Shadow of the Hawk

by David Gilman

  ‘And our dead?’ said John Jacob.

  ‘Find soft ground, John. Cover their graves with rocks. We’ll stop and rest the men and horses a few miles further on. A night’s sleep and rest will serve us for the long day ahead.’

  The archers went among the dead pulling free arrows as Renfred’s men slit the throats of the enemy’s injured horses. The circling vultures dared to settle closer.

  ‘Lázaro! Andrés!’ Beyard called the boys from where they attended to the horses. ‘Keep them away until we are done here.’ He pointed at the hillside and the bobbing scavengers. The two boys gathered stones and hurled them, scattering the vultures, who immediately settled a few feet from where they had been. Keeping the birds at bay would distract the boys from the carnage.

  William Ashford dragged Ariz, hands bound behind his back, ankles tied with a length of rope long enough for him to shuffle, over to Blackstone and threw the murderer at his feet. ‘Some of the horses caught him when they rode past him. He has some broken ribs.’ Ariz clambered to his knees. A cut on his scalp had dribbled blood into his beard.

  Ashford handed Blackstone Ariz’s purse. ‘In his saddlebags. Santos had one as well.’

  ‘You sided with my enemy,’ said Blackstone. ‘You and him.’ He turned to face Santos, now tied to a tree. ‘I saved your life and you betrayed me.’

  Ariz winced from the pain in his ribs. ‘Money, Sir Thomas. Le Bête wanted the boy and Tibalt knew you had him. He was bitter about losing his arm. How else could he earn a living? You would not take him because he could no longer fight. He sold Lázaro for good money. Enough to let us buy a bed in a tavern and drink and whore ourselves to death.’

  ‘Where is Tibalt now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I swear.’

  ‘Who killed Saustin? It was no accident.’

  ‘I wish you had not sent him with us that night. I knew he wouldn’t betray you. He was my comrade but I wanted money more than friendship. I killed him.’

  ‘Where is de Hayle going now? Where has he run to?’

  Ariz shook his head. ‘I had no dealings with him. Only with Tibalt.’ He looked up at the scar-faced man towering over him. ‘A quick death, Sir Thomas. I beg you.’

  Blackstone beckoned Renfred to release Santos and then walked to the edge of the road and looked across to the distant valley where they would find their route to Burgos. The drop from the track was sheer. It had been a well-chosen ambush site. It was easy to see how he and his men could have been forced over the edge with an overwhelming charge. He signalled Renfred and Ashford to bring the men to him. They resisted, heels digging in. Their escorts hit them hard, forcing them on.

  ‘What information do you have about Lázaro?’

  Both men shook their heads.

  ‘What did Tibalt tell you?’

  ‘Nothing, lord,’ said Santos, spittle dribbling into the curls of his beard. ‘Nothing. I swear. De Hayle paid good money. All he wanted was the boy.’

  Blackstone looked at Ariz, who searched in vain for anything that might grant him a quicker death than being flung over the edge onto the rocks far below. ‘I swear by Our Lord’s tears on the cross he told us nothing.’

  ‘Santos?’ The drunkard shook his head. Tears filled his eyes.

  Blackstone nodded to Renfred, who grabbed Santos by the collar with one hand and by his belt with the other and hurled the screaming guide over the edge. Rocks smashed him into silence.

  Ashford hauled Ariz to his feet. He was no match for the man who had served King and Prince as captain of their bodyguard. ‘No! No! One thing! He told me one thing!’

  Blackstone stepped closer to the terrified man.

  ‘I did not believe him – Tibalt. I thought he had drunk too much wine. But he feared what lay at Burgos. With the King.’ Ariz spat out the words, desperate to save himself from the crushing fall. ‘Evil, Sir Thomas. A force so powerful it can kill men, fling birds to their death from the sky, turn wine sour and curdle milk. Enough malevolence to destroy a kingdom. Ranulph de Hayle knew. Even he was scared. Tibalt said he saw de Hayle tremble with fear when he mentioned it. There is a witch there. She serves the king. That is what he told me. That is all he told me.’ Ariz sobbed, sucking air into his chest, forcing himself to blurt out the last words he would ever utter. ‘She has... the power... all men fear.’

