‘Are they missing? And in this terrible storm? What happened?’ I tried to sound suitably appalled, and fancied I made a convincing job of it. But although the absence of Isabela was no surprise, I can’t say I was exactly distressed that Vítor was missing too. Come to think of it, it was poetic justice – a map-maker getting himself lost. I almost giggled, but fortunately my face muscles were too stiff with cold to permit a grin.
Pig-boy’s father shook his head gravely. ‘When Senhor Vítor brought the wood for the fire and discovered Dona Isabela had not returned, he feared she’d met with some accident or could not find her way back, so he went to search for her.’ He glanced towards the door which was rattling violently in the wind. ‘A hopeless task, and I fear that, noble though the gesture was, on a night such as this it may cost the poor fellow his life.’
The merchant grimaced. ‘I should have gone with him, perhaps the two of us –’
‘A fine thing that would be, running off in the middle of the night to search for a girl we barely know and leaving your own wife unprotected and at the mercy of the storm. Goodness knows what may be lurking out in those woods.’ Dona Flávia shuddered, as did I when I remembered that shriek.
As if to make quite sure that her husband would not even think of trailing out after Isabela, Dona Flávia sent pig-boy to fetch some wooden bowls that had been packed into the provisions barrel the sailor had brought ashore and began to ladle out portions from the steaming cooking pot. Hers, of course, was the largest measure, though on this occasion not even the pig-boy seemed anxious for a greater share.
Ship’s biscuit had been simmered in water until it formed a lumpy porridge that was so thick and gluey it had to be vigorously shaken from the spoon in order to persuade it to relinquish its hold. I was trying hard to convince myself that the black pieces in the greyish mess were burnt biscuit and not boiled weevils. The merest hint of any kind of flavour was provided by a few strips of salt pork which had mostly found their way into Dona Flávia’s and her husband’s portions. We all gazed at it in dismay, for hot was the most charitable thing you could say about the mess that lay suppurating in our bowls.
‘How much wine did the sailor leave us?’ I asked, hoping for something pleasant that would wash down the glutinous lump stuck in my throat.
The merchant shook his head glumly. ‘He left no wine, just biscuit and pork. May the Blessed Virgin, in her mercy, still this storm before morning. I can’t stand many more meals of this.’
‘If you don’t like it, you certainly don’t have to eat it, husband.’
Dona Flávia seized the half-finished bowl from him and began scraping the contents back into the cooking pot.
‘I’d like to see anyone do better with mouldy biscuit and pork that’s too tough even for shoe leather, but I’m sure I won’t bother again. Perhaps you think that girl Isabela can whip up a meal more suited to your tastes. Well, perhaps she should have tried instead of running round the forest in the middle of the night like some common harlot. And her a married woman, or so she claims.’
‘My dear,’ her husband said, consternation written across his brow, ‘I’m sure that poor child isn’t still out there by choice. No one –’
‘You men always fall for that helpless act. But take it from me, she’s not as innocent as she looks. I’ve seen her sneaking off to have whispered conversations with that Vítor, who thinks it’s so amusing to torment me with his tales of monsters. He was very keen to go after her tonight. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had arranged a tryst before we even landed.’
‘On a night like this?’ the merchant said incredulously, and as if to give credence to his words, the wind ripped another wooden tile from the roof with a resounding crack. A stream of freezing rain poured in through the hole, forcing pig-boy’s father to struggle to his feet and pull his blankets away from the puddle before they were completely soaked.
Nothing much was said after that. Dona Flávia had plainly decided to punish her husband, and indeed all the men in the room, by refusing to speak, which was a blessed relief to the rest of us, though not to the merchant, who kept glancing nervously towards his wife as if she was a loaded cannon that might fire at him without warning.
We tried to dry our bedding around the fire, only succeeding in making it steam a little. But we rolled ourselves in the blankets as best we could and bedded down for the night. Pig-boy’s father, who was still anxious that two of our party were lost in the storm, said that we should hang one of the lanterns outside to guide our missing couple back, but I managed to persuade him that the wind would smash it even before he had closed the door and he reluctantly conceded that the gesture would be futile.
