The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,22

food, Pio screamed at me in indignant fury, before finally turning his back on me and refusing to look at me at all.

When he was in this mood, he was nearly as bad as Silvia. The sulky little witch was always flouncing and throwing tantrums. I didn’t have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of times she’d threatened to leave me. Now she had finally done it, but I knew she wouldn’t stay away for long, not once she got a whiff of the money.

‘How long do you reckon it’ll be before that whore comes crawling to me? Want to place a wager, Pio? A month, you say. I’ll bet you a whole barrel of figs it’ll be a week at most, you’ll see. Then she’ll be twisting her pretty little arms round my neck and begging me to take her back.’

I lay back on the narrow stained straw pallet and stared up at the sagging beams above the bed. God, but I missed her. Silvia drove me mad when she was here with her whining and nagging, but when she was gone I was crazy with longing for her. I tried not to think about whose bed she was lying in now. And she would be lying with someone; she was not the kind of woman to spend even a single night alone. With that wild mane of raven hair, lithe brown limbs and full soft lips, not even a Jesuit could have remained true to his vows in her company.

Even when we lived together I could only be sure that Silvia was faithful to me when she was actually in the room with me. Not even then sometimes, for she often had that melting look in her wide indigo eyes that told you she was thinking of someone else. I frequently became insanely jealous. But when I shouted at her or implored her to give the other men up, she only laughed at me. Jealousy made no sense to her, for she was easily bored and would wander from lover to lover like a fly aimlessly buzzing around a butcher’s stall. She couldn’t ever understand that a man wants to believe he is a woman’s only lover.

What had made her stalk out this time, I couldn’t remember. We’d had a fight. But that was nothing new. Silvia loved to whip up a storm, to rage and scream and hurl her shoes at my head, and once even a full chamber pot. But if our fights were wild, our lovemaking afterwards was wilder still. All that fury in her exploded into passion and she rode me like a marauding Tatar until we both collapsed into sleep from sheer exhaustion.

But there’d been no intoxicating gallop this time, that much I do remember through the brandy fumes fogging my head. When I’d finally awoken the next morning, with a tongue as furred as a donkey’s arse, she was gone. I was sure she’d return that night but she didn’t, and no one at the inn had seen her since.

‘But it’s only been four days, Pio. As soon as she hears I’ve got money to buy her dresses and jewels, she’ll slither back in here. Just you wait and see, Pio. All the soldiers in the king’s army couldn’t keep her away.’

A bright green lizard scuttled across a patch of rotting wood above my head. Sweet Jesu, but it was hot. The sweat was trickling down my face and stinging my eyes. The stench of putrid fish guts, tar and dried seaweed wafted in through the broken shutters, but there was scarcely a whisper of breeze to cool the tiny room. I slapped at a bedbug crawling into my armpit and tried to settle myself more comfortably between the lumps in the straw mattress.

Below my window, I could hear the rustling and squealing of the rats fighting among the rubbish, too insolent even to bother to wait for the cover of darkness. But for the first time in weeks I didn’t resent any of these daily torments. Only five more days and then I’d be out of here for good, with money jangling in my pocket and a belly full of rich food. Life was a tree laden with sweet ripe peaches for those who knew how to pick them, and I was about to pluck one of the juiciest.

Iceland Eydis

Mews – the building where hawks are kept, especially while they moult, or mew.

My sister died today. I felt