The Burning

by Will Peterson

  Gabriel saw the look from Rachel. “Like I said, lots of names…” He introduced the girls as Inez and Carmen, and, within moments, the group had expanded to include them. The girls sat and talked happily, as though they had known everyone for a long time; the Spanish they spoke instantly understandable to everyone round the table.

  “I thought there were two others,” Carmen said.

  “Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard will join us later,” Gabriel said. “They’ll be sorry they missed you.”

  Rachel grinned. “I bet they will.”

  The Spanish girls seemed especially struck by Morag and Duncan, fussing over the youngest twins and sharing their ice creams once the waitress had delivered them. Morag clearly enjoyed the attention and chatted happily to the newcomers, while Duncan was forced to hide behind a menu, struggling to conceal his blushes each time he was spoken to, or had his hair ruffled.

  Once the first round of ice creams had been eaten, they ordered more, and for a while, with their laughter rising above the music, it was almost possible to relax and forget the journey that had brought them here; the dangers that they still faced.

  Rachel watched Gabriel, though, and she could see that he never forgot. Not for one second. She saw his eyes drift lazily around, even as he chatted and laughed, and she knew that he was keenly drinking in every detail, sizing up every stranger, each murmured conversation or casual glance in their direction.

  He leant across the table and spoke to the Spanish girls, “Do you two mind looking after Morag and Duncan for a few hours tonight? You can meet us later.”

  “Not at all,” Carmen said. “We will show them the sights.”

  “You must keep them close.”

  “I understand.” Carmen ruffled Duncan’s hair again. “We will have fun.” Duncan giggled and Morag beamed, excited.

  “Did you talk to your uncle? Will the boat be ready?”

  Inez nodded. “Everything will be ready,” she said. “But he thinks the middle of the night is a funny time to be going fishing.”

  Morag’s ears pricked up. “We’re going fishing?”

  Inez and Carmen laughed.

  “We’ll have made our catch well before then,” Gabriel said.

  He looked across at Rachel and Adam and the message was clear enough. Rachel knew that their final destination was not far away; they were getting close. And she knew that until they got there, they were the ones who would continue to be hunted, who would be struggling every moment to stay away from the fishermen’s hooks.

  Laura Sullivan studied her guidebook as she hurried across the street, narrowly avoiding an oncoming motorbike.

  The Church of San Rafael was just off the main square in Seville. It was a tiny building, long overshadowed by the Giralda, the bell tower of the city’s massive cathedral. But the Church of San Rafael had its own loyal band of devoted followers. The original Saint Rafael had been imprisoned during the Spanish Inquisition – for some real or imagined heresy – and had been burned alive in the Plaza de la Constitución, the very square that Laura and Kate were now crossing. All that had remained, so the guidebook said, was the saint’s right hand which, legend said, had been held out in forgiveness to his killers and had not been so much as scorched by the flames. The church had been founded on the spot where he’d died and the hand remained mummified in a glass casket in front of the altar in a side chapel.

  “Why would they keep it?” Kate asked.

  “If I’m right,” Laura said, “it’s more valuable than they know.”

  Laura and Kate were struck by the smell of frankincense as they opened the door. The little church glittered like a jewel; the rays of the afternoon sun filtering through its many coloured windows.

  It was unusually busy and the priest seemed a little annoyed that tourists had found their way in on his special day. It was, after all, the high point of his year. Women scrubbed the floor and polished the pews. Others arranged flowers, lit candles and adorned a wooden statue of the saint with garlands. Carved, gilded flames licked at the bottom of San Rafael’s robe, and his blank, almond-shaped eyes stared skywards as he held out his unscathed hand.

  The priest bustled over to head the two women off at the top of the aisle. He was dressed in a white shift, tied at the waist and knotted with gold cord. His ceremonial yellow robe, richly decorated with embroidered red flames and gold-braided crosses, was draped across the altar.

  “Can I help you?” he said in heavily accented English. “You are tourist? ‘Merican?”