Exhausted though I was, I found it impossible to sleep. I was not accustomed to nodding off without a good measure of wine in my belly, save for those nightmare days chained up in the tower of Belém, and, believe me, I had not been doing much sleeping there. But even if I’d drunk half a keg of wine, the roar of the wind and the drumming of the rain and the constant splashing of the water into the puddles on the floor would still have kept me awake. Trying to sleep on the ship was bad enough with the creaking timber and crashing waves, but the rolling, once you got used to it, was somehow soothing, and I found I was missing it.
Besides, I couldn’t stop thinking of Isabela. When I had followed her out into the forest I hadn’t much of a plan. My original idea, when we landed on the shore, had been to accompany her as she collected wood or water, and in doing so coax her away from the others and then dump her like a sack of unwanted puppies, far enough from the beach so that she couldn’t find her way back. Naturally I realized that if I was able to find my own way back to the cottage, so would she, and probably quicker than me too, since she no doubt had more experience with that purgatory they call the countryside. So I knew I’d have to stop her returning somehow, tie her up perhaps. She’d get herself free eventually, but by then the ship would have sailed.
But I hadn’t reckoned on her stalking out of the cottage alone, spitting like a cat whose tail’s been trodden on. It was all the fault of that gormless, slug-brained ninny Vítor. Did he have no idea how to handle women? Tell any female that she can’t do something and that is precisely what she will insist on doing. He’d nearly ruined everything. In that mood she certainly wasn’t going to let anyone walk with her.
I had followed her as soon as I could, but it was sheer luck that I stumbled across her standing in the middle of that clearing. I had already taken the precaution of picking up a good stout branch that I’d found. If she saw me with it she would not be suspicious, she would assume I was collecting wood. I’d hidden behind a bush, waiting for her to move back into the trees. I crouched there ready, with the wood grasped tightly in both hands. I didn’t intend to kill her, just knock her out. But when she knelt down in that clearing and bowed her head, she looked like a prisoner meekly awaiting the executioner’s axe. It was as if she was inviting me to do it, begging me even. I stood up and had almost taken my first step into the clearing, when we both heard that unearthly shriek.
Now I felt strangely miserable. I liked the girl, even if she was a heretic. God knows I was no saint myself. I honestly hadn’t meant for her to die. I’d hoped it wouldn’t need to come to that. But I knew she had to be dead now, or would be by morning. Even if that animal, whatever it was, had merely wounded her, lying out there in this rain and biting wind she would surely perish in a few hours. But at least I could console myself with the fact that she hadn’t died at my hand.
But would the Jesuits believe she was dead? Would they expect some proof – bloodstained clothing, a severed hand? Nothing would induce me to go back into the forest and look for her corpse. Besides, they hadn’t asked for proof. An accident, they said, well away from Portuguese soil. Just ensure she doesn’t return. Well, they’d got their accident all right.
And I would have my pardon, not to mention a house and money, enough money to make Silvia crawl out from whatever sweaty bed s
he was holed up in. Silvia wasn’t dead, she couldn’t be. If only I could remember something, anything. If I could just picture her in my head walking out of that door alive. Her throat, I could see her slender throat, the fragile pulse beneath her jaw. Had I put my hands about that long, slender neck? Had I squeezed until that tiny throb was stilled?
I groaned as I felt an urgent stirring in my groin. I turned over, pressing myself into the hard cold floor, and tried to kick the image of Silvia’s lithe, naked body out of my head. I would find her. I would leave the ship at the very next port and buy passage on the first boat sailing back to Portugal. I could be home within the month and holding her in my arms.
I must have drifted off into sleep eventually, for I woke sweating from a dream in which Dona Flávia was ladling out soup into bowls, and when I dipped a spoon into mine and raised it, I saw the decaying, bloated head of the woman’s corpse balanced on my spoon gazing up at me, the rotting lips parting, begging to be kissed.
