keep standing until I had pulled myself up on to the roof.

  The girl instantly vanished back into the chamber, closing the shutters to the balcony behind her. For a few minutes I just lay there, too terrified to move in case I rolled off the steep slope of the roof. The tiles were painfully hot from baking under the fierce sun, but even the pain of that couldn’t induce me to stir until I heard a thunderous hammering at the door of the chamber.

  ‘Are you in there, Ricardo? You’ll have to come out sometime. You’re trapped. There’s no way you can escape. Now, open this door and give yourself up, and I won’t kill you, but if you don’t, I’ll break the door down and cut you into dog meat.’

  The strange thing about fear is how readily you overcome it when threatened by something even more terrifying. If I had been too frightened to move up to that point, I suddenly found myself positively eager to crawl across a roof even a cat would refuse to venture upon. Trying hard to resist the temptation to look down, I inched my way along the tiles until I came to the side of the building and with a monumental effort dragged myself over the ridge tiles and round the corner. At this point, a low palisade ran along the side of the roof and I gratefully crawled behind it and lay there, panting and shaking. On this side, the roof overlooked one of the narrow streets. The palisade was too low to shield me completely, if someone should chance to look up as they sauntered along, but it was the only cover I had and at least it would stop me slipping off.

  I don’t how long I lay there with the sun scorching my back and the hot tiles blistering my hands, sweat pouring down my face and my throat so dry I would have gladly drunk a barrel of horse piss, before I finally heard Carlos and some of the servants heading off down the streets away from the house. They had evidently realized I was not inside and
had decided to search the streets for me. Carlos was bound to report the incident. In fact, he’d probably already sent a servant to summon help. It wouldn’t be long before the place was crawling with soldiers.

  Trying not to raise my head too high, I examined the building next door. It had a balcony on the upper storey with a high wall around it. The doors to the room that opened out on to the balcony were tightly fastened, and the catches were rusty. It looked as if they had not been opened for some time, for leaves and other wind-blown debris had accumulated behind the wall. If I could get down there I could safely hide on the balcony in the shade and wait until dark. Anything would be better than being grilled alive on this roof.

  There was nothing for it but to move quickly and pray no one would look up. I grabbed the palisade and dragged myself over the tiles until I reached the point where I was directly above the balcony of the neighbouring house. Then, praying to every saint I could name and to all those I couldn’t, I jumped down.

  For once the saints must have taken pity on me for I landed on the wall of the balcony, teetered precariously between life and death, then managed to fall the right way and tumbled down inside. There I lay bruised and winded, not daring to move in case someone inside the house had heard me. But no one came running or flung open the shutters, so I eased myself into a sitting position in the blessed shade and breathed a great sigh of relief.

  I’d made it! I’d escaped! All I had to do now was wait until dark, then climb down into the street below, leaving that arrogant, pompous jackanapes Carlos chasing himself up his own tight little arsehole. I grinned to myself at the thought that even now he was pounding around the sweltering streets working himself into a raging sweat, while all the time I was lying cool and relaxed just above his head.

  The exhaustion of the chase and the sleepless night before it had taken its toll and I must finally have drifted off into a doze, because I was jerked awake by a clamour of voices below in the street.

  ‘We may as well call off the search here and start to cast our nets wider, Senhor Carlos. The villain will be long gone from this area by now.’

  ‘No!’ Carlos roared. ‘I stationed men on the end of every street leading out of this quarter and I tell you he’s still in this warren somewhere. I want that scoundrel found.’

  I shrank down beneath the wall as low as I could get.

  I could hear them banging on doors, questioning people up and down the street, but all denied seeing anything, though they promised to report it at once if they did. Carlos’s voice was growing more distant as they moved further up the street. I released my breath. My mind was racing, trying to work out an escape route which would avoid the lookouts Carlos had posted. If I could slip through a house and emerge on a different street, then …

  There was a chattering just above me. For a moment I thought it must be birds quarrelling on the roof, but then something black and white scampered along the top of the balcony wall. I twisted round. My little monkey, Pio, was standing on the wall just above my head, squeaking in ecstasy at having found me.

  ‘Where the hell did you come from?’ I whispered.

  His chattering grew more noisy and excited.

  ‘Be quiet, Pio! Shush!’ I implored him.

  He was standing up on his hind legs on top of the wall, waving his arms about.

  ‘Pio, come here. Good boy, that’s right, come to your master.’

  I lunged at him and he bounded away along the wall, uttering high-pitched screeches of rage at my attempts to grab him.

  ‘Go, get away! Go! Go!’ I flapped at him frantically.

  Picking up twigs that lay scattered on the balcony, I hurled them at the enraged little demon, trying to make him flee to the roof top, but he refused to budge. His screams intensified. I made another grab for him, but he neatly evaded my hand, and as I turned to try again, the doors on the balcony crashed open and I found myself staring up into the coldly triumphant face of Carlos.

  ‘I thought the creature would find you. They say masters become like their pets, so I should have guessed you’d be clambering over roofs like a monkey.’

  I scrambled to my feet and swung my leg over the wall.

