The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,21

you could. You have been a jewel of a son to your parents and your sisters. A saint! No mother on earth could ask for better.’

I almost wished my mother had been there to hear me called a saint. Then she would realize that there are some people in this world who do appreciate my talents. But it was just as well she wasn’t for she might have disputed a few of the trivial details of my story. It was entirely true that I was half an orphan. You didn’t think I’d lie about something like that, did you? But my mother would tell you it was shame over my wicked and dissolute behaviour that killed the old man. Rather an unfair accusation, if you ask me. But then she had thought me a sad disappointment ever since I said my first word, which apparently was a word no mother would ever want to hear her son utter. She could be a harsh woman at times.

Dona Lúcia, on the other hand, was a charming if blessedly gullible creature, who was perfectly content that I was whatever a mother could wish for in a son. And that kind of touching faith is bound to bring out the best in any fellow. I swear by the time I left that perfumed courtyard she was almost on the verge of adopting me as her own kin.

I was to return in five days’ time when she would have my money … her money … ready for me to collect. She had originally proposed two weeks to gather the finances, but I had persuaded her that the ship needed to sail within the week in order to catch the trade winds. A few days, I told her, could make all the difference between a journey lasting mere weeks and a voyage of many months, as I knew from my own experience, having seen ships becalmed for days on end.

I explained to her that men grew so sick from lack of food and water as their supplies dwindled that by the time they found the wind again, the crew were too weak to man the sails. I told her how I’d seen innocent young boys plunge to their deaths from the rigging, too faint to hold on, and men, driven mad by thirst, leaping into the waves thinking the water was a meadow and they could see their own wives and children running across it. She dabbed her eyes most touchingly at that.

Finally, after we agreed that the money had to be found as quickly as possible if she didn’t want their deaths on her conscience, I left her house, clutching a basket of grapes and peaches ‘for dear little Pio’.

Tomorrow I would pay a call on a friend of mine, a clerk, and get a document drawn up. Dona Lúcia would expect a written contract before she parted with a single crusado. My friend could produce the most impressive documents ornamented with great flourishes and couched in such obscure legal phrases that the Devil himself would sign away his own soul and not realize he was doing so. This clerk would draw up whatever I required for nothing. He owed me. He’d managed to pocket some nice little sums from his employer over the years, but he’d become greedy and careless, and was perilously close to getting himself arrested. I’d helped him point the finger of blame at another employee who even now was languishing in prison, but my friend knew that one word from me and he could find himself in that dungeon instead.

‘Just think, Pio,’ I said, as we feasted on the fruit in the stifling heat of my lodgings, ‘in five days’ time that bastard of an innkeeper will be bowing and scraping and begging us to accept the best wine his poxy tavern can offer. But I’ve a good mind never to set foot in there again. He can whistle for his money. Throwing me out as if I was a beggar instead of a gentleman. By rights he should be paying me to drink that muck he serves just to get rid of it. And I should sue him for giving me a bellyache every time I sup it.’

Pio snatched another grape from my plate, and leapt up on top of the battered old cupboard to eat it, spitting the seeds at me. I popped a grape into my own mouth and, as if he thought I was stealing his