“How wonderful not to have to wear my wimple!” she cried with a sigh of relief. Yet I could sense anxiety in her voice.
“Is something worrying you?” I asked.
“A good deal more firewood has gone missing from the forge this year than in years previous. It’s a youthful prank, but this time they’ve gone too far. I won’t report it, but it reminds me of what I’m seeing in Villa de Suso today. It seems to me there’s too much anger, too much ill will.”
“Why eguzkilores?”
“Our guild protects Victoria. We provide arms for the townspeople when they need them. Here,” she said, “take a bun. We made extra to celebrate Maundy Thursday.”
The bun she handed me tasted like heaven.
“I’m here to fetch Grandmother Lucía, to carry her around the celebrations for a while.”
“If you see danger, take her straight home and come find me.”
“I will. Can you spare an eguzkilore?”
“What do you want it for?”
“An old ritual,” I said, shrugging.
* * *
—
I spent the morning capering around town with Grandmother Lucía on my back. She giggled like a little girl, overjoyed to be outside and on the streets once more. I told her my plan as we approached Santa María Cathedral, where we came upon Vidal, the young priest, in solitary prayer. Although the Church of Rome denounced pagan festivals, in reality it turned a blind eye. It was impossible to prevent the townsfolk from celebrating. Priests did not often join the festivities, perhaps because there was always a pot-bellied drunken cleric mounted on a donkey among the disguises, and self-ridicule wasn’t a virtue commonly found in men of the cloth.
“May we climb the bell tower?” I asked the young priest.
He startled when he saw me, a response I attributed to my disguise and to the unexpected presence of Grandmother Lucía. And yet he gave me a fleeting look of horror, too.
“Are you not Count Don Vela—the man who rose from the dead?”
“So folk say. Will you lend us the key?”
“What do you intend to do up there? I’ve already rung the Angelus.”
“I yearn to view town from above, my child,” Grandmother Lucía said. Her dulcet tone would have melted even the devil’s heart. “Surely you won’t refuse an old woman’s fancy?”
The priest handed us a heavy iron key, and Grandmother Lucía took his hand and clasped it in her tiny fist.
His eyes met hers before darting away, as though burned. Then he abandoned the little church, leaving us to puzzle over his curious behavior.
I mounted the narrow spiral staircase with Grandmother Lucía still clinging to my back. The bell was suspended from a wooden crossbeam at the top of the stairs. Grandmother Lucía and I exchanged glances like a couple of mischievous children. I managed to find an old nail in the beam and pulled it loose. Grandmother Lucía took out Alix’s eguzkilore, and I nailed it to the crossbeam with a stone I found lying at my feet.
“Let us pray this will suffice to keep the gauekos from entering town,” she said, looking uneasily beyond the confines of the bell tower.
“I am more afraid of the evil within our walls than of spirits of the night, Grandmother.”
With a roguish twinkle in her eye, she produced a length of red wool. “I braided this for you. Wear it always,” she declared solemnly.
Red wool. I had come across spinners in other lands who claimed to thread together people’s souls with skeins of red wool. I looked back at her, moved. This gift created a stronger tie between us than even the spilling of our red blood; it made us kinsfolk.
“Go ahead, put it on. Should you lose it, you know what will happen.”
“I will never take it off. I swear on the goddess Lur.”
“The goddess Lur,” she echoed, speaking as if from her pagan soul.
I set her down, and she turned toward the north.
Suddenly she began to sniff the air, then she looked at me.
“What are they burning, Diago my boy?”
I looked out across the town and could see smoke rising from beyond the walls. The Mendozas had set fire to the Judas effigy. Joined by other nobles, they were dancing around the cart and jeering at the burning figure, which represented the vendors.
“We must go, Grandmother. It’s time I took you home,” I said, alarmed.
She nodded, and we descended to the chapel in silence. As we passed the door to the sacristy, she stopped me.
“Do you smell what I smell?”
“What does it smell like, Grandmother?”
“Like the priest, when I held his hand. Like rotten eggs.”
I left her on the altar steps and approached the sacristy. The door was closed, but I pushed against it with my shoulder until it gave way. Grandmother Lucía was right, except the smell wasn’t quite that of rotten eggs, although it was similar.
It was an odor not easily forgotten.
A dead animal, an abandoned battlefield left to the crows, an exposed mass grave after an execution—I covered my nose with my sleeve and looked for the source of the stench.
I found it coming from a tiny, shuttered window that stood at waist height. At that moment, I understood.
I left the room to breathe in fresh air.
Grandmother already knew, too. She looked at me with ageless eyes and lips tight with grief and rage.
“Take me home. You must take care of it.”
“Grandmother, don’t tell anyone. I need you to keep quiet.”
“I will.”
25
THE LORDS OF CASTILLO
UNAI
October 2019
Héctor called me the next day, and there was an unusual urgency in his voice that I’d never heard before.