  ‘You can certainly jump if you want to, Senhor Ricardo,’ he said with an icy smile. ‘But I really wouldn’t recommend it. If you look down you’ll see the soldiers are waiting directly below with their pikes and swords. So your landing won’t exactly be comfortable.’

  He gestured towards the door leading back into the house. ‘Please be so good as to step this way. I’m afraid, Senhor Ricardo, or whatever your real name is, your days of charming naive old ladies out of their money are about to come to an end … a very painful end.’

  Iceland Eydis

  Jesses – short leather thongs permanently attached to the legs of a hawk to allow the bird to be held securely by the falconer or fastened to a perch.

  ‘I’ve brought you the herbs you asked for.’ The lad squats opposite me on the warm rock floor.

  He is the same young man who helped the crofter, Fannar, bring the injured man to me.

  ‘Does he live?’ he asks.

  ‘He is not dead.’

  The body of the man lies between us, like a loaf of bread placed between a guest and his host on a table. Something given, something taken, something shared, which forms an unbreakable bond between strangers. But though he is the pledge between us, neither of us looks at the man.

  ‘Fannar is not coming?’

  The lad frowns. ‘The priest has come to hear confessions and to administer the sacraments of Mass. He’s in Fannar’s hall even now. Fannar sent me to his neighbours to tell them to come, for who knows when Father Jon will be able to return … or even if he will ever return. Fannar said to tell them they must come quickly for the priest must be away before first light. It’s too dangerous for him to remain on the farmstead more than a few hours. Fannar will guide him out of the valley before dawn.’

  The lad nervously fingers the ties on his leather jerkin. ‘I did offer to guide the priest myself. I’m not a coward!’ he adds vehemently, his eyes flashing from under his heavy fringe of red-gold hair.

  It is plain that he still feels shame over his failure to defend the foreigner from the Danes.

  He scowls down at his grimy fingernails. ‘But Fannar wouldn’t let me do it. He said he knew the land better, could show the priest a pass over the mountains that’s hidden from view. I think he only wanted to protect me, though, in case the priest is caught. But I don’t need protecting! I know ravens are everywhere watching us, but I’m not afraid.’ He thrusts his chin out as if defying the Lutherans to come and take him.

  Fannar is wise not to entrust the task to him. The boy is desperate for a chance to show he is no coward and might deliberately take risks to prove himself, which will put not only him but the priest too in danger, for the ravens are indeed watching everyone. Although every man, woman and child is officially a Lutheran now by order of the Danish king, still many like Fannar practise the old Catholic faith in secret. And the black-clad Lutherans have eyes everywhere, trying to catch those hidden priests still celebrating the forbidden Mass, as well as the ordinary men and women who shield them.

  Fannar is taking a huge risk by inviting others to come to confession. How is he to know for certain which of his friends or neighbours is not simply pretending to be Lutheran as he is, but has in his heart really converted to the Protestant faith and might betray him? Even those who have no love for the Lutherans might be persuaded to spy for them, if they are offered enough gold.

  ‘Fannar must trust you, Ari.’

  The lad looks startled. ‘Did Fannar tell you my name?’

  ‘Fannar trusts you,’ I repeat, ‘and yet you did not tell him the truth about this man.’

  Ari’s cheeks flush, but he mutinously thrusts out his lower lip. ‘I told him what I saw.’

  ‘That some Danes beat him.’

  ‘It was the truth.’ He scowls as if challenging me to
dispute it.

  ‘But you let Fannar believe you didn’t know the man, that he was a stranger to you. And Fannar is a good soul. No matter if it was a friend or stranger, human or beast, if Fannar saw any living creature hurt or hungry he would try to help, even if it meant sharing his last loaf of bread or cutting his only blanket in two. You, I think, are much like him, and if that man had been a stranger, you would have helped him just as Fannar would. But there is something more here. Something I think you will not admit even to yourself.’

  I pause to watch him. Although I am veiled, still he refuses to look at me, but stares sullenly at the pool of hot water bubbling up through the rocks. He is not going to admit anything without a deal of persuasion.

  ‘If this man really was a stranger to you, Ari, you would have looked at his face with curiosity that first day you brought him here, but you didn’t. I thought then that you were sickened by the sight of blood, but that wasn’t what was upsetting you, was it? Then again tonight when you came in, any other man’s gaze would have been drawn at once to him as soon as they entered, to see if his wounds were healing and if his eyes had opened, but yours was not. You know this man and you are afraid of him. Why?’

  Ari scrambles to his feet. ‘I have to go. Fannar will have need of me to keep watch.’

  ‘Ari, tell me. We need to know. There is danger, grave danger, hovering around this man, that we can sense, but we cannot yet see the shape of it.’

  The boy hesitates. He stares into the clear waters of the pool, the flames of the burning torch rippling over his face so that he dissolves and re-forms in a hundred different masks.

  ‘I should have left him to die on the track, I know I should. But I couldn’t just walk away. What if I’d been mistaken? Do you think it’s better to let an innocent man die rather than risk saving a man who should not live? I didn’t know what to do, Eydis, and I still don’t.’

  ‘Tell us the truth, Ari. We have to understand what we are dealing with. You must help us. If you don’t, you could be putting everyone in danger.’