The Falcons of Fire and Ice (22 page)

Jónas carries little Frída into the cave in a sack tipped over his shoulder, with only her head visible and not much of that, for her face is wrapped tightly around with a shawl. Frída is nearly seven years old and lives up to the name that we revealed to her mother, for she is both
beautiful
and
fair
. Her mother gave birth to her in this cave and Valdis and I brought the child into the world and bit through the cord to loose her from the womb.

‘Is the child sick, Jónas?’

He does not answer, but lays her tenderly on the floor. She begins writhing like a maggot, trying to free herself from the sack, and her eyes are blazing with fury.

Jónas glances over at the man lying motionless in the corner.

‘He still lives then,’ he says without curiosity. ‘I heard what happened.’ He spits to show his disgust. ‘He was a fool to come inland. A shark-sucker does not leave the shark, why should a sailor leave the shore?’

‘Why have you bound your daughter?’ I ask, not wanting to talk about the man.

Jónas grunts and turns his attention back to his thrashing daughter. ‘She tried to throw herself into a boiling mud pool.’

‘But she’s a sensible child, old enough to know that the pools are so hot they would kill her instantly.’

‘She knows. We’ve taught her since she could crawl that it is dangerous even to walk on the ground around the boiling mud pools in case the crust of the earth gives way. But she ran at the pool and tried to jump in. Her playmates caught her and dragged her away, but she fought them and kept trying to reach the scalding mud again. In the end three of them had to sit on her to hold her down while one of them came running for me.’

It is not unknown for men and women to throw themselves into these pools of boiling mud, when a great melancholy comes upon them. I have heard of women killing themselves in this way in grief over a lost lover or a dead child, but for one so young to be in such despair … Whatever could have brought about this change in her?

‘Loosen the shawl. Let me speak to her.’

Jónas fumbles with the knot and pulls the shawl from her face.

The moment her face is uncovered, Frída screams that it hurts and then she utters such obscenities that I never thought to hear fall from a child’s lips. Her father makes to cover her mouth again, but I stop him.

‘Where does it hurt, Frída? Tell me where you feel the pain.’

But she stares at me, her eyes wild. ‘The whales are singing on the land. The birds are flying in the water. And flowers, I saw flowers in the snow.’

She thrashes her head violently from side to side, her pale hair flailing about her face. It is only now that I notice the thick black line down the side of her face, but the mark is not swollen. I have seen enough bruises on the man in recent days to know that this mark was not caused by a blow or a fall.

Jónas hastily ties the thick shawl about his daughter’s head and face again, plainly worried that she will dash her brains out on the rocks. ‘You see how she is? Her mother and I can do nothing to bring her to her senses.’

‘That mark on her face. How did she come by it?’

‘In the same hour that she lost her wits,’ Jónas says sadly. ‘Her mother thought it was soot and tried to wash it off, but it will not budge.’

‘You said that she was playing when the madness came upon her. Did her friends tell you what happened?’

Jónas frowns. ‘They did, but what they say makes no sense. They were scattered about the pasture, throwing a ball one to another, when one of the children said she heard a hissing in the air. She looked up to see a cloud, a small black cloud, approaching them. It was so low and coming towards them with such speed that at first she thought it must be a big black bird of some kind. It seemed to her that this cloud brushed past Frída’s face and at once my daughter fell to the ground, screaming and holding her head. As they clustered round her trying to find out what ailed her, she leapt up and ran towards the mud pools, screaming and babbling so wildly, they had to run after her to grab her.’

‘Your neighbour has done this. A Sending has been conjured to harm the child.’ The voice which suddenly booms out in the cave might have been my own and yet I did not speak. There is a harshness to it which I do not recognize.

Jónas turns to look at my veiled sister. ‘My neighbour?’ he asks, as if he expects her to answer him, and I cannot understand why, until I remember he does not know she is dead.

‘Is there anyone who has a grudge against you?’ the voice says.

I stare at the body of the man lying in the corner of the cave, even though I know it is my sister’s voice I can hear. But he remains motionless, his eyes closed, his lips cracked and still.

‘Pétur, it has to be that bastard Pétur,’ Jónas says vehemently. ‘I sold him a stallion to cover his mares, but he said the beast died. Claimed it was sick when I sold it to him. He’s come to my farm several times demanding the return of the money, but I wouldn’t give it to him. It’s been more than three months since I sold him the stallion. If the horse had been sick when I sold it to him it would have died long before this, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. Now he’s taken his revenge on my poor innocent daughter. What can I do to help her?’ Jónas is still addressing my sister as if he expects her to answer him.

‘If you do exactly what I say, the child’s wits shall return,’ she says.

My hands are trembling. I slowly turn my head towards Valdis’s body, not wanting to look but knowing I must. There beneath the flimsy cloth of her veil, I can see her lips moving.

‘Go to the graveyard,’ she says, ‘and open a grave of one newly buried. Take from it the coin that is placed on the man’s tongue. Carry the coin to Pétur’s farm and there hide it in the bed of the stream at the place where his mares come to drink. But make sure you do this during the daylight hours. At night, the ghost of the corpse will follow his coin to the farm to take back what has been stolen from him, but ghosts cannot enter running water, so he will not be able to retrieve the coin. In his frustration, he will take his vengeance out on the nearest living creatures, Pétur’s mares, and kill them. Then the child’s wits shall be restored.’

Jónas shudders. ‘The wretch deserves to lose his mares and more besides after what he’s done to my beautiful daughter, but I would sooner kill his horses with my own hand than rob the dead.’

‘Dark magic harmed your child, only vengeance from the spirit world can undo the curse. It must be done as I have told you,’ Valdis tells him.

