A Murder Most Literate

by Jefferson Bonar

  Instead, Armada found himself at his sherry barrel, removing the tarp that hid it from the porter and pouring himself a goblet-full. He resisted the urge to go over to the boy, preferring to remain on his feet on the opposite side of the room. He wasn’t sure what he was afraid of, but it was definitely fear that held him there.

  “Now, Lucas. What is this nonsense you’re accusing me of?”

  It hurt Lucas to breathe, but his anger made his heart race. He wheezed, trying to save up enough breath to speak. Armada could see now that his left leg and ribs had taken the majority of the damage. The leg was possibly broken, just above the knee, and the doctor had wrapped his midsection in a large bandage, in the middle of which a red stain was already forming. The left side of his face was swollen so bad his left eye had almost entirely disappeared from view.

  “You ruined it, sir. You ruined it!” Lucas shot back, wincing in pain from his outburst. Armada took a step toward him to help, but Lucas ignored this and sat up in bed. He wheezed in between his phrases, unable to get an entire sentence out in one breath.

  “You told Emiliano…everything you knew…about the election…Julian knew it was me that told you…it was easy to figure out…that’s why they did this…it’s all ruined….”

  Armada could see that despite the injury to his eye, Lucas was still able to tear up, and now droplets were dripping down his cheek.

  “They liked me, sir…they respected me…and now…it’s all ruined….”

  Armada could see it wasn’t the physical injuries that were hurting Lucas. Those would heal in time. It was something much deeper that had been wounded, and Armada felt his anger melt away. This poor boy, he thought. He had no sense of himself yet. He was not equipped to resist Julian’s seductive charms. What had he done to the boy? Why had he not thought any of this might happen?

  “I can only apologise, Lucas. I never should have sent you in there to begin with. You were too young.”

  Lucas glared at Armada, the tears still flowing from his one good eye. “I am not too young, sir. You always say that, but I’m not.”

  The boy was so full of youthful passion now, and there was no predicting how it would come out.

  “You are on a murder case, Lucas. Do we need to return to the scene of the crime to remind you? This was all done in order to find a killer. Nothing more. I will feel guilty until the end of my days for what happened to you. And I do feel responsible, even though it may be years before you believe me. But what Julian may think of you is immaterial to the case. I don’t need you to spy on him any longer.”

  It sounded cold. Armada knew that. But as was happening more and more often these days, Lucas was challenging the boundaries of their relationship, forcing Armada to be stern and more disciplined with him. Armada hated the tone of voice he’d been forced to adopt. He’d hated hearing it when he, himself, was a boy. But what else could he do? The days of Lucas dutifully following all of his instructions were over. He could hardly just let the boy do what he wished.

  Lucas stared at the toes of his left leg, which were all that had been left exposed by the bandage the doctor had wrapped.

  There was so much that needed to be said, but Armada couldn’t find the words. Half-phrases floated through his mind, trying to find meaning to assign to the feelings, but the words were never adequate. None of them fit, and now the silence was getting uncomfortable.

  The case. There was nothing else to do but return to the case.

  “It’s clear now that Julian de Benaudalla worked for Gregorio Cordoba, making serpentine at night. Something happened between them that soured their relationship, and whatever it was had something to do with Aurelio Martinez. Gregorio Cordoba attempted to contact Aurelio Martinez’s benefactor to inform her of what he’d found, and he was killed before he could tell her. Which suggests to me that both Julian de Benaudalla and Aurelio Martinez were there for this incident, and it is very likely one of them is our killer. Tonight, I will arrest Aurelio Martinez and interrogate him. Tomorrow, I will do the same with Julian de Benaudalla. Hopefully a bit of time in a prison cell will loosen their tongues enough to get the truth.”

  Lucas said nothing.

  “There is a good chance this case will be over by tomorrow morning, Lucas. Get some rest tonight. Because as soon as we have our killer, we will return to Granada for you to recuperate and perhaps discuss the terms of your employment.”

