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.
The woman returned to the baby, who looked to be somewhere around their first birthday and apparently incensed at being interrupted in the middle of eating. The woman spooned another bit of soup into its mouth as Armada squeezed himself in at the table next to the boy.
“You are Aurelio Martinez?” Armada asked him.
The boy struggled to keep eye contact.
“Yes. And that’s my mother, Angeles.”
Armada glanced back at Angeles, who tried to return a hospitable smile, but failed. Armada knew she must be worried for her son. Could it just be because they weren’t used to having a constable in the house? Or was it something else?
&nbs
p; “I wanted to talk to you about Gregorio Cordoba,” Armada said, turning back to Aurelio. “I was told you were his assistant.”
“Just for this year,” Aurelio said, glancing back at his mother. “I…I wanted to make a bit of extra money, so my father wouldn’t have to work. He helps out down at the mill, but he has a bad back. He’s in pain all the time.”
Armada wondered why Aurelio was so nervous. There was one possibility, but Armada needed to get Aurelio out of the room to test it.
“I have something in my cart outside. I’d like you to take a look at it. Do you mind?” Armada said, gesturing toward the front door.
Another glance to his mother, who now had her hands full with the baby.
“Um…all right.”
Armada quickly ushered Aurelio out the front door and into the street. As soon as they were outside, Aurelio glanced around and quickly realised Armada hadn’t brought his cart.
“Tell me about Professor Cordoba’s trips to Madrid,” Armada said. “Did you go with him?”
Aurelio couldn’t help but glance back inside the house. But his mother was well out of earshot. Armada wondered if Aurelio knew how obvious he was being. Also, why didn’t he want his mother to know about Madrid? How much was he keeping from her?
“Madrid? Um…yes.”
“Every time?”
“Yes…well…maybe not every time. But most of them…I suppose….”
“What did he do on these trips?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“You were with him. Surely you know…?”
“I don’t. Sorry.”
“So, what did you do?”
A noisy cart filled with charcoal clattered past, making it impossible to hear for a moment and giving Aurelio some time to think of his answer.
“I just stayed in the room and…looked over papers…”
“Why don’t you try telling me that again. Only this time, don’t lie.”
The whole street now seemed to go quiet, as if everyone around were suddenly holding their breath, waiting to hear the answer.
“You never went to Madrid, did you?” Armada asked. “And neither did Gregorio.”
Aurelio stared back, not answering.
“How is it you can afford to attend university? Or afford to join San Bartolomé? You’re risking a lot by trying to lie to me.”
“No! No…I have a benefactor, that’s all,” Aurelio said. “She’s a mad old woman. She lives just outside Valdunciel, in the north. She’s rich. My mother knows her and convinced her to support me going to school.”
“And you’re worried you might lose that if she found out about Gregorio’s murder.”
“I had nothing to do with that. But mother…she worries about it. She doesn’t want anything to get in the way of me getting my degree. She wants me to be a letrado, to have a better life than she or my father did. It’s a rare chance when a farming boy like me gets to go to university.”
Not Aurelio’s words, but his mother’s, spewed out verbatim, things she must have told him one night before moving their family to this big city. And now their nervousness began to make sense.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Armada said, not wanting to let up the pressure on Aurelio. “If you weren’t going to Madrid with Gregorio Cordoba, what were you doing with him?”
Tears welled in Aurelio’s eyes.
“I’m going to find out eventually. If you make this easy on me, I’ll make it easy on you.”
Aurelio sighed. “Venga.”
Armada followed Aurelio. They walked a bit further down the lane before turning up a narrow alley that led back toward the river, along the outside of a wall surrounding one of the crumbling mills. From the other side of the wall came the creaking, grinding din of a wooden mill wheel slowly turning under the force of the current in the river. From inside the mill, the groaning noise of massive wooden gears banging into each other as they ground fanegas of raw wheat into flour.
Aurelio followed this wall until they were almost at the water, where the slope of the bank hid them from view of all of Santiago. Armada had to navigate the muddy slope carefully, but caught up to Aurelio just as he removed a loose stone from the mill’s wall, revealing a hidden space inside.
“This is the mill my father works at. I used to play by myself out here a lot. It’s how I found this hole.”
Aurelio pulled out a canvas bag and reluctantly handed it to Armada.
Armada opened it to find it full of chunks of white crystals, stained brown in places and mixed with bits of masonry debris.
Armada put a bit of it on his tongue. “Saltpetre…?”
Aurelio nodded. “Gregorio had me steal it at night. It grows on the walls of people’s cellars. I would break in, scrape it off, and give it to him.”
