Explanation From Original OP:
Context: The Grand Master of the Order of St John of Jerusalem had to pay an annual tribute to the Emperor Charles V and his mother Queen Joanna of Castile as monarchs of Sicily, for the granting of Tripoli, Malta) and Gozo. There were also other conditions. The annual tribute payable on All Saints day (1 November) was one falcon. The grant was made at Castelfranco Emilia and is dated “the 23rd day of the month of March, Third Indiction, in the Year of Our Lord 1530; in the 10th year of our reign as Emperor, the 27th as King of Castile, Granada etc., the 16th of Navarre, the 15th of Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem and all our other realms”.\1])\2])\3])\4])\5])\6])\7])
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute/of_the_Maltese_Falcon)
Danegeld (/ˈdeɪnɡɛld/;\1]) literally “Dane yield”) was a tax raised to pay tribute or protection money to the Viking raiders to save a land from being ravaged. It was called the geld or gafol in eleventh-century sources. It was characteristic of royal policy in both England and Francia during the ninth through eleventh centuries, collected both as tributary, to buy off the attackers, and as stipendiary, to pay the defensive forces. The term Danegeld did not appear until the late eleventh century. In Anglo-Saxon England tribute payments to the Danes was known as gafol and the levy raised to support the standing army, for the defence of the realm, was known as heregeld (army-tax).
“The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett was the novel that created the hard boiled private eye genre. Hammett was a real life Pinkerton operative before turning to writing. He served in WW1 and WW2 and ended up in jail because he refused to name names during the Red Scare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell_Hammett
Maltese Falcon movie
