But that wasn’t what he was mad about. No, his anger was saved for the fact that Armada had never once mentioned the idea of him going to university. It wasn’t even considered. Julian had done more for his education in their first five minutes of meeting than Armada had done in years.
So why should he feel guilty about not telling Armada what Julian’s gunpowder was going to be used for? The election had nothing to do with him, or the Holy Brotherhood, or this case. This was about the university and San Bartolomé. It was important. Why couldn’t it be important to him, too? Yes, he’d never met Francisco Vergara, who apparently was a very busy professor who had been in Madrid these past few months. But whatever he was doing there, Lucas was sure it was to help the colegio of San Bartolomé somehow. Julian had been sure about that, so Lucas was, too.
No, he wouldn’t let himself feel guilty about this. It was just Armada, having burrowed his way into his head, telling him what to think. Well, he could think for himself. He didn’t need the old man for that anymore.
Lucas reached the courtyard of the Patio de Escuelas Menores and spotted the other boys hanging about on the opposite side. There were no lectures going on now, so the whole courtyard was deserted. It had been decided that morning that talking in the pupilaje was too dangerous. They were well aware that Ambrosio was talking to Armada and had no desire to have their plans overheard.
Lucas felt excited. He was being allowed into a very secret meeting, one that could decide the very future of the colegio. It was crucially important that things went well. And Lucas would now be a part of it.
“I’m here,” Lucas said breathlessly after running over at nearly full speed.
His excitement abated as he saw the other boys looking him over with odd expressions as he approached.
“Lucas, you made it. Good. We couldn’t start without you,” Marcos said, putting his arm round Lucas’s shoulders and grabbing his shoulder tightly.
Julian was standing some way off, avoiding eye contact. It was clear something was wrong. Something the boys didn’t want to tell him just yet.
“Julian…?” Lucas said. “Is something wrong?”
“I spoke to Emiliano today. He said he got visited by that constable from the Holy Brotherhood, Armada.”
Lucas felt a chill radiate through the back of his head at the utterance of Armada’s name.
“Emiliano said that constable seemed to know all about how he was going to help us with the election. Every detail.”
It was only now Julian let himself look at Lucas. But there was no warmth there. Only anger. Only distant hate. And it was terrifying.
“I’ve been asking around, and the only way he could have learned any of that…was from you. So, I’m going to ask you a question, Lucas. And you have to tell me the truth. It’s important.”
“All…all right….”
Lucas felt Marco’s grip on his shoulder tighten.
“Did you tell him about Emiliano and the election?”
Julian got close to Lucas, not letting him look anywhere else except deep into the blacks of his pupils. There was no escape from Julian’s glare.
“No…,” Lucas said. It sounded weak. It was weak. And it was uttered out of fear. Lucas couldn’t stand the idea of Julian being disappointed in him. He would have given anything to go back in time to that conversation with Armada, and tell him nothing. How he wished now that he had! Had he ruined his relationship with Julian forever? Would there be any repairing this?’
“Did you tell that constable about the gunpowder? About what we were planning to do with it?”
“No,” Lucas said again.
“You have to tell me if you did, Lucas. Because you might have ruined everything. If they catch us while we’re trying to set everything up, and we lose that election….”
“I didn’t tell him anything.” Lucas was able to muster up a bit more conviction for his answer. It was true. He hadn’t told Armada what they were planning to do with the gunpowder. Only that he had it.
Julian looked troubled as he mulled Lucas’s answers over. His suspicious gaze had softened somewhat, giving Lucas hope that he could still fix this.
“Please…I would never do anything to jeopardise San Bartolomé,” Lucas said. “Kings for Bartolome, Bartolome for Kings!”
Lucas’s words rang out down the alley. But they were lonely. No one else joined in, leaving the echoes to fade away on their own.
“Then how did that constable find out everything?” Julian said. “I know none of us have said anything. That bellaco had to get it from somewhere.”
