The Falcons of Fire and Ice

by Karen Maitland

  Vítor rose and took another pace towards me. I cringed and grabbed the branch he had discarded, prepared to defend myself as best I could, but he stepped over me and felt his way along the gulley.

  ‘The sides are much less steep at this end and not so high,’ he called back. ‘This is our best way out.’

  I heard his shoes scuffing through the leaves as he returned. Then without warning he slipped his arm around my back and I felt the fingers of his other hand sliding under my legs.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ I swung the branch at him.

  He leapt back and held up his hands as if to show me he meant no harm. ‘Forgive me, Isabela, I was only trying to lift you up. I’ll have to carry you. You can’t walk.’

  I stared up at him. Just minutes before he had been standing over me with a branch preparing to smash my skull open. Now he was offering to carry me?

  ‘Get away from me. I can walk and I will!’ I dug the end of the branch into the ground and tried to lever myself up. He proffered his hand which I ignored. But though I leaned heavily on the branch I couldn’t manage to raise myself more than a few inches before I sank back down on to the leaves again. He offered his hand once more and this time I was forced to take it. I managed to drag myself to the end of the gulley, using the branch and his arm to steady me. But though the wall of the gulley was indeed less steep there, the top was still level with the top of my head and there was no way that I was going to be able to scramble over it.

  As we stared at the bank the rain began to fall. Hard, heavy drops falling fast and furiously. Desperately I reached up to pull myself out, but found myself holding only a handful of slippery wet leaves. I groped through the leaf mould, trying to feel for a tree root that I could use to haul myself up, but I could grasp nothing solid except chunks of earth which came away in my hand. The rain was blinding me and I was on the verge of tears from pain and desperation.

  Vítor grasped my wrist as I scrabbled frantically through the sodden leaves.

  ‘It’s no use trying in this rain. We may as well stay here until it’s light. Then I can find a way to heave you out. At least it’s sheltered from the wind down here.’

  He swung me up in his arms and by this time I was too weak to resist. Every step he took jolted my knee and sent stabs of pain shooting through me so violently they exploded in white lights in my eyes. I allowed him to carry me back to the higher end of the hollow. There he set me down gently against the side of the gulley, removing his own cloak and wrapping it round me, though it was already soaked through. He scraped piles of wet leaves over my lap and legs to keep out the cold, before settling down to sit beside me. The rain beat down upon us. I knew I should offer to wrap the cloak around the two of us, but I couldn’t bear for him to touch me for I was in too much pain, and besides, I still didn’t trust him.

  ‘It was foolish to wander so far from the cottage and the beach,’ he said.

  It was too dark to see the expression on his face, but I could hear the accusation in his voice. He blamed me for us both being out here. How dare he?

  ‘No one asked you to follow me. I could have found my way back. I wasn’t lost until that shriek startled me.’

  ‘Shriek? What shriek?’

  ‘You must have heard it. Anyway, you didn’t answer the question I asked you before. How did you find me?’

  ‘I heard something crashing through the bushes and I followed the sound.’

  ‘Rather foolish thing to do, wasn’t it? It might have been a wild boar.’

  He snorted. ‘I can tell the difference between two legs running and four.’

  I was still firmly grasping the branch. I lifted it a few inches. ‘And exactly what did you intend to use this for?’

  The answer came swiftly. ‘Firewood. What else would I want to do with an old branch?’

  It was obvious when he said it. He’d told everyone in the cottage he was going to find wood. Why should I doubt for a moment that’s what he’d been doing? And yet I still couldn’t throw off that image of him standing over me.

  ‘But when you climbed down in the gulley, you had the branch raised as if …’

  I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t want to say what I feared aloud, as if the words, once uttered, would make it true.

  ‘As if I was defending myself?’ he finished. ‘Of course I was. It was dark. I could see something moving at the bottom of the gulley. And couldn’t be sure it was you. It might’ve been some wild beast.’

