The Falcons of Fire and Ice

  I heard a deep, croaking pruk-pruk-pruk above me. A pair of ravens was circling round the black rocks up on the hillside, their wings outstretched, gliding on the wind for the pure joy of flying. Suddenly I saw this was not the entrance to purgatory at all, but to heaven. It was the most wildly beautiful place I had ever seen. I half-turned, wanting to share my excitement with my father as I had done so many times when I was a little girl, when he took me with him to trap the wild falcons. But even as I opened my mouth, I realized with a sickening jolt that he was not riding behind me, but lying in a dark dungeon deep beneath the earth. I gazed up at the sky, desperately hoping to hear that cry or see the familiar outline of the gyrfalcon circling above me, but there was no sign of the birds.

  I was so intent on searching the skies for the falcons that at first I didn’t see what was happening, until shouts and curses from the men jolted me back. The packhorse which Vítor had been leading behind his own mount had stopped and was jerking its head, trying to pull away from the leading rein. The pack which Fausto had helped to tie to the beast had slipped sideways, so that now all the weight of our bundles and the iron cooking pot hung on her left side. The horse flopped down in the track and tried to rid herself of the irritation by rolling on her back and thrashing violently.

  Vítor dismounted and, flinging his reins at Marcos, marched back to try to pull the packhorse up on to her feet. Marcos dismounted too and, holding tightly to both horses, led them forward, looking wildly around for somewhere he might tether them, but there was not a tree or a post anywhere. Hinrik, who had been riding ahead, was plainly oblivious of the commotion behind him and had disappeared around one of the mounds of soil.

  Vítor glanced up at Marcos. ‘Hurry up and give me a hand. We’ll have to get this pack off her before we can get her up.’

  He tugged at one of the knots in the wool, but it only seemed to make it tighter. Exasperated, he pulled out his knife. ‘I’ll have to cut it.’

  Up to then I had kept my seat, but I saw the most useful thing I could do now would be to dismount and help to hold the beasts while the others freed the packhorse. Behind me, Fausto was still mounted too. I half-turned my head and saw his horse drawing level with mine.

  ‘Can you hold her while I dismount?’ I handed him the reins and, seizing a handful of the horse’s mane, I leaned forward, about to swing my leg over its back, when I felt something hit my horse’s flank, as if someone had kicked the beast hard. She whinnied and sprang forward off the track. Fausto dropped the reins, but before I could grab at them, the horse galloped away with me frantically clutching at her mane. I had lost the stirrups and was desperately trying to keep my seat by gripping her sides tightly with my legs.

  Hinrik’s warning flashed through my head. I knew that by pressing the horse’s sides I was only encouraging her to go faster, but I couldn’t help myself. I was only holding on to her mane and I was terrified that if I relaxed my grip with my legs I would be thrown straight on to those sharp, jagged rocks.

  As we dashed forward, I coaxed and pleaded with the horse to stop, but she took no more notice of me than she would a fly. I crouched low across her neck, groping for the swinging reins with one hand while I twisted the fingers of my other hand tighter into her mane. I was dimly aware that the ground right in front of us looked flatter and smoother and the vicious black rocks had given way to pools of water. Perhaps I could manage to slide from her back. I would be bruised, but at least I wouldn’t smash my head open on the stones. I felt again the twinge from my injured knee and almost before I’d thought about what I was doing I began to shift my weight to the other side. I couldn’t afford to fall on that leg again.

  Without warning the horse staggered, her back legs buckled beneath her. The violent jerk dislodged the precarious hold I had on her and I found myself sliding sideways and backwards. I landed in something soft and at the same moment the horse lashed out wildly with her hooves, kicking and bucking as she tried to free her legs from the sucking mire in which she was caught. I rolled over, covering my head and trying to protect myself. I felt the rush of wind as her hoof passed within a hair’s breadth of my head. Then, with one tremendous heave, she had freed herself and was gone.

