The Falcons of Fire and Ice (9 page)

‘You can’t simply confess,’ my father told her. ‘They won’t believe you have repented, unless you give them the names of others.’

‘Not when he was already sentenced to death. Once he’d been handed over to the king, they couldn’t do anything. He could have recanted on the pyre. Then it would have been over in a trice. But no, he wouldn’t do it, would he, the stubborn old fool.’

I shuddered. We had returned from Lisbon only yesterday evening, a full three days after the burning, but I could still smell the stench of that bonfire.

Mother banged another plate down in front of me, causing the three salt-crusted sardines on it to leap as if in a bid for freedom.

‘Jorge was a good man, a brave man,’ Father said quietly. ‘To endure the flames rather than betray anyone else, that takes the courage of a saint.’

Mother snorted her contempt. ‘A saint! Is that what you think? He was a heretic, a Christ killer. It was the Devil in him who stopped him confessing his sin, that’s what it was. To even think of comparing a man as evil as him with a saint who died for the true faith is … is … is obscene!’

‘He was our neighbour. Don’t you remember how kind he was to little Isabela when she was a child? She loved him like a grandfather.’

‘And how many times did I warn you not to let her go round there? Filling her head with his silly stories and goodness knows what else. I warned you not to let her go mixing with Marranos, and now I’ve been proved right. They pretend to be good Catholics, but all the time they are practising their devilish rites in secret and plotting to murder us all in our own beds.’ Mother rounded on me. ‘You stay away from the lot of them, do you hear? Isn’t it bad enough your father can’t provide a decent dowry for you? How do you think you are ever going to get a good, respectable husband, if anyone finds out you are mixing with these converts? And now you have seen for yourself how dangerous it is to make friends of these pigs.’

‘But, Mother, Jorge was a good man, a great physician. You used to take me to him yourself when I was sick, and don’t you remember that time when you –’

‘Enough, Isabela.’ Father shook his head, warning me not to continue.

‘Who reported him, that’s what I want to know!’ I burst out angrily. ‘Who would even think of doing so, betraying a harmless old man?’

‘Harmless!’ Mother snapped. ‘He was a heretic, and you heard what Father Tomàs said in Mass. Anyone who does not fight against heresy is himself guilty of betraying our Blessed Lord. It’s our duty to God and the king to report these people. Our duty, do you hear?’

‘But who –’

‘Please, Isabela.’ Father’s tired eyes begged me to let the matter drop. ‘Jorge is dead. All the words in the world cannot change that. Let us speak of something else.’

I glared at him, torn between wanting to punish my mother for her contempt of that poor old man and not wanting to hurt my father. But in the end I said nothing and vented my anger by stabbing furiously at the belly of the little charred fish. There was much which was never spoken of in our household for fear of upsetting my mother. It was the eleventh commandment in our family.

Mother crossed to the small shrine in the corner of the room and picked up the statues of the Virgin Mary and St Vincent of Saragossa clutching the gridiron on which he was martyred. She moved the statues reverently to one side, then gathered up an assortment of rosaries, dried flowers and candles. Shoving aside my father’s half-eaten breakfast, she laid them on the table in front of him. My father grabbed his plate just in time to prevent the faded and crumbling wreath falling into his griddled sardines, and retreated to a bench in the corner to continue eating.

The shrine was my mother’s pride and joy. She dressed it according to the feasts and festivals as diligently as if it was an altar in the great Cathedral in Lisbon. My earliest memories were of her holding me up in her arms in front of that shrine, gripping my chubby fingers painfully tight as she helped me light a candle to the Holy Virgin.

‘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, Falconer, 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.’