  But I didn’t believe him. He had held that branch raised above my head long after he must have realized that it was me. Besides, only an idiot would climb down into a pit if they really thought there might be a savage animal trapped in it, and I had a feeling Vítor was no fool.

  We spoke little more that night. He seemed to be lost in thought and I was consumed with pain. I huddled into the sodden cloak and as I pulled it tighter around me, my fingers brushed something hard on my chest, caught in the wool of my shawl. I grasped it and even without looking I knew what it was – the small white finger bone, encircled by the iron ring. On the top of the ring was a flat disc, and I could feel the faint lines of some letter or mark etched into it like the mark of a seal.

  I felt like a thief. I should not have picked it up. To steal from the dead was almost worse than stealing from the living. I should take the bone back, return it to the grave and bury it once more, but even if I could have found the place again, I couldn’t walk there. The last thing I wanted to do was keep it, but I couldn’t just cast the bone away as if it was rubbish. What I held in my hand was part of a human being, a person, someone who had lived and been loved. It would be sacrilege to throw it away. The image rose up in my head of the girl at the auto-da-fé sobbing as she was driven to place the box of bones on the pyre, of her refusing to relinquish her grip on the box and them beating her until they had forced her to let go. I shuddered, and not simply from the chill of the icy rain.

  I fumbled for the little leather bag I wore around my waist and pushed the bone and ring inside. I had no idea what I would do with them, but perhaps I could rebury them in the next graveyard I came across or lay them in the crypt of a church where they would be safe.

  We lay in the gulley all night as the wind howled, the rain lashed down on us and the branches of the trees whipped and cracked all around us. Never had a night seemed so long or so dark. By morning intense pain and cold had left me barely able to move. My jaw had locked rigid, for I had been clenching my teeth so hard. As Vítor picked me up in his arms, I couldn’t even open my mouth to acknowledge him. I was dimly aware that it had stopped raining and the sun had already risen behind the trees.

  Vítor carried me back to the end of the gulley and managed to raise me just high enough so that I could grasp the thick ancient roots of an oak tree, though my fingers were so numb I could scarcely hold on. Nevertheless, he was able to heave me over the lip of the gulley, and I collapsed on the sodden ground above. I no longer had the strength even to sit up.

  Vítor heaved me into his arms and carried me back through the forest. Each time he stumbled a searing pain ran up my leg, making me cry out, though I tried to bite it back. Several times he was forced to set me down while he scouted around, trying to work out which direction the sea might lie in, but it wasn’t until we heard the faint sound of the trumpet in the distance that we were certain we were walking towards the shore. However, the notes, far from reassuring me, only renewed my fear. How long would it take us to reach the beach?

  ‘They will wait,’ Vítor said in answer to my unspoken question. ‘They won’t sail without us. They know I came to look for you.’

  He set me down on the ground. ‘You rest here and I’ll run to the beach and explain that you’re hurt. I’ll bring some of the sailors back with me to help carry you.’

  ‘No!’ I grabbed his leg. ‘Don’t leave me here. What if you can’t find me again? What if some wolf or boar should scent me and attack before you can return? I can’t walk, neve
r mind defend myself like this.’

  But it was not the thought of wild boars or wolves that terrified me. For some reason, in spite of all his kindness since, I could not forget that image of him standing over me in the gulley. I knew I was probably imagining it, I told myself I was, yet I could not shake off the feeling that he had no intention of returning for me.

  He hesitated and for a moment I almost convinced myself I was right, but then he scooped me up again and we struggled on. I roundly scolded myself for my doubts, and blamed them on the pain. People are like falcons, they lash out when they are hurt, believing everyone is their enemy, even those who are only trying to help them.

  The beach was deserted when we emerged from the trees, save for some gulls picking over clumps of glistening emerald seaweed and stranded starfish washed up on the wet sand. Vítor stopped and stared out to sea.

  ‘They’re setting sail. The bastards are leaving without us!’

  He lumbered over the sand and down to the shore, the wavelets lapping over his boots. ‘No, no, come back! You can’t leave us here!’

