The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,28

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.’

Belém, Portugal Ricardo

Make in – to approach a falcon after it has made a kill.

‘Álvaro, Álvaro, wake up, you lazy dog!’

A clatter of stones hit the broken shutter of my window and pattered on to the wooden floorboards. Pio chattered angrily and retreated to the top of the cupboard. I groaned and turned over, trying to force my eyelids open, but shutting them against the cruelly bright morning sunlight.

‘Álvaro! I know you’re up there!’

Another hail of stones, one bouncing hard off my back, finally made me sit up. Even so, it took me a few moments to realize that the idiot throwing stones was