The Devils of Cardona

by Matthew Carr

  “Remember, Bernardo,” Calvo said in a slurred voice as his two servants walked beside them with torches, “anytime you need help, you know you can depend on me—just like at Lepanto. You need more men and I’ll call out the militia.”

  “I don’t need the militia,” Mendoza replied. “But I do need to make sure my reports get to Madrid at least within a week.”

  “Of course! Franquelo can bring them to me from Belamar. From here the post is very fast.”

  On reaching the inn, Calvo embraced Mendoza once more. “It’s good to see you again. After all these years! Who’d have thought it? And who’d have thought that the man I pulled off that deck would go on to become a judge?”

  “That’s one man with his cojones in a vise,” Ventura murmured as Calvo stumbled away, flanked by his two servants. “And someone should tell him to hold back on the wine and brandy.”

  “He always drank too much,” Mendoza said. “But he wasn’t like this when I knew him. He gave up the law for the legions because he liked to fight. I always expected him to come back.”

  “Well, he should have stuck to soldiering. His wife may be pretty, but a woman like that is not for marrying.”

  Mendoza laughed. “I didn’t know you were such an expert on the subject of marriage, cousin. Now, sleep. Tomorrow we shall be in Belamar.”

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING they left before sunrise. As they rode out onto the darkened plain, they heard a wolf howl from the direction of the mountains farther north, and Mendoza wondered whether he had made the right decision to reject the viceroy’s offer of extra men. By the time they reached Sabiñanigo and the Valle de Tena, the sun had already risen above the mountains to the east, and they rode parallel to the Gállego River across a wide plain flanked by rows of valleys that folded back like waves.

  After about two hours, they crossed the hanging bridge that Calvo had told them about, where they paid yet another exorbitant fee to the toll keeper before crossing into the señorio of Cardona. They followed the road eastward and upward through ravines and passes and stepped valleys dotted with farmhouses, villages and hamlets, interspersed with the occasional crumbling remnants of old defensive towers. The mountains now enclosed them so completely that at times it was not possible for them to see beyond the immediate ravine or valley they found themselves in as they ascended toward the towering massif.

  Much of the road passed through woodland that offered numerous potential points of ambush, whether from bandits or a would-be Morisco avenger with even the most rudimentary grasp of military tactics. The Moriscos of Granada had staged surprise attacks against armed columns that were considerably larger, and Mendoza ordered his men to be especially vigilant. By midmorning they were climbing through a forested slope when a young man on a mule appeared on the road in front of them. He halted his animal and looked warily at their weapons, with one hand poised over the handle of the short pistol protruding from the sash around his waist. As they came closer, Mendoza saw that he also carried a long dagger in his belt. Both were weapons that would have been banned even among Christians in Valladolid, let alone Moriscos, Mendoza thought as Necker approached the man and called out imperiously, “Where are you coming from, sir?”

  “Damián Alarcón from Belamar de la Sierra at your service, señores.”

  “Are you a New Christian?”

  “I am. But what I lack in pure blood I make up for with a true Catholic heart!”

  Necker scowled, and his jaw jutted out even farther. “Do you mock us, Morisco?”

  “No, señor. My mother taught me to be polite to strangers.”

  “And why are you carrying weapons like these?”

  “Because these mountains are dangerous, Your Mercy.”

  “Well, we are officers of the king. This is Licenciado Don Bernardo de Mendoza, alcalde of the Royal Chancery of Valladolid. Do you have reason to fear us, youth?”

  “By God, no,” the young man said. “But being the king’s officers, you will know that it is not illegal for Moriscos to carry weapons in Aragon—especially in these evil times.”

  “So you think you know the law,” Necker thundered, “when your people have been murdering priests and Christians?”

  “I know nothing of that, señores,” the Morisco protested. “I only came back two days ago to see my family. I’m a muleteer. I’m away most of the year. Castile, Andalusia, Portugal—I’ve been everywhere, and now I’m going back to Zaragoza to work. If I don’t get there tomorrow, I’ll lose my job.”