  My relief lasted barely half a breath. For in the same instant I discovered I was unhurt, I also realized that I was sinking. I was lying sprawled in a pool of warm black mud, but as soon as I tried to push my arms down to prise myself up my hands disappeared into the ooze. I scrabbled around, trying to feel something solid to push against, but there was nothing. Each time I moved, more of the thick, sticky mud welled up over my body and legs, pulling me in deeper. I was in the grip of a giant. I tried to pull one arm free, but dragging it up through the sucking mud was like trying to lift a blacksmith’s anvil in one hand. Blind panic engulfed me and I screamed.

  As I twisted around I saw a tall woman standing a few feet away from me. Where she had come from I had no idea, but she looked as old as poor Jorge. For a moment she just looked at me, then turned away and began to pick her way around the edge of the mire. I shouted at her to help, but she didn’t even glance in my direction. I yelled again, certain that she was just going to walk on and leave me to drown.

  She halted at the edge of the bog and swiftly untied a long, coarse apron from her waist, then she knelt down and flicked the apron towards me like a whip. I suddenly realized what she was trying to do. I tried to lift my hand to catch the end of it, but I couldn’t pull it from the mud. The edge of the cloth fell near my face, but I couldn’t grasp it. The black mud bubbled against my lips, and in terror I tried to arch my head up and away from it, but that only made me sink deeper.

  She pulled the apron back and I could see she meant to throw it again. I heaved my arm up with all my remaining strength and, with a pop, my hand shot free of the mud. But the movement cost me dearly, for even with my head thrown back as far as I could, the mud was oozing into my mouth and nose. I was trying to hold my breath, but my lungs were bursting with pain. I was dimly aware of a cry and felt the edge of the apron whip across my face. I flayed around blindly with my fingers, and then I felt the blessed solidness of the cloth. I clutched it as hard as I could and felt the tension on the cloth as she gently began to tug it towards her. By pulling against the cloth, I managed to wrest my head a few precious inches out of the mud, and lay there coughing and choking.

  The woman began to pull steadily. For all her great age she was surprisingly strong, but my hands, slippery with mud, kept losing their hold on the apron, and she was forced to stop until I could struggle to grasp it again. I had not moved more than an inch or two. I was utterly exhausted. My limbs felt like jelly. I didn’t care any more. I just wanted to let go, sink down and down into the soft, warm mud and sleep for ever.

  Marcos came running up behind the woman. He stopped a little way off and froze, staring wildly as if he was at a loss to know what to do. The woman half-turned her head and beckoned to him. Still he stood there as if he couldn’t remember how to move.

  ‘Marcos, help me! Please … help … me!’

  The sound of my voice seemed to jerk him into life and he ran forward and crouched down next to the woman. She thrust the end of the apron into his hands.

  ‘Twist the cloth around your wrists,’ he called to me urgently.

  I tried, but my fingers felt like sausages and every movement buried my arms deeper. When he saw that I had grasped it as well as I could, Marcos began to pull. I felt as if my arms were being dragged from their sockets. I willed myself to grip it, even though I knew it was useless.

  ‘It’s no use … I can’t,’ I wailed.

  ‘You must, you’re nearly there. Hold on, Isabela. Just hold on!’

  Then, with a rapid slither like a newborn lamb sliding out of a ewe, my body burst from the mud and I felt hands clutching my arms and hauling me on to firm ground.

  I lay on the grass, too weak even to sit up, mumbling my thanks to him over and over again. I looked around for the woman
to thank her too, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Marcos asked anxiously, and I realized my teeth were chattering, but it was from shock not cold.

  ‘Mud was warm.’ The strangeness of that had only just occurred to me.

  ‘It must be that little brook. There’s steam rising from it. Come on, try washing some of that mud off in there.’

  He had to support me the few yards to the shallow stream, for my legs repeatedly gave way beneath me as if every drop of strength had been sucked out of my body. I touched the water gingerly. It was blissfully warm. I slipped into it and lay on hot stones on the bed of the stream, letting the water gently trickle over me.