  “Er, yes … no. I mean, we’re students,” Laura said. “We’re doing research.”

  The priest nodded. He forced a tight-lipped smile and smoothed a hand across his slick, black hair. “Is better if you come back tomorrow. You can see we’re very busy today.” He waved his hand at the general activity.

  Laura strained to remain civil. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I kind of knew that, but you see we are only in Seville for the day.”

  “Such a shame.”

  Laura’s temper began to fray a little. “OK. So you’re telling me we can’t enter a public place of worship that we’ve flown thousands of miles to see?”

  “You can see it now. There,” he said, waving behind him and not letting them past.

  “We’re English actually and we would like to see the relic.” Kate Newman found herself speaking in an authoritative tone that had long lain dormant; her English accent reasserting itself after years of living in New York.

  The priest stood his ground. “I am sorry, señora. The fiesta of San Rafael is our most important holiday.”

  “Why?” Laura asked.

  He smiled tightly again but there was no humour in his eyes. “The king decreed many years ago that this day should always be remembered as the day Seville was rid of a dangerous heretic.”

  Laura had done her homework. “But I thought the Pope had made him a saint? Surely that’s why the day is celebrated?”

  The remains of the smile disappeared from the priest’s face. “It depends on your viewpoint. This city has a very long memory. Now, if you’ll excuse me, señora.”

  Laura peered past him and, straining to see into the side chapel where the relic was held, caught sight of a little stained glass window decorated with the sign of the Triskellion.

  “So which side are you on? Heretic or saint?” she said.

  The priest glared at her. “I’m sorry. I am too busy to chit-chat…”

  And then Laura saw the Triskellion everywhere: on the roof beams, cast into brass chalices, embroidered on the hem of the priest’s ceremonial robes, dangling from the end of his rosary. And then she knew she was right. Laura took a potshot. “This saint was a man perhaps who came from far away, too far away? A man who challenged the way people thought and who frightened them?”

  The priest clutched at his rosary beads. “You need to leave now. It is none of your business.”

  Laura scoffed; she clearly felt that it was very much her business. “A foreign man who had children with local women and had to die for being different?” She had hit her stride.

  “Enough!” The priest’s voice echoed around the church. He ushered Laura and Kate forcefully back towards the entrance. “I do not have time for this. You have to get out.”

  Laura suddenly dodged away, pushing past the priest and heading towards the side chapel. “I want to see the relic.”

  Suddenly, a group of five or six women, who had been going about their work, formed a line in front of the side chapel. Armed with mops and brushes, their arms beefy from years of polishing, they looked quite formidable.

  Kate Newman, shocked by Laura’s passion, grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “Come on, Laura; we’ll come back another time.” She looked at the line of ferocious women, the mask of hatred on the priest’s face. “These people obviously have something to hide.”

  The man behind the counter laid down a small dish of spinach and chickpeas and poured out another measure of sherry. He turned round to
cut two fresh slices from the huge leg of ham hanging behind him, then chalked another mark on the counter; another few Euros on the customer’s tab.

  Standing at the bar, the Englishman devoured the food hungrily, then used the sherry to wash down a fistful of painkillers. Around him, the tiny tapas bar was filling up with revellers. They would be keen to line their stomachs for a night of drinking and dancing ahead.

  A night of … celebration.

  The Englishman ignored them as they milled around him; ignored the odd looks thrown in his direction. He would be celebrating something very different. Not least, if all went well, the moment when the two children he sought would stand at his mercy. When he would once again possess what was his by right.

  The barman held up the bottle. “Un otro, señor?”

  The Englishman shook his head, tossed a handful of notes on to the counter and marched out into the street. Outside, a man in a decorated, yellow jacket was waiting to meet him. He fell obediently into step as the Englishman walked past, then pointed the way through a maze of narrow streets, each growing more crowded as the hours passed and the huge, red sun sank lower in the sky.

