The Errant Flock

by Jana Petken

  De Amo groaned as he turned over onto his side. With his back to Luis, he said softly, “Leave me. You will rebuild, even if you lose your entire wealth doing it. Your town will be cleansed, but as duke, you must answer to God for the wickedness that has infected it.”

  Luis stood on the battlements and watched the town burn. His plans had gone awry, but only slightly off course. The inquisitor’s death would have meant a great inheritance for Josefa. The money would have come to her husband, for she wouldn’t have been aware of its existence. It was ironic. It would appear that the inquisitor was going to outlive his daughter and that when he eventually died, his money would pass to little, Gaspar.

  Looking at the town, he couldn’t help but feel a tinge of sadness. He wiped smoke and ash from his eyes as he questioned his decision to torch the town. He had not intended to have fires set, at least not in the beginning. Alejandro had conceived the idea at their last meeting. Luis recalled how the conversation had begun ten days previously in the secret chamber. “Your father was a good man, Luis, but he mismanaged his coffers. And thanks to his obsessive desire to fund the king and your soldier brothers, he left you a pauper.

  “Your brothers are wealthy knights with more men under their banners than you will ever be able to afford. They were given estates in Castile and wealth far beyond your own, whilst you received the remnants of a great town wallowing in decline. You have the title, but what good is it when you are forced to live in a damp castle with walls that crumble at the slightest touch? Burn Sagrat. The houses are old, and half of them are falling down anyway.”

  “And what do you think will happen when Sagrat is in ashes?” Luis had asked, shocked at the very idea.

  “It will be resurrected, of course. The king has close ties to Sagrat and your family. He won’t allow such a tragedy to go unanswered. He’ll be duty-bound to fund its rebirth. And you, Luis, will no longer be in the shadow of your father’s failures. You will fill your vaults with the king’s coin and build a magnificent town, worthy of a viceroy.”

  Luis spoke in a soft, unthreatening voice, informing Tur that he was to be forgiven for his mutinous protests earlier in the Roman theatre. Having reflected on what he should do about the captain, he decided that Tur would be much more useful as an ally than as a prisoner locked up for treason, so he had swallowed his pride.

  “I hope we are clear, Captain. I will not tolerate such behaviour in the future. If you ever question my orders again you will be severely punished. Is that clear?”

  “Yes. Your Grace is very generous,” Tur said.

  Luis leaned against the battlement wall and stared at Tur, trying to gauge his mood. Finally, he said. “Take your men. Tell them to aid the townspeople in whatever way they can.”

  Tur nodded. “And when do we go after the marauders? They stole two chests of coin. That amount of money will have to be transported in carriages. My men might yet have a chance of capturing the thieves if we ride after them now.”

  “No, the town needs to see the militia out in force. Have them patrol the streets all night. There will be homeless people to attend to. All the townspeople must help their neighbours. I will ask the viceroy’s soldiers to hunt the vermin.”

  For a moment, there was silence, and then Luis straightened himself and puffed out his chest in a show of authority. “I have another task for you. This is a job for you and you alone. I want you to find David Sanz.

  “Sanz? And when I do?”

  “You will kill him, quietly and without witnesses. There is evidence to suggest he may have had a hand to play in these fires and the assassination attempt on the Inquisitor’s life.”

  Tur stood in stunned silence. Luis lifted a sinister eyebrow. “You have something to say, Captain?”

  “Why ...why would he perpetrate such a crime?” Tur managed to stutter.

  “Revenge for being thrown out of my militia by his ear, of course .... Why else?”

  “There is no evidence against him...”

  Luis turned his back on Tur and stared at the town below. “Are you questioning my orders again?”

  “No, Your Grace,” Tur mumbled.

  “Good. Find him, no matter how long it takes you. Report back to me when it is done. That will be all, Captain.”

  Chapter fifty-nine

  David gazed at the gaping empty tract where six tightly knit streets used to stand and shook his head in disbelief. It was as though a huge rock had been tossed to Earth from the heavens and had blown everything away.