  Armada turned to go. He was starving and happy about having found a reason to exit the room. He looked forward to a nice meal and some ale down at the tavern, and perhaps a little time to sort out everything in his head. He wasn’t sure what he’d meant by discussing the terms of Lucas’s employment. He’d just wanted the boy to know that it was still his choice about whether to employ him or not. He didn’t want the boy thinking he owed him a job and that it could be taken for granted.

  “Did you ever think about it?”

  Armada stopped at the door, surprised at Lucas’s suddenly vulnerable tone.

  “What?”

  “School. For me. Was it something you ever thought about?”

  Armada realised he had no answer. That wasn’t true. He did have an answer. He just didn’t like it.

  “That…would have been difficult. You see how much I travel.”

  Lucas nodded in acknowledgement and went back to staring at his toes. He didn’t seem angry any more. Just disappointed.

  “Perhaps I should have given it more thought. But I needed a page, and you needed a home. I could hardly leave you back in that village, not with your parents’ killer still….”

  Armada couldn’t finish the sentence. The killer of Lucas’s parents was still on the loose because he had failed to find him. It was his fault Lucas’s life had ended up like this. But that was hardly new. Was that all Lucas was trying to say about this?

  “I know, sir.”

  Armada found himself suddenly on the defensive. Lucas would have been fine had he just walked out the door, right now. It was only a step or two away. But he couldn’t. Not yet. He couldn’t leave things like this.

  “I don’t understand, Lucas. You’ve never mentioned wanting to attend school before.”

  Lucas shrugged, staring at his toes.

  “I’m not sure how it would work, Lucas. School requires you to be in one place. And I need you here….”

  “But you never even thought about it, sir. How am I supposed to know all the things I’m supposed to know? Like Latin, and counting, and law. All you ever teach me is how to find killers, and how to sneak barrels of sherry around. But what can I do with that when I grow up? I wouldn’t be smart enough for university. And I was never a soldier, so I can’t join the Brotherhood, even if I wanted to. So, what am I supposed to do then?”

  A great weight of failure fell on to Armada’s shoulders. The boy had given his life far more thought than Armada had. And he had no answers. He had seen his hiring of Lucas as a page as an act of charity, a way to allow him to escape the dangers of his home village. But he had escaped, he was safe. Armada hadn’t thought about it much after that. He’d always been focused on the next case, the next killer, of which there was always a next one.

  It was an issue that Armada had contemplated much over the past few years. What was his role here? He wasn’t the boy’s father. And he wasn’t really a guardian. He was an employer, technically. Which meant the boy was free to leave his employ whenever he wished. Lucas was hardly a slave.

  But he was still dependent on Armada. Did that mean Armada was obliged to prepare the boy for manhood? Murder had always seemed to usurp that responsibility. He didn’t have the time to educate the boy. He couldn’t be distracted by taking time out of an investigation to school the boy on his Latin. A case required absolute concentration. It’s why he’d hired Lucas, to take care of the duties that distracted him from the case. It was the whole point.

  But Armada felt he was reaching for a justification there. His instincts told him he might be getting this wrong.
The boy was indeed his responsibility, like it or not.

  Yet Armada hadn’t wanted a son, only a page. If he’d known what kind of responsibility he was taking on back then, would he still have done it? Perhaps not. He hadn’t given it that much thought back then. He’d just done it. It had felt right to him. It must have, for he’d never needed a page before then. There had been some other instinct at work there when he’d taken Lucas on, an instinct he had yet to understand.

  The boy wanted to know what he was to become. What was it for him, Lucas, to be a man? He had no father or other family to ask, only Armada. So he asked, as any boy would.

  “I’m not sure I can help you with that, Lucas. It’s something you’ll have to figure out on your own.”