  ‘Her name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Blackstone nodded, accepting the man had told him all he could. His hand swept across Ariz’s throat. Blood spurted. Ariz’s eyes widened at the speed of Blackstone’s blade. He convulsed. Ashford let him fall. Blood spilled below his fallen body, soaking into his beard. His eyes glazed. Ashford kicked the dead man over the edge.

  ‘So now you take us into a witch’s coven,’ said Killbere. The others crossed themselves.

  ‘Superstition, Gilbert. There’s no such thing.’

  Blackstone turned away and strode across to where the men went about their work, yet as he did so he raised Arianrhod to his lips and asked the pagan Goddess of the Silver Wheel for her protection.

  PART FOUR

  THE DEVIL’S MISTRESS

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The devil fell in love with Velasquita Alcón de Lugo when she was fourteen years old. The girl was everything he desired. Her heart was imbued with the love of God, her knees raw from prayer, her soul pure, her life one of devotion. She served pilgrims who stayed at her father’s inn on their way to find redemption at Santiago de Compostela where the apostle St James was buried. Ten years ago, when the devil, disguised as a pilgrim, pushed open the door of the inn, the girl’s radiance smote him. The innkeeper spoke proudly of his only child’s spirituality. It was common knowledge in the town that she was so blessed God whispered to her during her prayers.

  That night the innocent girl, unable to resist the pull of the devil’s desire, took her bedside candle and made her way to the hayloft where he seduced her. When she awoke she was alone: her virginity stolen, his seed planted, her soul led into temptation, her pure heart smothered by the dark veil of passion. There was no longer the need for candlelight. Darkness became her friend. It held no fears. She breathed its blackness deeply into her.

  The devout parents witnessed the change. Her mother saw it in her eyes. They flickered with fire. Her father whipped the girl and spent good money on salt, sprinkling it on the coarse wooden floor, forcing her to kneel and pray for ever longer periods. But no prayer came from her lips. When the truth of the union showed itself, the innkeeper once again spilled hard-earned coins from his purse, this time into the hand of an old crone who knew how to rid the body of an unwanted child. They purged the girl and the devil’s offspring was flushed from her body.

  The girl lay ill for days, tormented with something more than fever. The priest refused to enter her room. The stench of evil was more pungent than that of her stale sweat and soiled bedding. Her parents begged and paid the last of their money for him to rid her of whatever foulness had entered her soul. Fearful but emboldened by the weight of the purse at his belt, the priest knelt at the door and offered prayers of redemption. After five days her torment eased. By the seventh day, she was calm and the priest found his courage and knelt at the child’s bedside. She slept free of fever. It was a miracle that showed the power of prayer and the grace of the Almighty. The priest’s work was done. The parents embraced their smiling child, bathed and fed her and retired for the night, humbled by the power of good over evil.

  Before the cock crowed the fourteen-year-old Velasquita Alcón stepped lightly up the scuffed wooden steps to her parents’ bedchamber and cut their throats. Villagers found the priest slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb on his own altar.

  *

  Over the years the child seduced by the devil journeyed to village and town. Like attracted like and she found those who knew the world of shadows, who cast spells, who turned men blind with a curse and who merged into darkness to witness events that had not yet occurred. At every step
of the way along the dusty roads her pilgrimage gathered pace, drawn to those who with poison and necromancy hid their skills from the prying eyes of the Church. She killed or betrayed many of those who guided her so that her own secret was kept safe. When she reached the court of Don Pedro of Castile and León, she was a gift to a King who relied on astrology and the predictions of a favoured heretic priest. Don Pedro was tall and muscular, blue-eyed with fair hair, and occasionally spoke with a sibilant lisp. He was a dangerous man, prone to fits of violence followed by an eerily calm lucidity. A King who bathed in his own greed and licentiousness.