  Mendoza nodded at Necker to let him go, and they continued on their way until the road leveled out and they emerged onto a wide cultivated valley, where men and women were working side by side. At the far end of the plain, a cluster of white houses cascaded down a sloping promontory that gave out onto a narrow ravine, and Mendoza knew even before Franquelo told them that they had almost reached Belamar de la Sierra. The road led directly through the valley, past men, women and children working the fields and orchards with forks, hoes and scythes. Others were leading mules piled with herbs, hay and firewood. As they came closer, Mendoza saw the high cliff at the upper end of the town and the church tower farther down toward the ravine, where men and women were working on terraces cut into the hillside below the old medieval walls.

  The valley did not look like a hotbed of murder, heresy and sedition. On the contrary, everything emanated a timeless rustic serenity, from the barking dogs and the birds of prey lazily hovering overhead to the tolling bells that counted out eleven o’clock.

  “How do you tell the Old Christians from the Moriscos?” Gabriel whispered as they rode into the main entrance to the village.

  “The Moriscos are the ones with horns and tails,” replied Ventura.

  The houses were built in the Aragonese style, tall and narrow with few windows and tiled roofs that sloped down on both sides in a V shape and brick or stone walls. The ones that faced out onto the road and the valley were built so close together that they made a natural defensive wall, with a single opening at the road that was barely wide enough for a carriage or a cart to pass through. The road went straight past a lavadero, where a group of women washing piles of clothes at a sheltered stone trough stopped to look at them warily as they rode up the narrow, winding street. Other people stopped and stared at them with expressions that might have been hostile or fearful or both. At the front Necker looked around him with a belligerent expression, while Mendoza glanced down at the even narrower streets and cul-de-sacs that once again reminded him of the Morisco towns and villages of Granada.

  It was clear from the bare, unpaved streets to the narrow windows, many of which had no glass and were covered with sheets of greasy transparent paper or nothing at all, that this was not a prosperous village. Mendoza was conscious of the eyes watching them from the darkened interiors, and some women actually pulled their children back into the doorways as they rode past. It was not until they reached the Plaza Mayor that they found themselves on cobblestones as they drew up their horses in front of a nondescript two-story building painted with a faded pink, which Franquelo said was the village hall.

  On the opposite side of the square, there was a bakery and a butcher shop, whose customers stood watching them with the same wary suspicion they had already encountered. They had barely dismounted when they heard voices coming toward them, and a moment later about twenty armed men came into the square carrying an assortment of swords, daggers and farming tools.

  “What is this, Vicente?” Franquelo asked one of them. “Are you going to war?”

  A sullen, handsome young man stepped nervously forward, holding a short sword. “We heard strangers with guns had entered the town,” he said. “We thought they were bandits.”

  “Well, you can put your weapons away. This is Judge Mendoza from Valladolid, come to bring the king’s justice to those who have murdered his subjects!”

&
nbsp; “And we bid him welcome.”

  Mendoza turned as the door of the village hall opened and a tall, upright-looking man with a gray beard and a mane of white hair stepped into the square. He appeared to be in his early fifties, though his blue eyes seemed much younger than his tanned and deeply lined face.

  “Good afternoon, señores,” he said. “I am Dr. Pedro Segura, physician and mayor of Belamar. I’ve been expecting you. Someone like you anyway. What can I do for you, Your Honor?”

  “I need food and lodging for myself and my men until my investigation is completed.”

  “Well, we have no inn in Belamar—only a tavern. Didn’t Constable Franquelo tell you that? You’d be better off in Cardona.”

  “We’re staying here,” Mendoza said firmly. “Even if we have to sleep in a barn.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I have two rooms and a storeroom at my dispensary. I’m sure they will cook for you at the tavern if you buy your food. My daughter can assist you as well.”

  Mendoza thanked him. “I also need a room where I can take statements and depositions and a secure place where any prisoners can be detained.”