  “How was the honey-seller?” the Englishman asked.

  The man in the yellow jacket smiled. “He was … surprised.”

  “Good. It will send out a message to anyone else who is stupid enough to try and help these children.”

  They walked round a corner into a blind alley where music drifted through air that was thick with woodsmoke. His companion led the Englishman to a pair of heavy, wooden doors. “We are here,” he said.

  A tall, thick-set doorman stepped out in front of them and raised a hand that looked as lethal as a sledgehammer.

  “Is there a problem?” the Englishman asked.

  The man in the yellow jacket stepped forward, ready to argue their cause, but as soon as the man guarding the doors had stared into the blackness beneath the Englishman’s hood, he stepped meekly to one side, his gaze fixed firmly on the cobbles at his feet.

  The Englishman nodded. “I thought not.”

  The music grew louder as they pushed through the doors and followed a winding staircase down into a vast hall. Its walls were lined with timber and wreathed in smoke from an enormous open fire at one end. A musician sat beating out a rhythm on the strings of a guitar and two women in flamenco costumes stamped their heels against the floor, crying out and clapping their hands as they danced. There were antlers and bull horns mounted on shields above a wooden stage, and a long trestle table ran down the centre of the room, round which were gathered perhaps fifty men.

  As the tempo of the music increased and the dancers whirled faster and faster, the men dug into the piles of yellow jackets and red scarves that were heaped on the tabletop. They tried on the jackets, admiring themselves in full-length mirrors and striking poses as they tied the thin, blood-coloured scarves across their faces. Some jackets were brightly decorated with garish devils, while others had images of bones or fearsome-looking beasts or grinning skeletons that danced across the wearer’s chest and along his arms.

  “This is not a fancy-dress party,” the Englishman muttered. “They must be made to understand.”

  “Once you tell them…”

  But the Englishman was already marching across the floor towards the musician. He snatched away the guitar before slowly climbing the small staircase up on to the stage.

  Catcalls and boos began to ring around the hall. The men were still howling out their displeasure when the robed figure reached the centre of the stage and turned to face them. But once he had banged his black stick against the floor and slowly removed his hood, a silence descended on the crowd like a shadow, until only the hiss and spit of the fire could be heard echoing around the hall.

  When the signal was given, a man hurried to the side of the stage. Even as he translated, he could see nothing but the Englishman’s face and feel nothing but the fear jumping in his guts. The scarf round his neck felt like a noose, as though the embroidered devils on his jacket were digging their nails deep into his skin.

  “Tonight the streets will fill with those keen to remember a man they call a saint.” The Englishman’s voice was low, but it reached the back of the room easily. “A man who was hunted and who died in terrible agony. Why was he hunted?” He waited, let the question hang, then drift away on the woodsmoke. “They would have us believe that he had a different faith; a faith that would not be tolerated. They would have us believe that he died for freedom, or for truth, or so that others could follow and not be hunted as he had been. These are lies.” He paused again, letting the man finish translating.

  “The people on the streets tonight will celebrate this man’s memory, but I will be celebrating for an altogether more noble reason. I will be celebrating his death. Yes, he was different. Yes, he had different beliefs. And your ancestors were right to hunt him down and destroy him before those beliefs could spread. Because they were not Earthly beliefs…

  “Do we welcome poison? Do we embrace a deadly virus?” The Englishman stared from face to face, his passion intensifying as he saw the reaction he was looking for begin to spread throughout the room. “No. We isolate it and we wipe it out. It is not wrong to protect yourself, to protect what is yours and what you wish to leave behind for generations yet to come. That was the right thing to do five hundred years ago, when the outsider they now call Saint Rafael came to your city, and it is the right thing to do now.