I sat up, stifling a cry. A pale light was filtering through the holes in the roof, but apart from the occasional drip where water still dribbled through, the puddles beneath the holes lay still. It had stopped raining and the wind had died down too. The storm had blown over.
We were manfully attempting to swallow the remains of the biscuit and pork porridge, which, though it scarcely seemed possible, had grown even more foul having festered in the pot overnight, when we heard the distant sound of the trumpet signalling that they were launching the shore boat from the ship. Dona Flávia hurried to the door and wrenched it open.
‘Hurry, husband, we must be on the shore before they think we have all perished and sail without us.’
She waddled out of the door with such eagerness that I wondered if she had entirely forgotten that she was going to have to scale that rope ladder again. Her husband collected his wife’s water keg as well as his own, together with their blankets and several other items Dona Flávia had abandoned in her haste to get to the shore, and the rest of us gathered up our own possessions and extinguished the fire.
Outside pig-boy’s father stared anxiously at the forest. ‘What of Senhor Vítor and Dona Isabela? Should we not wait for them?’
‘We can’t wait,’ I told him. ‘You heard the ship’s master; the boat will sail without anyone who doesn’t return at the signal.’
‘Then we should search for them. They may not have heard the trumpet and if they are lying hurt, unable to move …’
Last night I had convinced myself she was dead, but that certainty had ebbed away with the passing of the storm. If Isabela was still alive and she heard the trumpet, then she might have got her bearings from the sound and be even now making her way towards us. I couldn’t risk that.
I took his arm and pulled him around away from the forest. ‘Senhor, that forest is vast. Even if they still live, they could be anywhere. We could search for days and not find them and the ship will not wait.’
‘But … we cannot just abandon a young girl,’ he protested, twisting his neck around to stare once more into the trees.
The merchant staggered past us, donkey-laden with his own possessions and those of his wife.
Pig-boy tugged at his father’s sleeve, whining like a five-year-old. ‘Come on, Pa. She’s only a dumb girl. I’m hungry and I’m not eating any more of that stinking cowpat we had for breakfast.’
His father looked mortified and began a stumbling apology to the merchant for his son’s rudeness.
But the merchant grinned sheepishly. ‘Believe me, I’ve no more appetite for my wife’s cooking than the boy has, but I beg of you, don’t tell her I said so.’
Heaving his many burdens more firmly over his shoulders, he staggered up the sand dune and the rest of us followed.
The shore boat was already bobbing in the shallows of the bay by the time we reached the water’s edge. The sea was sparkling in the sunshine, the tiny waves pouncing playfully on the sand, like harmless kittens. To see the ocean now you might easily be convinced the raging storm of barely a few hours ago had been nothing more than a fevered dream. Once we had all waded out and clambered into the boat, Dona Flávia being carried by two burly sailors who grunted with the effort, the boatswain counted us.
‘Where’s the girl? There’s a man missing too. Miserable-looking fellow, never buys any wine, what’s his name?’
‘Senhor Vítor,’ Dona Flávia supplied. ‘And as to where they are, we haven’t laid eyes on them since last evening. We think they went into the forest. Doubtless Senhor Vítor went hunting for more of his monsters. He’ll probably return with a savage-toothed manticore or basilisk and insist they are perfectly harmless pets.’
‘Went off with the girl, did he?’ The boatswain winked at the other sailors. ‘In that case I don’t reckon it was monsters he had on his mind.’ He jerked his head at the young lad, Hinrik. ‘You, boy, get up to that stone cottage and collect the provisions barrel and while you’re up there give a good holler into the forest. Listen to hear if they shout back, but don’t linger too long and don’t go wandering into those trees. Master’ll keel haul me if I lose one of his crew, even one as useless and bone-idle as you.’
We watched Hinrik trudge up the beach and disappear from sight. He seemed to be gone an age. I felt the tension knotting my stomach tighter. What if he had heard something in the forest and had gone to investigate? I could stand the suspense no longer. I stood up and tried to pick my way over the plank seats towards the boatswain.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ the boatswain yelled. ‘Sit still, can’t you, you’ll have us all in the water!’
