by K. C. Dyer
“It’s only a short way from here,” gasped Brodie. He held Darrell firmly under her right arm. Her feet were practically skimming the rocky surface of the road as she ran along between her two friends. “Unfortunately, it’s straight uphill.”
“Everywhere is straight uphill in Lisbon,” panted Kate. “There are seven of them right here in the centre of the city.”
The miasma of burning was all about them, and Darrell could see the flames in a nearby square. There was no time or breath left for speech as they climbed the steep slope towards an enormous castle that overlooked the city.
Kate’s face was ashen in spite of the run. “Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t look at the fires.”
Darrell nodded and concentrated on following Delaney. His once-golden fur was smudged and sooty, but there was no mistaking his energy. He wore a rough knotted rope around his neck and dashed around them to lead the way up the hill with Darrell and her friends in close pursuit. The castle gate was a scene of further chaos. People ran in all directions, uncertainty and even panic written across many faces. Delaney veered around the side of the castle wall and stopped, panting, near a guardhouse. Kate dropped her skirts and put her hands on her knees, gasping for breath.
Brodie stuck his head into the guardhouse. “Looks like they’ve all gone to the burning,” he said grimly. He rested his hand on Darrell’s shoulder. “Are you really okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Darrell nodded. “I have so much to tell you. Is there somewhere safe we can go and talk?”
“No,” said Kate, her voice tinged with panic. “The Dominicans have rounded up all the Jewish people in Lisbon. They’re going to kill them all, Darrell. Your priest is the only person we’ve met who listens to reason, which means he’ll probably be dead before the day is over. We must leave now.”
“But, just a minute, you two, I think I may have found—”
“I’m sorry Darrell, but it doesn’t matter what you’ve found,” interrupted Brodie. “Kate is right. We have to go.”
Delaney barked sharply, and the trio looked up to see a line of soldiers marching purposefully towards them. In the lead was the soldier who had broken down the cottage door. Clutched securely in the arms of two others was the Franciscan priest.
“Marranos!” screamed the first soldier, and the group broke ranks and ran up the slope towards the castle wall.
“Go!” Brodie pushed Darrell into the guardhouse. Pieces of armour were strewn about haphazardly as though they had been recently discarded. A passageway led from the guardhouse into the gate yard outside, guarded by an enormous portcullis. Darrell started for the passageway, but Kate pulled her back.
“No — this way!”
In a dark corner at the back of the guardhouse stood a small closet with a heavy wooden doorframe. Darrell could just see the outline of a flaming symbol as it began to glow a deep red on the wooden surface. Beside the glowing symbol was the charred remains of the image of an eight-armed candlestick. The friar’s menorah.
Kate was already holding hands with Brodie and she smiled tremulously at Darrell. “Try not to let go of my hand this time,” she whispered.
“I’ll do my best.” Darrell wound her fingers through Delaney’s rope collar and, grasping Kate’s hand firmly, followed her friends through the low doorway.
CHAPTER SIX
Darrell handed around the last of the peppermints from her pocket as they sat on the stairs, recovering. Delaney lay on the bottom step, panting gently.
Brodie patted his head. “You’re an amazing dog, you know that?” He looked up at the soot and dirtstained girls. “He always seems so unperturbed by these journeys.”
“I’ve never come back without my clothes ripped to shreds,” said Kate, pointing at the dirty bare knee poking through her jeans, “and he always looks like he’s just been to the groomers.”
“So, what do you think happened to Paris?” asked Darrell.
“Well, he wasn’t touching us when we went through the portal,” said Brodie, “so he must still be here somewhere. He couldn’t have travelled with us.”
“He’s probably gone back up to the school,” said Kate. “We’re going to need to talk to him to find out what he knows — he had to have seen us get pulled away.”
“I thought he got dragged along for sure,” said Darrell quietly. “Especially when the friar said he had found my three friends.” Delaney flopped over on his side to let her rub his tummy. “I’m just so glad you’re both okay,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve been sick with worry. Where were you all that time?”
“We stayed at the little villa where we found you,” said Brodie. “We looked everywhere for you when we arrived in Lisbon. Of course, it took us quite a while to figure out where we were at first. Kate was convinced we had to be in Spain because of what we had been learning in Professor Grampian’s class.”
“Well, that’s how it worked before with Professor Tooth,” Kate said, a trifle crankily.
“Anyway, we couldn’t find you anywhere. We searched a bit through the passages near the guardhouse under the castle, but then Kate thought you must have gone out into the city, so we went out to look.”
“I hit my head this time,” said Darrell, ruefully rubbing the sore spot. “I must have been knocked out for quite a while. And I was in a passageway, near a little underground grotto.”
“Anyway,” continued Brodie, “we finally figured out we were in Lisbon. We asked around in the local marketplace to see if anyone had seen you.”
“I pretended you were my lost sister,” interjected Kate. “Nobody wanted to talk to us. Everyone seemed so anxious and suspicious because we were strangers.”
“After what seemed like forever I spoke to a priest all hooded up in a red cloak who told us to go find Brother Socorro at the church — that he sometimes gave lost travellers sanctuary.”