  Smouldering within the rubble were bodies of men and women who had lost their lives trying to retrieve their most precious possessions. Every person had an ash-coated face and smelled of burnt timbers. Every straw and wooden roof had disintegrated. Walls made from stone had tumbled, and shells of houses left standing were black and so hot that they could blister a hand if touched. There was no sky, no white clouds. The entire town was engulfed in a black and grey fog, smelling like the devil’s breath.

  Hearing his name being shouted, he stopped what he was doing, wiped his eyes with his forearm, and looked into the crowd of people who, like him, were stamping out the remains of the fire. The militia had finally arrived, but they were too late to be of much use here, David thought. Then he saw Captain Tur.

  Tur ordered his men to work and then turned his attention to David. Taking stock of his filthy clothes, he said, “Sanz, you stink like a strong wind in a shit storm. I’ve been looking for you. Come with me.”

  “I no longer take orders from you, Captain. What do you want with me?”

  “I’m not ordering you to come with me, Sanz. I’m asking you,” Tur answered.

  “I can’t imagine why we would have business together,” David said, still unwilling to move. Trepidation grew, but with one eye on Tur and the other on the militia, who had already begun to sweep and dampen debris to make sure it would not reignite, he concluded that Tur was not tricking him or deceiving him. Tur was an honest man. If he had come to arrest him, he would have done it with force. He looked at Paco, who was watching from a distance. Paco shrugged his shoulders as if to say, I don’t know anything. At last, David nodded. “At your service, Captain,” he said sarcastically.

  Tur led David through the smouldering streets, saying nothing until they were inside the Roman theatre. It was strangely quiet and clean. There were no dead bodies. The platforms’ remnants and timbers had been removed, as had the penitents’ benches. No arrows were strewn on the ground. It looked as it did every day, a deserted old monument. The militia had been busy, after all.

  David’s heart thumped as a thought struck him. Was he going to be asked to rejoin the militia? He wouldn’t, of course, but for some reason the notion excited him. “Captain, you have my attention,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

  After sitting down on a spectator’s step, Tur drew his sword and laid it beside him on a stone. “Sit,” he said, motioning David to the spot beside him.

  Once David was seated, Tur said, “I lost five good men today.”

  “Who?” David asked, saddened by this news.

  Tur reeled off the names in a voice that shook with a mixture of anger and sorrow.

  “My condolences. They were good men. I should have been serving with them,” David said.

  “A soldier prays for a good death in battle, not to be murdered,” Tur went on, staring at the empty arena. “There has been too much murder done in this town. Too much suffering and grief … and loss.”

  The conversation was civil, David thought with some surprise. But where would it lead? Should he speak up or say as little as possible? He felt cold spread through him and the hairs on his arms rise and tickle his skin. “Yes, there have been too senseless killings,” he found himself saying. “How many people died in here?”

  “Twenty five. It could have been much worse, but I don’t think the marauders wanted to kill innocent people. They seemed more intent on killing the dignitaries on the scaffold.”

  Waving his
arms in the direction of the arena, Tur asked, “Do you know who is responsible for what happened here and for all the other terrible crimes plaguing Sagrat?”

  “No. How could I know anything?”

  Tur grunted and then sneered with disgust. “This is the question I have been asking myself for weeks. What is David Sanz’s involvement? Why does he seem to be at the heart of every matter?”

  “I am not involved in anything or with anyone,” David protested, but his voice shook with guilt.

  “One would think not. After all, you’re a pup with no credentials, yet on the very night a young family was slaughtered and your farm was attacked, you were in the duke’s private chambers having dealings with him. I watched you leave the castle with Garcia and speak to him in whispers, and then you disappeared. You left your watch post and did not return until morning. Where did you go?”

  A cool head was needed, David thought, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “I don’t know,” he eventually muttered. “I can’t remember.”