  Finally, when I felt strong enough to move again, Marcos helped me out and wrapped his own cloak around me, though it was so long I had to loop it over my arm. I glanced back towards the track. Vítor and Fausto were picking their way towards us around the black rocks. The two men were making slow progress encumbered by our packs, the cooking pot and stockfish, which they now had to carry upon their own backs.

  Before they could reach us, I grabbed Marcos’s arm and whispered urgently, ‘I think Fausto deliberately kicked my horse and that’s why she bolted.’

  ‘But why on earth should he want to make your horse bolt? His foot probably nudged your beast by accident. It’s hard to know where to put your legs on those brutes, especially when you’re the size of that gangling lump Fausto. He could practically straddle that horse and still keep both feet on the ground.’ Marcos smiled at me in a pacifying sort of way, as if I was a small child who had complained a playmate had shoved her over in a game. ‘Those horses crowd together and lean on one another’s flanks every chance they get. They’re doing it now. It’s little wonder he bumped you.’

  He pointed to where Hinrik was riding back towards us, leading one of the other horses. The rest were following, pressing themselves so tightly together that it seemed as if they were one beast with twenty legs. My own mount, the wretched little troll-wife, was trotting calmly back towards her companions as if nothing had ever alarmed her, deftly skirting the rocks without once breaking her gait.

  ‘You look as bedraggled as a street urchin,’ Fausto said cheerfully as he drew close. ‘But no bones broken, I hope.’

  ‘Do you?’ I answered coldly.

  A vaguely startled expression crossed his face. But before he could reply, Hinrik trotted up.

  ‘There is a bóndabær … farm … not far. We can sleep there.’

  ‘You know the farmer? Are you sure he will give us hospitality?’ Vítor asked him.

  The boy looked mildly surprised. ‘I do not know anyone in these parts. But it is the custom, if a stranger asks for shelter, he will be given it.’

  Vítor turned to us. ‘If the boy speaks the truth, then I think we should avail ourselves of the hospitality while it is still permitted for us to do so.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Let’s sleep under a solid roof while we can, for if we find ourselves still in this land in two weeks’ time, then we’ll be forced to fend for ourselves out in this.’ He swept his hand towards the distant mountain peaks, suddenly dark and menacing in the fading light.

  ‘And will you still be here in two weeks, Lutheran?’ Marcos asked sharply, but Vítor ignored him.

  Hinrik, without even asking us if we wanted to remount, turned his horse’s head and began threading his way over the springy turf and through the rocks. The rest of the horses turned as one and followed, leaving us no choice but to trail after them.

  My knee was really aching now. I wrapped Marcos’s cloak more tightly around me, but my sodden garments clung to me, chilling me to the bone. It wasn’t just my wet clothes that made me shiver, though. Marcos was too kind and generous to see it, but whatever he said, I knew Fausto had tried to get my horse to throw me. The ground was littered with sharp rocks. If I had fallen from a galloping horse on to any one of those I would have been killed or badly hurt.

  I felt someone’s eyes on me and glanced over my shoulder in time to meet Vítor’s fixed gaze. His stare was cold and intense and I felt as if he was trying to read every thought in my head. I still could not bring myself to trust him. For all that he had rescued me in the forest that night, I could not rid myself of that image of him standing over me with a stick raised menacingly above my head.

  But it made no sense. As Marcos said, why should either man want to harm me? They couldn’t have discovered who or what I was. If they had known, they would have told the captain of the ship that I was leaving Portugal illegally, and doubtless he would have been only too happy to chain me up until I could be returned, or sell me as a slave or even simply throw me overboard. They couldn’t know who I was, so why should either man want to do me harm? Yet I could not shake off the feeling that that was exactly what they intended.