  “You can use my office. There’s a back room there with a solid door and a stable in the dispensary. And there’s also the seigneurial prison in Cardona.”

  “Any prisoners will be held under my jurisdiction, not the seigneurial courts. And one more thing. I want the town crier to announce our investigation first thing tomorrow morning. My scribe will give you the exact wording for the proclamation later.”

  “Will that be necessary, Your Honor? This is a village. Everyone will know what you’re doing by the end of the evening.”

  “This is a royal investigation, not a rumor.”

  “As you wish.”

  • • •

  THEY FOLLOWED SEGURA to a three-story stone house on a street behind the village hall and led their animals through the wide double door and into the stable past the fireplace alcove and stairwell, next to the little kitchen. After unpacking their weapons and saddlebags, they went up the narrow stone stairs and into a large open room with two smaller rooms at the back. Mendoza was pleased to see that one of them contained a double bed as he looked around at the bag of surgical tools lying on a table near the window, the shelves bearing glass bottles and apothecary jars containing ointments, powders, crushed herbs and the skeletons and skulls of mice, rabbits and sheep, plus anatomical prints on the walls showing muscles, bones and veins.

  “I see you’re a student of Vesalius,” he observed.

  “Is there any doctor worthy of the name who isn’t?” Segura said. “This used to be my parents’ house. Now I use it as an apothecary and a consulting room. My hope one day is to turn this building into a small hospital for the people in the area. I assume that you and your page will stay here. Your men can sleep upstairs. My sons will clear it out for you and see if they can find some more mattresses.”

  Mendoza examined the titles on the shelves while Ventura, Necker and the two militiamen carried their bags and weapons upstairs. Some of them were old leather-bound copies, but the majority were folios without covers. It was an eclectic and wide-ranging collection for a country doctor in a remote mountain town. In addition to the Bible and the catechism, there were editions of Ambroise Paré’s Journeys in Diverse Places, in addition to Amadis of Gaul, El Lazarillo de Tormes and La Celestina, Pedro de Medina’s Book of Cosmography, and an assortment of medical texts that included Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica, a French translation of Hippocrates and Castilian translations of Galen and Avicenna.

  “Did you know that Lazarillo is on the Index now?”

  “I didn’t,” Segura said. “Well, that’s a pity.”

  “It doesn’t bother me, but an inquisitor might see things differently.”

  Segura sighed and took the book down from the shelf. “Better burn it then,” he said.

  “But there must be at least twenty books here!” Gabriel exclaimed. “And some of them are in French and Latin.”

  “Some of them were given to me by the countess and her late husband,” replied Segura. “And many of us speak French in these mountains. I studied medicine in Paris. You like books, young man? So do I. Have you read The Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa? A noble tale!”

  The third floor, as was the custom in the country, was a winter storehouse filled with fruit, grain and vegetables, and two of Segura’s sons now dragged up two mattresses for Ventura, Necker and the two militiamen to share. Mendoza asked to be taken to the scene of the crime, and they followed Segura once again back into the street. The church was a solid white building with a sloping slate roof, its stained-glass windows reminding Mendoza of some of the smaller churches in Castile rather than the rounded Romanesque churches that he had seen while coming up through the mountains, but the horseshoe arches on the bell tower suggested that at least part of it was of much older construction.

  “Was this a mosque?” he asked.

  Segura said it had been until 1524, when the Moors of Belamar were baptized. It had remained unused since Father Panalles’s murder, he said, because it had not yet been purified, but they continued to use the bells to mark the hours. Inside, they could still smell the slightly sweet and pungent combination of incense and spilled blood as they looked around at the thick stone arches, the alcoves containing headless or broken statues and the slashed sanbenitos.

  “This is where we found him,” Franquelo said, pointing to the bloodstained altar.

  “Who found him first?”

  “His maid, Inés. She’s moved back to her parents’ house in Villamayor since the murder. It’s about an hour from here.”

