The Devils of Cardona

by Matthew Carr

  The man fell to the ground with a yelp and lay clutching his knee as Mendoza drew his sword and held the point against his throat. “You know I’m entitled to kill you in self-defense, thief?”

  “I’m not a thief! I was on my way home!”

  “Really? Then what’s this?” Mendoza kicked the wooden club away from his hand. “Get up and crawl back into the sewer you came from. If I see you again, this will be your last night on earth.”

  The thief got up and hobbled quickly away, cursing under his breath. Mendoza had barely resheathed the sword when he heard the sound of hooves coming toward him. He turned and saw his cousin leading his horse, wearing his familiar wide-brimmed feathered hat with one side pinned back.

  “That was well done, Bernardo,” Ventura said. “I’m glad to see that the law hasn’t made you soft. Sergeant Luis de Ventura reporting for duty, Capitán.”

  Mendoza laughed at the mock salute and embraced him. “So it was true, then. You were in the monastery. Were you seeking salvation or sanctuary, cousin?”

  “Both. But I decided to see what you had to offer instead.”

  “A complicated mission to Aragon,” Mendoza said. “Which you will be paid for. Does that tempt you?”

  “Right now anything that pays is tempting. Because this horse is all I own.”

  “The night watchman can take care of him till the morning. We leave tomorrow. And I won’t ask what made you seek refuge with the Hieronymites.”

  “And I won’t ask you what you are doing out at this time of night.”

  Luis laughed the ribald, infectious laugh that Mendoza had heard so many times during the War of Granada. His cousin had never been to his apartment before, and Mendoza ushered him into the dining room and produced some bread, ham and wine from the kitchen.

  “Well, well, Alcalde Mendoza,” Ventura said. “I see you’ve gone up in the world. You earn a better living than I do.”

  “So you’ve left the tercio?”

  “For now. But I was thinking of reenlisting till you gave me a reason not to. And the abbot has told me I have to go out and do good in the world for my penance.”

  Mendoza laughed. “Did he? Well, I’ll do my best to give you that opportunity.”

  Until Ventura had entered the monastery, the two of them had shared the same house and been more like brothers than cousins. Instead Mendoza was the one who had been brought up in his uncle’s house as if he were the man’s son, except for a brief period when Ventura had abandoned the monastic life. These childhood bonds were strengthened when they fought together in the same war and the same army, and the conversation quickly turned to the War of Granada, to the battles they’d fought in and the comrades they’d known and lost, until Mendoza sensed that his mercurial cousin was becoming gloomy.

  “This investigation also involves Moriscos,” Mendoza said. “I assume that won’t bother you?”

  “Not in the slightest. And the farther I am from Madrid, the better.”

  Mendoza shook his head in exasperation as his cousin described his near-fatal adventure with Ágata de la Prada and the cuckolded husband whose minions were hunting for him.

  “You won’t change, will you, cousin?”

  “No. But you certainly have. An apartment like this . . . you only need a wife to complete it.”

  “So Magda was telling me.”

  “And how is Gabriel?”

  “He’s fine. He asks too many questions, and he doesn’t know what questions he shouldn’t ask. As long they are only directed at me, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Does he ever ask about Granada?”

  “No.” Mendoza looked at him severely. “And I don’t tell him. And I don’t want anyone else to do it either.”

  Ventura looked as though he were about to say something and then changed his mind. It was nearly dawn now, and Mendoza offered his cousin a place on his own bed, but Ventura preferred to sleep on the floor. Mendoza brought him a blanket and pillow and retired to his own room. Lying in his own bed, he found himself thinking of Granada, and he saw once again the scene that he knew would be permanently engraved in his mind until the day he died. He saw the elderly Morisca stabbing at him with a sharpened stake in the doorway of the smoke-filled house that had been hit with cannon and musket fire, ignoring his order to surrender. He saw himself run her through with his sword, and he felt once again the same shame and disgust as he walked away. He heard the piercing cry of a child from inside the bombed house and looked in through the gaping hole in the wall where the cannonball had struck, squinting against the smoke at the broken chairs and the overturned table, at the rising flames and the blood and the bodies of five children of various ages, a young woman and a much older man. He saw the toddler, naked and crying out for his mother, sitting among the bodies with the fire coming toward him, and just before he fell asleep, he saw himself go back into the house and carry the child out on his bloodstained arm.

