The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,6

questioning.’

Sheer terror washed through Manuel, almost emptying his bowels. ‘No, no, please, you have the wrong man. It’s a mistake. Why would you want to question me? I know nothing … I swear, by all the Holy Saints, by … I … I am a good Catholic. I go to church regularly every week. I never miss Mass. Never miss confession, you ask anyone.’

‘A good Catholic does not blaspheme the Holy Virgin.’ The hooded man raised a warning hand as Manuel opened his mouth to protest. ‘We have a dozen witnesses who will swear they heard you mocking the Virgin even as you denied with your own hand that her Son was the true Messiah.’

They dragged Manuel down the stairs – they had to, for his legs had buckled and he couldn’t manage to stand, much less walk. From behind the many doors they passed along the street there came only the sound of silence as heavy as a stone coffin lid. All lights were extinguished. All shutters closed. All doors barred.

Only the old widow, her eye pressed to a crack in the wood, watched and chuckled. Ten thousand crusados they’d promised her. It was a fortune, more than enough to move away from this street of pigs into a respectable district and live in comfort for the rest of her life. They had explained that she would only get her reward if the accused confessed his guilt, but she didn’t have the slightest twinge of concern about that.

And Manuel did confess, of course … after his muscles and tendons had been ripped from his bones on the rack; after every joint in his limbs had been slowly dislocated by the ropes biting into his thighs, shins, wrists and ankles. Day and night without sleep, they whispered, shouted and cajoled, until they had even him believing that he must have nailed those notices to the church doors.

But, as his inquisitors said, his admission of guilt was not enough, not nearly enough to demonstrate his repentance, for how could one man alone have nailed those notices to the churches all over Lisbon in one night without being seen? Manuel must have had accomplices, unless the Devil himself aided him. He had only to name those men and his suffering would be over, his pain ended. They would let him rest.

Give us a name, any name, that is all we want – JUST ONE NAME.

He could have named his friends, his acquaintances, even his enemies, especially his enemies, most did. He could have uttered any name at all that surfaced in his pain-crazed mind, uttered it without even knowing if he was dreaming or speaking it aloud. But although Manuel prayed with every fibre of his being for an end to his torment, his inquisitors could not make him name another soul. Now, that kind of defiance takes a rare courage.

In the end, they carried him to the square. There, in front of a blood-crazed mob, they sliced through his wrists, separating skin and flesh, muscle and bone, severing the hands with which those foul words had been written. In truth he scarcely recognized the pain of the knife, for what was left of his limbs was already half-dead from the rack. He had thought himself in so much anguish that he could feel no greater torment, but when they tied him to the stake, and he felt the burning flames licking around his body, he knew that he could. The Inquisition had, as always, left the most exquisite agony to the last.

Chapter Two

Anno Domini 1564

According to Norse legend, at the birth of the world an ash tree was created, Yggdrasil, the tree of life, of time and of the universe. On the topmost branch sits an eagle, and perched between the eyes of the eagle is Vedfolnir the falcon, whose piercing gaze sees up into the heavens and down to the earth, and below the earth into the dark caverns of the underworld.

All the good and evil this falcon sees he reports to Odin, the father of gods and men. For the falcon and the winds are one, and the winds blow across every blade of grass on the earth and every wave that foams on the sea. There is no escaping the wind.

Lisbon, Portugal Isabela

Stoop – the rapid descent of a falcon from a height on to its quarry.

‘You must not avert your gaze, Isabela. Whatever you see, whatever you hear, don’t let your face betray you. You must look