  “I want to speak to her. Bring her to the town hall tomorrow.”

  “With respect, Your Honor, we already questioned her when the corregidor came here. She didn’t hear anything or see anyone.”

  “I haven’t questioned her,” Mendoza said.

  Some footprints were still visible in the dried blood, and he placed his boot alongside them and asked Necker to do the same. “One of them had boots—and large feet, too,” he said. “Even larger than yours.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Necker as Mendoza followed the dark streak where the priest’s body had been dragged to the altar. There was blood all down the side of it and a thicker pool on its surface. He walked carefully around it and followed the trail of bloody footprints to the lectern, where a large leather Bible had been slashed with a knife and its pages torn. The headless statue of the Virgin also bore white marks that looked like blows or stab marks, and there were Arabic letters written in red on the wall behind it. It was impossible to compare the Arabic with the handwriting on the note that Villareal had given him, except for the fact that the message on the wall was neater and more level, and whoever had written it had clearly taken his or her time.

  “Do you know what this means?” Mendoza asked.

  “I don’t speak Arabic,” Segura replied.

  “Dr. Segura, I’m not the Inquisition,” Mendoza said impatiently.

  “I don’t speak it,” Segura insisted.

  Ventura peered at the wall. “‘Slay the unbelievers wherever you may find them,’” he read.

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Mendoza said as Segura and Franquelo looked at his cousin in astonishment. “I assume you examined the priest’s body?”

  “I did, Your Honor,” Segura replied. “His throat was cut, and he suffered ten separate wounds from sword and dagger. His skull was also shattered by a heavy weapon. It was some kind of pointed mace.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because of the hole it made. The same weapon was used to destroy the head of the Virgin, as you can see.” Segura showed him the stone head of the black Virgin and the conical hole that had cracked it.

  “Does anyone from the village carry a weapon like that?”


  “Absolutely not. The people here are mostly peasants and farmers. A weapon like that is a soldier’s weapon.”

  “Peasants and farmers can be soldiers, too,” Mendoza said. “Especially when they have someone to lead them. Someone who acts as their champion.”

  “If you mean the Redeemer, I assure you that he did not come from the village.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because the existence of such a thing could not be concealed!”

  “And you would reveal it if you knew?”

  “Yes I would,” Segura said firmly. “Because a man like this can only bring disaster to all Moriscos. I believe that the priest was killed by at least three men.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “The variety of the size and depth of the wounds. The angle at which they were struck. And no one from Belamar would be capable of such a thing.”

  “What about from outside the village?”

  Segura’s face hardened. “You won’t find many people around here who mourned his death. Father Panalles was a drunkard, a lecher, a thief and a disgrace to his faith.”

  “You defame a man of God in his own church?” Franquelo said.

  Segura did not even look at him. “The truth defames no one. Everyone knows what kind of priest he was. Especially you.”

  “With respect, sir,” said Franquelo, “you cannot believe what these people say about anything.”

  “That’s enough, Constable. Leave us. All of you. Wait outside,” Mendoza ordered. “I wish to speak to Dr. Segura alone.”

  Franquelo glared at Segura and followed the others out of the church, leaving the two men standing by the bloodstained altar.

  “These are serious allegations,” Mendoza said.

  “Everything I say is true. There is nothing that this priest didn’t do to us. How many times did I sit here in this church and listen to him standing by this altar insulting and dishonoring us—even during Mass! In the middle of a sermon, he would abuse us and tell us that we were heathen swine who could not be saved. We were not worthy of his God—his God!” Segura grimaced. “That man could not have been further from God. Sometimes he was so drunk that he used to shout and swear at us—in church! He fined us if we missed saints’ days or feast days, or for anything that came into his mind. If the people didn’t have money, they had to bring him a chicken or a basket of fruit or perform some service for him. He took our women, even our wives and daughters! Some of our women, when they went to confession, were told that if they didn’t sleep with him, he would report them to the Inquisition for some religious offense or denounce their husbands.”