A Murder Most Literate

by Jefferson Bonar

  There, rooms were left uncleaned and repairs to windows and ceilings were rare. Some rooms had evidence of water leaks on the walls where streaks of green mould grew, giving the room a dampness that mixed with the sweaty odour of unwashed sheets and unwashed boys to make a toxic cocktail that took some getting used to.

  This smell, however, was held at bay by the jasmine trees, whose long, vine-like branches had been trained to grow over the grand oak front door. In the summer, when the parents were most likely to visit, the perfume that dropped from its tiny white flowers easily hid the worst of the odours that lay beyond.

  “Venga, boy. Go on!”

  Ambrosio slapped Lucas hard on the back, then walked back to the room he kept for himself that overlooked the rear garden and was the quietest in the house.

  Lucas knew Ambrosio would squeeze every bit of labour he could from him, especially given he wasn’t paying much for Lucas’ efforts. Lucas wondered why Armada hadn’t asked for a better wage when they were negotiating. Lucas could already tell Ambrosio was cheap, but a few more maravedís might have almost made this worth it. Almost.

  Lucas was starting to hate the whole situation. Was he not here for another purpose? Why not just tell Ambrosio what they were doing? That way, he could give Lucas some breathing space to do what was really important.

  But no. Instead, the moment Armada had walked out the door that morning, Ambrosio came at him with a long list of menial tasks that began with cleaning this latrine, followed by a long list of threats he would carry out if he didn’t do everything that was asked of him without question, without complaint, or if he went anywhere, or spoke, or behaved in any way other than a slave. Why was it these sorts of jobs always seemed to end up with Lucas working like this?

  As Lucas set about using the last dregs of the brush to scrub off whatever horrors he found on the crumbling stone walls of the tiny latrine, he heard shouting in the foyer, followed by the hoarse rasping of Ambrosio reminding someone of the rules concerning noise in the foyer.

  Ambrosio was ignored, and there was a rumbling of footsteps shooting down the corridor and past the latrine where Lucas pretended to work. As they passed, Lucas saw it was a group of boys mostly in their early twenties. They were dressed in elegant, expensive clothes but had given little thought to putting them on properly. Buttons had been left undone, hats were left crooked on top of heads full of hair that had been allowed to grow too long. Shirt sleeves had stains, collars were yellow with old sweat and in desperate need of laundering, while beautiful Italian leather shoes with buckles left undone were dragged across the floor by lazy, drunken legs.

  Two of the boys had their arms around each other and were laughing, insulting two of the others about something that had happened at the tavern they had just come from. The boys hadn’t even noticed Lucas standing there as they went down the hall toward the back, where a common room had been set up for studying.

  One glance at the state of the common room suggested very little studying ever happened there. Nor cleaning, for that matter. There were bottles and glasses left everywhere, as well as old clothes that had been shed and never picked up, and bits of paper and other debris were strewn about as if a party had occurred there the night before.

  The boys all plopped themselves onto the two velvet couches in the corner which smelled vaguely of sick, and one of them began to search through the empty bottles overflowing on an end table, shaking each one before finding one that still had a bit of brandy in it.

  The boys passed the brandy around they continued to laugh at the humiliation one of them suffered when confronted with a boy from one of the other three rival colegios earlier that afternoon. It wasn’t hard for Lucas to picture these boys being violent, as they were rough enough just with each other.

  There were six of them in the common room now, with eleven others living in the other rooms, and Lucas marvelled at them. It made little sense to him how they could appear to be so mean to each other on the outside and yet remain so close.

  For much of the rest of the afternoon and evening, the boys sat in the common room, drinking and smoking tobacco out of long pipes and talking about the upcoming election. Lucas couldn’t hear everything they said, but they were greatly concerned about it. Especially the oldest, who was the boy named Julian. He said Gregorio Cordoba’s murder had opened up a new opportunity. There was less competition now for their man, and he wanted to make the most of it.