  And it wasn’t just my own life that they had threatened. If I was killed or badly injured and I couldn’t return with the falcons, my father, my whole family would go to their deaths believing I had deserted them. And if my father, a Marrano, was executed for killing those royal birds, they would use the outrage of the people to round up others. How many other innocent lives would end in the flames? How many more sobbing girls would place a box of bones on the pyre? How many Jorges would die in agony, their mouths bound so tightly they couldn’t even scream? Suddenly the enormity of what rested in my hands almost made me vomit with fear.

  I had to get away from these men, and soon, before either of them could try to harm me again. My mistake before had been to involve the boy, Hinrik. This time I would have to do it alone.

  Eydis

  Mantle – when a falcon spreads her wings and her tail, and defensively arches over her food to protect her kill from other birds which might snatch it from her. If a falcon without a kill adopts this sitting position it is a sign she is irritated or feels threatened.

  I lift the piece of black bog oak in my hands. It is an old friend, a friend I both respect and fear. The wood is oval like a giant egg, but it has been sliced down the middle and hollowed out, the hollow polished until it gleams in the firelight. It is a black mirror in whose labyrinthine depths the spirit wanders freely to see what it already knows but cannot yet give form.

  I gaze unblinkingly into the black centre of the hollow. At first I see nothing but my own smoky reflection, but I know that I must sink beneath its surface, allow my sight to be pulled deeper and deeper into its heart until the hollow becomes bottomless, timeless, eternal, until I can see into the eighth day.

  I am staring down a long, dark tunnel. A girl is standing at the far end. She is gazing towards me, as if she senses I am there, but cannot quite see me. She knows where she must go. But something has changed. A man is standing behind her. He is not one of the dead who follow her. He is alive and he is coming close to her, too close. He means her harm. She knows it and she is afraid. She turns away from me. Her fear is driving her, separating her from me, as a dog cuts out a single sheep from the flock. She is in danger, mortal danger. Even as I try to call out to her, she vanishes.

  Someone is walking ahead of me. But it is not the girl. I recognize him. It is Ari. He is walking towards a farmhouse. It is the darkest hour of the night, and a chill wind is rolling down from the mountains. His step falters. He stops. He knows that something is terribly wrong. The farm dogs are howling, not barking excitedly at his approach, but whimpering in terror. They know him. He feeds them. They love him. At any hour when he approaches the farm, they recognize his tread, smell his scent on the wind and come running to leap up and lick him. But tonight they are cowering, trying to hide. They shrink from the house as if even to brush its walls terrifies them. All, that is, save one. This dog is screaming and jerking convulsively where it lies helpless on the ground. Ari can see at once that its back is broken.

  He moves to try to help it, but he never reaches the poor creature, for his gaze is drawn instead to the door of the farmstead. Since the days of the Vikings, men have constructed such do
ors to withstand the onslaught of sword and spear. It is a craft learned from their fathers and their fathers before them. But now the stout timbers have been smashed open with such force that only a few splinters of wood dangle uselessly from the hinges and one of the great doorposts has crashed to the ground. Silence, as icy as a winter’s sea, flows out from the dark passageway beyond. Ari is terrified, but he forces himself to climb through the splintered wood.

  He edges warily down the passageway as if he is in a stranger’s house, though he knows this place as well as he knows his own flesh. He creeps into the great hall beyond. Three oil lamps burn on those few wooden pillars which still remain upright. Their light is thin, flickering like candles on a tomb, and he knows at once that this is a grave.

  The wooden beds are shattered as if great boulders have been hurled at them, but it is not rocks that have been thrown across the room, but bodies. Ari finds little Lilja lying in a twisted bloody heap at the base of one of the pillars. Her head is crushed as if it had no more substance than a snail’s shell. Her sister Margrét’s face is frozen in agony and terror. Her belly has been ripped open, her guts torn out. Unnur, her mother, is dead beside her daughter, her chest crushed in an embrace so powerful that the broken pieces of her ribs are protruding from the mangled flesh. Her sightless blue eyes stare up at Ari, even in death beseeching him for mercy that was not granted.