Ari moans and brings his fists up over his head. ‘It’s all my fault. I should have let him die on the track. The Danes were right to attack him. We must kill him now, before he regains his strength. Cut off his head and burn the body, like my grandfather said, that’s the only way to destroy him.’
Ari struggles to his feet and pulls the knife from his belt.
‘No, Ari!’ I shout. ‘No, don’t hurt him. He must live.’
But the lad takes no notice of me. Although I can see he is terrified, I know by the hard set of his jaw he is resolved to see it through. He thinks it is the only way to undo the harm he has done. He starts across the floor of the cave, his knife raised high in both hands.
‘If you spill one drop of his blood, Ari, we will curse you to the grave and beyond.’
He ignores me, and I know that even if I utter a curse it will not stop him. But just as he reaches the man, there is a great clicking and whirring. A dense cloud of black beetles rises into the air and buzzes around Ari, dashing their sharp wings against his face over and over again. He flails his arms wildly, trying to beat them away. The knife flies from his hands as he staggers blindly across the cave.
‘Sit down, Ari! Sit and they will leave you.’
But so great is his panic that I have to shout twice more before I can persuade him to crouch down on the ground.
He kneels, hunched over, covering his head with his arms. The beetles fall back to the floor and scuttle back into the cracks in the rock.
Ari sits trembling for several minutes before he finally manages to find his voice again. ‘Eydis, I … I don’t understand. Why did you stop me? Why do you want this creature of hell to live?’
‘We don’t, Ari. We swear to you we would give our lives to see him destroyed, but for now he must live. His spirit has left his body. If the body is destroyed while the spirit is absent from it, his spirit will remain among the living and there will be no way to banish it. Not even the sorcerer who conjured up the corpse from the dead will be able to send the spirit back to the other world. The spirit will be capable of doing as much harm as the draugr itself, maybe more. Until the spirit returns to the body, we cannot risk destroying the corpse.’
Ari raises his head, despair etched into his face. ‘Then what can we do? Tell me what to do to put things right.’
‘Listen to me, Ari, the corpse is growing weaker. Soon it will be too weak for the spirit to return. We must heal the body. We have a jar of the fox fat we need and the dried herbs, but there is one ingredient, the most important, we do not possess. We need to prepare some mummy.’
The boy looks blank, as well he might. The ingredient is too costly for a hireling like him ever to have seen, never mind used.
‘Mummy is the render from a human corpse. It is one of the most powerful physics there is. The merchants bring a little in from Germany for the wealthy Danes, but it is costly, far beyond what most farmers could ever hope to pay, even if there were any for sale.’
A look of apprehension crosses the boy’s face. ‘You want me to steal some … from a Dane?’
‘No, lad. Even if we could discover who had some on his shelves, we could not risk you breaking into the house of a Dane. You would be caught and hanged without question. No, we must make it ourselves. But to do that we must have a corpse, or rather the head of one, for it is the render from the head that is the most powerful … Ari, listen to me carefully, we need you to break open a grave. You must choose the grave of someone not too long dead, so that some of the flesh and brains will still remain. You must cut off the head and bring it to me.’
He gags and the blood drains from his face so swiftly I fear he is about to faint.
‘Surely there must be something else that would heal him?’ he begs. ‘A root … a herb? It doesn’t matter how rare it is, only tell me what to look for and I promise I’ll search every mountain and valley. I won’t rest until I find it.’
‘Ari, believe me, I would not ask you to do such a thing if there was any other physic that would work.’
‘But to open a grave!’
‘If we cannot heal the corpse, then this man’s spirit will continue to serve the master who conjured it. To go to such lengths to raise a draugr, Ari, must mean whoever did this is planning great evil. Who knows how many men, women and children this spirit will drag down into the grave before his work is finished?’
The lad nods, his brow creased in anguish. I can see he is steeling himself to the task out of guilt for what he has unwittingly unleashed. I loathe myself for putting him through this, but there is no other way and no one else I can ask.
‘Ari, you must find the skull of a dog and place it in the grave so that it will placate the spirit of the man or woman and stop them seeking vengeance. But you must do this soon, Ari, time is running out. If we leave it too late …’
Ari lumbers to his feet and stumbles across to the passage.