  I felt as if a great black curtain was slowly closing around me. Hunger, cold, pain and fear finally engulfed me and I knew no more.

  I swam in and out of consciousness as they laid me in the shore boat, and was carried over a seaman’s shoulder up the rope ladder, passing out cold again when the ship’s surgeon with the help of one of the sailors wrenched my knee back into place. And I was told it was the ship’s surgeon who strapped my leg with wooden splints to support it as it healed. Marcos apparently declined to take any part in this procedure, saying he was a physician, not a common bone-setter.

  Afterwards, though, Vítor, Fausto and Marcos behaved like lovelorn suitors, each insisting on mulling wine for me in case I should take a chill, pressing their blankets upon me and almost falling over one another to be the one to fetch me meals as I lay on my pallet. But all I wanted was to be left alone, and I was profoundly grateful to Dona Flávia when she insisted the three men joined her and her husband at the table for meals, leaving me alone in the passengers’ quarters, though I know full well that she did not do it for my sake.

  And during those few precious times when I was alone I could not help repeatedly taking the bone with its iron ring out of my scrip. The ring was a plain band of iron, flattened into a disc on the top on which a simple word been inscribed – foi. Was it a name? Was this a lover’s ring? Who were they, buried out there in the wastes of that forest with no church nor shrine? Who had interred them there? Was it a kindness they had performed for the dead or a cruelty, a concealment of bodies that were never meant to be found?

  Each time I touched that ring and bone I felt a strange sense of grief, as if I had lost someone I had known and loved, as if I had just watched them being laid to rest in a cold grave. It was a feeling of utter desolation, and more than that – a fear, a horror that some nameless force was about to descend upon me. I longed to cast the bone away, but even if I could have dragged myself to the ship’s rail, I knew I could never have tossed it into the sea. The bone needed a resting place and because I had taken it, I must give it what it craved.

  Eydis

  Rouse – the action of a hawk shaking its feathers.

  I know she is drawing closer. I sense it. The draugr senses it too. I take up our lucet again, our cord-maker, our power. It will lead her to us. It must.

  Our lucet is fashioned from a piece of deer-horn, but it was not carved by our hands. It is an ancient thing. The Vikings brought it on their long-boats when first they ventured to this land. When its owner died it was placed in the grave with her. And there it lay for hundreds of years, until a storm washed rock and earth and grave away, and we found it, lying among the brown bones and a scatter of amber beads.

  Though we were scarcely five years old we knew at once what it was, for our mother had taught us the art of plaiting cords for our clothes, just as she had taught us how to cook lichen and clean pots. But our lucets were carved from rough pieces of mutton bone, not smooth and polished as a sea-washed stone, not curved as proudly as a horse’s neck … not a precious gift from the long-dead. We sensed even then our mother would fear to see it in our hands.

  Now the cord I have woven twists from its twin prongs. It is long enough to reach the girl, but not yet long enough to pull her close. Each day I must add another finger-length to it. Each twist, each loop gently and slowly guides her footsteps to this place. Three strands of wool woven together to make a single cord – black to call the dead, green to give them hope, red to lend them strength.

  I turn the stem of the lucet in my hand, twisting it always with the sun I cannot see but have never forgotten. And with each new knot, the cord tightens and tightens until she will feel it drawing her, and know it is the falcons calling her. Then she will come. She must bring them to us. For the dead who follow her are our only living hope.

  Iceland Ricardo

  Entraves or fetters – the equipment used to prevent a bird of prey flying away, comprising the jesses attached to the legs, a swivel and a leash with which to tie her to the perch or block.

  It would just have to be that snivelling little wretch Vítor who gave Isabela the news that the coast of Iceland had been sighted, wouldn’t it? I’d heard the cry go up from the watch, of course, but they were always hollering orders at one another in their own jargon with the sole purpose of trying to make the passengers feel inferior, so that I had long since abandoned any pretence of listening to them. But on this occasion it turned out the incoherent bellows were because land had been sighted, and Vítor came thundering down the steps into our sleeping quarters to convey the glad tidings, urging us to come and look, as if this was an uncharted land and he had personally just discovered it.

