The Devils of Cardona

by Matthew Carr

  “What offenses?”

  “Anything! They didn’t have to be real. He could just invent them, and the Inquisition always believed him. Many people here were taken to the Aljafería because of him. Two men from the town are still serving eight years in the king’s oars because Father Panalles wanted their wives. Three families have lost most of their property. Two women were flogged. I don’t know how many were fined. Most of that was because of Panalles. Your Honor, this was a man who deserved to die, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that his soul is now burning in hell.”

  Mendoza leaned onto his stick to take some of the weight off his aching leg. He had chosen to linger in the church to see how Segura reacted, since it was not uncommon in his experience for criminals to reveal more than they intended at the scene of the crime, but there was nothing in the doctor’s manner to indicate a guilty conscience.

  “Did you have any reason to kill him?” Mendoza looked at him intently.

  “No.” Segura’s face was stonily impassive. “But if I did, I have sufficient medical knowledge to kill a man without stabbing or bludgeoning him to death. And enough humanity to refrain from doing so, and so does everybody else from this village.”

  “Did you report these matters to the proper channels?”

  “Of course. I wrote letters to the bishop, and I spoke to him when he came to visit us two years ago. I myself went to speak to the archbishop, to the bishop of Jaca, His Excellency Don Pedro de Aragon, and the corregidor Pelagio Calvo.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “His Excellency Bishop Santos promised to look into it. Don Pedro also said he would report the matter to his superiors. The corregidor told us to take our complaints to the Church or the Inquisition, not him. Even though his own constable was one of Panalles’s cronies.”

  “You mean Franquelo?”

  Segura nodded. “They gambled and drank together. Franquelo also collected fines and threatened people who refused to pay.”

  “Can you give me the names of anyone who can support these claims?”

  “I won’t denounce my people, Your Honor.”

  “I’m not asking you to denounce anyone. But what you’ve told me raises questions that must be answered. It will be easier if you ask people to come forward voluntarily. Tell them that I will be taking depositions at the town hall all day tomorrow. Tell them no one will be harmed or arrested. But whatever kind of man Father Panalles was, I mean to find out who killed him and see that the perpetrators are punished accordingly. Is that clear?”

  • • •

  SEGURA AGREED AND RETURNED to the village hall while Mendoza asked Franquelo to take them to the rectory. At first glance the sparsely furnished rooms suggested the typical home of a humble country priest, but this impression was quickly dispelled by the unmade bed with its silk sheets and the crucifix on the wall above it, the faint smell of wine and brandy emanating from the kitchen and bedroom, the pack of cards on the kitchen table and the two expensive-looking women’s dresses, which Ventura discovered in the chest of drawers in the bedroom.

  “Did Panalles have any women living with him?” Mendoza asked.

  “Only the maid. And I never saw her wearing clothes like that.”

  “Look at this.” Ventura opened the drawer on the little unit next to the bed and held up a wheel-lock pistol and a powder bottle. “Not a bad weapon for a priest,” he said, stroking the embossed cherry-colored handle. “There are about a dozen balls here. Too bad he didn’t have them with him the day he died.” He knelt down under the bed and pulled out a double-edged sword, followed by a small wooden casket with images of winged angels engraved in its sides. “Maybe this explains the weapons,” he said. The others clustered around him and peered at the tufts of different-colored hair.

  “This is women’s hair,” Ventura said, sniffing at it, “and not just one woman.”

  Mendoza turned to Franquelo. “You knew nothing about this behavior?”

  “No, sir,” the alguacil insisted. “Absolutely not.”

  Mendoza said that he had seen enough, and they were just about to leave when Ventura sat down on the bed, as if testing it.

  “Is it all right if I stay here, Your Honor?” he asked. “I don’t sleep well with vegetables and snoring constables.”

  Necker looked horrified. “You’d sleep in a dead man’s bed?” he asked.

  “Well, he won’t need it, will he?”

  Mendoza had no objections, and they returned to the dispensary, where Segura appeared to tell them that their food was ready. The tavern was not as bad as some of the places they had stayed along the way, with a single table in a dimly lit room that smelled of burned oil, meat and mutton from tallow, with rushes on the dirt floor. The widow Señora Ortega and her daughter, Beatriz, were clearly glad of the custom, and Beatriz immediately caught Ventura’s eye as she served bowls of meat and garbanzos wearing a stained apron that accentuated her wide, curvaceous hips.

  “Well, well,” he said. “I didn’t expect to find such a delicate alpine flower growing in these wild mountains.”

  Beatriz grinned, but Necker looked disapproving as Ventura appreciatively studied the sway of her hips as she returned to the kitchen.

  “Look at that.” He sighed and shook his head. “Enough to make Adam eat a whole orchard, wouldn’t you say, Constable? And her mother isn’t bad either for her age.”

  “I’m a married man!” Necker reminded him.

  “Well, I don’t see your wife here. And what the wife doesn’t see can’t hurt her.”

  “God sees.”

  “Maybe so. But you can always go to confession afterward.”