“Maybe Emiliano said…something…?” Lucas said. He hadn’t meant to. It was an unformed idea in his head. Something, anything, to take the heat of Julian’s glare off his own guilt.
The blow had come so suddenly Lucas hadn’t had time to stiffen. It had come from Julian, just above his stomach, violently expelling all the air from his lungs. Lucas doubled over and struggled for breath while the boys circled round him like a pack of hungry wolves.
“You’re saying Emiliano sold us out? Is that what you just said?” Julian said. The caustic tone when Lucas had first met him had returned. Now, his words had an even sharper edge, and something in Lucas’s mind suggested his life may now be in danger.
Two more kicks in quick succession found his rib cage, and Lucas cried out.
“You have the huevos to look us in the eye and tell us Emiliano, who has been San Bartolomé longer than any of us, was disloyal? Is that what you think?”
More kicks were lodged into Lucas’s back. He twisted away, but to no avail. They were coming faster now, and getting more painful.
“This is for Emiliano, you worthless little soplon!”
“You’re nothing but a pícaro! Go back to begging on the street!”
“Please…,” Lucas tried to shout, but he didn’t have the breath. “I can help…I can….”
But it was no use talking. It only inspired the beating more. Suddenly, his whole world was the soles of shoes as they jammed their way, hard, into his midsection and his face. Lucas couldn’t keep track of them anymore, he had no idea which way he was facing. One of his eyes had lost vision, covered in red that dripped down his face, while his nose exploded in pain every time he moved his head back and forth.
After a few minutes, all he heard was the sound of cackling boys and footsteps as they strolled down the alley, muttering insults over their shoulders and laughing as they went.
Lucas began to lose all sense of time. He had to focus his energy on breathing, which took everything he had now. His nose was obviously broken, making it almost impossible to breathe through. He tried breathing through his mouth, but there was a gurgling metallic taste in the back of his throat that made him gag whenever he took a breath. He could see nothing, nor could he call out for help. So, he would have to wait for someone to come by. That same niggling voice in the back of his head, the one that had reminded him of his guilt, now told him something else—stay conscious. Don’t go to sleep. Sleep means death.
Stay conscious.
Chapter Twenty-Five
From the moment he laid eyes on the Lady Florentia’s villa, it was clear it was a shrine to the past.
He was well outside the city now, in a small canyon made of rolling hills topped with odd bunches of nature, decaying oak trees that were memorials to the vast forests of oak that once covered these plains.
Alongside one of these groves was a large farmhouse surrounded by fields enclosed in waist-high stone walls that someone had once gone through a lot of trouble to build. These walls were now crumbling, having been pushed over by livestock in several places. The fields within were long neglected, now choked with browning weeds and covered in insects whose wings glittered in the sunlight as they flittered about looking for any last remains of wildflowers still holding out from early spring. A single, greying olive tree was the only living thing that remained of a front garden that once covered the whole house, but was now just
a collection of dead stumps and ant trails baking in the sun.
Armada dismounted and tied up his tired mule. There was every reason to believe the woman had long ago expired and her body was lying inside, having been picked mostly to bones now by stray dogs and legions of flies.
Armada approached the house and peered in the front window through a shutter that had come partly off its hinges.
Inside, he could see a house that was fairly tidy. The floors and walls were dripping in beautifully hand-painted tiles that formed patterns of colour that were rare to see in farmhouses like this. In the front was a large fireplace that took over much of the room. The furniture was a mix of fine French and Italian styles chosen by someone with a decorative eye, their gleaming satin and velvet textures coordinating well with the colours of the tilework.
Wherever there was room on the wall, original artwork had been hung, including a moving portrait of a forlorn fish seller that looked suspiciously like an original Velazquez. In the smaller corners hung serving platters made of gold and silver, as well as several black iron crucifixes.
In the back of the living room was a patio where he could just see the outline of an old woman sitting in a chair and reading. From this angle, it was hard to tell if she was sitting comfortably or lifelessly slumped, and he waited for any sign of life before walking around the back of the farmhouse.
