by Matthew Carr
The evidence against him was slim. A disgruntled servant claimed that he wore a white shirt on the Sabbath and refused to eat pork. His uncle denied these charges, but his brother’s previous record with the Inquisition worked against him, and he confessed in order to avoid a more severe punishment. His uncle always insisted that the charges were invented by a business rival. He was punished with a large fine that left him without funds to finance the education that might have transformed his nephew into a fully qualified law graduate, or letrado. Having spent much of his life trying to rise from the ranks of the lower nobility, his uncle now found himself ostracized and died two years after his appearance at the auto-da-fe broken and bitter.
By that time Mendoza had received his first post as a lawyer at the Granada Audiencia, and he had now been one of the four criminal judges at the Royal Audience and Chancery of Valladolid—the second-highest court in the land after the Council of Castile—for nearly four years. This was a long time for a relatively minor position, but it was better than might have been expected, given his Jewish origins and the sanbenito bearing his uncle’s name, which was still kept in the Church of San Ildefonso as a mark of the infamy that was also shared by all his descendants.
Elena, like his mother, believed that he lacked ambition, because some of his fellow students had risen much further and become high-salaried advocates, attorneys and judges in the secular judiciaries or the Inquisition, or they had gone on to become governors and judges in the Indies. Some had risen through their own ability. But too many of them were men like Izarra who had achieved promotions through bribes and family connections or who faked their degrees and called themselves “Licenciado” when they had not even been at university for three years and who had achieved their positions by bowing and scraping to their superiors or taking on cases for the sole purpose of extracting fines that would pay for their rents, their lifestyles and their mistresses.
Mendoza had nothing but contempt for such behavior. If the officials who enforced the king’s laws did not obey these laws themselves or used them to their own advantage, he often argued, then there was no reason his subjects should feel obliged to obey them either, and without the law there was nothing to distinguish human society from the beasts of the forest.
Nevertheless these principles were beginning to put a strain on his finances. The cost of living was rising, there were always new taxes to be paid, and it was expensive to keep Gabriel and a housekeeper, in addition to the payments that he sent to his mother. For all these reasons, he was glad of an assignment that might bring him a promotion or a financial reward that did not require him to be corrupt. Even before leaving Saravia’s house, he had begun to think about the men he needed. Most of them he could find in Valladolid, but there was one man who would be especially suitable for an assignment like this and who, depending on the weight of his purse and the presence or absence of female company, might be only too glad to accept it. Mendoza had a very good idea where he might be found, and no sooner had he returned to the Chancery than he dispatched a messenger to find him.
• • •
“BLESS ME, Your Reverence, for I have sinned.” Luis de Ventura, former sergeant in the Tercio of Naples, looked expectantly at the abbot, who nodded at him to continue. Ventura began, as he usually did, with the venial sins first. “I have not been to Mass in many months. I have not observed the holy days. I have doubted the existence of God. I have coveted another man’s wife. . . .” Ventura reconsidered this. “I have lain with another man’s wife. I have slept with public women. I have taken pleasure in these things.”
“Well, the devil’s temptations wouldn’t be tempting if they weren’t pleasurable,” the abbot observed.
“I have gambled.” Ventura was getting into his stride now. “I have frequented taverns and brandy houses. I have killed men.”
“To kill in the king’s wars is not a sin, my son. The wars of Spain are God’s wars.”
“It wasn’t only in war, Your Reverence. I have fought in taverns and duels.”
“And when was the last time this happened?”
“A week ago. A man sent two assassins to kill me. They were not men of quality.”
“And why did he do this?”
“He believed that I was having intimate relations with his wife.”
“And were you?”
“I was, Your Reverence.”
“I see.” The abbot sighed wearily. “And so you decided to come here for concealment?”
“No, Your Reverence,” Ventura protested. “I came here to repent! Even though the dogs deserved it.”
“No doubt.” The abbot gave him a skeptical look. “Do you remember when you first came here? You were just eleven. Your parents had high hopes for you, Luis.”
“I know that. God rest their souls.”
“But you disappointed them. And now you are carrying a weight that will only get heavier as you get older. If you want peace, you must surrender yourself to God. Give yourself to him completely and unconditionally. Open your heart, and you will find him willing to embrace you, whatever you have done—and so will we.”
“I will try, Your Reverence.”
“For your penance I would like you to perform some exemplary work. An act of goodness that your parents could be proud of.”
“Here in the monastery?”
“No, Luis. It’s easy to be virtuous when virtue is untested. The world is where you belong, not here. When you leave these walls, I want you to devote yourself to goodness and virtue for at least two months. Who knows? It might even become a habit. No drinking. No gambling or fighting. And no women—married or not. Now, go and pray to God for guidance on how to achieve this.”