  • • •

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Ventura was greeted with great delight by Magdalena and especially by Gabriel, who had not seen him in more than ten years and barely remembered a man whom he had come to regard as something of a legend.

  “So I understand you’re going to be our escribano,” Ventura said.

  “Si, señor,” Gabriel said. “I can’t wait.”

  “Do you know how to use a sword, boy?”

  “He’s not coming to fight,” said Mendoza. “The quill will be his sword.”

  “You never know,” Ventura said. “Aragon is a lawless place. Haven’t you heard that those Morisco bandits like to eat their victims alive? They roast them over a slow fire first.”

  “Jesus and Mary!” Magda made the sign of the cross. “You cannot take the boy to such a place, Don Bernardo!”

  “See what you’ve done?” Mendoza asked.

  “Only joking, Magda.” Ventura grinned. “I’ve been to Aragon many times. It’s perfectly safe. And don’t worry about the fighting, boy. It’s probably the only thing I’m good for. And your guardian can fight, too, by the way. A judge of cape and sword.”

  “And a veteran of Granada and Lepanto,” Gabriel said proudly. “But he never talks of it!”

  “Some things are better forgotten than remembered,” Mendoza replied.

  He had arranged for a carriage to take the three of them to the stables to load the horses and mules, and Magda looked tearful as she came out into the hallway to say good-bye and saw their weapons, knapsacks and saddlebags, and the wooden bureau that contained Gabriel’s writing materials.

  “You’re sure you have enough ink and paper?” Mendoza asked him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Must he go with you, Don Bernardo?” Magdalena pleaded. “Suppose something happens to him?”

  “Now, Magda, we’re going to the Pyrenees—not Barbary.”

  The housekeeper embraced Gabriel and clung on to him, much to his embarrassment and Ventura’s amusement. The carriage stood outside, and they rode over to the stables with their bags, with Ventura riding alongside. Necker was already waiting for them with Daniel and Martín, the two Valladolid militiamen whom Mendoza had managed to wrest from the city council to serve as special constables. Neither of them looked much older than twenty, and Necker towered over them, with his craggy, blocklike face and deep-set green eyes staring out from beneath his three-cornered alguacil’s hat and his slightly protruding jaw that always reminded Mendoza of the king’s father.

  Both of them had served as harquebusiers in the king’s armies during the conquest of the Azores the previous year, and Necker assured Mendoza in his impeccable but heavily accented Castilian that they were men of ability and experience. In addition to pistols, swords and daggers, both men had brought two short matchlock carbines or escopetas, which hung in holsters from their horses’ saddles.

  Mendoza would have prefer
red flintlock carbines in the mountains, but Necker said that they were the only weapons the militia commander had been willing to part with. If Necker was pleased with the two militiamen, he looked less impressed by Ventura and cast an openly disdainful gaze at his plumed hat, his silver-handled sword and crab-hilt parrying dagger, the ornate pistols clipped to his belt and his knee-length deerskin boots. Ventura merely smiled back and looked dubiously at the enormous double-bladed two-hander that was tied to the saddle of Necker’s horse.

  “You don’t see many of those relics nowadays,” he said. “Is it for chopping wood?”

  “It was my father’s sword,” Necker said, bristling.

  “As long as you know how to use it.”

  “I do, sir.” Necker tapped the hilt of the shorter Landsknecht sword that hung from his left side and the pistol that hung from the other. “And I also know how to use these.”

