‘My mother came from one of the oldest Catholic families in Portugal,’ she would say. ‘You must always remember that and see that you light a candle every day, just as she did and her grandmother before her.’
I didn’t really understand then what Catholic was, but I could tell from the tone of my mother’s voice, and the way she lifted her chin when she said it, that this was something to boast about.
Mother would show me the black wooden rosary with the silver cross left to her by my great-great-aunt who was an abbess of a convent. And if I had been a good girl, she would unwrap a little square of silk and let me hold the tiny tin wheel, the emblem of St Catherine, once worn by one of my father’s ancestors in the Crusades when he fought under the Holy Cross. If she couldn’t be proud of her husband or her life now, she could at least take pride in her heritage.
Mother flapped her goose-wing brush vigorously over the shrine, sending a cloud of dust into the air.
‘Ana, my dear, must you start to clean so early?’ my father protested gently. ‘It’s not even light yet. Sit, rest, eat your breakfast.’
My mother turned on him, her hands on her scrawny hips, her dull-brown eyes for once flashing with life. I cringed for my father, knowing that even after twenty-two years of marriage, he had once again walked blindly into the hole she had dug for him.
‘Rest!’ she snapped. ‘When do I have time to rest? I suppose you have remembered that the girl who washes for me is sick again. Well, she says she is sick, but is it just a coincidence that her lover’s ship has put into harbour? She’ll be in bed all right, but mark my words, it won’t be her own bed, that’s for sure. If we had a black slave, like every other respectable family, I wouldn’t be wearing my fingers to the bone, waiting for some little slut to decide whether or not she can be bothered to work. The spice merchant’s wife says their slave paid for herself in half a year with the wages they saved by not having to employ a maid, and the slave they have costs practically nothing to keep for she eats less than a hound, and needs no meat. But no, you’d rather see your own wife work herself into an early grave than buy a slave.’
Father raked his fingers wearily through his hair. ‘Ana, please, no more. If this girl is not reliable then look for another, but I’ve told you I will not buy a slave. We’ve discussed …’ He shrugged, but did not finish the sentence, as if after all these years of trying to reason with her, he had simply exhausted his store of words.
He had never told me why he would not give in to my mother over this. It would have made his life so much easier. He said, whenever she pressed him, that we could not afford it, but I had to admit that my mother was right, poorer families than ours had at least one slave, for they were cheaper by far than hiring a man or maid by the hour. But my father’s reason for refusing remained unspoken, like so much else in our lives.
He pushed his half-eaten meal away and began to fasten his shoes.
‘And what about her?’ my mother demanded, as she replaced the objects on the shrine. ‘I hope you’re not planning to take her with you today?’
I mouthed a silent ‘please’ at him, begging him not to leave me behind, for I knew mother would be in a foul temper all day.
Father grimaced and shook his head.
I pressed my hands together in supplication. ‘Please, please,’ I mouthed silently again.
‘I … I have a falcon with broken feathers in its tail. I will need an extra pair of hands to hold the bird while I glue in new feathers.’
‘There are plenty of boys at the mews who can do that. Isabela should be here learning how to be a wife and mother, not playing about with those birds. Unless you intend to marry her off to some stinking stable hand.’
My father shrugged to show me he’d tried his best. ‘Perhaps your mother is right. She needs you more than I do today with the girl being sick, and –’
The bell of the courtyard door jangled and at the same time someone hammered on the stout wood. All three of us froze. We stared at one another. No neighbour or pedlar would knock so early or so insistently.
The bell clanged again, ringing over and over. From the thundering at the door, it sounded as if someone was beating on it with metal rather than with their fist.
‘It could be someone in trouble,’ my father said as he crossed the courtyard. But I don’t think even he believed that. For the long minutes it seemed to take him to cross the few flags of the courtyard, I felt as if I could see through the solid wood, see the hooded, black-robed familiaries of the Inquisition standing outside our little house. Had Dona Ofelia reported me for showing sympathy for a heretic? Had they come to question me?