  “Is that so? I think you remember very well what happened that night.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “I imply nothing … I know.”

  “If you know, you should get to your point,” David said gratingly.

  “Not yet. There are still pieces of the puzzle that leave me baffled. I’m hoping that you will give me the answers I’m looking for.”

  “It seems you already have all the answers,” David reiterated.

  “If I had, you would already be dead. I would have done to you what I did to our dear departed lord treasurer.”

  David gasped loudly. Instinctively, he rose from the step.

  “Sit on your arse!” Tur’s voice hissed.

  Paralysed with fear and his mind frozen with questions, David sat back down, stared at Tur, and saw a murderous intent in his dark eyes that terrified him. He did it … Tur, a man who went to Mass every day and carried a rosary. “Why? Why did you kill him?” he asked, so softly spoken that the words were barely audible.

  Seemingly confident that David was not going to make a run for it, Tur sat back and rested his elbows on the step above him. “Had I let him live, he would have gone to the duke. I would have been killed within hours, and Peráto would not have to answer for his crimes. That hardly seems fair.”

  David’s ears rang. Holding his breath, he waited for the words that would condemn him and the punishment that would follow them.

  “Now back to what I know, Sanz,” Tur continued with not a hint of malice in his voice. “Garcia lied to me on the night he left the castle with a prison cart and came back with two men disfigured, in agony, and unable to whimper their innocence. Perhaps he thought me dim-witted when he made those blunders. You see, the lord treasurer does not hold the power to arrest citizens. The arrest warrant in his possession was signed by the duke, yet only the magistrate has that authority. I was suspicious, so I investigated.

  “I heard from witnesses at the port that a scar-faced man and his cohorts, using the prison cart that Garcia took, abducted Miguel and Ignacio and killed their friend. I also found out that on the night of the Immaculate Conception, Miguel and Ignacio were in the port’s taverna and that both had consumed enough wine to put a horse to sleep. They could not have killed that family or raised fires on the plain … so who committed those crimes? I asked myself.

  “After Miguel and Ignacio were arrested, I kept a close eye on Garcia. At the burnings, I watched him approach you. I saw the hatred on his face when he gripped your arm and whispered in your ear. I also heard about your sword fight with a man who had a scar running down his face. That’s when I knew you and Garcia were connected.”

  David’s mouth was as dry as bone. He swallowed painfully and said, “No.” Labouring to keep his breathing steady, he looked at his options. Say nothing and be tortured; admit everything and be burned. Fight Tur? Kill him? With what? He had no sword.

  “Sanz, I have dedicated my life to soldiering. I have seen guilt written on men’s faces after they have killed in battle, and I saw it on yours when the men were burned. The shame was emblazoned in your eyes, as though you felt personally responsible for their deaths …”

  During a strange pause in which Tur seemed to want to give David the opportunity to rebut his statement, David found himself unable to deny what had just been said. Sighing wearily with defeat, he kept his mouth shut.

  “I bided my time, looking for an opportune moment to question Garcia,” Tur continued. “I knew he had the duke’s ear and that it was a dangerous pursuit, but I came to believe that Garcia and the duke were connected to a terrible crime and that somehow you were also involved. Unfortunately, Garcia proved to be elusive, but on the night before the High Mass, I saw him leave the south-east gate alone. I followed him. I confess I was torn … What would happen to me were I to accuse our illustrious treasurer of being complicit in the murder of an innocent family? And why were they killed? I could not find any possible motive.”

  “But you decided to ask him anyway?” David asked, finding his voice. He could feel droplets of sweat run down the side of his forehead and into his hairline. “Well, did you?” he asked again.

  In the silence, Tur’s face took on a satisfied expression, as though he were remembering a pleasurable experience. “I had to. It had to be me. The magistrate and council are like blind sheep. I knew I couldn’t count on them to ask the right questions. I waited until Garcia was almost at the municipal palace. I put a knife to his throat and led him here, to this very spot. I tied his hands and feet with hemp cord. Every time he raised his voice louder than a whisper, I nicked him with my dagger.