“A red robe?” said Darrell thoughtfully. “Why does that remind me of something?” She thought a moment then shook her head. “It’s gone. So his name is Brother Socorro, eh?”
“Yeah. Turned out he was actually looking for us, since he must have found you by then.”
“He hid me in his room in the cathedral,” Darrell explained. “But he locked me in, and I guess that’s when things started to go crazy in the city, so he left me there for what seemed like forever.”
“Nearly three days,” said Kate, patting Darrell on the arm.
“No wonder I was so hungry! So you were in the cottage all that time?” asked Darrell.
“Only about a day, ’cause we spent the first day figuring out where we were and the second looking for you,” Kate replied.
Darrell leaned over and squeezed Kate by the shoulders. “That explains why Socorro thought you were my sister,” she said and peered at Brodie through bloodshot eyes. “You know, I am so tired, at one point I thought he actually referred to you as Kate’s ‘good husband.’”
Kate and Brodie both started talking at once.
“It was the only ...”
“... not my idea ...”
“... a short time ...”
“And nobody has to know anything about it,” they both blurted.
Darrell dropped her head onto her arms and enjoyed the best laugh she could remember having for a long time. When she finally looked up, she saw Kate’s face was scarlet, and even Brodie’s cheeks had reddened.
“There was no other way,” he said, standing up abruptly. “There was no one else to act as chaperone, and in those days, no decent girl would be wandering around alone with a guy unless she was married to him.”
Darrell’s face was sore from grinning. “He was saving your reputation, Kate,” she spluttered.
Kate rolled her eyes. “Grow up, will you? It was the only thing we could think of to explain ourselves to Brother Socorro.”
Darrell chuckled. “Okay, okay, I’ll try to keep it to myself.”
Kate yawned hugely. “I am so ready for a nap,” she said, rubbing her e
yes. “A person can take only so much anxiety, you know.” She stood up.
“What’s that?” Darrell turned to peer down one of the passages. Delaney lifted his head and cocked one of his ears.
“There’s a light.” Kate looked like she was ready to run. “We’d better get out of here.”
Brodie put his hand on Kate’s arm. “Just a second.”
The beam of light broadened, and from around the curve in the passage appeared Paris, his hair glowing the faintest lavender in the thin light.
“Thought so,” muttered Brodie.
“Sheesh — you really know how to scare a guy,” said Paris, his voice hoarse. “I’ve been searching down here for hours, yelling my fool head off.”
Darrell laughed nervously. “I’m so sorry Paris.” She swallowed. “We’ve been — we’ve been looking for you, too.”
Kate sat back down with a shaky sigh. “How long have we been lost?” she asked.
Paris directed the beam onto his watch. “A little more than two hours,” he said. He bent down and ruffled Delaney’s fur. “I thought I’d be able to find you for sure, boy,” he said and directed his flashlight upward. “What happened back there? Where did that wind come from? It was almost like it blew you all right out of here. By the time I got the dust out of my eyes I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“Yeah,” Darrell shot a significant glance at Kate. “We got separated, too. Just found each other a few minutes ago.”
Kate nodded. “Yup. How ’bout that wind, anyway?” She lifted an eyebrow at Brodie. “You’re the expert underground. Maybe you can tell us how a hurricane like that can blow through a tunnel this far from the edge of the ocean.”
Brodie curled his lip at her, and Kate grinned.
“Beats me,” he said, finally. “But I think we should get out of here before it happens again.”
“Me too,” said Paris, though he shot a strange glance at Darrell. Delaney trotted up the first few steps and then paused to wait for the rest of the group to follow. “Your dog sure seems comfortable down here,” said Paris.
Darrell looked at him sharply, disturbed by the tone of his voice. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said lightly. “Delaney is always the same, happy to go for a walk anywhere.”
“Really?” Paris echoed. He gestured for Brodie and Kate to pass, and when they did, he put his hand on Darrell’s arm. “I think we need to talk,” he said quietly.
Darrell looked carefully into his face in the dim glow of the flashlight. “You might be right,” she said with a sigh, then followed the group up the treacherous stone steps.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The flames were burning and someone was dragging her closer. She could feel the pull on her shoulder — smell the burning flesh. She opened her mouth to scream ...
“My goodness, dear. It’s only a bad dream.”
Darrell opened her eyes to the placid face of Mrs. Follett. She sat up in bed, befuddled. “Mrs. Follett? What are you doing here?”
“Well, it is eleven o’clock. I know it’s a Sunday and you young folks need your rest, but I thought I should wake you as there is a call from your mother in the Middle East.”
Darrell flipped over onto her stomach and reached under the bed for her prosthesis. Three days back from the journey to Inquisition-torn Lisbon and she still hadn’t caught up on her sleep. “Thanks for coming to get me, Mrs. Follett. I’ll be down right away.”
“Don’t worry dear, your mother told me she would call back in fifteen minutes, so you have time to get dressed.” Mrs. Follett bustled over to the window and drew back the curtains. “Raining again today, I’m afraid,” she said, and scurried out of the room.