‘I … I won’t fail, Eydis. I promise I won’t fail,’ he says, but he does not turn around and look at me.
‘Ari, take great care. Don’t let anyone catch you.’
The Lutherans care little for the dead. They say no Masses for their souls, neither do they anoint the corpses, nor sprinkle holy water on the graves. They do not even lay food or drink on the graves to welcome the spirits of the dead back on All Hallows’ Eve. But if they were to discover anyone attempting to open a grave they would accuse them of stealing bodies for the black arts and would hang the man or drown the woman, even if there was no proof they had removed anything from the corpse.
Ari clambers out of the cave with the heaviness of an old man. It is as if his youth has vanished in a single breath.
Laughter crackles from my sister’s lips, then stops abruptly.
‘So, Eydis, now you make a grave robber of the boy. My master would be proud of you. He has a great talent for dark arts. He has studied long and hard to acquire his knowledge and he will use all he has learned, you can be sure of that, for he has a passion, my master, a hatred burning him up. Ambition, all-consuming ambition is a goblet of acid that he daily drains to the last scalding drop. He would be delighted that you are going to such lengths to help him achieve what he desires, that you are taking such pains to cure my corpse.
‘But, Eydis, you must have realized that all your tender efforts will be wasted. I won’t return to my own corpse. I like being in Valdis’s body. I feel so close to you, my sweet sister. It is lonely being dead, so lonely. Can you imagine what it’s like lying down there among the bitter, angry dead, in cold black water, the grave mould slowly creeping across your tongue? I won’t go back.’
The moon is rising. Death is riding. Eydis, Eydis. He chants the words like a mocking child.
I try to ignore the taunt, though the tone of the sing-song voice makes my flesh crawl. ‘Fridrik raised you. He placed his bitterness on your tongue and his hatred in your mouth. But understand this. However strong you are, we are stronger. We will not let you live in her. We will not let you use her to destroy countless innocent lives.’
Eydis, Eydis, sister mine, the grave is cold, but we shall lie together and you shall kiss my rotting lips all through the days of the dead and into the darkness beyond.
He laughs, and I feel a strange tingling between my thighs and fingers rubbing my breast, though no hands are touching me.
My sister’s head rears up towards my face, and her dead lips part. ‘Caress me, Eydis. Kiss your master.’
I turn my head sharply away, but I cannot restrain the hands that are invisible. I cannot stop the fingers probing me, stroking me, for it is like trying to push away an icy wind. I roll myself into a ball, trying to repel him with my mind, but I cannot escape from his loathsome touch.
‘You will surrender yourself to me, Eydis. Sooner or later, you will let me enter you too.’
Chapter Nine
The king of Persia once owned a white falcon worth more to him than his own palace. He cast the falcon after a crane, but when
he drew close to where his bird had made the kill, he discovered that the falcon had slain an eagle instead of the crane. To honour his falcon’s courage and valour the king had a lavish dais erected for her to perch on and placed a miniature golden crown on her head, then he ordered that the falcon’s head be struck from her body, because she had killed her sovereign lord.
In the same manner a king of England cast off his falcon, but before the falcon could seize its prey, a wild eagle, king of all the birds, stooped down upon it. The falcon dived to the ground and hid itself among a flock of sheep, and when the eagle thrust its head into the flock to find the falcon, the falcon struck the eagle hard on the head and killed it. All the knights and noblemen who rode with the king cheered and praised the brave little bird. But the king of England, hearing their praises, had the falcon hanged as a salutary lesson for anyone who might dare to dream of rebellion against the Crown.
Isabela
To mount a horse like a falconer – a falconer always mounts from the right side and with the right foot, because they hold the bird on the left fist.
I couldn’t believe what Hinrik was saying – we were allowed to stay here for only two weeks. I had just fourteen short days in which to capture the gyrfalcons! Surely, the boy had made a mistake. He’d used a wrong word. He meant months not weeks. But he was adamant, and I could see by the grin on the face of the official that it must be true. The man would hardly have advised us to go home otherwise. It was all I could do not to howl aloud with frustration and misery, but I couldn’t afford to let myself sink into despair.