  Eventually the boys left, leaving Lucas with little recourse but to go about his other duties. He had to make Ambrosio happy to some degree, so he spent a couple of hours at the lavadero cleaning the sheets he’d pulled off the boys’ beds then hung them out to dry.

  Soon, he was quite hungry, especially as he could smell the food Ambrosio was cooking in the kitchen downstairs. Lucas had been very specifically told he was not to eat with the boys, or be seen eating anywhere around them. His job was to serve the food and clean the dishes and the kitchen. Once this was all done, and once the boys had all gone to bed, only then could Lucas have a bit of supper for himself. He was to remain entirely invisible.

  But Lucas was going to be far too hungry by then, and the house was quickly filling up with the smell of cooked pheasant, which wasn’t helping. He needed something to get him by for the next few hours.

  Lucas remembered seeing a bit of bread the boys had forgotten about in the larder in the common room. Perhaps if it was still good, a few bites would get him through. Then tomorrow, he would make better preparations for eating. He would get up early, get to the bakery, and stash some fresh bread in his room for just such an eventuality.

  Lucas snuck back upstairs and into the common room. It was getting hard to see through the two windows that overlooked the street. They faced west, and the room was lit by a strange, sideways orange light coming from a sun that was minutes away from setting. But it was just enough for Lucas to fumble around in the far corner and find the larder. He opened it and found the bread, quickly stuffing a bit of it in his mouth.

  “What are you doing?” came a voice from behind him.

  Lucas turned around to find the boys had been passing by in the corridor. How had he not heard them return home?

  “Who are you?” the oldest asked.

  “Sorry, sir. Sorry.”

  “Sir?” the boy asked. It was the one everyone else had called Julian. The one Lucas was supposed to make contact with. But he hadn’t wanted it to go like this. “What does that mean? You’re the help? You’re certainly dressed like it. You smell like our latrine.”

  Julian grabbed at Lucas’s clothes and snickered while the other boys entered the common room, lit a couple of candles, and settled in for the evening.

  “I’m…I’m here to clean. Ambrosio hired me—”

  “Ambrosio? Our Ambrosio?” Julian said with a sarcastic tone. The other boys chuckled. “That tight-fisted bastardo actually spent money to clean this place? You have to be joking!”

  “No, sir.”

  It felt strange calling Julian “sir.” Lucas was sure he shouldn’t be. The boy wasn’t his employer, nor did he seem old enough for such an honour. But Lucas was nervous. He wasn’t sure what else to call him.

  “What’s your name?” Julian asked.

  “Lucas.” Lucas nearly said “Sir” again, but squelched it.

  “Where are you from?”

  Lucas had been prepared for that. Armada had warned him these boys were mostly vizcaínos from Basque, with a few from Navarre. With the possible exception of Cantabria, all other kingdoms were considered “foreign” and thus, hostile. Lucas was not to reveal his Andalucian roots.

  “N-Navarre,” Lucas said.

  “No, you’re not!” said the other older boy in the corner, who stood up from the couch and came over. This was Marco, from what Lucas had overheard. “Not with that accent. You sound like a campesino.”

  Marco turned to the others. “He sounds Andalucian to me.”

  “Is that it? Are you Andal
ucian? Are you one of those idiot farmers from the country? The ones who lay with their goats and breed like rats, eh?” Julian asked.

  Lucas suddenly felt tears spring to his eyes, but he held his composure. He didn’t want to look weak in front of them, but it was hard. He wasn’t used to such confrontation.

  “No…no…I’m from Navarre,” Lucas said, trying to harden his r’s to make it sound more Navarro. But it didn’t sound confident. Accents were not something Lucas did well.

  “All right. If you’re from Navarre, then you’ll agree to take the test,” Marco said.

  “Test?”

  “That’s right. You see, all us Navarros have an ability to take a punch. We can all do it. It’s in our blood. Watch.”