  “I began by asking him who had ordered the arrest of two innocent men. Of course, I didn’t want to believe it was our duke, but Garcia was quick to offer me Peráto like a pig’s head on a platter. I told Garcia that I knew who had killed the young family but that I needed him to tell me why. I suppose he must have believed me. Or perhaps he was terrified of being tortured further and wanted to keep some skin on his bones. To this day, I don’t know what possessed him to tell me about the duke, the baby, and you, but to my surprise, he did. He sang like a canary and begged for his life, over and over again.

  David could almost hear his own heart beating. He had imagined dying in many different ways in the past weeks. At times, he thought that death might be easier than trying to stay alive. But faced with it now, he realised that he wanted to live. He wanted to see Sinfa again and to be given the chance to redeem himself. “Garcia spoke the truth,” he said, crushed. “I followed the duke’s orders after he threatened to kill my family. I have been living in fear ever since that terrible night.”

  “Fear is what that young family must have felt when you slaughtered them!” Tur stopped speaking. His jaw tensed, twitching the muscles in his cheeks.

  David could feel the captain’s rage. “If you’re going to kill me, do it now.”

  “You followed orders.” Tur, sneering with bitterness, ignored what David had just said. “Valencia is full of men who follow orders and hire their swords for money. They kill not out of necessity or pleasure but because it gives them a living. You are not the only soldier to follow a foul order from a bad leader, Sanz. And had you not killed a little girl, I might have given you a head start before I implicated you in that shit of a crime.

  “You’ll get your death soon enough. You sicken me. There is no filthier scum than a man who murders a child, so before you face justice, you will take me to the child’s grave and you’ll dig up her body. She will be given a Christian burial.”

  As Tur’s words raced in his mind, David’s breath felt as though it was being sucked out of his body. He gasped for air, panicking at his inability to say what he wanted to say. “No … no,” he finally managed to utter. “I could never harm a child. I had to kill the parents. Had I not ended them, Peráto would have sent another man in my place – or another infant would have been stolen and his
family killed, perhaps in a house with even more occupants than the one I chose. But I swear to you, I would rather be gutted alive than kill a child.”

  A cry ripped from Tur’s throat. His mouth remained open, and for a second, a spark of approval sat in his eyes. “You had better not be lying to me,” he whispered in a broken voice.

  “I’m not. I swear to you. After I delivered the infant to Garcia, I carried the girl from the town and hid her somewhere safe.”

  Pensively but with the hint of a smile, Tur nodded. “God is indeed merciful.”

  David felt a spark of hope ignite and dared to ask, “Captain, why did you wait so long to confront me?”

  “I needed time to find solid evidence to use against the duke ... Who is going to believe an old drunk like me? What man or priest is going to accuse a duke of such a wicked crime without irrefutable proof?”

  “Do you still mean to kill me?”

  “No.”

  “Then let me serve you,” David begged. “I’ll give you your proof.”

  Tur stood up. “Lad, I mean to see this through. If you remain in this town, you will be arrested.”

  “I know,” David nodded, knowing he couldn’t run away from this. “I will stand by your side... I give you my oath.”

  “I believe you, Sanz, Tur said, nodding. “Now tell me about this proof of yours.”

  Chapter Sixty

  The old farmhouse sat in the middle of a field which had not been ploughed for years. Pampas grass, taller than the height of a man, swayed in the soft afternoon breeze and obscured the overgrown path that led to the dilapidated building.

  David walked in front of the horse that Tur had given him with the reins held loosely in his hand and picked his way through the dirt trail littered with sharp-edged rocks and potholes. At the farmhouse, he tied the horse’s rope to a tree and edged his way towards an opening in the stone walls. This was the right place, he thought. From the road, he had seen the convent’s tower in the distance, just as Diego had described.