I swallowed hard and tried to think. When my father and I had gone to the plains in Portugal to trap migrating hawks and falcons we had caught a dozen in just a few days. I only had to capture a pair. I must surely be able to do that in two weeks. And in any case I couldn’t afford to stay here longer than that. With every day that passed the shadow of the pyre crept closer to my father. Even before the year was up, weakened by hunger, he could die of prison fever in those fetid dungeons. And what if they were torturing him, trying to force him to confess to killing the falcons, trying to make him betray others … No, no! Even two weeks was too long. I had to find those birds now – at once.
As we walked away from the quayside we clambered up on to the rough track that wound between the little turf huts. Racks of dried fish lined the upper slopes, but their rotting guts paved the path, along with mutton bones, offal and every kind of excrement, which was trodden into the dirt. The smoke from the cooking fires stank of burning dung, charred fish bones and scorched seaweed. It made my eyes sting. Vítor, Marcos and Fausto were all holding kerchiefs over their noses and looked as if they were about to vomit, but Hinrik was grinning and sniffing the air. To him it must have been the smell of home, but I remembered the stench of another fire, a fire that smelt of burning flesh and death. I shuddered.
Then I heard it. Krery-krery-krery – it was the cry of a hunting gyrfalcon. I frantically scanned the skies. Only gulls wheeled over the dark blue water. But even as I strained to find the call again above the screams of the seabirds, I knew I wouldn’t hear it. The cry of the falcon had come not from the skies, but from somewhere deep inside me like a second heartbeat, or a tiny bubble of memory that rose and burst in my head. I gazed out across the bay towards the distant mountains, their tops hidden in the swirling grey clouds. Somehow in that moment I knew that’s where I must go. If the white falcons existed anywhere on this island that is where I would find them. But it would take days to walk there – days I did not have.
Fausto clapped a hand on Hinrik’s shoulder. ‘Now, my lad, you can start earning the money we paid for you by finding us a decent inn for the night. Even in this goats’ byre there must be one that doesn’t stink like a piss-pot and serves a good supper. My belly is howling for some fresh, juicy meat after all that dried-up old salt pork.’
Vítor pushed the boy aside. ‘No, we can’t seek lodgings here. That clerk will be watching every move we make, or at least his spies will.’ He jerked his head behind him, to where three men stood in the shadow of a hut, their gaze fixed on us.
‘And there was me thinking that now you’d confessed to being a Lutheran, you and that popinjay were best friends, or was that another of your lies?’ Marcos spat out the words loaded with venom.
Vítor shrugged. ‘Obviously, I had to tell him something. I couldn’t very well say I’d come here to map this island, he’d have me arrested as a spy.’
‘In that case I’m sorry that I didn’t tell them,’ Marcos said. ‘He would have entertained us like kings if we handed him a spy.’
‘Or arrested you as accomplices,’ Vítor said with a granite smile. ‘I think you will find they don’t trouble themselves with minor inconveniences like evidence before they hang a man on this isle. You should be grateful to me, at least it got him on our side long enough to let us land.’
I knew from the weeks aboard the ship that quarrels like this could occupy them for hours, but for once I was grateful. The men were so busy glaring at one another that I could slip away unnoticed. I had already seen a man ambling across the track ahead of us on a tiny, shaggy horse, leading half a dozen small horses who crowded behind him, their bodies pressed tightly together and their heads resting on each other’s backs. If I could ride, I could reach those mountains in a quarter of the time it would take me on foot.
I moved closer to Hinrik, and lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘That man, do you think he would sell me a horse? Can you ask him?’
As I hoped, Vítor, Fausto and Marcos were so busy snarling at one another that they didn’t even notice the boy and me walking off. The horse-owner glanced at me several times as Hinrik explained what I wanted, but his face told me nothing of what he might be thinking. Finally he waved his hand over the small herd, inviting me to choose. I had already studied the stocky, shaggy little beasts and pointed to a pretty honey-coloured mare, which, unlike some of the others, showed no sign of lameness. I urged Hinrik to hurry and negotiate a price, but it seemed that no business was ever done in haste in Iceland. Finally, the horse-owner seemed satisfied, and I was just about to claim my beast and mount when to my dismay I saw the others hurrying towards us along the track.