  The two militiamen snickered until Necker silenced them with a glare. After supper Mendoza returned to the dispensary with Gabriel and dictated the proclamation. He then recited the names and ages of the Quintana brothers and Father Panalles, the cause of death, the position of the wounds and other relevant details. It was nearly ten o’clock when Gabriel finally finished writing. Mendoza undressed for bed while Gabriel took the message for the town crier to Segura at the town hall. He returned five minutes later, holding a lantern in one hand and The Abencerraje in the other, and said that he had delivered it.

  “Well done, boy. You should sleep now.”

  Gabriel nodded gravely but continued to hover. “Sir, may I ask where Don Luis learned to speak Arabic?”

  “You can ask me. But it’s not something you boast about in Spain unless you want to end up in front of an Inquisition tribunal. My cousin was captured in the Granada War. He spent four years in Algiers.”

  Gabriel looked both shocked and amazed. “Don Luis was a slave? I never knew that.”

  “It’s not something he likes to talk about.”

  “But how did he get out? Did he escape?”

  “I paid his ransom.” Mendoza could see that his page was still trying to comprehend how his warrior cousin could have been taken prisoner by the Moors. He sensed that there were a lot more questions his page wanted to ask, but he was too tired to answer them. He blew out the candle and lay back on the narrow bed. “Good night, boy. I’m sorry about what you saw yesterday. The law can be a hard taskmaster, and it demands a great deal from us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gabriel shut the door behind him. By the time he got into his own bed and began to read, the steady, rhythmic breathing from the next room told him that his guardian’s first day in Belamar de la Sierra had come to an end.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  endoza woke up to the sound of a beating drum and the loud blare of a horn, followed by the town crier monotonously intoning the list of His Majesty King Philip II’s kingdoms and possessions. Mendoza had slept well, and he lay on his side, half listening to the familiar preamble: in the name of His Majesty Philip II, king of Castile, of León, of Aragon, of the Two Sicilies, of Jerusalem,
of Portugal, of Navarre, of Granada, of Toledo, of Valencia . . . of the East and Western Indies . . . Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy . . . It was an impressive list that no ruler in the world could match, and yet even the few days that Mendoza had spent in Aragon suggested that the king’s authority was more tenuous than the preamble suggested.

  He was not surprised by the allegations against the priest. There had been many like him in Granada, and complaints from the Moriscos had generally met with the same official inertia from the Catholic clergy. But it was obvious that incompetence and indifference were not limited to the Church. There was no reason to think that Calvo was corrupt, even if some of his subordinates were, but Mendoza had already discovered more about the priest’s death in a few hours than the corregidor had found out in the last month. He now knew that the priest had been killed by more than one man. He knew the weapons that had been used to kill him, and despite Segura’s assurances he had discovered a whole village with sufficient motivation to have done so. Even if the Redeemer did not come from Belamar itself, the priest’s reputation would have made him a suitable target for a Morisco avenger seeking to establish his reputation.

  This was the man Mendoza had been sent to the mountains to find, and as he lay beneath the blanket, he felt daunted by the responsibility that his assignment entailed as the pregonero finally got around to informing the populace that Licenciado Bernardo de Mendoza, criminal magistrate at the Royal Chancery at Valladolid, was conducting an investigation into the murders of the priest Juan Panalles and the Quintana brothers, and that anyone with any information regarding these events should go to the town hall and present it to the alcalde and his officials.

  At last the message ended and the crier and his companions moved off to another street, accompanied by the beating drum and further shrill blasts of the horn. Mendoza stood up in his nightshirt and opened the wooden shutters. The sun was just beginning to touch the slate rooftops, and light puffs of cloud drifted across the sky above the still-shaded street. Below him two women were walking back from the baker’s with loaves wrapped in cloth and immediately fell silent and hurried away when they saw him standing in the window.

  Gabriel came in already dressed and brought him a bowl and pitcher. Mendoza washed his face and, looking into a small mirror, carefully groomed his hair and beard with a comb and scissors while his page laid out his clothes. As a representative of the royal authority, it was important for him to look like a judge even in this far-flung corner of the realm, at least when he was not traveling, and he put on the lined green doublet, velvet black cap and short matching cape and leather shoes that he had brought for his official duties.

  The others were already moving around above them, and when he and Gabriel went downstairs, they were surprised to find Segura sitting on one of the stone benches in the fireplace alcove. A pretty young woman in a white head scarf, a skirt and a shawl was tending the fire. She looked about the same age as Gabriel, with wide, lustrous dark eyes and pinkish lips that made Mendoza think of ripe apricots, and his page stood holding his portable desk in two hands, staring at her as if he’d been dazzled by a bright light.

  “Good morning, señores,” Segura said. “This is my daughter Juana. We thought you might like a fire. And Juana has brought you some breakfast.”

  Mendoza thanked them and smiled amiably at the girl as she went into the kitchen. “Your daughter does you proud,” he said. “How many children do you have?”

