Armada stepped into the lobby of the dilapidated boarding house to find that it reeked of smoke and decaying animals. In the cramped main room, the landlady had laid out several pig hindquarters, freshly cut, and there was a vat of salt nearby. She was beginning the long process of making them into jamon serrano, the first step of which was rubbing salt into them and allowing them to cure for a week or two. The conditions in the basement of the boarding house were far from ideal for such a process, and Armada guessed these jamónes would be sold long before they were done curing, which was supposed to take a year or two.
Armada felt a large wooden spoon planted against his chest.
“You paid to see the room, not my hams.”
Armada followed the large woman up the stairs to the first door on the right, and she unlocked it.
“Five minutes. That’s all I’m giving you.”
Before Armada could answer, the woman turned and stomped her way back down the stairs to continue working on her curing.
Armada turned his attention to Teo’s room, which didn’t look promising. It was quite small and damp, and one of the shutters on the window was broken, so there was no way to completely block out the light or the noise from the street below. The smell of rotting animal flesh seemed to sweat from the walls and it took Armada a moment to get used to it.
The only furniture in the room was a rickety wood-framed bed, with a soiled mattress made of straw and sheets roughly hewn together. There was nothing else except for a large canvas bag in the corner, which Armada turned his attention to.
On the very top was a bit of paper, wrinkled as if it were hastily shoved inside. There were numbers scrawled on it. It looked roughly like a ledger sheet, designed to keep track of goods that were either coming or going.
The figures were all listed in Portuguese. Sadly, Armada’s skills in the language were not good enough to identify exactly what was being counted, but the numbers were large.
The rest of the bag contained only a change of clothes that smelled badly of dust and sweat. Armada knew that smell. It was similar to his own clothes after making a long journey in the hot sun. There was also a pair of boots that were worn in an odd way. The middle of both the soles had been dug out, from one side to the other, almost to the point of the sole cracking in half.
Armada knew those marks too. He had the same problem with his own boots. Which meant, somewhere around, Teo must have….
Armada poked his head out of the room.
“Excuse me. Do you have a stable?”
The landlady, after collecting yet another payment, took Armada down to her stables, where Teo had left his donkey and cart. The donkey was emaciated. Underfed, overworked, and currently taking a rare opportunity to sleep while standing in the corner of the stable.
Armada looked to the cart. Just in front of the bench where the driver sat was a metal bar that was bolted to the wood frame, where the saddles were tied. It was also where Teo would have planted his boots while he rode, rocking them back and forth, wearing out the middle of the soles.
The back was large enough to carry cargo. On the bottom were round circles, well-worn and surrounded by sprinkles of grey powder that had worked themselves so deeply into the wood they would never come out. The circles were about the size of a barrel, and the powder possibly part of their contents.
All of this meant Teo had come a long way to collect his debt. Possibly all the way from Portugal. It was a dangerous trip, given that Portugal was in the middle of a war of independence with the Spanish crown at the moment. The border plains were full of sentries and scouts and bandits, all of whom were happy to shoot any strangers they came across on sight. The lack of belongings showed Teo had no intention of staying very long. He had only brought a single change of clothes and very little money. And it was very likely this trip had something to do with a delivery he’d recently made in barrels.
Armada found it confusing. Why on earth would Gregorio, a junior university professor, owe money to this man? What had he been buying? And where was it stored?
Armada returned to the boarding house, where he caught the woman in the middle of rubbing the salt into the hams with her bare hands.
“How much do you know about this Teo? Have you seen anything odd?”
The woman held out her hand again.
“No more payments. Answer my questions, or I will arrest you on a petty charge. You will eventually go free, but in the meantime, your boarding house will be left unattended, possibly for months.”
Armada made a point of looking at her hams behind her.
“Completely. Unattended,” he said.
The woman grimaced at him, but she understood. “I don’t know anything. It’s how I keep it around here. The less I know about my boarders, the better.”
“When did he arrive?”
“Last Tuesday night. Late. I almost didn’t rent him a room. I don’t like letting strangers into my house in the middle of the night.”
“Did he say where he was from?”
“No. But his accent is funny.”
“Did it sound Portuguese?”
“I don’t know. It just sounded funny,” the landlady said.
“Where is he now? Did he say?”
“I told you. He didn’t tell me, and I don’t want to know.”
“Can you give him a message for me?”
The landlady hesitated, wondering if it was safe to ask for more money.
Armada held up the coin purse from his pocket. There was only two coins left inside, but it was enough to make noise when he shook it.
The landlady snatched it from him.
“Tell him I have what he’s come for. If he wants it, he’ll have to visit me personally. He is not to contact the Cordoba family again.”
The woman opened the purse and was disappointed that there were only two coins.
“I’m staying at a house near the university. The porter at the main entrance can direct him.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll run? I’m going to tell him who you are.”
“He’s come a long way for what is owed to him. I doubt he’ll leave without it. Thank you, Señora.”
Armada bowed his head slightly and made his way out of the boarding house, happy for the slightly fresher air outside and suddenly wondering if there was anywhere nearby to buy some fruit.
Chapter Seven
By the look of it, Lucas would be the first person in history to clean this latrine.
“And make sure you scrub those stones,” Ambrosio said, pointing to the greasy brush he’d just given Lucas. The bristles now lay flat from wear and the handle was black and greasy. It looked in worse condition than the latrine, the stink of which was making Lucas ill.
“I thought I would be cleaning the rooms, sir,” Lucas said.
Ambrosio snorted at this. He was a large, bearded man with a voice that had gone permanently hoarse over the years from so much shouting at the boys in his pupilaje. He had been in the business of accommodating the sons of wealthy aristocrats for decades now and had long ago learned the art of repairing only the parts of the house that mattered to the parents on those rare occasions when they came to visit. Although the latrine was a small stone room covered in filth, the bit of garden just outside the front door was perfectly maintained, with well-watered jasmine trees overlooking various tropical shrubs from the New World that must have been quite expensive. It was pruned and watered every day to keep it looking perfect and give one the sense of the palace that must be inside. And if one only took a few steps inside, that’s exactly what it looked like. Beyond that, however, in the back where the actual rooms were, was a whole other matter.
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.
Thi
s 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 Andalucian? 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.
The Domingo Armada Mysteries Box Set Page 57