Father’s hands were trembling as he fumbled to turn the key in the lock. Mother moved to my side and put her arm around my shoulders, drawing me close to her, breathing in short little gasps. Side by side we watched through the open door of the kitchen, as the lock of the courtyard door yielded, but even before my father had pulled it open, someone was flinging it wide from the other side.
A tall man in the king’s livery pushed his way into the courtyard, followed by two soldiers. I realized I had been holding my breath and it almost exploded out of me in relief. It was not the Inquisition. Father was wanted at the royal palace; that was all. Perhaps the young king wanted to go hunting or –
‘You are under arrest, Falconer, by order of the king.’
My mother gave a little shriek and started forward, but my father motioned her back. He drew himself up as straight as he could, though he was no match for the height of the officer.
‘Arrest? On … on what charge? May I ask what crime I have committed?’
‘The charge is murder.’
My mother moaned, swaying so violently that I rushed to her side, fearing she was going to collapse. Even my father seemed too stunned to answer.
‘Murder, but who am I supposed to have murdered? When? Until yesterday I was waiting on the king in Lisbon and since then I have been nowhere alone, nowhere except to tend the king’s falcons.’
‘So you admit it,’ the officer said. ‘You admit that you were alone with the king’s birds.’
‘Yes, of course. Why shouldn’t I be? I am the Royal Falconer. The birds are my responsibility. I went to see that they had been well tended in my absence the moment I arrived back in Sintra.’
‘And had they been?’ The officer’s expression remained impassive.
‘Yes, the boys had been diligent in their duties. Perhaps not cleaning the dung from the wall behind the perches as well as I would have liked, but I will see to it that they do so this morning. I assure you that –’
‘So there was nothing amiss with the birds last night?’ the officer persisted.
The two soldiers were leaning against the wall, yawning and picking their teeth, evidently paying little attention to the exchange.
‘The birds were fit and well,’ my father said, his face showing his bewilderment. ‘One of the peregrines has damaged his wedge a little, but I will soon mend –’
‘And you personally locked the mews when you left?’
My father nodded. ‘I left one of my lads to sleep with the birds, as I always do, in case they should become disturbed during the night.’
‘Then it seems we have come to arrest the right man,’ the officer said. ‘This morning one of your other lads found the body of a gyrfalcon lifeless and cold.’
My father groaned, pressing his hand to his mouth, shaking his head sadly. I knew he was devastated. He loved every one of his birds as if they were his own children, but particularly the gyrfalcons, the royal falcon, rarest and most beautiful of all the hawks of the lure. But I still didn’t understand. The officer had spoken of murder and arrest, but what did the death of a bird have to do with that?
‘It happens,’ Father said with a sigh. ‘The gyrfalcon is a powerful bird, but also the most delicate. They can die without warning. Which one was it, do you know? Did the boy say?’
‘Oh, he told us, all right, Falcone
r, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It wasn’t just one bird. It was both of the gyrfalcons. The royal birds are dead. The most valuable birds in the mews are now so much carrion. Now, how do you account for that, Falconer? They both decided to fall off their perches at the same time, did they? So how did you kill them, Falconer?’
My father gasped in horror. ‘But I didn’t! I would no more hurt those birds than I would murder my own child. They’re my life. Something must have happened, a sudden illness … perhaps something frightened them … The lad who slept with them, he must surely tell you how this misfortune came about. Have you questioned him? What did he say?’
‘Oh yes, we questioned him all right, though we had to find him and untie him first. You see, he’d been bound, gagged and hidden behind some sacks of sand. He doesn’t remember being trussed up. What he does remember is settling down to eat his supper after you left. The usual fare except for an unexpected treat, a custard pastry had been left on his platter, the kind they sell in the market places of Lisbon. Naturally the lad being hungry, as they always are at that age, gobbled it up. Next thing he knows he felt dizzy and unaccountably sleepy. He collapsed and doesn’t recall a thing until he came round the next morning to find himself bound up … I noticed you keep a great many jars of herbs and flasks of potions in the mews.’