  How easy it was to let the King taste the pleasures she offered. He accepted her potions on his tongue: droplets that swayed his mind. He succumbed to sexual promises, his desire stretched as taut as a bow’s cord until near breaking, teased over time until his lust was rewarded. Her enticements for him to act against his enemies were more seductive than those of the heretic priest Garindo. She knew how to manipulate the King’s erratic behaviour; the man’s skilled hunter’s instincts were easily inflamed so that he saw those who stood in his way, or who in any way challenged him, as prey. Velasquita Alcón sowed doubt in his mind about the commander of his royal bodyguard, Gutier de Toledo. There was no more loyal soldier than de Toledo. He had fought the King of Aragon for years, keeping at bay Don Pedro’s bastard half-brother and any threat of invasion. He knew how dangerous her influence was on the King and had vowed to expose the depth of her evil. It was child’s play to undermine him. She had others lay false claims and evidence against him, showing that he colluded with the enemy, that he supported the half-brother’s claim to the throne and intended to help the Aragonese seize the crown of Castile for him. The innocent man was beheaded with great fanfare.

  The shadow witch continued her master’s work. The young Queen had been an easy victim and Velasquita laid the blame for her death on two Jews. One by one those close to Don Pedro fell: threat or not, their demise weakened him. Her purpose was not to help any one man succeed to the throne but to cause dissent and disruption. The King’s beloved mistress, María de Padilla, mother to four of his children, died within months of the Queen. The plague was blamed and her death caused Don Pedro great suffering; his grief allowed her to manipulate his weakness still further. Now the time had come to remove the heretic priest so she and she alone controlled the mind and emotions of the King of Castile.

  *

  She stood naked in the morning glow in her chamber high in the palace tower: an eyrie for the woman feared by everyone in the court. The sunlight was pushing its warmth across the mountains into her chamber and she let it bathe her like a jealous lover teasing aside the veil of darkness. The devil’s inheritance was a mysterious gift. Never questioned. Never doubted. Her mind’s eye soared across the peaks. The light blinded her and then opened a portal. She saw the men’s approach. Still days away, yet fighting their way towards the king.

  The images faded and, letting the knowledge of the men’s approach comfort her, she dressed, as ever, without the help of servants. Amid the dozen or more aristocratic women who graced the palace she might have been invisible, apart from fleeting glimpses caught of her around the corridors and stairways of the King’s various palaces. Wherever the King travelled she accompanied him and his courtiers, yet still was not seen. The rumour, barely whispered among the fearful, was that she took the form of a bird. How else did she appear so unexpectedly in different parts of the palace? Obviously she flew through windows and soared above the turrets. Others said not just a bird. A raptor.

  Garindo, the heretic priest, stood with Don Pedro in the King’s private chambers. A celestial chart of the planets and stars lay spread out across a table. Don Pedro chewed his fingernails.

  ‘Sire, you can see that it is not a propitious time to attack Aragon. I urge you to wait for at least a month when the planets align more favourably.’

  ‘There must be retribution for the cross-border raids. Our wounds will never heal unless Aragon burns,’ said the King, his voice clear with barely a sign of his lisp.

  ‘But, highness,’ said the priest, ‘will you not follow my advice? I have spent hours of daylight and darkness studying the charts and I bring you details of the heavens. I have devoted myself to your endeavours but your decision can only lead to...’ He pulled himself up. To issue dire warnings was one thing, to predict defeat another. Garindo bowed his head. ‘My lord, may I implore you to consult with your closest advisers? The Pope will direct all his power against you.’

  Don Pedro looked past the heretic priest to the devil’s child.

  ‘You are already excommunicated,’ she said. ‘Strike fear into your enemy, my lord.’

  Garindo faced her and summoned his courage. ‘Your dark soul blights the radiance of my Lord Don Pedro. It would be better if a malignant creature like you plunged to earth with an arrow through her.’

  She grinned. ‘You believe palace rumours?’

  ‘I believe in the God I have always believed in. I stand at the border between heaven and heresy because I have a skill that alarms the Church. You have nothing but venom for all mankind. I know who you are and what you are capable of.’

