The Crown that Lost its Head

by Jane Thornley

  “Then teach me.” I was counting on a priest’s longing to convert a lost ewe to the flock. “Tell me how the skull of some poor dead prince from five hundred years ago can impart something holy on today’s messed-up world.”

  His dark brows furrowed. “It is because this world is so ‘messed up,’ as you say, that our crowned king must act quickly to save us all by clearing the way for the world to be born anew. Just as Christ rose from the dead, so must humanity.”

  “Through a skull and a crown?”

  “Dare not speak of what you fail to understand!” he roared. “Our crown contains a fragment of bone from the King of Kings—” he paused long enough to genuflect and raise a hand to the crucifix “—and the skull is merely His corporal representative on earth. Once they are united, we will hear His call and the faithful will be saved.”

  Oh, good: I was making him angry. “You want to resurrect an archaic notion that the world can fit into some simplistic one-size-fits-all belief system where we all must look, live, and behave the same? Are we going to pretend that the past never happened?” I’d found his button and kept pushing.

  “You do not know what you say!”

  But I was on a roll. “Would you burn people at the stake, and inflict even more suffering in the world in the name of Jesus, is that what you’re saying? Do you really think He would want that?” My eyes had turned to the crucifix. I didn’t need to be religious to be incensed. In fact, I imagined Jesus was fully on my side. I could almost hear the angels singing. “The Inquisition is dead for a reason; the world changes for a reason; and this is only one more power play in the name of your patriarchal doctrine! Don’t talk to me about entitlement! Men have always demanded entitlement and hidden it under one guise or another!”

  He looked as if I had struck him. God, I realized that no one had probably ever spoken to him like that for a long time, maybe never, let alone a woman.

  “You dare speak to me that way,” he sputtered, adding something in Spanish—either a prayer or a curse.

  “If a mortal stands before me and spews nonsense about destroying the earth in the name of religion, I dare speak to you that way.” In for a penny…

  “The earth is already destroyed,” he roared in his pulpit voice. “Look around. The seas are rising, nature is dying, men are still fighting among one another in the name of their false gods and misguided beliefs. Technology is the god of the young. The only way to save humanity is to burn it to the ground so we may be born anew in the name of Jesus Christ!”

  His hands rose in the air and he waved them around, as if evoking the gilded angels on the walls to fly. For the first time I gazed into the face of madness and was terrified.

  “Enough! I have wasted too much precious time on you two.” Suddenly he was sweeping back down the aisle while speaking urgently into his phone, calling for reinforcements from the god of technology.

  In seconds, he disappeared, leaving me alone before the altar with the bindings biting into my wrists and my heart galloping. I looked up at Jesus. “So did I mess that up?” But I had maybe seconds until they returned. How could I break free?

  I strained against my bindings, kicking my bound feet over and over again trying to loosen the ropes. And then I heard a faint noise behind me. “¡Deja de retorcerse!” a female voice whispered.

  Something sawed into my bindings as I stilled. After my wrists sprung free, a young woman ducked in front of me and began cutting the bindings at my feet with a penknife, the same woman who had brought the candles earlier. Now a vicious bruise blackened her cheek. In her twenties with straight dark hair styled in an almost boyish fashion, she caught my eye, beckoned, and slipped back through the altar door.

  But I wasn’t leaving without my phone. Instantly I was on my stomach reaching under the pew and froze in that position when two men ran down the aisle shouting. The phone just inches out of reach…unless I risked ducking between the pews and kicking it out with my feet. Damn.

  The men fanned out all over the church. They’d find me for sure. Suddenly the woman’s voice burst in, speaking excitedly, and the men began firing questions at her. Now the guards were dashing back toward the front of the church, the large wooden doors creaking open before slamming shut.

  I sagged in relief before standing up and waving at my ally. She waved back from across the aisle. I snatched up my phone along with Evan’s and followed her to the vestibule behind the altar.