‘Every falconer does,’ my father said distractedly. ‘If a bird gets sick or it’s not thriving it must be treated at once. But have you discovered who drugged the boy?’
‘It must have been someone with great knowledge of herbs – someone who knew exactly what would keep a lad asleep for several hours so that he couldn’t raise the alarm and also which herb would poison a bird so swiftly that it would die in those same hours, isn’t that so, Falconer?’
Before my father could reply, the officer grabbed my father’s shoulder and spun him around, pressing his face into the rough stone wall of the courtyard. One of the two lounging soldiers finally sprang into action and bound my father’s wrists tightly behind him.
The officer pushed my father towards the open door. ‘You know what they used to do to a falconer who carelessly lost a valuable bird, don’t you? They sliced the weight of the bird out of the falconer’s own chest. If that was the punishment for letting a bird escape, what do you imagine they will do to a falconer who has deliberately murdered the king’s favourite birds? How much do you think a pair of gyrfalcons weighs, Falconer? I reckon there’s not going to be a lot of flesh left on your chest once they’ve finished, in fact I don’t reckon you’re going to have enough meat on your chest to equal the weight of those birds. So maybe they’ll just have to take the rest from your charming wife, or your pretty little daughter.’
Belém, Portugal Ricardo
Make in – to approach a falcon after it has made a kill.
‘Álvaro, Álvaro, wake up, you lazy dog!’
A clatter of stones hit the broken shutter of my window and pattered on to the wooden floorboards. Pio chattered angrily and retreated to the top of the cupboard. I groaned and turned over, trying to force my eyelids open, but shutting them against the cruelly bright morning sunlight.
‘Álvaro! I know you’re up there!’
Another hail of stones, one bouncing hard off my back, finally made me sit up. Even so, it took me a few moments to realize that the idiot throwing stones was actually addressing me. I’d become accustomed to thinking of myself as Ricardo these last few days, so that I’d almost forgotten that up to then I had been Álvaro, at least to those who shared the miserable squalor of this quarter of Belém.
‘Álvaro!’
‘I heard you! I’m coming!’ I bellowed. ‘And stop chucking stones, you fuckwit! You’ll have my eye out.’
I struggled out of bed and crossed over to the window. The acid from last night’s cheap wine rose up, burning in my throat, and I coughed violently as I bent forward to see who was disturbing me at this unholy hour. How anyone can face being up before noon is a mystery I have never fathomed. What is the point of mornings, you tell me that? The taverns aren’t open, the whores haven’t unlocked their doors, and cock pits are empty, so what is there to get up for?
I blinked down into the street below. It was crowded with jostling people trying to edge around one another with barrels and baskets. Women balanced trays of fruit or pitchers of water on their heads, men held live chickens fluttering under their arms, and donkeys swayed under the weight of laden panniers or huge mounds of hay. In the midst of all this bustle, a solitary man was standing resolutely under my window gazing upwards. He was being shoved forward and backwards as those on the move barged into him, cursing him roundly for blocking the path, but he was ignoring all of them.
He was a scrawny-looking fellow, with fleshy ears that stuck out between the locks of his straight hair, like the handles on a flagon. I dimly recognized him as one of the potboys from the inn. What was his name – Felix … Filipe … ?
He beckoned with a frantic flapping of his hand as if he was trying to bat at a wasp. But I had no intention of going down there until I knew what he wanted. Had the lousy innkeeper sent him to collect the money I owed? Did I owe this Filipe some money as well? I couldn’t remember, but it wouldn’t be the first time I laid a wager after one too many glasses and not recalled the incident. If I was honest, I’d have to confess I’ve been told of many things I’ve done when I’m drunk that I don’t have the slightest recollection of, but then the world is full of liars. And, as I always say, if a man can’t remember laying a bet, then he was in no condition to make one. If you are going to trick a drunken man into making a wager, you can’t expect him to honour it when he’s sober.