  Mendoza now explained the purpose of the investigation for the first time. Daniel and Martín did not look pleased to hear that they would be away from their homes for some weeks and possibly months in the Morisco lands of Aragon, but the devout Necker’s face darkened when Mendoza told them that a priest had been murdered.

  “So Moors did this?” he growled.

  “That’s what we are going to Aragon to find out.” He noticed that Martín was looking at him with a perplexed expression. “You have a question, Constable?”

  “Yes, sir. Where is Aragon, sir?”

  “It’s in the Pyrenees. Next to France.”

  Martín looked none the wiser. “Where is France?” he asked.

  “You just keep heading north,” Ventura explained, pointing in that direction. “Until you bump into some mountains. Then you cross them.”

  After loading their mules and horses, they rode slowly back to the Palace of the Chancery to pick up the expenses for the journey. Outside the main entrance, horses and carriages were lined up on the street, accompanied by their drivers and servants, and they followed two handcuffed prisoners who were being led to trial by their guards into the main patio, which was thronged with lawyers, judges and oidores in black robes and clients, plaintiffs and defendants waiting for civil and criminal cases, some of whom were already shouting and arguing with one another as notaries and scriveners hurried back and forth clutching sheaves of papers.

  It was the usual bedlam, and Mendoza thought that he would not be sorry to be away from it for a while as he and Necker pushed through the crowd to the accountant’s office. They returned to the waiting horses, carrying four bulging bags of coins, and Mendoza turned his back on the king’s courts and led the expedition out of the city, toward the Crown of Aragon and the distant mountains where His Majesty’s laws were being flouted.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  rom the gallery overlooking the Patio of Santa Isabel, Inquisitor Mercader looked down at the ornate hedges and orange trees, the bubbling water fountain and the white marble walkways with their lobed Moorish arches. As always they charmed and soothed him, and the fact that they had been built by Moors did not detract from his enjoyment. On the contrary it seemed to him a fitting outcome that the Aljafería Palace that the infidel invaders had constructed centuries ago in Zaragoza and inscribed with prayers to Allah and his false prophet had now become the headquarters of the Inquisition of Aragon. If anything this transformation only enhanced the pleasure that he took in the serrated stucco workings, the geometrical designs and gold-paneled ceilings.

  Such buildings were no longer possible in Spain, not since the last conversions of the Aragonese Moors in the second decade of the century. Some of their mosques and public buildings had already been torn down or reconditioned centuries before, and those that remained had undergone the same fate. But it was no bad thing to retain some reminders of what had once been and never could be again, and the massive walls and towers and the defensive ditch provided a formidable barrier against an Aragonese population that, unlike that of Castile, had never wanted the Holy Office in the first place and still resented its presence after nearly a century.

  Beyond these walls lay a kingdom infected with heresy and sedition, where Moriscos brazenly followed the law of Muhammad with the complicity of their Christian masters. And nowhere was the infection more advanced than in Cardona, in the mountains of the far north where the infidel Moor known as the Redeemer had called upon the Moriscos to rise up and make war on all the Christians. Mercader pictured him now like a wild creature—hairy, bearded and wearing a turban, with the stink of the forest and the stain of his poisonous faith on his dark skin—looking down from some mountain cave with mad, staring eyes, the image of his damned trickster Prophet. He imagined the Redeemer in the church at Belamar de la Sierra, standing over the body of the dead priest with his scimitar dripping blood, while the Moriscos laughed and looked on approvingly like the murderous savages they were.

  These images filled Mercader with disgust. At the same time, he felt a sense of satisfaction and keen anticipation as he imagined the Morisco killer who had dared to threaten him by name, gazing down from his mountainous lair and dreaming of entering Zaragoza with the sultan’s army. Whoever this monster was, he no doubt believed, like his fellow heretics, that he was beyond the reach of the law and the Inquisition. But he was wrong. Because all this was about to change, for now the time prophesied by Luke was coming, in which there would be “nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.”