“And he told everyone you both had travelled to Madrid, to explain your absences?”
“Yes,” Aurelio said.
“This is dangerous work, my boy. Saltpetre belongs to the Crown. There are stiff penalties for such a crime, and for good reason.”
“I know. Gregorio tried to tell me that no one would be bothered, that we couldn’t get in that much trouble for it. But I knew he was lying. Why else would we have to do it in the middle of the night? And be so careful?”
“Do you know what he was using it for?” Armada asked.
Aurelio shook his head. “He never told me. I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to make a bit of extra money so my father wouldn’t have to work. Lady Florencia, she only covers my school costs. But my family, they still have to eat. Once I started doing it, Gregorio said if I ever stopped working for him, he would tell everyone what I’d done. And I’d go to prison. I couldn’t—”
“I understand, my boy. It’s all right,” Armada said. It was hard to believe Aurelio was so naïve.
“Are you going to arrest me now? Am I going to hang for this?”
Armada realised this was what Aurelio thought was going to happen the moment he revealed himself to Armada.
“No, but only if you answer my next question honestly,” Armada said. “Where were you the night Gregorio Cordoba was murdered?”
Aurelio was shaking now, and he looked up at Armada with the look of a cat suddenly realising it is in the path of an oncoming horse.
“I was with Julian and the rest of the San Bartolomé boys, I swear it. We were in the pupilaje all night. We were having a meeting about the election. Julian said he’d invited Gregorio over, and we were going to try to convince him to drop out of the election. But…but he never showed up.”
“Because someone had murdered him,” Armada said.
“I suppose so. But I had nothing to do with it! I promise!”
“Yes, all right,” Armada said. “I believe you.”
For the moment, this seemed to help Aurelio’s frayed nerves.
“But if I find anything you have said to me today is a lie, I will charge you with the crime of stealing saltpetre and turn you over to the Inquisition without a hesitation. And you know what they do to such thieves.”
“Yes…yes, of course.”
Armada had no idea. The Inquisition didn’t prosecute such minor crimes. They had bigger issues to deal with. But he wanted the word “Inquisition” to ring in Aurelio’s ears for a bit, just to impress upon him the gravity of what he was involved in. He had to make sure Aurelio was truthful, especially considering what might be at stake.
“So…so you aren’t going to arrest me?”
“I suggest you don’t try and flee, Aurelio,” Armada said. “I may have more questions.”
“Yes, I won’t. I promise.”
Soon after, Aurelio was back home and Armada was making his way back across the Roman Bridge. There was no time for contemplating history this time. He had to get back to town. He had to talk to Lucas, to sort it all out in his mind.
Saltpetre! How could Gregorio Cordoba have been so foolish?
Chapter Nine
Lucas wasn�
�t sure how long he’d been asleep. He heard his door open and saw a bit of candlelight splash on the wall opposite. Then the sound of footsteps shuffling into the room. They didn’t sound like Armada’s footsteps, so Lucas sat up and stiffened his midsection, ready for the attack.
“It’s me. It’s Julian,” he heard whispered. Lucas rubbed his eyes and watched as Julian came in and sat down on the edge of Lucas’ tiny bed.
Was Julian here to punch him again? How cruel could he be? Or perhaps he was here to rob him. Anything was possible now. He had no idea how far these San Bartolomé boys were willing to go for their silly games.
Julian smiled at him.
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to beat you or anything. I wanted to apologise.”
Now Lucas was thoroughly confused.
“The boys and I…well…our games get a little carried away sometimes. We’d had a lot to drink this afternoon. We didn’t mean any harm by it.”
Lucas said nothing. He didn’t want to spoil the moment by saying the wrong thing. He still wasn’t sure what Julian wanted.
“There is a little trick I know. Just stuff some papers down the front of your tunic next time. Then, if any of those bellacos try their little test again, it won’t hurt so much. It’s what Manuel did when they tried the same thing on him for being Montañese. The rest of the boys will think you’re clever and they won’t do it again. Trust me.”
“Thanks,” was all Lucas could think to squeak out.
Julian didn’t move from the edge of the bed. There was more he wanted to say, but he was in little hurry to say it. It gave Lucas a moment to study the man’s face. He was quite young, by Armada’s standards. Early twenties perhaps, with blue eyes whose colour pierced through the orange light of the candle that illuminated them. His face still had the smoothness of youth, but even that could not hide the scar on his neck, or the bit of his right ear that had been lost and was now covered in stringy brown hair that had been grown long on the sides to cover it.
The Domingo Armada Mysteries Box Set Page 58