Wayland extended a hand containing a purse. ‘Syth and I agreed that this belongs to you. You were too generous.’
Vallon waved it away. ‘Keep it. You have a family to consider.’
Caitlin ran a finger down his sunken cheek. ‘It’s time you considered yourself.’ She rounded on Hero. ‘Whatever were you thinking of letting him chase after books hidden in castles? He can’t continue to Constantinople in that state. We’ll stop at the next town and find lodgings until he’s fit enough to travel.’
Hero made a gesture halfway between a cringe and a bow.
Vallon tried to protest. ‘I’ve outstayed my welcome in Suleyman’s territory. The sooner we reach Byzantium, the safer we will be.’
Caitlin swept his opposition aside. ‘You’re not in any danger from the Seljuks. We passed Faruq early this morning and he told me to take care of you.’
‘Faruq?’
She smiled. ‘You underestimate the respect the Seljuks hold you in. Their soldiers are already composing tales about you as if you were a hero of old.’
Wayland looked on, feeling curiously cut off from his friends as they prepared to vanish from his life. Vallon rode up. ‘Thank you for bringing Caitlin.’
‘She brought herself, and if I hadn’t gone, Syth would have escorted her herself.’
Vallon looked south. ‘Dear Syth. Just the thought of her brings a smile, and that smile will be with me for as long as I live.’ He slapped Wayland’s knee. ‘She’ll be missing you. Return as quick as you can.’
Wayland conned the landscape, postponing the final separation. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll ride with you a little way further.’
They rode to the west and at evening time breasted a ridge to see the plateau folding away in soft greys and mauves, the sun pulsating halfway below the horizon, the peach- and lavender-coloured sky brushed with a few streaks of fiery cloud. Vallon halted and looked hard at Wayland. ‘Now it really is the last farewell.’
They said their goodbyes with no great outpouring of emotion except from Caitlin, who planted a kiss on Wayland’s lips and enjoined him to treasure Syth all his days.
Hero dabbed a speck of dust from his eye and spoke in a voice pitched higher than normal. ‘Well, the weather’s set fair.’
Vallon raised his hand to check and stared at the empty finger with dull incomprehension. ‘The ring’s gone.’ He glanced back. ‘It must have slipped off.’
Everyone turned and stared back down the tracts of barren space.
‘Do you have any idea where you lost it?’ Hero said.
Vallon shook his head. ‘I last saw it when we set off this morning. It could be anywhere.’ He shook himself and drew a deep breath. ‘It’s gone. No point looking for it.’
‘Are you sure? The ring’s valuable. It has magical properties.’
‘And that’s why I lost it. I bet the damn thing’s gone back to Cosmas.’
A last nod at Wayland, a last penetrating look and a touch of the hand and then Vallon led his party away. Hero and Caitlin kept turning to wave, but Vallon didn’t look back, nor did Wayland expect him to.
He watched them for miles, their shadows lengthening behind them, merging into one and dissolving in the creeping dusk.
A movement in the air made him look up. Caught on the cusp of remaining light, a falcon on passage skated in smooth ellipses, intent on the ground far beneath. Its wings flickered and it slid forward, bunching up into a missile that fell in a steepening curve until it was plunging earthwards as true as a plumbline. The tide of shadows engulfed it, and though Wayland waited, it didn’t appear again. When he looked west again, Vallon, Hero and Caitlin were gone.
He waited a little while longer. A single cloud with its edges burnished by the last rays of the invisible sun glowed like a scrap of charring parchment. When the flame died he turned his horse back. The twin peaks lay sunk beneath the earth and the ridges rolled away soft as lampblack.
On his solitary journey homewards he passed within yards of Cosmas’s ring, lying buried in the winter grasses at the edge of the track. The gemstone recorded his fleeting passage, his image elongating as he approached and then contracting to a dot. Gone in a trice, leaving a dark blank eye highlit by the gleam of stars.
Wayland rode on, wishing he was at home with Syth, regretting that the quest was over. He looked back only once, to record the moment, to draw the line, to seal the memories. He raised one arm in salute before turning away.
Here or in the hereafter.
My agent Anthony Goff encouraged and guided me from start to finish. My thanks to him and the foreign rights team at David Higham Associates.
I should also like to thank my editor, Daniel Mallory, my copy-editor Iain Hunt, and all the other team members at Little, Brown who steered
Hawk Quest
to publication.
Fellow-falconer Neil Johnstone and good friend Mike Newth kindly read the book in typescript and picked up some silly blunders. All remaining errors are my own.
Consultant haematologist Dan Thompson checked my descriptions of medieval surgery. He pointed out that Hero seems to have anticipated Germ Theory by eight centuries. It’s true that the germ theory of disease was scientifically proved only in the nineteenth century, but the Roman writer Marcus Terentius Varro warned of disease-carrying ‘minute creatures, invisible to the eye’ as early as 36 BC.
I’m grateful to Bill Massey for more than I can say. Writing this book brought back happy memories of autumn days hawking with Bill and Neil on Scottish grouse moors.
My wife Deborah supplied the Latin and Greek and much else besides.
Hawk Quest
is dedicated to her and to our daughter Lily, with love.
Robert Lyndon has been a falconer since boyhood. A keen student of history, he was intrigued by accounts of hawks being used as ransoms during the Middle Ages. Some of the scenes in
Hawk Quest
were inspired by Lyndon’s own experiences as a falconer, climber and traveller in remote places.