  Lucas only stared ever harder at his toes, leaving Armada to feel he’d let the boy down. He wasn’t sure what else he could have said. Perhaps something more inspiring? Was that what he was supposed to do now? Would Lucas even be receptive to that? It felt hollow. He would have felt like a performer on stage, pretending to be optimistic about Lucas’s future when in reality, he wasn’t. He couldn’t see a path to wealth and success for Lucas any better than Lucas could. So, the only response was honesty, as painful as it was.

  Sensing Lucas wished to be alone, Armada promised to bring food back, and he left the room.

  In the tavern, far from being alone with his thoughts to contemplate the case, Armada found himself distracted. Lucas’s questions had cut into his own gut like a knife. How had he failed Lucas so badly?

  The tavern was busy and filled with noise. Drunks shouted and laughed with each other over rickety tables while barmaids constantly bumped into the back of Armada’s chair, holding trays of ale and food and spilling bits of them everywhere. Arguments began and were dragged outside, glasses were smashed, and the boisterous atmosphere only got louder as the night wore on.

  Even though he sat in the middle of such chaos, Armada felt it was deathly quiet.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lucas wasn’t about to just lie there for the rest of the night. He was angry, and why shouldn’t he be? The old man had just shut the door on his future and locked it. He was not even fifteen years old and had just been told he had few prospects to ever be anything but a slave or a vagrant in life.

  Four years. That’s how long he’d been travelling with the old man. Four years of washing his clothes and gathering his meals and feeding his mule and hoisting his sherry barrels up and down stairs, of loading carts and unloading carts and sorting out provisions and packing and unpacking and all the rest of it. Four years of listening to him ramble on about theatre plays he’d been to and actors he didn’t care about and quoting things that never made sense. Four years of being told his way of looking at things was nonsense, how the physical clues in a case were “useless bits and pieces,” even though they had helped many times before. Four years of being told he was almost always wrong, and always needed help, and could never do anything right for himself without Armada’s help.

  The only time in four years he hadn’t been made to feel like a helpless young boy who was too dumb to do anything for himself was with Julian and the San Bartolomé boys. They had come close to treating him like an equal. It had been fleeting, but he’d felt it.

  So, it was no surprise that once Armada had heard of this, he had to immediately ruin it all. He couldn’t have his obedient little puppy dog go off by himself. So, he had to stamp it out, make sure Lucas had no hope of ever feeling like that again.

  But Lucas was smarter than that, possibly smarter than the old man. There was a way to repair all this, to put things back the way they were. But to do it, he had to act fast. He had to get out of the room before Armada came back.

  In his condition, however, moving fast meant pain. Lucas sat the rest of the way up in bed, taking long breaths to keep the pain in his ribs at bay. Although his left leg was still throbbing, it was his midsection that felt as though knives were piercing his insides whenever he moved.

  Lucas planted his injured leg on the floor, then put his right leg in front and attempted to hoist himself awkwardly to his feet. His midsection throbbed again and Lucas cried out, but he stayed on his feet, panting all the way.

  Grabbing a broken chair leg from the corner to use as a cane, Lucas shuffled his way to the door, trying not to cry out in pain whenever his midsection twisted slightly. He’d broken a rib or two, and now the key was learning to push himself forward without using the left side of his body in any way. Not an easy feat.

  Lucas eventually shuffled his way out into the corridor, and seeing he was alone, he planted his free hand against the wall and slowly made his way down to the front door of the inn and out into the street.

  Every step was painful, and he was becoming aware that his left ankle had swollen, making it difficult to move his foot. But he didn’t have far to go, and the cool air of the night felt good on his face and in his lungs. He focused his mind on the sensation of it entering his mouth and his throat, the only parts of his body that didn’t hurt, and pushed on.

  Lucas made his way toward the university, hoping he wouldn’t run into any of Salamanca’s law officers who wandered these streets at night to keep the peace. They were mostly there to keep the vagrants and panhandlers at bay, to push them into the dark corners so they couldn’t be seen, or kick them out of the city entirely. If Lucas were to come across one of those, he would have a very hard time explaining himself in his present condition. Nor did he have much hope of running away.