“Iago and I would like to meet you in Vitoria as soon as possible. We read the novel carefully and are caught up on the events that have shaken your city these past few weeks. We have something to show you, but it’s a valuable object that needs to be kept safe.”
“You can come to my office at Portal de Foronda, in the Lakua district. There’s no place more secure.”
“I don’t think I’m explaining myself properly,” he said. “We don’t want any security cameras or any record of this. There must be no paper trail. I’ve known you for many years, Unai, and I trust you to be discreet. The information we have will help your investigation, but we don’t want our names in any reports. Is there somewhere else, somewhere more suitable, where we can meet?”
“Come to my apartment, then. Number Two, Plaza de la Virgen Blanca.”
* * *
—
I greeted them on the landing. Although I hadn’t seen Iago del Castillo for years, he looked pretty much the same: tall like me, dark hair, light eyes. He was carrying a hefty briefcase fitted with high-tech security locks. His older brother, Héctor del Castillo, was following behind him; Héctor was even-tempered and always weighed his words before speaking.
“Unai, good to see you!” Iago said, entering my apartment. “Héctor told me about the Broca’s aphasia. Be sure to take care of that brain of yours. It has to last the rest of your life.”
I hugged him; I was just so delighted to see them both.
The trust and affection that Iago and I shared had developed gradually. After completing my studies in criminal profiling, I was transferred to police headquarters in Santander for a few months, where I met Iago. A series of troubling homicides had put the brothers’ private museum of archaeology, the MAC, at the center of an investigation led by Inspector Paul Lanero—a lovely man we called “Paulaner.”
At the beginning, Iago and I had clashed because I thought he was concealing information. As time went by, though, my opinion changed. Iago was extremely smart—almost too smart—and he knew it, but
he was also an honest man, and in the end, we solved the case.
“Don’t worry about my brain,” I said, “I doubt it’ll atrophy with all the serial killers keeping me busy. Why don’t we sit down and you can show me this mysterious object of yours. You sure know how to create intrigue.”
The brothers exchanged a knowing look and then cast furtive glances at the windows overlooking the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca before sitting down. I put my cell phone on silent. Iago opened the briefcase and then slipped on a white cotton glove.
I leaned in, intrigued by a bundle of yellowing sheets bound in leather.
“What is it?”
“A chronicle that dates back to the twelfth century,” replied Iago.
“Can you elaborate?” I asked, mesmerized. Were these pages really…a thousand years old?
“This, my friend, is a kind of diary written by one of our family’s ancestors, Count Diago Vela,” Héctor explained.
“You’re descendants of Count Don Vela?”
“The Del Castillo branch were older relatives of the Velas, as recounted in that novel that’s just been published,” Héctor answered. “We have shared blood, yes. Several variations of our surname appear in documents pertaining to King Sancho the Seventh, Sancho the Strong, as well as in some of the cartularies in the General Archive of Navarre: Dicastillo, Deicastello, Diacastello, Diacasteyllo, Dicastello…”
“Count Don Vela’s Christian first name also holds an indelible place in our family,” Iago added. “It’s no coincidence that our family baptized me in the ancestral tradition: Diago, Diego, Didaco, Didacus, Tiago, Santiago, Iago, Yago, Jacobo…They’re all recurring names in our lineage. They come from the Greek didachos, meaning ‘learned.’ Names are important, don’t you think? They define our lives. But to go back to what brings us here, this chronicle is a family heirloom, as I’m sure you’ve already deduced.”
“May I take a look?” I asked, awestruck.
Iago smiled.
“Of course,” he said, reverently turning the first page.
The ancient document was speckled with brownish spots, a process of deterioration called foxing. I examined the text, but I could not decipher it.
“I don’t understand a word,” I confessed.
“It’s the written variant of the dialect used in this area. Suffice it to say that its beginning closely resembles that of the novel. Moreover, based on what we’ve read, The Lords of Time appears to parallel this chronicle throughout,” Iago added.
“Would you be able to transcribe it?”
“I’m able to read the text,” replied Héctor, “but Iago is the medievalist expert. He has studied it in depth and knows it well, which is why I asked for his help when you called. To be honest, I haven’t even read it in its entirety,” Héctor admitted. “It is, after all, a private diary, something intimate. I feel uneasy intruding on the thoughts of a man who loved, suffered, and grieved while writing it.”
“Are you saying that the events described in The Lords of Time actually happened? That the novel is based on your ancestor’s thousand-year-old diary?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Then you’ll have to explain, Iago.”
“From what I’ve been able to read, the novel’s author has taken our ancestor’s account and rewritten the events, using modern language and employing a similar narrative structure to the chronicle,” he clarified. “It is our opinion that the events depicted did take place. Carbon dating suggests the manuscript was written between AD 1190 and 1210, so the timeline matches as well. But there are slight variations in some events and characters.”
“For example?” I prompted.
