The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,44

that I’d been arrested and was chained up in some prison somewhere or worse.

‘Have they released your father too? Is he with you?’ she asked eagerly, peering over my shoulder as if she thought he was going to walk through the door behind me.

I felt a coldness come over me, a sudden hatred of this woman. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t answer her. I pushed her away and crossed to the big clay water jar in the corner, dipped in a beaker and drank it in a single draught, refilling it several times before my thirst was slaked. I sank down on the bench where only a few days before my father had retreated to eat his breakfast of sardines, while she had told us why poor old Jorge deserved to die. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

I told her all that my father had said, with a brutal harshness, sparing her nothing, not even the fact that my father had paid for me and not her to be brought to him. I knew I was hurting her, but for the first time in my life I didn’t care. I refused to play the game of pacifying her any more.

She stood pale-faced, her hand gripping the crucifix around her neck so tightly I could see the whiteness of her knuckles. I wanted to tear it away from her throat, just as I was ripping away the whole necklace of lies she had so proudly worn throughout her life.

‘All those foul things you said about poor Jorge and the other heretics, yet all the time you were saying them, you knew that we were exactly the same as them.’

‘We are not,’ my mother spat. ‘We’re not like them. They’re filthy Jews and always will be. There are no Jews in my family, nor in your father’s. We’ve always been Catholics. Always! Your father doesn’t know what he’s saying. Goodness knows what they’ve done to him in that place. It’s enough to turn anyone’s wits. They’re making him confess, but it’s not true. It’s all lies. We are Catholics, do you hear? Good, decent Catholics.’

A horrifying thought struck me. ‘Were you the one who reported Jorge?’

She flushed a dull scarlet and I knew it was true.

‘Why?’ I screamed at her. ‘Why would you do that? Don’t you see that it was as unjust as what they’ve done to my father?’

‘I am a good Catholic. I did it to prove I am a good Catholic. Your father wouldn’t do it, so I had to. Father Tomàs had been asking questions, asking if we knew Jorge, how long we had known him, how often we went to see him. I knew that meant they suspected him. Someone had to protect our family. You have to prove you are loyal. You see what happens if you don’t. You see what they’ve done to your father, because he refused to denounce Jorge.’

I felt the anger drain out of me. I saw now what my father had long understood, that arguing with her was hopeless. Even after all I’d told her she still wouldn’t accept why her husband had been arrested. I don’t believe that even the Grand Inquisitor himself could have made her admit the truth. She had lived the lie for so long, that like the tree roots and the rocks, she and the fantasy she clung to could not be separated.

‘We have to leave tonight,’ I said dully. ‘We must start packing.’

‘Leave here? But we can’t just go. This is my home. What about all my things, my furniture, my pots and linen? It will take weeks to pack. Besides, they’re bound to release your father soon, when they realize it’s all been a mistake.’

‘Mother! Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said? They are not going to release him. They are going to kill him, kill us all, unless I can give them a pair of gyrfalcons in exchange for our lives.’

‘And just how do you propose to do that? You think we have the money to buy such birds?’

‘I will have to take them from the wild.’

My mother snorted. Contempt for my father’s occupation had become such a habit with her that even now she could not keep the expression of distaste from her face.

‘I know you and your father think I am stupid, that I don’t know anything about his precious birds. You both like it that way, don’t you? That private little world you share with