  These thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Secretary Bleda appeared at the top of the stairs, accompanied by the tonsured commissioner of the Huesca Inquisition, Domingo Herrero, and his green-clad familiar Diego Pachuca.

  Mercader looked at them in surprise. “Good afternoon, señores,” he said. “I did not expect you to return so soon. Have you made arrests?”

  “We have not, Excellency,” Herrero replied nervously.

  “And why is that?” Mercader’s voice was calm, but his eyes were as hard as polished glass.

  “We were not able to enter Belamar, Your Excellency. We were prevented from doing so.”

  “Prevented by whom?”

  “By Sánchez!” replied Pachuca indignantly. “He said the Holy Office was not permitted to enter Cardona without the approval of the Cortes.”

  “Not permitted?” Mercader repeated scornfully. “So the Inquisition must ask the Aragonese parliament for permission even when a priest is murdered and a church defiled?”

  “We did, Excellency,” Herrero said. “We told Sánchez we had come to read out the Edict of Grace. He insisted that we had no legal authority.”

  “How fortunate that we have bailiffs to explain the king’s laws to us. I assume he didn’t stop you by himself?”

  “No, Your Excellency,” Pachuca replied. “He had forty men with him. And well armed, too. He said the countess had given orders that no one was to enter Belamar without her permission.”

  “So this Redeemer has threatened the Inquisition directly. He has killed a priest and promised to kill more Christians. Yet this Christian countess will not allow the Inquisition to enter her estates to find him.” Mercader grimaced and shook his head at the absurdity of the situation he had described. “This will not stand,” he said darkly. “This woman will not defy me.”

  “Baron Vallcarca has been more cooperative, Excellency,” said Herrero. “He has asked us to carry out an investigation at a Morisco village in his señorio.”

  “What village?”

  “Todos Santos, Excellency. The baron has received reports of sorcery and witchcraft there.”

  “And why have I not heard of this place before?”

  “We have only just received information about it,” Herrero replied. “We believe that these reports are sufficient to warrant a full investigation.”

  “Baron Vallcarca is a good and faithful Christian. Very well, you may proceed. B
ut we will return to Belamar. These delaying tactics merely confirm the countess’s complicity in the depraved practices of her vassals. You will await my orders, and the next time you return to Belamar, you will not be stopped.”

  Herrero bowed, and Bleda showed the two of them out. Afterward Mercader remained staring for a long time at the gardens and the wisps of cloud that drifted above the patio. The countess’s latest act of defiance was frustrating. Now letters and petitions would have to be written and representations made to individuals and institutions, a process that might take weeks or months. But the Inquisition was tenacious, and its authority would prevail. Witchcraft and sorcery were of no real interest or importance to Mercader, nor was Todos Santos. What he wanted were the Moriscos of Belamar. It was only a matter of time before he got them.

  And when that happened, the Moriscos and their Redeemer and the mistress who protected them would all discover that no one was immune to God’s justice.

  • • •

  EVERY YEAR, in the first or second week of April, the Quintana brothers brought their sheep back up from their winter pasture on the plain of the Ebro to their home village above the Gállego River for the summer. Their father generally advised them to leave before the other shepherds, in order to keep their herds separate and avoid the confrontations that invariably ensued when they brought their herds up through the valleys and across the old drover routes through the Morisco lands that the shepherds had used for centuries. Every spring and autumn, there were quarrels and fights between the Old Christian mountain men and the Moriscos, and some of them were fatal.

  These fights generally took place when the montañeses drove their cows, goats or sheep right through plowed or cultivated Morisco fields, to the fury of the farmers and peasants who worked on them. Such damage was not always easy to avoid, because the larger herds often strayed from their allotted paths, and the drover routes that shepherds had used for centuries to move their flocks back and forth between the plains and the mountains sometimes led through lands that had been placed under cultivation, where the rights of passage were still disputed by the drovers on the one hand and the lords and their Morisco vassals on the other.