‘Well done, my lad,’ Fausto said. ‘Horses – just what we need, since Vítor is so determined on not letting us rest here.’
He glared resentfully at Vítor. Then he stared in dismay at the little horses. Not one of them was bigger than thirteen hands and he was a tall, broad man.
‘Ask this man where he keeps his larger mounts. Those couldn’t carry us more than a mile.’
Hinrik answered without bothering to translate. ‘They can carry you easy for miles at the tölt.’
‘At the what?’ Fausto said.
Hinrik wrinkled his nose as he struggled to explain. ‘You know, fast. Not as fast as a gallop … but you will not be thrown about like a trot.’ He shrugged at our blank faces. ‘You will see. You want to buy five more, one for the packs and for me too?’
‘Of course for you too, you little maggot,’ Fausto said. ‘We paid good money for you. You’re coming with us. We want our money’s worth.’
Our bundles were stacked in a heap, together with some wind-dried fish and a small iron cooking pot which had been much patched and repaired. The owner was reluctantly persuaded to load the beast for us, but not until he received yet another coin for his trouble. He laid two fresh turfs on the horse’s sides and over these tied a flimsy wooden frame, studded with pegs, fastening it under the creature’s belly. Then, using lengths of wool knotted like fishing nets, he wound them round the pegs and over our bundles.
As the man worked, Fausto peered dubiously at the frame. ‘This wool won’t hold for long. Have you nothing stronger? Rope?’
The Icelander briefly lifted his head, frowning up at the seabirds drifting in the grey sky, as if he thought the question had come from them. Then he resumed his work, knotting the strands of wool so slowly that it seemed it w
ould take the whole winter for him to finish.
A crowd of adults and children had gathered a little way off and stood silently watching us, their eyes following our every move, like a clowder of wild-eyed cats hungrily watching a flock of sparrows. With a groan of frustration at the slow pace of the Icelander’s painstaking work, Fausto elbowed him aside and seized the strands of wool, winding them rapidly several times in a loop over the frame and under the horse’s belly.
‘Come on, let’s go while we’ve still a chance of reaching the next village before dark. I’ve no desire to spend the night sleeping in the open in this purgatory.’
Fortunately my skirts were full enough to allow me to straddle my mount, though it had a very broad back for such a short creature. But the moment I was in the saddle, my horse tried to throw me off and was only stopped by the owner grabbing her head. I moaned, rubbing my knee which was throbbing from where I’d gripped the horse’s sides to prevent myself falling.
‘He says she is called Gilitrutt after the troll-wife,’ Hinrik said, grinning. ‘Let your legs hang. If you squeeze her it will make her bolt. Do not pull on the reins. It makes them gallop.’
‘Then how am I to bring her to a halt, if I can’t rein her in?’
Hinrik shrugged. ‘She will stop … when she wants to.’
The rough track that led away from the village was only wide enough for us to ride single-file, although the horses seemed desperate to walk next to one another and kept trying to squeeze past rocks to get closer together. The boy rode ahead, followed by Marcos and Vítor, who was leading the packhorse behind his own mount. I came next and, behind me, Fausto brought up the rear.
Hinrik led us between great towering mounds of dark soil and rock piled in haphazard layers, like carelessly heaped slices of bread. Broad streams, teeming with swan, duck and grebe, meandered across the valley floor, their waters riffled by the stiff breeze into little peaks and troughs, like a newly ploughed field. Great cushions of grey moss snuggled around the base of jagged black rocks that stuck out of the ground like rows of shark’s teeth, and between the patches of dark, wiry grass were vivid splashes of a strange pink plant I’d never seen before. At the base of the hillsides long stretches of marsh pools shone like broken fragments of mirrors as the light caught them, and white-tufted cotton grass swayed in the wind. Ahead of us in the distance a huge rounded mountain rose into the grey afternoon light, as if it was a sleepy giant curiously watching us tiny creatures crawling towards it.
The Falcons of Fire and Ice Page 24