The abbot made the sign of the cross and blessed him. Ventura kissed his hand and went into the chapel, feeling mildly cleansed. He knelt in front of the altar and tried to pray. Apart from his shoulder-length black hair, he looked the image of piety and devotion in his white tunic and black scapular. Normally the Monastery of Santa María del Parral near Segovia was one of the few places on earth where he felt something like peace. No matter what brought him there, the sight of its ancient sand-colored walls and pink slate roofs rising up in layers above the fruit orchards and vineyards, the rows of trees and the wells and fountains, seemed to him like a vision of earthly harmony each time he saw the place.
In the daytime he liked to wander the gardens and watch the monks or their workers cultivating vegetables or picking fruit, but he rarely spoke to them. With few exceptions the monks were as thick as shit, and no more thoughtful or intelligent than many unlettered peasants he’d met who had never been anywhere near a church or a monastery. And so although he ate and occasionally prayed with them, he mostly kept his own counsel, either in his cell or walking the grounds and cloisters like a ghost in his own skin.
Now, as he sat alone in the same chapel where Isabel the Catholic had once prayed and which he had first attended when he was only ten years old, his loneliness seemed far more difficult to bear than his sinful life. There’d been a time when his parents had set their hearts on his becoming a Dominican monk and even an Inquisitor, but the spirit had proved weaker than the flesh so often that he had long ago ceased to believe that it could ever be victorious.
Yet he did not believe that he was a bad man, and he had met many men who were considerably worse. The commandments said that he should not covet another man’s wife, but sometimes it was difficult to resist, especially when men’s wives coveted him. The Bible also said that he should not kill, but most of the men who had died at his hands had been Turks, Moors and heretic rebels. And those he’d killed in peacetime had mostly been bad men or men who had tried to kill him. And at least he hadn’t killed anyone for money. He had not offered himself as a sword for hire. He had not cheated anyone at dice or cards who did not deserve to be cheated, and he had not robbed anyone.
The a
bbot was a saintly man who walked in God’s path, but he had spent most of his long life in a monastery. Luis, on the other hand, lived in a world whose temptations would have tested the resolve of even the most ardent monk. He could testify from personal experience that not all wars were God’s wars. He had seen men behave like beasts, and at times he had behaved like one himself. And even as he prayed for guidance on how to do good, he was not entirely sure if he was capable of it.
By the time he returned to his cell, the brief serenity that always followed confession had worn off, and he lay down on his cot in a state of restless agitation. Outside, the blue sky was slowly turning red and pink through the grilled window, and the sound of vespers wafting up from the chapel mingled with the songs of the swallows and the deep, heavy notes of the church organ. Normally he liked this time of day, and the chanting stoked memories of the religious fervor that he had once felt when he first came to the monastery, but now he looked at his sword and his short parrying dagger and his two pistols leaning up against the wall next to his saddlebags and boots, and he knew that his refuge could only be temporary. He knew that he could not return to Madrid, at least for a while, because the husband of Ágata Fernández de la Prada was powerful and rich enough to send any number of assassins to hunt him down.
For a man in his position, there were essentially three options apart from the army. He could go to the Indies and seek his fortune, he could take to the roads and become a highway robber, or he could continue to advertise himself as a master of arms and find people rich enough to pay him to teach them to fence. But the age of heroes was over, and the days when even the poorest soldier could come back from the Indies bearing cases filled with gold and silver were gone. Now wealth was accumulated slowly, if at all, by farmers, businessmen and administrators who ground their lives away in endless, tedious work that he had neither the patience nor the aptitude for. Robbery was more suited to his abilities. With his skills it would be easy, almost effortless, for him to relieve the first traveler he came across of his possessions and even his life, but the old voice of the would-be knight-errant that he had first encountered in his grandfather’s stories still insisted that it was more noble and more honorable to defend the weak and helpless than it was to prey on them.
Sooner or later he would have to get back on his horse. He tried to think of a destination, but he had never been good at plans, and he soon gave up the effort and closed his eyes. He had nearly dozed off when there was a knock on the door, and a squeaky-voiced monk who sounded like a eunuch told him that a messenger from Valladolid had come to see him.
• • •
“DID I EVER TELL YOU that you remind me of Titian’s Venus?” Mendoza ran his fingers through Elena’s thick red hair and traced the perfect curve of her back as she lay on her stomach beside him in Prosecutor Izarra’s bedroom, propped up on her elbows like a sphinx.
Elena laughed. “How do you know? You’ve never even seen her.”
“I’ve seen Antonio’s copy.”
“So you compare me to an imitation?”
“Not at all. I compare you to an image of imagined perfection by one of the greatest artists on earth.”
“Very well, then,” she said, kissing him lightly on the lips. “In that case I accept your compliment.”
She rolled over onto her side and wrapped one leg over him and pressed her face against his neck. It had been a most agreeable evening that Mendoza was in no hurry to bring to an end. First he had attended a performance in the patio of Elena’s house-cum-salon performed by the Fanini commedia dell’arte troupe on its way home from Madrid to Rome. The play was inconsequential but still enjoyable, and the subject matter was appropriate—a romantic tale of forbidden and impossible love between a Morisca noblewoman and a Christian aristocrat in Don Juan of Austria’s army during the War of Granada.
