The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,141

I wore underneath my clothes – at least I hoped that was why she was watching me with a fascinated expression – I removed my outer clothes and pulled on the plain brown breeches and shirt she offered. They stank as if they’d been stuffed up a chimney for years, and the cloth was so rough that within minutes I was scratching and chafing, though it didn’t take me long to realize that it wasn’t just the coarseness of the cloth that was making me itch.

‘Unnur says you can go outside,’ Hinrik said. ‘But do not go far from the house, and if we hear the dogs barking, we must run inside and hide. She will show us where.’

Unnur led Hinrik and me out of the hall into a passageway so narrow that we could only walk down it in single file. She opened another low door.

‘This is the store chamber. If anyone approaches the farm we must hide in this place until one of them comes to tell us it is safe to come out,’ Hinrik told me.

The only light in the room filtered in through the open door from the passage. A few barrels, a loom and several small chests stood in the centre away from the damp earth walls. The cold air rolled up from the muddy floor. I shivered. I hoped none of Fannar’s neighbours would decide to come calling for dinner. I didn’t fancy spending even a few minutes in there, never mind several hours.

‘Does she think the Danes will come here?’ I asked Hinrik.

‘She says if they suspect Fannar was not telling the truth, they will. She does not think they are as easy to fool as her husband believes.’ Hinrik darted an anxious glance up at me. ‘I think she is right.’

I had no sooner ducked out of the low doorway into the blessed fresh air than Vítor grabbed my arm without so much as a by-your-leave. ‘I need to talk to you. Come with me.’

He strode around the side of the turf building, where we couldn’t be overheard, dragging me with him. I was sorely tempted to shove him off and walk away, but curiosity got the better of me.

‘Isabela,’ he announced, ‘is still alive.’

‘Why shouldn’t she be?’ I asked him, startled by the oddness of the statement. Then I looked round in alarm. ‘Has something happened to her?’

‘No, but that, my friend, is precisely my point. We both know something should have happened to her by now, but it hasn’t, has it?’

I shook off the grip he still had on my arm. ‘Vítor, I thought you were a tedious little turd the first moment I clapped eyes on you, but now I’m convinced you are not merely tedious, you have the brains of a senile goat. I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about, and I rather fear, my friend, that you haven’t either.’

‘Then let me make it plain for you. The girl you were sent here to kill still lives.’

Suddenly the breath seemed to have been sucked out of my lungs.

‘Kill … I … I beg your pardon,’ I stammered, trying to regain control. ‘Do I look like a murderer?’

‘No,’ Vítor said, with chilling calmness. ‘You don’t look like a murderer, which is exactly why you were chosen, but you are a murderer, aren’t you? Silvia. I believe that was her name.’

The ground seemed to be buckling under my feet. I must have looked as if I was about to pass out for Vítor grabbed my arm again, but this time as if he was trying to hold me up. I swallowed the acid that was rising in my throat and took a deep breath.

‘I am very much afraid, Senhor Vítor, that you have me confused with someone else. I don’t know who you think I am, but –’

‘I know the name by which you were christened in the Holy Church was Cruz. I know that you were arrested for attempted fraud, and taken to the tower of Belém. And I know that you were advised by two of my most respected brothers to embark on a sea journey for the good of your health, or in your case one might say for the good of your life, for if you’d refused their generous offer, you would by now have joined your lover in her sepulchral embrace.’

I gaped at him. How the hell did he know all this? I tried to laugh as if this must be a joke,