  Marco pointed to the youngest in the group, a sandy-haired boy in his late teens whose name Lucas didn’t know.

  “Punch me,” Marco told the boy. The boy smiled, got up, and punched Marco in the stomach. It didn’t look like a particularly hard punch, and Lucas wondered how much Marco really thought Lucas would believe it. Or if it was just all taunt. It was hard to tell. If Marco and Julian talked with sarcasm all the time, it was impossible to tell when they were joking.

  “See? Nothing. It’s true,” Marco said. “Now, it’s your turn.”

  Lucas, seeing no way out of the situation, held his hands out.

  Marco balled his fist and stepped back, winding it up while the other boys egged him on.

  Before Lucas knew it, Marco plunged his fist into his midsection with such brute force that Lucas fell on the floor. His stomach exploded with pain and he couldn’t help but be a little sick. His insides felt as though a horse had trampled on them, and for a moment, he found it hard to breathe.

  “He’s no Navarro!” he heard Marco say before collapsing into laughter with the rest of them.

  Lucas lay on the floor, trying to get his breath back while the boys all plopped down on the couch and began drinking again, occasionally yelling taunts and insults at him.

  Feeling the eyes of all the laughing boys on him, Lucas stood up with as much dignity as he could, but found it impossible to stand up straight. He held his aching gut and shuffled out of the common room.

  “Go home, Andaluce!” one of the boys cried, followed by another round of laughter.

  Lucas went back to the tiny room he’d been given to sleep in, which was just large enough for a small bed and a table with a candle on it. There was no window. When Lucas closed the door, he was in complete blackness.

  But he didn’t care. He flopped on to the bed, holding his stomach, and wept into his pillow.

  He had never been so humiliated in his life. Why did Armada ever think he could do this? The boys had seen right through him and laughed at him for it. He would never be accepted by them now, there was just no way. They would just laugh at him and see him as a joke. They would probably hit him again.

  Lucas never wanted to see their stupid, laughing faces again. He couldn’t take it, he hated them too much. Tomorrow, he decided, he would pack his things and leave, and go anywhere other than this pupilaje and those cruel boys. He didn’t care where, he just wanted to leave this place. And if he had to leave Armada too, then so be it.

  Anything was better than this.

  Chapter Eight

  Armada left the city through the Puerta del Rio and made the short walk down to the shore of the Tormes River, which ran just outside the southern wall of the city. It was quite large by Spanish standards, but it was calm and lazed past Armada at a deliberate pace, its glittering, pristine surface undisturbed by the destructive wakes of boats and ferries. This was not a river used for such work, and so it was left to the wildness of nature. A dazzling array of birds of every size and colour had taken over, flying overhead or squawking to themselves in the many trees that hung over the banks, or hopping about on the sandy banks looking for grubs. It was springtime and many would be mating soon, so there was much work to be done.

  As for man, the river was only an obstacle. Those that conducted business here arrived by land, streaming in through one of the thirteen gates built into the defensive walls. For those coming from the south, there was only one way across the river—the old Roman Bridge was where Armada allowed himself a moment to linger about, a rare self-indulgence. He took his time strolling across the bridge that would take him to Santiago, the neighbourhood that hugged the shore on the opposite side. He wanted to soak it in, to feel the history.

  The bridge was built at a time when the Romans ruled this place. Despite its age, it was still the only bridge to span this river, a testament to Roman engineering. A millennia later, it was still far superior to that of Armada’s countrymen.

  This was no more apparent than at the far end of the bridge, where a section of the original Roman construction had been washed away, decades ago, in the Flood of San Policarpo. To keep the bridge open, the city authorities fixed the missing section with wood, gnarled beams that were already twisting so badly they were pulling up the iron nails that fasted them. They cracked and groaned under the slightest weight, making it clear this section had been hastily assembled and done as cheaply as possible. In Armada’s view, those beams ruined the beauty of what the Romans had taken so much time to build correctly.