Darrell looked around as she adjusted her prosthesis. Lily’s bed was empty and neatly made, and Kate’s looked like a charging rhino had roared through it. Darrell grinned at the glimpse of tousled red hair sprouting like a patch of hawk weed from somewhere near the bottom of the bed.
She pulled on her jeans and reached into the back pocket to pull out a creased and torn piece of paper. Folding the page carefully, she replaced it in her pocket and shook her friend by the shoulder. “Wake up, Katie. I’ll meet you downstairs in the dining hall, okay?”
No reply.
A moment later as Darrell was lacing up her shoes, Lily came bounding into the room, bearing a load of swimming paraphernalia.
“You mean she’s not up yet?” sniffed Lily, disdainfully. “I’ve been up since six, swimming laps.”
Darrell grinned. “If anyone can wake her up, Lily, you can. Go for it.” She left the room to the sound of a torrent of abuse erupting from somewhere under Kate’s bedclothes.
“I don’t know what to tell Paris,” Darrell said. It was late in the afternoon, and after a reassuring talk with her mother, she had managed to drag Kate out from under the covers. Brodie sat beside Kate, the waning light of a grey afternoon casting sepia shadows in the empty study hall. Darrell’s mother was deeply involved in a peacekeeping effort but still managing to stay out of the hot zone, and Darrell was relieved to hear her sounding so happy. Less comforting was how often her mother referred to Dr. Asa. By the end of the conversation, Darrell was convinced that almost every sentence she’d heard had been prefaced with “David and I.” Still, it was reassuring to know that there was someone watching her mother’s back — as long as he keeps his mind on his job, she thought. It meant Darrell could turn her attention to a more immediate concern, in the form of one Paris Mercer — the troublemaker.
“Don’t tell him anything,” snapped Kate, still not quite recovered from Lily’s rude awakening technique. “All he needs to know is that we all got lost down there, it’s not a safe place to go, and that’s that.”
“I did tell him that,” said Darrell, “but he just looks at me like he doesn’t believe me.”
“I’m with Kate,” said Brodie. “I think if you keep changing the subject, he’ll drop it sooner or later.”
“Okay, I guess.” Darrell fiddled with the folded page she had pulled from her pocket. “I’ve got something to read to you,” she blurted. “I’ve been going over it, and I think it can mean only one thing.”
She quickly related story of examining the old ledgers in the cottage while waiting for Brother Socorro to return. “He obviously felt they were really important or he wouldn’t have tried to hide them from the soldiers,” she said. “I think they must have held a list of initials of the people he had helped save from the Inquisition in Spain.”
“He didn’t tell us anything about his life when we were with him.” said Brodie, “He did say that many conversos had escaped to Portugal, but that it was no longer safe. I think he believed we were all trying to do just that.”
“Conversos?” Darrell repeated the word slowly, and her fingers traced across the worn paper on the table in front of her.
“Conversos were the Jews that were persecuted by the Inquisition for their religion,” said Brodie. “Remember what Gramps told us?” He whipped open his notebook and read: “Queen Isabella of Castile, a devout Catholic, was also a bold warrior. She and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, had united Spain and were seeking to strengthen their territory against the Spanish Moors. One way to get the money for this expensive war was to take it from their own countrymen. The money was raised when Isabella declared her personal confessor the head of the Inquisition and gave him the right to torture and murder anyone not a member of the Roman Catholic Church as a way to convince them to change their minds.” He closed his notebook.
Kate nodded. “And if the people agreed to convert, their souls were deemed saved, but they were still put to death and their money confiscated for the war effort,” she added.
“But the soldiers who chased us called us marranos,” said Darrell. “Not conversos.”
“The people who converted were often called pigs,” said Kate sadly. “We heard that expression everywhere on the streets of Lisbon. It seems some people didn’t believe that the conversos had truly a
ccepted Christianity.”
“It also made it easier to kill them,” said Brodie, flatly. “It’s easier to slaughter pigs than kill your fellow human beings, I guess.”
“So Socorro thought he was saving us from the Inquisition,” said Darrell, quietly, “when really he was leading us to an old friend.”
“An old friend?” Kate looked surprised. “What are you talking about?”
Darrell unfolded her piece of paper and smoothed it out on the table. The page looked incredibly old and worn, its creases brittle to the point of breaking.
“Where did that come from?” asked Kate.
“I brought it back with me,” said Darrell eagerly. “I copied it out from the back of one of Socorro’s ledgers. Listen:
March 17, 1505
Numbers slowing down, the wealthy are more able to pay for passage abroad. Have taken on an assistant, a young man from one of the madhouses of Madrid where I went to offer what little help I could. The wars and rule of Torquemada brought much pain to so many and this boy has suffered beyond any I had seen. Still, he has been a great help thus far and I plan to further train him in the earthly goal of kindness to all things that is so sorely missing from these times.
“Then he goes on a bit about how perhaps it is the people that the church calls insane are really the only ones thinking straight, so I skipped that bit, but listen to this ...
June 11, 1505
My new assistant has proved to be of enormous help in redirecting the conversos. He raves less often about what he calls his “old life” but has much to say of his experiences getting caught up in war and mayhem on his way from Florence to Madrid. He has surely been sent by God himself to help me with the plight of these poor people.