I flopped awkwardly down on to one of the seats. ‘Listen, my good man, the lady is becoming chilled and we are all hungry. I think you should take us back to the ship at once.’
‘Oh you do, do you? Well, if you think I’m going to row you lot all the way across the bay with one man short at the oars, and then row all the way back for my lad, you’re an even greater blockhead than you look.’
‘How dare you speak so to a paying passenger,’ Dona Flávia snapped. ‘He was only thinking of my comfort and he is quite correct. It’s outrageous that we should be kept waiting like this. If your boy –’
The merchant interrupted his wife. ‘Look, the young man is returning, my dear.’
All eyes turned to Hinrik who was weaving down the beach towards us, staggering under the weight of the provisions barrel awkwardly hoisted on his shoulder. I let out a huge sigh of relief. He was alone.
Despite the fact that the ship and boat were not rocking anywhere near as violently, Dona Flávia’s progress up the rope ladder was no less ungainly than it had been coming down. In fact it was worse, since she now had to heave her bulk upwards. Men heaved on the rope from the top and the boatswain, much to her indignation, grabbed her great hams and pushed from below, and finally she was hauled on to the deck. To make matters worse, she had insisted on going first, so the rest of us were obliged to wait below on the bobbing boat, until we could follow her up that swaying ladder.
The other passengers all made at once for their quarters in search of their own supplies of food and wine. But I was too anxious to think of eating. I stood on deck watching the distant shore. Hinrik had said he’d called and whistled several times, but there was no answer. That was it then. Isabela and Vítor had vanished. The ship’s master was barking orders. Men feverishly cranked the windlass to haul up the great anchor, while high above me, the gromets, as they called the apprentice seamen, were already swarming over the rigging.
I willed the seamen to hurry. Just a few more minutes and we would be sailing out of the bay and all my problems would be marooned for ever on this shore. That old familiar thrill shuddered through my belly, as it did whenever I was certain I was going to win on the throw of the dice. It was all over and I hadn’t had to do a thing.
Naturally, that would not be the story I would tell the Jesuits. I wasn’t going to give them any excuse not to pay me what they had
promised. I would confess to her murder. Confessing a sin you haven’t committed is no crime. There were saints who confessed to sins of pride and lust, greed and faithlessness every day. How could they be saints and have committed those sins? It was merely excessive humility on their part. Yes, I’d confess sorrowfully to her murder. They’d ask me how I’d done it, of course. And I would tell them that I –
My breath turned to stone in my throat. There was someone hurrying down towards the beach. Vítor, was it Vítor? He was clutching what looked like his bedroll in his arms. Suppose Isabela was following behind him? He might have run on ahead to alert the ship. I turned sharply away. Maybe no one else would see him. The sailors were all intent on their tasks. The anchor was clear of the water. They were just securing it. I searched for the ship’s master. He was standing on the forecastle, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun as he squinted up into the rigging. Give the order to set sail, I willed him. What was he waiting for? Everything was ready. Go! Go!
As if he heard me, the order came: ‘Set the mainsail.’
But the words were barely out of his mouth when that ship’s brat, Hinrik, scampered up the steps like a monkey and tugged on his arm, gesticulating wildly towards the shore where Vítor stood. I haven’t ever in my life felt a greater urge to strangle a lad than I did at that moment.
I turned once more and looked again at the man standing on the shore. As he waded out into the shallows, I realized that the bundle in his arms was not blankets but something far more substantial. A woman? Was it Isabela? If it was, she was not moving.
Iceland Eydis
Haggard – a wild falcon which is more than a year old when it is captured and has passed through its first moult, or mew, and therefore has its mature plumage or livery.
I wake suddenly to find Heidrun looking down at the man. I did not hear her enter the cave. I never do. She is just as I remember her though it must be five years or more since I’ve seen her, tall and slender, her back as straight as a razor cut. Her hair is as grey as the cloud over the mountains and her eyes, I know, are the colour of the winter’s sky, though she does not turn to greet me.
The Falcons of Fire and Ice Page 19