  Armada crossed this wooden section without looking at it too closely and found himself in the parish of Santiago. It was clear this part of Salamanca, so far outside the protective walls of the city, was one few ever chose to live. The roads here were badly rutted and strewn with boulders, like the bottom of a riverbed, suggesting how often this place flooded.

  Along the river were several crumbling mills and a tannery, and the smell of a nearby slaughterhouse seemed inescapable. The houses here were made with whatever materials could be scavenged and leaned heavily on each other at odd angles, their windows and doors covered with little more than tattered fabrics that fluttered in the breeze. No one here walked in fine clothing or leather shoes, there were no gold-inlaid coaches, no sense of business being transacted in every corner of the city. In fact, from his vantage point now, the centre of Salamanca, nestled snugly within its walls on the other side of the river, seemed so far away as to be a dream. How many people who lived in this parish had never stepped foot on the Roman Bridge in their lives?

  More importantly, why did this boy, Aurelio, live here? He was attending the university. He was a member of the colegio of San Bartolomé. Why was he not living in the pupilaje with the other boys? If his parents were so wealthy and entitled to afford San Bartolomé, what were they doing in a place like Santiago?

  Armada followed the directions the registrant at the university had given him. He turned right and followed the road that ran parallel to the river, past the mills and an ageing goat paddock, until he came to what had once been a grand villa on the riverbank. It was a large house, surrounded by a low stone wall decorated with engraved balustrades that had once encircled a courtyard with a fountain in the middle.

  Everything else about the house had been ruined. The stone walls were crumbling, there was little left of the fountain, and the land inside had long ago been left to the weeds. The house itself had been divided up between multiple families, and it had clearly once been heavily damaged and shored up. Patches of wall had been rebuilt with different colours of stone and bricks that didn’t fit, and the roof was mostly a collection of scrap wood that had been piled on top, thick enough to keep the worst of the rain out.

  Armada found something scrawled into the wall at the entrance. It was badly weathered, but still barely readable.

  Mancebía.

  Armada smiled. He’d found it.

  Go down that lane until you find the old whorehouse. That’s what the registrant had told him with a grunt of disapproval.

  It also explained what this once-fine villa was doing in this part of the city. It was built during a time when the King’s grandfather had seen fit to try and regulate the business of whoring by creating a series of houses of Mancebía in
every kingdom in Spain with strict rules about what the women could do with their clients and when, rules that had been increasingly ignored over time until all the houses faded into obsolescence. Or, like this one, had been badly damaged in a flood and sold off.

  Armada walked up to the door on the right, where only a tattered, old wool cloth hung in the door to keep the mosquitos out.

  “Señor Martinez?” Armada called into the fabric. “Aurelio Martinez?”

  The cloth was suddenly thrust aside to reveal a woman in a modest, hand-stitched dress with an apron over it, who was a bit distracted by the crying of the baby erupting from inside.

  She seemed startled at the sight of Armada’s green sleeves, which made her ignore the pleas from the child inside for a moment.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Are you the mother of Aurelio Martinez?”

  The baby cried again, demanding its mother’s immediate attention. But the woman was unmoved by it, focusing on Armada’s expression instead.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I am Domingo Armada, constable of the Holy Brotherhood. I was hoping to speak with him. Is he home?”

  The woman scowled, as if about to tell Armada bad news. But before she could speak, there was the sound of a young man’s voice coming from inside.

  “Mother! The baby is crying again! I can’t concentrate!”

  Another moment went by as the woman considered her options, then she moved out of the way to let Armada into the house.

  Inside, the house was cramped and Armada struggled to get out of the woman’s way. There was a long wood table against the back wall, where a boy of about eighteen sat with a large Latin book, studying the letters inside and writing them on a bit of paper next to him. He was quite small and thin, with rough-cropped hair and spectacles his family couldn’t have afforded.