“You might as well come in,” the old woman called out. “Unless you’d prefer to spy through my front window.”
Armada smiled and walked round the side of the farmhouse. Upon reaching the back terrace, he found the woman sitting under a wooden pergola made of reeds to keep the worst of the day’s heat off her head. She put her novel down and smiled at him as he walked toward the back patio.
The woman’s eyes seemed to twinkle as he approached, and she rose to greet him. She was quite short, barely up to Armada’s shoulders, wearing a long dress that had been dyed purple at great expense. She wore a white chiffon to keep the sun off her neck and white silk gloves to protect her hands. Although she seemed well into her seventies and frail, she had little trouble getting up from her chair and moving about.
“You must be the Lady Florentia. I am Domingo Armada of the Holy Brotherhood. It is good to meet you, Señora.”
Armada kissed both her cheeks lightly.
“You as well. So, what brings the Brotherhood all the way out to my door?”
“The murder of Gregorio Cordoba, I’m afraid,” Armada said. “I wanted to find out what you knew about him.”
Lady Florentia narrowed her eyes, looking him up and down as if he were a grouse she was getting ready to hunt.
“Rum. A nice dark rum. That’s your drink.”
“Sherry, actually. Oloroso.”
Lady Florentia sighed. “There was a time when I rarely got that wrong. Don’t ever get old, Constable. It will get you nowhere. Come inside, I think I may have some oloroso left.”
A short while later, Armada was sitting in the front room on one of the overstuffed chairs with a goblet full of sherry fresh from a tiny cellar that had been dug behind the house. Lady Florentia had described for him how her husband enjoyed a nice drink and had learned how to properly store it from a man he’d met in Italy, who had built something similar.
Her husband’s efforts had paid off. Despite the sherry being over a decade old, it tasted as though it was as fresh as the day it was bottled.
Lady Florentia had a bit of sherry herself, although she much preferred the darker, heavier Pedro Ximénez. Armada was impressed. Not many could handle a mouthful of Pedro Ximénez, much less prefer it.
“So, you didn’t know him at all?” Armada asked.
“Not until a few months ago, when he contacted me.”
“Contacted you? Gregorio Cordoba contacted you? How?”
“He sent me a letter. He said he had something very important to tell me.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. He never told me. At least, now I know why. I found it a bit rude at the time to get an old woman’s curiosity piqued only to never mention it again.”
Armada tried to hide his smile. Lady Florentia had a sense of humour that was all her own. Probably a result of so many years living by herself out in this farmhouse. It was obvious this villa had once been grand, with a great deal of effort put into decorating it in order to impress. Now that he was inside, Armada could see a large dining hall off the west wing of the house with more than twenty oak chairs around it. It had been specially built for large dinner parties and family get-togethers, but had now been left covered in dust. It was easy to imagine how full of life the house must have been once.
“May I see this letter?”
“It should be on the bookcase there.”
Armada rose and grabbed the letter from the bookcase, his eye momentarily caught by the shelf of books all by an author he knew well.
Armada studied the letter, but found it said nothing beyond what Lady Florentia had already told him. It was short, with just a few lines of Gregorio introducing himself, followed by a plea for them to meet so he could tell her something important.
“When did you receive this?”
“Must have been a few weeks ago, now.”
“What do you think it was regarding?”
“Well, given this Señor Cordoba is a professor at the university in Salamanca, I assumed it had something to do with Aurelio. He’s the boy I sponsor there.”
“Is he the only student you sponsor?”
“At Salamanca, yes. But I’m also paying for one at the university in Valladolid, and one at Alcala.”
“So, this had to be about Aurelio….”
“Is the boy all right? He had such a difficult upbringing, and despite it all he is such a nice boy. It’s why I selected him. I’ve been sponsoring him since he was in grammar school, helping him to learn his Latin and his counting so he could attend the university. I even got him into one of the colegio mayores there. There’s no more guarantee of success than that.”