  It was a small room with a library of books on one side and racks of church vestments on another crowded around. Hooks held various church headgear including long white pointed hoods encased in plastic wrap that sent shivers down my spine. What, like the Ku Klux Klan or something? I remembered seeing those hats in a Goya painting without understanding its meaning.

  The woman beckoned me on through a back door past two offices, down a short hall, and to a set of back stairs leading both up and down. One presumably led to the bell tower, the other to the basement and outside. I pointed down. She held up three fingers. Three men downstairs—got it.

  Opening up my phone, I was relieved to find it still operable and scanned for a weapon app, something that might disarm someone from a distance. Evan’s phones would never shoot bullets but a laser bolt might be a good substitute. I popped open the red bolt icon and crept down the stairs with the phone raised, indicating that the woman remain upstairs.

  The steps ended at the back door. To the right lay the hall we’d entered earlier and the room where they held Evan. I heard voices in the corridor, one being Don Santos, who strode from the room talking hurriedly into a cell phone. When he was far enough away and his back turned, I crept to the door and stepped in. Two men with rolled-up sleeves were working over a bloodied Evan.

  “Hello, boys.”

  The moment they swung around, I beamed a bolt of laser light straight into both their eyes, one after the other, blinding them on the spot. As the men screamed and spun away, I rushed up to use the same burning light to sear the ropes off Evan’s hands and feet. He sagged forward into my arms just as Don Santos rushed in.

  “Stop in the name of our King!” he cried.

  I lifted the phone, ready to launch another bolt, when the priest collapsed to the floor. The candle woman stood over his crumpled form, a silver candlestick raised in both hands, a hard look in her eyes. She was one of us.

  “Help us!” I cried.

  She dropped the candlestick and was at my side in an instant, both of us lifting Evan from the chair. “What’s your name? I’m Phoebe,” I said, thumbing my chest.

  “Phoebe. Me Ilda.”

  “Gracias, Ilda.”

  She nodded and shot me a brief smile.

  “Not…unconscious,” Evan whispered through swollen lips. “Can stand. Get the guns…on table.”

  Leaving him supported by my ally, I snatched up both guns and stuffed them into my pockets. Our bags were on the floor and obviously had been rummaged through. I hastily stuffed everything back into the backpacks, threw one over my shoulder, and grabbed the other.

  The two guards were flailing around, screaming about the room with one stumbling into the hall. And yes, I felt pity for them but not enough to let them kill us instead. One was lurching around, arms outstretched, trying to grab somebody. He came too close to Evan, who let go of Ilda long enough to slug the guy in the jaw. The guard crumpled to his knees and stilled.

  Two down, four to go. Where were the others? And then as if in answer, we heard voices upstairs. I passed Evan a gun and I cocked the other, shoving my phone into my pocket.

  Two men where pounding down the stairs crying out, no doubt seeing the priest’s prone form in the hall. Evan leaned out and fired, winging one guy in the arm while the other kept shooting.

  “Where are the other two?” I asked.

  “Santos sent…them out to pick up…supper,” Evan mumbled.

  I ducked out from the other side and aimed for the second guy’s legs, hitting him in the kneecap. He screamed, d
ropping his gun and leaving the three of us to climb over the unconscious Don Santos and bolt out the door in the opposite direction.

  Outside, darkness had fallen hard as we dashed toward one of two parked cars. The keys were in the ignition, typical rural-style, so we tossed in our bags and folded Evan into the back seat. I took the driver’s side and beckoned Ilda to join me in the front.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “What do you mean ‘no’? They know you helped us. They’ll kill you.”

  “No,” she repeated.

  Evan leaned forward and spoke in Spanish and whatever he said convinced her to climb in. Seconds later I was easing the car down the hill with no idea where to head next except away.

  “Give me my phone,” Evan mumbled. I dug in my pocket and Ilda passed it back.

  “Head for the village—right,” he said, trying to read his phone through swollen eyes. “Head for Córdoba. Use your translation app…the one with the…lip icon.”