  I was the more annoyed because, for the first time, I had actually begun to believe I was gaining Isabela’s trust. There is a moment in every scam when you know that you have succeeded in putting a halter on your victim and may lead them to wherever you want to take them. At first they are wary of you, then comes suspicion, distrust and even hostility, but you must hold your nerve, persist. Gradually you will see they are listening to you, pricking up their ears, sniffing the air, and then they begin to edge diffidently towards you. They ask a few questions which suggest they are thinking about the prospect. They give you a tiny inadvertent nod of agreement, a hesitant little smile, and this is the beginning of trust, but only the beginning, mind you. Move too fast at this stage and they will shy away, never to return, but offer soothing words, compliments about their good sense and judgement and you’ll find them snuffling ever closer. Believe me, I have conned enough men and women to know the signs. And Isabela was almost there, almost willing to allow me to lead her.

  It was imperative that I got her to trust me before we reached Iceland. If I didn’t, it was all over. For her to come off that beach alive was bad enough, but to come off with an injured leg which meant she was confined to the safety of sleeping quarters where no accident could possibly befall her, was nothing short of a disaster, especially with Vítor and his companion sticking to her like birds to lime.

  ‘Don’t you want to see your first glimpse of Iceland?’ Vítor urged. ‘Isabela, won’t you allow me to carry you up?’

  ‘No, no. I can manage.’ She brushed his extended arm aside.

  For a moment I thought I glimpsed an expression of fear in her eyes. It was not the first time I had witnessed such a look since she had returned from the beach. What had passed between them that night? Had the bastard tried to force his oily little carcass on her?

  Isabela levered herself to her feet, steadying herself against the bulkhead as the ship rolled. She limped to the bottom of the short flight of steps. Once more, Vítor put out a hand to try to assist her, but she pretended she hadn’t seen it, and with grim determination hauled herself up the steps.

  Over these past two weeks she had daily practised walking until she was exhausted. Even the ship’s surgeon had told h
er to rest, and that was certainly a measure of the seriousness of his concern, for it was rumoured he’d once told a man on his deathbed to shift his arse and stop lounging about cluttering the place up. But Isabela took not a jot of notice. She was going to walk without a crutch and splints if it killed her. And give the girl her due, she’d done it, though it was obvious her leg still pained her, not that she’d admit that to anyone.

  Sometimes her stubbornness reminded me of my Silvia when she was working up to a fight, though Isabela was not the kind of woman who would shriek dockside obscenities and hurl her boots at a man, more’s the pity. Sweet Jesu, how I missed Silvia. Without warning, the maggot-white, bloated face of that woman’s corpse swam up before my eyes and I pushed it firmly back down again before racing up the steps behind Vítor.

  To be honest, I had no idea what sight was going to greet me on deck. I hadn’t given much thought to what manner of place Iceland was and I’d never had any desire to find out. Ask me to imagine parting a wealthy widow from her jewels and I would have no trouble in picturing such a scene in exquisite detail. But tell me to imagine a place I never really believed existed except in tales of drunken sailors and I could no more picture it in my head than I could see heaven. And, to tell the truth, since the day we set sail I’d never believed I would actually get as far as Iceland.

  My plan, if you can call it such, was to somehow dispatch the girl long before we ever got this far and then to disembark at some civilized port and find a ship to carry me home. I’d thought it was going to be so easy – a ship tossing about in stormy seas, slippery decks, dark nights and a fragile young girl – it was an accident waiting to happen, so what could possibly go wrong? Iceland wasn’t even worth wasting a stray thought on. And if I had been forced to think of Iceland at all, the image that would have occurred most naturally would have been that it was … well … icy … covered in snow, I guess. But somehow black was never the colour that came to mind when I heard the name.