“Some of the deaths in the novel aren’t mentioned in the chronicle, nor in any other historical documents from that period. But what I’m trying to tell you is that this manuscript is unknown. It has never been published. In fact, it has always remained exclusively in our family’s possession. In other words, whoever wrote the novel must have accessed either a copy of the text or the original document written by Count Vela himself,” said Iago.
“So there’s another manuscript, identical to this one, that hasn’t been published, either?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“If only.” Iago sighed. “It was lost in 1524 in Vitoria, when Diago Vela’s palace burned to the ground and all the possessions belonging to his descendants were destroyed. Their family coat of arms, which hung in the San Miguel Arcángel Church, was also obliterated, even though they helped build the church, the walls—the entire neighborhood.”
“Who destroyed them? Who demolished all that heritage?”
“At the time, several rival families were fighting over Vitoria. The situation worsened during the Revolt of the Comuneros.”
“What are their surnames, Iago? Are any of these families present in Vitoria today?”
“Yes, many of them are: the Maturanas, the Isunzas, the Ortiz de Zárates, the Mendozas…Others, like the Calleja family, died out in the seventeenth century.”
“Is it possible that the missing copy is in the private library of a direct descendant of one of those families?” I asked.
Héctor and Iago exchanged a swift, wordless glance.
“Well, clearly someone with the necessary knowledge gained access to the document, read it through, and created their own version of the diary,” Iago concluded.
“For the record, and you know I have to ask: Did either of you write this variant or version of the chronicle?”
“No, obviously not.”
“Is there any chance it was stolen and then returned without your knowledge?”
“Look,” Héctor explained, “ever since the theft of the Cabárceno Cauldron three years ago, we’ve increased security at the museum. We keep this chronicle, along with other items of value, in a vault in the basement. Only Iago and I have the access codes. There’s video surveillance, which are only erased after three weeks have gone by—that’s standard in most security systems. But we always review the sped-up footage first, and believe me—no one broke in. In fact, no one other than my brother and I even knows the vault exists, not even the museum employees. And that’s not even the strangest part. There are only a few documents that have endured since the twelfth century, and if you’ve read the novel, you should know this chronicle is a firsthand account of events that occurred in Vitoria between AD 1192 and 1200. The missing copy alone is worth several million euros.”
“Or dollars,” interjected Iago. “There would be significant interest from American and European universities, private collectors, and museums. Have you ever been to the Conjunto Monumental de Quejana?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“What a shame,” he said, shrugging as he closed the chronicle. “The lord chancellor built an altarpiece next to the tomb he and his wife, Leonor de Guzmán, occupy. That piece is actually a re-creation. A group of Dominican nuns sold the original to an English antique dealer in the early twentieth century. It was then purchased by an American tycoon, whose daughters donated it to the Art Institute of Chicago, where it’s currently on exhibition. Do you see what I’m getting at? It seems absurd that someone who either has, or has access to, such a valuable document is content to forego wealth in favor of rewriting the chronicle to reflect their own version of events. I’m not sure if showing you this has helped the investigation or given you a bigger headache.”
I smiled, too excited to speak.
“You have no idea how much clearer things are now,” I said. “But I have one final question: Are Alfonso the Tenth’s Notes on the Seven Divisions written in a language similar to this?”
“Yes. Alfonso’s notes appeared in 1256, so they’re later than the chronicle,” replied Iago. “But grammatical structures and expressions didn’t change as quickly back then as they do n
ow, so the language is very similar, although the notes possibly use a Toledo variant.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been extremely helpful.”
“Look, Unai…I know we can count on your discretion. If what we’ve told you proves helpful to your investigation, please keep our names out of it,” Héctor repeated as we all rose to our feet.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find a way to avoid mentioning you. If it’s discretion you want, though, you’d better show yourselves out of the building. All the neighbors know who I am, and they might put the pieces together.”
“We’ll do that. If there’s anything else we can do, you know where to find us,” added Iago as he gave me a firm handshake on his way to the door.
* * *
—
I waited until they had gone downstairs. I needed to organize my thoughts, but an idea was already forming. Who could have inherited the purloined copy of the chronicle? Who didn’t need that money and, in fact, would have spurned it? Who had the skills necessary to read a document written in the twelfth century?
Just then, my phone vibrated in my back pocket.
I picked up as soon as I saw the name on the screen. “I have a bone to pick with you, Lutxo,” I said.
You’re the reason I argued with Alba, I thought.
“Are you downtown?” he asked hurriedly.
“Yes, do you want to meet for coffee at the Virgen Blanca?”
“Okay, I can be there in ten minutes,” he said, agreeing.
“Fine.”
I went downstairs to the café next to my building and waited at the most secluded table I could find. The other customers stirred their milky coffees and munched on tapas as they stared dreamily at the square through the café’s plate-glass windows. Lutxo stubbed his cigarette out in the doorway, ordered at the bar, and then sat next to me.
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