  “God has blessed me with seven, Your Grace. She and her sister Susana take after her mother, may she rest in peace. But I still haven’t managed to marry either of them off yet. Juana is a healer, like her mother. She also helps me with patients. Her sister Susana is the countess’s chambermaid.”

  Necker and the two militiamen came downstairs and leaned their swords and escopetas against the wall as Juana returned carrying a basket of bread, eggs and figs. They had just sat down when Ventura came in and smiled broadly at the sight of Juana.

  “Well, good morning,” he said with a bow. “Someone might have warned me that I would run into such a beauty first thing in the morning. I might have shaved at least.”

  Segura laughed and put his arm around his daughter’s waist. “She will make someone a good wife one day. She reads, she cooks, she cures the sick. She also plays chess. She can dance, too, but she doesn’t get that from me!”

  “I’d like to see her dance.” Ventura smiled happily.

  Juana frowned, and Mendoza gave his cousin a warning look. “Gabriel plays chess,” he said.

  “Not very well.” Gabriel was still gazing at Juana like a startled deer. His page had spent too much time with Magda, Mendoza thought, and the Morisca clearly appealed to very different emotions.

  “A fine-looking girl,” he observed after breakfast.

  “I suppose she is,” Gabriel replied.

  “Watch out, boy,” Ventura warned. “Women can lead even good men to madness.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Mendoza. “Without women, this world would be a desert. And I think she liked you.”

  Gabriel looked pleased. “You think so?”

  The others laughed, and even Martín looked amused as Daniel gave him a pat on the back.

  The village hall consisted of a large bare room with a desk, a few chairs and a stone stairway leading up to the next floor. Mendoza sat at the desk and gave his instructions while Gabriel placed the wooden escritorio next to him and set out his quills, his inkwell, his papers and the little bottle of cuttlefish bone to dry the ink. Ventura and Necker were to go door-to-door at all the houses near the church and find out if anyone had seen or heard anything on the morning of the murder. Martín and Daniel were to wait at the door of the village hall with their weapons, in case they were needed to go and bring people in for questioning.

  • • •

  THIS CONTINGENCY soon proved unnecessary, as a stream of men and women came to the office throughout the day to denounce the misdeeds of Father Panalles. Their testimonies universally supported Segura’s allegations. They described a priest who had shamelessly abused his power and blackmailed and exploited his parishioners financially and sexually, whose appetite for attractive young women was not constrained by their marital status or lack of reciprocity.

  Generally the threat of a denunciation to the Inquisition, of either the women themselves or their husbands, brothers and fathers, had been sufficient to get him what he wanted. In some cases Panalles had forced himself physically on his unwilling victims, who had been too frightened to denounce him. One woman claimed to have been ravished in the sacristy. Another said that the priest had forced himself upon her after administering extreme unction to her father. The daughter of a local carpenter sat silently as her father and mother described how the priest had come to the carpenter’s house for more than six months to fornicate with his wife.

  Some of the women had been obliged to visit the priest in the rectory and told Mendoza that he liked them to wear the dresses he kept there and that he would cut off a piece of their hair as a memento.

  Gabriel performed his duties with professional detachment, but Mendoza knew that he was shocked by what he was hearing. The Moriscos were considerably less forthcoming about the manner of the priest’s death than they were about his sinful life. All the attestants denied having killed him and said they had no idea how he had been killed or who might have done it. All of them claimed to have been asleep in their homes on the morning of the murder and could cite relatives or neighbors to prove it. After three hours Ventura and Necker returned with similar results. They had spoken to almost all the residents in the houses around the church, none of whom had seen or heard anyone coming into the town or leaving it that morning.

  After a break for lunch, they returned to the town hall at three, where more Moriscos were waiting to give depositions. The bells had just struck four when Franquelo appeared, bringing the s
ervant girl with him. Of all the witnesses they had spoken to, she was the most frightened and overawed. She made Mendoza think of a beaten dog that expected to be kicked as he politely asked her to sit down.

  “Your name, señorita?”

  “Inés Mejía Pacheco, Your Mercy.”

  “Are you Morisco or Old Christian?”

  “Old Christian, Your Honor! But not that it matters anymore. That pig of a priest ruined me! He made me his whore, and now no one will ever marry me. Even my own family despises me. Now I will have to go to the convent or lead a life of sin!”

  “I advise you to choose the former option,” Mendoza said. “I understand you were with Father Panalles on the morning the priest was killed.”

  “Yes, Your Honor, to my shame! But I saw nothing and heard nothing. I only found him!”

  “You were in the next building when he was being murdered. You really expect me to believe you heard nothing? Not even a cry or a shout or something being broken? I advise you to tell me the truth, woman, or you will go to prison, not a convent!”

  The little maid’s eyes widened in terror, and then her face hardened in an expression of bitter defiance. “Very well, sir. I heard the noises. But I didn’t go to look. And I didn’t call for help because I was afraid, like everyone else. Everyone wanted him dead! Claro, they’ll say they heard nothing, but they heard, and like me they were glad.”