I peered cautiously out of the window again. ‘What do you want?’ I yelled down.
‘It’s your woman … Silvia. You have to come.’
My heart began to thump against my ribs. ‘Silvia, but … Wait for me. I’ll have to dress. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
I knew it! I knew Silvia would be begging me to take her back, and it couldn’t be for the money, because she didn’t know I was about to acquire such a sum. She was coming back because she loved me, adored me in fact, and she’d found she couldn’t live without me, any more than I could live without her. She’d lay down conditions, of course; she had her pride. She’d make me promise I’d never do it again, whatever it was she thought me guilty of, and I would swear to it on my mother’s grave. But we’d both know she wouldn’t have sent this lad to fetch me if she hadn’t already made up her mind to return.
I gathered up the soiled clothes from the floor where I’d scattered them as I’d lurched to bed. Although I dressed as rapidly as possible, without paying any attention to the way I looked, it still seemed as if the simple task was taking hours to accomplish. My hands were trembling so much that I fumbled uselessly with every button and lace. I even managed to put my breeches on backwards and then had to fight to take them off again.
As soon as I crossed to the door, Pio leapt from the cupboard on to my shoulder, expecting to accompany me as usual, but I gently swung him on to the bed.
‘No, Pio, not today. You stay here.’
Silvia did not much care for Pio. He had the habit of springing on her back without warning and pulling her hair. It particularly amused him to do so when her hands were full and she couldn’t defend herself. Once, when I was nearly choking with laughter watching her struggle, I made the mistake of telling her that he only did it because she squealed, and if she ignored him, he would tire of it. I think that was the time she threw my dinner at me, and the names she called that innocent little monkey couldn’t be repeated even in a dockside tavern.
So on balance it seemed diplomatic to keep Pio out of the way until after Silvia had agreed to return. But Pio wasn’t used to being left behind. He made another rush at me, squeaking with anxiety, but I quickly closed the door in his face before he could slip through and heard his screams of rage behind me as I clattered down the stairs.
Filipe was squ
atting against a wall, waiting for me. He rose swiftly as I approached, and with another agitated flapping of his hand strode off down the narrow street, weaving in and out of the crowd with such agility that, several times, I lost sight of him altogether. At the end of the street, I turned in the direction of the inn, assuming that was where Silvia would be waiting, but I felt a hand on my sleeve, tugging me in the opposite direction.
‘This way, she’s down by the harbour,’ Filipe said.
I obediently trotted after him. So she’d found a bed somewhere along the waterfront. But just whose bed had she found? She wouldn’t have spent this past week alone, I knew that. I felt the sharp spike of jealousy plunge into my bowels. Who was he? Some sweaty hulk from the docks, all muscle and no brain? One of those oily musicians who play in the inns and wink at girls, or a foreign sailor with gold in his pocket? Was that why she wanted to see me again, because her lover’s ship had sailed?
I realized I was clenching my fists and I was probably muttering furiously to myself, because a middle-aged woman with a pannier of fish on her back squashed herself hard against the wall to avoid me, her hands raised across her face as if she thought I was going to attack her. I smiled and bowed, but she scuttled away, throwing terrified glances over her shoulder.
I tried to calm myself. There was no point in asking Silvia where she had been or who she had been with, that would only start another fight. For both our sakes, it was safer to ignore it. I must kiss her, cajole her and woo her again. That’s what she wanted, to be the centre of attention, to be made to feel the most desirable woman on earth, and she was too. Sweet Jesu, my groin was throbbing just at the thought of her. It had been a week since I’d held her, and my body ached for her more than any drunkard craves his wine. I could picture her now, naked save for that amulet in the form of the eye of God which nestled unblinking between her sweat-beaded breasts. She was straddling me, her back arched, her eyes closed and her lips parted in a cry, my hands pushing up over her slim waist, towards those soft round breasts.
The Falcons of Fire and Ice Page 7