  Lip icon? Like I had time to fiddle with a lip icon and where the hell was Córdoba? We were way up in the mountains with nothing like a main highway in sight. We were on a road so narrow a car could barely turn around. Ilda was tapping something into the dashboard’s GPS and up popped a map. She pointed to the screen. “Córdoba.” Yes, Córdoba, which looked many miles away.

  “Evan, can you translate for me?” Silence. I shot a look at Ilda, who slumped in her seat to pantomime that he’d passed out. Right.

  “¡Mira!” Ilda cried, straightening.

  In the rearview mirror I could see another car gaining fast. “The other two guards.” With Evan out cold and Ilda and I officially incommunicado, I had no choice but to keep on driving—only faster.

  Ilda was pointing at a signpost, I was putting my foot down on the gas pedal, and all of a sudden a police car was zooming toward us from the opposite direction with another car not far behind that.

  “¡Gendarméria!” Ilda cried.

  Right, but were they on our side or the Divinios’?

  When the car behind us slammed on its brakes and began to reverse, we had our answer. I slowed down and the police car drove right past us, roof lights pulsing, sirens blaring.

  A long black limousine pulled to a stop before us. A tall dark-haired man in a suit got out and sauntered up to our car as I lowered the window.

  “Buenas noches, señorita. ¿Eres Isabella?”

  19

  “Isabella?” Evan mumbled as we sped along.

  “My password. Are you badly hurt besides what I can see? A concussion, internal bleeding, maybe?” I longed to open his shirt to see if he had open wounds but thought it best to wait.

  Instead, I began dabbing his cuts from a bottle of water found in the well-appointed back seat, using a cloth one of the suited men had passed back along with a first aid kit. Ilda had the kit open on her lap and was handing me bandages, antiseptic, gauze…

  “I’ll be fine,” he mumbled through those swollen lips, his head resting against the seat. “They didn’t want to knock me out in case…I couldn’t talk but I refused to talk…regardless. How did you…escape?” he asked, fixing one half-swollen eye at me.

  “I riled Don Santos up so badly by daring to challenge his beliefs—me, a mere substandard human of the weaker sex—that he stomped off in fury. Probably thought that a woman couldn’t possibly slip from his grip, but two women bested him in the end. Ilda here saved my life and probably yours, too.”

  He turned to Ilda and flashed her one of his beautiful, currently distorted smiles. She beamed back. “Gracias,” he said, adding something in Spanish before turning back to me. “First time I’ve seen that laser bolt…in action.” He sounded like a boy with a new toy. “Works…perfectly.”

  “It’s deadly effective, if that’s what you mean. I blinded those men, Evan.”

  “You had no choice. I would have killed them given the chance.”

  Noel had said something similar to me once: never let your enemies live to come after you a second time. Kill them on the spot. But I could never do it. Besides, those two men would live a long dark life as a result of my actions and that was bad enough.

  “Probably…drained the battery,” Evan mumbled. “Haven’t found a…solution…yet.”

  I sat up to check my phone for messages, distressed to find that the laser feature had, in fact, completely drained the battery. A charger was handily available on the back of the front seat so I dug out my cord and began recharging. After that, I drifted off to sleep in the midst of worrying about Peaches, Rupert, and the Carvalhos. Oh, and us…

  We dozed off and on as the limousine zoomed through the evening. Ilda and I sat on either side of Evan, his head occasionally lolling on either my shoulder or hers. Our rescuers up front spoke little English and either could not or would not tell us who they worked for, but we did learn their names—Salvi and Luis, first names only. Both were in their thirties, both tall and well-built, as if they had been hired based on their physique. Ilda and Luis kept exchanging shy glances in the rearview mirror.

  I awoke with Ilda saying, “Córdoba!”

  Sitting up, I watched as the car drove over a long lovely bridge, the lights of a cathedral, towers, and arched-windowed buildings reflected on a calm water’s surface—a river.

  We gazed in hushed wonder as the car navigated wide boulevards and narrow streets, winding its way under up-lit palms toward a sprawling crenellated walled structure. I recognized medieval when I saw it and this fortress with its mellowed gold stone towers had to be at least that old.

  “Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos!” Ilda exclaimed.

  Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos? What did I know about the Palace of the Christian Kings other than to translate the rudimentary Spanish? Nothing. My one trip to Madrid when on a youthful backpacking trip would not help me here.

  Evan, stirring beside me, winced and sat up. “The Castle of the Christian Kings? It was actually built from Roman remains on the bones of a Visigothic fortress…before succumbing to the Umayyad Caliphate, so the origins are hardly Christian…though Alfonso of Castille began rebuilding it in the 1200s.” Various pronunciations were somewhat butchered due his lip swellings but I caught his meaning.

  “Glad you’re feeling better,” I whispered, “and obviously haven’t suffered brain damage.”

  He mustered a kind of lopsided smile as the car stopped by a guard post and the driver spoke into an intercom. “But why are we here? It’s now a national historic site.”

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  Ilda spoke beside him.

  “She says it has been closed periodically…since the pandemic, and wonders what we are doing here…too,” he translated.

  Our drivers were the silent types, so all we could do was wait as the car slid in through the gates and wove between imposing stone walls and under arches, hoping that somebody would eventually provide an explanation. When we stopped in a small parking area, a man and a woman were awaiting us, both dressed in dark clothing.

  Luis, our driver, opened the door and helped us out while Salvi tried to assist Evan. I’m assuming Evan’s Spanish response said that he could walk unassisted since the man stepped aside.

  The woman, her hair pulled back into a sleek chignon, wearing a white blouse, a crisp navy jacket with a matching pencil skit, and vertiginous high heels, stepped forward. The only ornamentation she wore were a pair of gold hoop earrings and a large marquee-cut diamond on her wedding finger that flashed the light. Her white mask completed the severe ensemble. “Señorita McCabe, Señor Barrows, and…” She hesitated before Ilda.

  “Señorita IIda Garcia,” Ilda said, adding something in Spanish.

  “Welcome to Córdoba and the Alcázar, Señorita McCabe, Señorita Garcia, and Señor Barrows. Consider yourselves our special guests. You are most welcome. I am Dr. Sofia Morales and this is my assistant, Señor Barco. We will be your contacts while you are in Spain. Please follow me.”

  Señor Barco nodde
d and smiled behind his mask, pointing to the face covering. “If you please.”

  We hastily applied ours while I gave Ilda one of the surgical variety I’d packed. Señor Barco offered to relieve us of our bags and reluctantly we agreed. We strode down a long white arched corridor that seemed to open up onto a garden on one side, up several flights of stairs, on through connecting hallways, and along a grand hallway paneled with red striped silk with a high ornate gilded ceiling. I couldn’t stop trying to absorb every detail from the tapestries to the paintings lining the space.

  “Didn’t Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon live here?” I asked as I dredged my information databanks.

  Dr. Morales turned, and then stopped while the men proceeded ahead with our bags. “You are correct. The alcázar, which means ‘palace’ in Arabic, was home to Queen Isabella and her husband, King Ferdinand, for eight years and also became the headquarters for the Spanish Inquisition for nearly three centuries. It is indeed a fortress with a long, often bloody history.”

  “And why are we here?” Evan asked, determined to stand on his own two feet as if he hadn’t been battered for part of the afternoon.

  Dr. Morales studied him. “Señor, may we call a doctor to tend your wounds?”

  “I will be fine after a good rest but thank you for the concern.”

  She nodded. “It is perhaps best that I take you to your quarters to rest before we talk further. Forgive us for being unable to put you up properly, but for as long as you are with us in Spain, you will be our guests inside one of our historic sites.”

  “We’re going to sleep in palaces and castles?” I asked.

  I thought I caught a slight smile behind the mask. I estimated her to be in her early fifties but she seemed almost ageless. “Perhaps this sounds more romantic than it is,” she said. “They are not designed as hotels but as museums. The facilities you might come to expect are unavailable.” She spread her hands, sending her mega-diamond sparkling. “However, these buildings are very secure with guards and the necessary technology to ensure your safety. This makes them our best option to protect you. I will take you to your rooms first and then you must eat.”