I am so horrified at hearing the voice come from my dead sister’s lips that I have barely taken in what is being said, but the words finally penetrate through the veil of fear and revulsion in my head. I know what she is telling him to do is wrong, terribly wrong.

‘No! No, that is not what ails the child.’

Jónas turns to me, puzzled, as well he might be, for my sister and I have always before uttered the same thought.

‘The cloud was not a Sending. There was no malice in it, no life in it, no spirit.’

‘Just look at the child,’ Valdis jeers. ‘How can you say there is no malice in this?’

‘The child is sick, but I sense that no human hand lies behind this. The cloud came from the mountain, not from your neighbour Pétur. Frída will –’

But Jónas interrupts me. ‘Your sister Valdis is right, whoever heard of a cloud moving so fast and why did it make straight for my daughter? Her friend said it was as if an arrow had been fired at her.’

He scoops the child up and slings her again over his shoulder, his face grim with resolve.

‘What Valdis says about the Sending is the only explanation that makes sense. I’ll do as she says. I’ll take a dead man’s coin to Pétur’s farm. Even if I have to dig up a hundred corpses before I find such a coin, I will do it to cure my child. What father wouldn’t be prepared to risk the wrath of a thousand ghosts if it was the only way to save his daughter?’

‘No, please listen, Jónas,’ I beg, but he strides away, determined not to hear me.

As soon as I hear him scrambling out of the crack in the rock above, I steel myself, then slowly pull the veil from my sister’s face. Beneath the cloth, her skin is yellowed like old parchment, the features wizened and sunken as if every drop of moisture has been sucked from her body by the heat of the cave. Her lips have shrunk back from her teeth. Her arms swing limp, the fingernails blackened, the skin cold as the grave.

But though I closed her eyes tenderly when she died, now suddenly they are wide open and looking straight at me. But it is not my sister’s soft blue eyes that stare up at me. I have known and loved her eyes all my life. I could not mistake them now. The blue is gone, the whites of the eyes have vanished, only two huge black pupils remain like great gaping holes. I am staring into twin open graves. I gasp in horror and the eyelids slowly blink.

Chapter Seven

A French nobleman was suspicious that his wife had a lover. So he locked her up in a high tower, with only a narrow window at the top and walls no man could scale. Then he set his sister to keep watch on the tower whenever he was absent from it. But when the nobleman left the tower each day to go hunting, the woman’s lover transformed himself into a goshawk and flew in through the narrow window. There he turned into a man again and made love to the woman, before flying away. And so they continued for many months, blissfully happy in each other’s arms.

But the woman’s sister-in-law noticed the goshawk flying in and out of the tower. One day she followed the bird, and when he alighted on the ground, she watched him resume his human form. She told her brother, who fitted sharp spikes to the window, then pretended to go hunting. The lover, believing it was safe to visit the woman, transformed himself into the hawk and flew in through the window, and impaled himself on the spikes. The wounds were fatal and he died in his lover’s arms. But his beloved was already pregnant with his son and that infant grew up to become a great hero of France.

Coast of France Ricardo

Ruff –
when the falcon strikes its prey without seizing it.

‘The men will row you ashore now,’ the ship’s master said. ‘Take your water kegs. There’s a stream and my quartermaster says the water is sweet. You can fill them before we return.’

‘Why are we disembarking here?’ the merchant demanded. ‘The bay’s deserted. There’s no town. Not even a house to be seen for miles. We must continue to a well-appointed harbour where –’

‘Where we can sleep in a decent bed on land and eat a meal that’s fit for civilized people,’ his wife finished for him. ‘Why should we set one toe on this desolate beach? How do we know you won’t just sail off and leave us there to starve? I’ve heard about such things – passengers being abandoned on some remote island to die, or sold to marauding pirates.’

‘You’d have to pay pirates to take that harridan,’ I muttered to one of the sailors waiting to help us to climb down into the shore boat.

He grinned, showing a mouthful of stubby, blackened teeth. ‘They wouldn’t take her if you gave them all the gold in the New World. A night with her and they’d be begging the judges to hang them.’

‘Senhora,’ the master said, in the tone of one who was barely restraining himself from throwing her overboard, ‘the ship will not abandon you because she will not be sailing tonight. Have you not seen?’ He gestured towards the towering clouds rising up over the distant headland. ‘There’s a storm coming. We know this coastline well. The nearest inhabited port is miles away, and with this wind against us, we haven’t a hope of reaching it before the storm breaks. If we attempt to sail any further we’ll be sailing straight into the storm and we’ll be caught out at sea when the full force of it hits us. This bay at least offers us some protection, though we’ll still take a beating.’

‘And you expect a fragile, delicate woman like my wife to spend the night on the beach in a storm?’ the merchant said, his expression as black as the gathering clouds.

The sailors sniggered. Dona Flávia was about as delicate as a whale.

The master spat copiously into the waves below. ‘She can stay aboard, if she’s a mind to, as can any of you, but I warn you now, you’d best make sure that you are lashed down as tight as the boxes and barrels, for once the ship starts being pounded, you’ll be thrown around so much you’re liable to get your brains dashed out on the bulkheads. And I hope you’ve a strong stomach, for if you’ve felt seasick before now, I can assure you that you’ll all be praying to drown once this ship starts plunging up and down.’

Dona Flávia shrieked and clutched frantically at Isabela’s arm as if it was a holy relic. ‘But if the storm is going to be so terrible, we’ll all be swept away by the sea if we spend the night on the beach. We’ll all drown!’

The master closed his eyes as if he was praying. ‘Then I suggest, Senhora, you
don’t
spend the night on the beach. The boatswain tells me there is a stone cottage among the trees beyond the beach. It’s not inhabited, but it will shelter you for tonight. Now, unless you want to ride out the storm on the ship, get into that shore boat before the wind grows any stronger else you’ll all end up at the bottom of the bay.’