  ‘That I have the powers of flight?’ Suddenly she stepped towards him, making him retreat a pace. ‘Is that why your heart squirms with fear?’

  ‘Enough,’ said Don Pedro. ‘I will think how best to act.’

  She turned her back to the priest. ‘Send your Moors and tell them to kill every living creature. Strike fear into your enemy and your own men. Let them bring the heads of the slain on pain of forfeiting their own. It is through displaying might that you command respect,’ she said.

  Garindo saw the King’s chin tilt, head raised, her words firming his resolve.

  ‘Sire,’ the astrologer said, desperation in his voice. ‘Your enemies will come tenfold if you commit such an atrocity.’

  Velasquita tore the chart in two. ‘Your prophecy is weak.’ She faced Don Pedro once more. His eyes widened with the expectation of a lover about to see the object of his desire naked before him. Her black eyes held his.

  ‘Do what you must,’ she whispered. ‘And do it quickly. A man of death rides towards us.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Garindo shuffled along the winding corridors, his way lit by cresset lamps. He pulled his cloak around him, head down, deep in thought yet watching where he trod on the uneven stone floor. Footfalls had scuffed the passageway over hundreds of years. Common men and holy priests had skulked and connived their way through history down these corridors of power, bending the will of kings, influencing their weaknesses and embellishing their strengths. Garindo had spent too many years in unheated rooms: his body ached. His sixty-three years were as sixty-three crosses to bear. At least now his rooms were furnished with carpets and a canopied bed to keep the chill from him at night. The feather mattress and bolsters were a luxurious gift intended to ease the fatigue of his old age. All in all he had done well for himself ever since Don Pedro had learnt to trust his astrologer’s prophecies and had elevated him to a position as adviser at court.

  Garindo knew that cleaving himself to the Castilian King meant there was little chance of the Pope absolving him of the charge of heresy, even though the pontiff had not excommunicated him as he had Don Pedro. He saw the future unfold in conflict. Everything the old astrologer saw in his charts for the year ahead indicated the kingdom would soon be lost. He had tried to dissuade the King from further acts of aggression but had failed to inform him of the impending defeat. There were times it was better to let Fate’s decrees unfold in her own time.

  He pushed open the iron-studded door into his room and saw the lit candle on his table flicker from the draught. Every night kitchen servants laid out his food with a jug of wine and lit the stout candle so that he could retire for the evening with minimum effort. The room was pleasantly warm; the fire replenished by servants. He took a bottle of wine from his cloak’s pocket and tipped the contents of
the jug on the table into his chamber pot. The easiest way to drug a man was by poisoning his wine, for that masked the taste of anything untoward. Every evening he would make his way through the kitchens, ignoring the boys turning the spits of meat and bowing at his presence, and then go down into the wine cellar. He would select a dust-encrusted bottle far away from where the kitchen staff would choose wine, close to the kitchen door. It took rare skills to mask the taste of poison in food, so now he sniffed the cold cuts on his plate and placed a small portion of each meat on his tongue. Satisfied that no one had tampered with his food and the crust of freshly baked bread, he uncorked the bottle and poured himself a generous measure.

  When he finished eating, he added seasoned logs to the fire for a slow burn through the night and then closed the internal shutters on the window. His room was too high in the tower for an enemy to scale the walls, but spirits condemned to the dark world knew no such barrier. The shutters bore the sign of the cross to ward off such creatures. Such caution had kept him alive so far. Plucking bits of meat from his teeth, he refilled his wine glass and spread out the original of the chart that his clerks had copied for the King – the copy Velasquita had torn in half. He looked again at his prophecy as dictated by the planets. Satisfied that his advice to the King had been correct, he disrobed and climbed naked beneath the sheets and blanket. Tiredness crept over him. He dozed for a while and then stirred himself to blow out the bedside candle. The dull, comforting glow from the fire with its dancing shadows lulled him to sleep. He slipped away into dreams of his youth in the monastery and then the priesthood: fractured images of a life that had been harsh but relieved by a deep sense of wonderment as the buried knowledge slowly surfaced within him. The weight of the blankets embraced him with their warmth.