  But fortune smiled upon him and Lucas made it to the front door of the building. He took out the key he’d been given and unlocked the door as quietly as he knew how. Creaking the door open, he glanced over his shoulder to see that no one passing on the street was giving him any attention. But the darkness of the night had already descended, and no one was about. A few candles burned in the windows of the buildings opposite, but there was no way the people in those rooms could see him. The moon was becoming but a crescent, giving Lucas the cover of almost total darkness.

  Inside, the building was dark except for a candle that was burning in the room on the back on the upper floor. Just a tiny bit of candlelight spilled into the foyer, giving Lucas enough light to see by. He shuffled his way quietly down the hall and at one point nearly fell over as his left foot tripped over the lip of a broken tile, forcing him to fall against the wall and bite his tongue to keep from screaming.

  Lucas recovered and slinked his way down the hall to the familiar door. There was talking coming from inside, and a candle was burning.

  Fear leaped into Lucas’s throat. This could all go so badly. But he had to risk it. It was too important.

  Lucas opened the door to find Julian sprawled out on his settee and smoking tobacco. The entire room was enveloped in a haze that gave off a bitter, sour smell. A window had been left open, but without a breeze tonight, it did little to dispel the smoke.

  “Do you have a death wish?” Julian said. He shot to his feet and raced over to Lucas, who readied himself for another beating.

  Instead, Julian slammed the door shut. “Keep the door shut! I don’t want to have to deal with Ambrosio tonight.”

  “Sorry…,” Lucas squeaked.

  Julian was now standing far too close, glaring at him with a threatening look. One punch on the left side of his ribs, Lucas knew, and he would probably pass out from the pain.

  “What are you doing here? You want another beating?”

  “No…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…but…I wanted to warn you.”

  “Warn me? About what?”

  “That constable, Armada. He’s going to arrest you in the morning,” Lucas said.

  “Arrest me?”

  “Yes. He’s already planning on arresting Aurelio tonight. He thinks one of you killed Gregorio Cordoba.”

  Julian backed away from Lucas, lost in his thoughts. Lucas could smell the brandy on him. He’d probably been drinking all day, celebrating with the boys at their hav
ing taken care of a mole in their group.

  But Julian was sober now, his tobacco pipe left smouldering on the table behind him, forgotten. His eyes darted about the room, thinking.

  “I felt like you should know,” Lucas said. Julian had gone quiet and Lucas needed to know if he was going to beat him again or not. If so, he wanted to be ready.

  Julian turned and gazed out the window at the dark city just beyond for a long time, taking long slow breaths.

  “Thank you…Lucas…,” Julian finally said. “I’m glad you told me. I don’t know of any other student here who would have done that.”

  Lucas relaxed a bit. There wouldn’t be another beating. At least, not tonight.

  Julian turned around and Lucas saw his warm expression return. “I need to leave.”

  Julian went to his wardrobe, grabbed a canvas bag from the back of it, and began stuffing some clothes inside.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I have places I can hide. I’ll have to leave tonight, though. I hope Federigo is still up.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  Julian stopped packing, looking back at Lucas, confused. “Why do you want to come?”

  “I…I have nowhere else to go tonight.”

  “I thought you lived here?”

  “Tonight…I…don’t live anywhere.”

  Saying it out loud sent a shiver down Lucas’s spine. At this point, there was no going back in his betrayal of Armada. There was a good chance he would never have a home with the old man again. And he hadn’t prepared. He hadn’t even thought to pack, but he could hardly risk returning to the accommodation now. The only clothes he had were those soiled and bloodied ones he was wearing at the moment.

  “All right. We’ll both go,” Julian said as he went back to packing.

  “What about Aurelio? Shouldn’t we warn him, too?”

  “No. We don’t have time to worry about him. Come on, we need to get downstairs without Ambrosio seeing us. Federigo is down there and can get the cart ready in minutes. He’ll get us out of here.”