“Aurelio isn’t in trouble. I just want to know why Gregorio Cordoba wanted to contact you about him, and then why someone would want to murder him for it.”
“That wasn’t my question. I asked if the boy was all right. Surely, you’ve spoken to him? I don’t get to. In fact, I never get to see any of the boys I sponsor. Despite how much I’ve given for them, they usually forget to write and tell me how they’re doing. Sometimes I feel like they could be dead and nobody would think to tell me.”
Lady Florentia sipped her sherry, her eyes wandering out to the view beyond the back patio. It was stunning, a vast landscape of rolling brown hills and decaying stone walls, with little sign of man all the way to the horizon.
“‘Even though it cannot see, praise this unfortunate eye because it is very graceful in its blindness,’” Lady Florentia quoted.
“Calderon.”
“A theatre fan? You are full of surprises, Constable. And no, it was Lope de Vega. I’ve always preferred Señor Vega’s more simple use of language. It’s much more honest, much closer to how real people speak. I’ve never been much of a lover of poetry. Calderon tends to be a bit flowery for me. He does let his soliloquys drag on.”
Lady Florentia had little fear of offending Armada, which only endeared him to her more. Plus, it was hard to argue with her. Despite not loving Calderon, she had an entire shelf of his dramas and poetry. Hers was not an opinion that was hastily made.
“Well, to answer your question: no. I have not spoken to the boy in that manner. But I can assure you he is alive.”
“That does comfort me a little. Sponsoring children can be very lonely, you know. I always pictured them coming here whenever they could, visiting me as if I were a grandmother. I’m not sure why I thought that. I see now it was foolish. Boys don’t think like that, do they? Aurelio is really no different than any of them. I do try to make them feel special, though. I send each of them a pin. It’s a little silver one in the shape of a m
int leaf, which grows so prodigiously around here. It’s to let them know they are a part of my family, in a way, no matter how far away they are. The boys always thank me in letters, no doubt at the behest of their mothers, and that’s the last I ever hear of it.”
Lady Florentia sighed. “If only it was easier for girls to go to university, perhaps sponsoring them would be different. They do seem to hold family in higher regard. But these days, the very concept of girls becoming educated seems to be going away. The grammar school I went to was long since closed. In fact, most of them all over the kingdom have closed, and it isn’t fair. It just seems that as our mighty empire collapses, so too does men’s ability to see women as intelligent. I’ll never understand it.”
“I don’t either, I’m afraid.”
“Maybe it’s for the best that I was never able to give my Jose children. It’s why I sponsor these kids now. Guilt, I suppose. My Jose wanted children so badly. We married so young. We saw our whole lives so clearly. A beautiful house in the country, lots of children, a life full of family and joy. Our parents helped to buy this land, and Jose worked himself to the bone to build this farmhouse. He was a very successful banker, but had no desire to live in the city. It wasn’t a good place to raise children, you know. No, the campo. In the fresh air, away from the stink and the rot of the city, away from the thieves and the vagrants. He didn’t mind travelling out here all the time. It was worth it to Jose.”
Lady Florentia stared down at her unfinished sherry, wrestling with unpleasant memories. Armada was tempted to remind her that there was no need to tell him any of this.
“Years later, it became obvious to me I would be unable to give my Jose what he wanted most. I could see it in his eyes. The enthusiasm he’d had when he was younger and more hopeful. It began to fade. I was so worried I’d lose him…I couldn’t stand it. So, I began to fill up the house with people. Any excuse would do. We had fiestas that would last for days, inviting anyone who would come. Family, neighbours, work colleagues. I wanted the house to be busy, to be lively, like Jose wanted. But it wasn’t enough. Those parties, they just seemed to exhaust him. And I watched him grow so old. He never left me, the fool. He just kept working, kept distracting himself with wine. I don’t think he knew what else to do.”
The Domingo Armada Mysteries Box Set Page 69