  “And as the descendants of those who acted as they did all those centuries ago, you must do the same thing now, the right thing, because his descendants are among us. Here. Tonight…”

  Voices began to speak up in the crowd, encouraging voices, and the Englishman’s voice rose up above them. “I don’t need to tell you what you have to do. Your ancestors felt it in their blood and so will you. It is an instinct for survival, plain and simple, and it has been bred into all of us. Believe what I tell you and you will be safe. Your city will be safe. Your children will be safe. I have only one question to ask you…

  “Are you ready to follow your blood?” He stared out, turning his face – such as it was – towards every other and asked the question again.

  “Are you ready to follow your blood?”

  It was as though a switch had been thrown suddenly and a current passed between the men in the crowd. The Englishman watched, smiling as best he could, as they came towards him. A mass of bright yellow streaked with crimson; the bones and beasts and devils dancing as they surged forward.

  He watched as each man stooped down at the foot of the stage to collect a firebrand wrapped in petrol-soaked rags. Each man walked past him with a look of understanding and gratitude for the valuable guidance they had been given.

  He saw ferocity and commitment in every step of every soldier in his perfect little army.

  He saw the blood beating in every face – every one lit up as each man passed his torch through the flames of the open fire.

  The night buzzed with the chatter of thousands of voices as the population of Seville poured out of restaurants, bars and cafes and into the square. Ropes of decorative lights were lit up like a million fireflies and strands of fringed paper-chains rustled in the breeze.

  The procession was forming on the far side, near the church. The parade would take its course round the plaza and through the surrounding streets, ending up where a huge bonfire had been set, at the very point in the square where the saint was thought to have been burned.

  Horsemen in tight-fitting suits adjusted their wide, black sombreros and tugged at reins, bringing their dappled, grey stallions into line. Behind them, gypsy ladies in frothy flamenco dresses sat side-saddle on less thoroughbred horses, their manes braided and their coats polished and glossy. Fifty or more flamenco guitarists strummed and tuned their instruments, while a marching band of bugles and drums formed into ranks behind the religious element of the parade: the priests, monks, altar boys and the choir.

  Behind the
organized part of the procession, clubs, societies, religious groups and members of the general public turned up in traditional costume. Boys were decked out as bullfighters, little girls marched in gypsy costumes, or in white lace, like tiny brides. Marshalling the parade, the members of Los Hermanos de las Llamas, the Brotherhood of the Flames, were out in force, their yellow and red embroidered jackets bright yet sinister in the light of their flaming torches.

  Rachel checked her watch. 11.35. “I thought the parade started at 11.30?”

  “The Spanish are not robots.” Inez chuckled, clacking the castanets she held in her hand.

  “Nothing runs on time here,” Carmen confirmed, fanning herself.

  As if to contradict the Spanish girls, a bugle sounded a fanfare and Rachel felt her stomach fizz with the collective excitement of the square as it rose to fever pitch. Rachel looked at Carmen and Inez. She thought they looked wonderful with their jet-black hair scraped back from their faces into tight buns. The tortoiseshell combs that held their hair in place stuck up from their heads like ornamental crests and the figure-hugging, polka-dot dresses fell in cascades and ruffles to their high-heeled black tap shoes.

  Then Rachel looked down at herself. The girls had done their best to pour her into a blue version of the red dresses they wore, but her athletic, American figure had fought against it; angular and awkward. Her chestnut curls were rebelling against being tied back. She thought she looked a mess, and she had never worn high heels in her life! At least the little twins look cute, Rachel thought. She looked down at Duncan in his devil costume, his red-painted face unrecognizable, and Morag, sweet in an angel outfit, with silvery wings and a little halo.

  Gabriel had told them to keep close but to blend in with the crowd. Inez and Carmen had done a good job. If only Gabriel had told her where he and Adam were going. But he wouldn’t, and it was making her anxious.

  The procession started to move. Bugles and drums squawked and thundered, whistles blew, and people started to cheer as horses clattered and whinnied. Dotted along the line, the Brotherhood of the Flames, their red kerchiefs now concealing their faces and their refuelled torches burning brightly, started a slow chant in an ancient tongue.