As a veteran of that war, he knew better than most of Elena’s guests how inauthentic the play was, but he had no desire to spoil the evening, not when Attorney Izarra was in Madrid and Elena was looking fabulous in a green bodice and a pleated farthingale skirt embroidered with gold threads and pearls. He always enjoyed the company of actors, and the Italians were lively and amusing. After the play they had danced a succession of pavanes and galliards, and he had accompanied Elena on two villancicos by Mudarra on the vihuela, which were well received.
In accordance with their usual arrangements, he left with the last of the guests and pretended to go home, waiting in the shadows near her house till she drew her curtain and closed it. Then he hurried across the street with his face half covered and entered through the servants’ door that her maid had left open for him. By the time he reached her bedroom, she was already in bed with her hair unfastened, and they feasted on each other with an eagerness that was sharpened by the long wait and the element of danger that their liaisons always implied. Because both of them knew what might happen if their affair ever became public knowledge. The cuckolded prosecutor would be obliged to defend his honor regardless of what he did in his own time. He would have the right to kill his wife himself or have her executed, or confine her to a convent. The law also allowed him to have Mendoza killed or challenge him to a duel.
If it came to a duel, Mendoza knew that the odds were in his favor, but the procurador did not have to kill him to end his career, because a mistress was not compatible with the moral standards expected of His Majesty’s judges in public, however many of them might violate these expectations in private. These were not possibilities to be relished, but Elena, more than any woman he had ever met, was a risk worth taking.
“Are you really taking the boy to Aragon?” she asked.
“Why not? Gabriel needs some experience of the world. He hasn’t even been to Madrid. There are boys who join the army even younger. Saravia is happy because he won’t have to pay the full court rate—and he’ll have been promised something from Villareal.”
“Will it be dangerous in Aragon?” she asked him.
“For you, anywhere outside Valladolid or Madrid is dangerous.”
“Not merely dangerous, cariño. Barbarous. Just the thought of the Pyrenees makes me shudder.”
“You never called me ‘darling’ before.”
“Well, tonight you’ve earned it.”
Mendoza grinned. “I’ll wrap up warm. Anyway, Gabriel is looking forward to it. He sees it as an adventure.”
“I also like adventures, Alcalde,” she said, rolling over to one side, “but I don’t like to travel so far in search of them.”
“I’m glad you still think I’m worth exploring.”
“Like the Indies, there are still parts of you waiting to be discovered. And you haven’t bored me—yet.” She stroked his face with the back of her hand. “Who else are you taking on this expedition?”
“Constable Johannes Necker. Not much initiative. But dogged, honest and dependable, like a bloodhound—and tough as nails.”
“Who else?”
“My esteemed cousin Luis de Ventura—perhaps. I haven’t heard from him yet.”
“I don’t know him.”
“He’s a sergeant in the Naples tercio. We fought together in Flanders and Granada. He’s a swordsman, a gambler, a rake and a bit of a rogue. I haven’t seen him in two years, but my mother mentioned to me in a letter that he was in Madrid and in some kind of trouble again—woman trouble. He usually goes to a monastery when that happens.”
“He sounds exciting. But why do you need such a man?”
“Luis is one of the best fighting men I have ever met. And he is absolutely fearless. In Granada he would go off by himself behind Morisco lines. We called him ‘El Invisible.’ He once spent three days at the court of Aben Humeya, the Morisco king, disguised as a Morisco. No one detected him. If you ever get in a fight, it’s good to have Luis de Ventura on your side.”
Elena regarded him with amusement. “You’re rather l
ooking forward to this, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly. These investigations aren’t comfortable. No more drawing classes with Antonio. No comedias. Bad food. No beds. My poor vihuela must remain untouched. And most of all I won’t see you.”
“Thank you for putting me last.”
“It wasn’t listed in order of importance.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And how long will you be gone?”
He shrugged. “It depends on the investigation.”
“You’ll forget me,” she pouted.
“Far more likely that you’ll forget me. Especially if you have any more Italian actors coming by.”
“Such little faith in womankind, Your Honor! Let me prove how wrong you are.”
She clasped her fingers behind his neck and pulled him toward her, and they made love once more, before he got dressed and sneaked out the way he had come. Outside, the streets were completely dark, apart from the occasional faint light from the windows and the glow of a sereno’s brazier. He limped down the middle of the road, eyeing the darker shadows carefully. It was only ten minutes to his house, but at this time of night there was no one he might meet who could bring him anything good at all, and even an encounter with one of his own constables on the nightly ronda might set the wrong tongues wagging.
As he made his way through the darkened streets, he heard the scuttling of rats and the dismal wail of a cat in heat. Above him the sky was bursting with stars and moonlight made it slightly lighter than usual, as he scanned the doorways and porticoes warily for the slightest sign of movement. He had just crossed the Plaza Mayor when he heard the sound of footsteps from behind him. He shifted suddenly to his left, swinging the stick around hard at knee level of the dark shape looming out of the darkness. His would-be assailant cursed as the blow caught him on the side of the left knee, before Mendoza jabbed the stick into his belly.