by Matthew Carr
“God bless you,” Ventura said. The doorway was so low that he could not stand fully upright, and he had to bend his head as he stepped across the dirt floor. The only furniture in the hut consisted of a stool and a mattress. Crumpled blankets lay on piles of straw where a little boy appeared to be sleeping. The fireplace had no real chimney except for a hole in the roof, and there was so much smoke that it was an effort for Ventura to stop himself from coughing. Nevertheless, he was hungry enough to eat whatever was in the blackened copper pot, and he was about to sit down on the floor when the montañés pointed toward the stool and shooed his three dirty and sickly-looking children outside as though he were scattering flies.
He murmured something to one of them and shut the door behind him. Ventura unbuckled his sword frog and laid his weapons on the ground. He perched on the little stool and looked at the little wooden cross on the wall above the fireplace, where the woman was spooning stew into a bowl. It was a good thing that this couple believed in salvation, he thought, because their lives on earth had clearly not gone well. The woman had no more flesh on her than her husband did, and poverty had stripped her face of whatever womanly features it might once have had. She served him a plate of chickpeas flavored with flecks of meat, which he spooned down greedily despite the fetid smell, the smoke, and the occasional agitated groan emanating from the child on the bed.
“Is he sick?” Ventura asked.
The woman nodded and went over to the mattress to dab at the boy’s forehead with a damp cloth. So far she had not said a word, and Ventura sensed that they were not used to talking to strangers and probably not even to each other. He was still staring at the sick child when he felt the sharp blade pressing against his throat.
“One move and I’ll gut you like a fish,” the man said. “Leanor, take his pistols.”
The woman gaped at him uncomprehendingly. “Andrés, what are you doing?”
“This is the alguacil the boys in the forest are after. Whoever hands him over gets a reward. Move, woman!”
“You’re making a mistake, Andrés,” Ventura warned. “Now, let me go and I’ll forget this happened.”
“You’re the one who made a mistake!” Andrés pressed the knife a little deeper, till Ventura felt a trickle of blood down his throat. Leanor approached him from the bed and nervously unclipped his two pistols. As she did so, Ventura kicked out with one foot, catching her in the belly, and propelled himself backward with the other. Leonor fell onto the child, who let out a cry as Andrés tumbled toward the door behind Ventura and dropped the knife. He had no time to pick it up before Ventura was straddling him, holding the parrying dagger against his throat.
“Now, that is no way to treat a guest, is it?” he said.
“God’s mercy! Don’t kill me!” Andrés pleaded.
Ventura had forgotten about the woman behind him, but she now struck him a fearful blow across the head with one of the pistols and sent him reeling to the floor. Leanor stood watching with her hands over her mouth as Andrés retrieved his knife and stabbed Ventura in the shoulder. Ventura grunted and jammed the poniard down into one of his bare feet, pinning him to the floor. Andrés let out a howl and lay clutching his bleeding foot as the door burst open and the three children ran toward their father shouting and crying. Ventura extracted the blade and wiped it on the shepherd’s patchwork tunic as Leanor crouched by the fire and pointed the pistol at his chest with both hands.
“You need to take the safety catch off first,” he said with a sigh. “And I wouldn’t bother, because that one’s not loaded. Now, give it to me. It’s only because of your children that I’m not going to kill your husband—if that’s what this creature is. But you’d better find something to stop this bleeding before I lose patience with the pair of you.”
For a few moments, Leanor’s face had been illuminated with a fervid mixture of desperation and hope, as if she had briefly glimpsed the possibility that some good fortune had finally come her way, but now she handed over the pistol and became once again the resigned mountain woman that she’d been only a few minutes before. Had it not been for the pain in his head and shoulder, Ventura might have felt sorry for her, but even after she had tied a rough bandage around his shoulder with a piece of torn shirt, he continued to bleed, and he dabbed the back of his head and realized that he was also bleeding where she’d hit him.
It was turning out to be another very bad day, and there was now a real possibility that after all the battles he’d fought in, death might finally overtake him in this Pyrenean hovel. Andrés was still writhing and cursing on the floor, and Leanor bent down to tend his bleeding foot, telling him that he was an idiot and it served him right. Ventura stumbled out into the daylight and staggered past the children, who were staring fearfully at his pistols and sword and his soaking shoulder. He felt dizzy and sick, but he noticed that the oldest boy was missing. He knew that the boy had gone to alert the bandits, and he stumbled over to the donkey and climbed onto its bony back.
It was not much of a beast, but a donkey had carried Jesus into Jerusalem, and this one might just be enough to get him back to Belamar.
• • •
IT TOOK SLIGHTLY OVER TWENTY MINUTES to reach the turnoff toward Las Palomas and another half an hour before Mendoza saw the church tower protruding out of the cluster of houses up ahead. The village was situated in a shallow river valley, and surrounded by woods, which made it possible to get close without being seen by the peasants working in the fields nearby. Mendoza and Necker walked their horses into the woods and made their way around the edge of the valley toward the village, until they found a vantage point overlooking the church. The cemetery was small, like the village itself, and they could see the three empty carts that had left Belamar with the bodies earlier that morning drawn up alongside a single-story annex to the church. At least ten men were digging graves among the uneven rows of tombstones that protruded up like broken teeth from behind a low stone wall, and even from a distance Segura’s mane of white hair was visible.
For the rest of the afternoon, they watched the workers climbing in and out of graves with picks and shovels, and the sound of saws and hammers from the annex mingled with the sound of birdsong all around them. From time to time, Segura emerged to inspect the graves, and his sons emerged from the annex and walked to the nearby river carrying wooden buckets, which they filled with water and carried back to the church. It was nearly dusk when they finally stopped, and Segura came out of the building and walked around the cemetery once again. The work had clearly been completed to his satisfaction, and the gravediggers gathered their tools and left the cemetery on two of the carts. Soon afterward Segura and his sons left the annex and rode on the remaining cart back toward the main road, past the laborers returning from the fields.
Mendoza waited until it was completely dark before picking up the unlit torch he had brought with him.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“May I ask what we’re looking for, sir?”
Mendoza suppressed a smile. There were not many alguaciles who would have waited for nearly eight hours before asking that question, but Johannes Necker was a man whose patience was matched by a boundless trust in Mendoza’s judgment.
“I’m not even sure myself,” he replied as he set off toward the cemetery with the torch in his hand. It was a moonless night, and despite the faint glow from some of the houses in the village, there was no possibility of being seen as he stepped over the cemetery wall and carefully made his way through the rows of tombstones and little crosses and the open graves with mounds of earth piled beside them.
The door to the annex was unlocked, and he stepped inside and closed it behind him. It was pitch-dark inside the room, and he could smell burned flesh, wood and a scent of almonds as he crouched down and rubbed the flint and steel together till the char cloth ignited, before touching the little flame against the tip o
f the torch. The fat immediately caught fire, and in the wavering light he saw eleven coffins laid out on the floor, one of which was little more than a large wooden box, and the table against the wall that was covered in wood shavings.
He balanced the torch against the wall and drew his sword, kneeling over one of the coffins. It was easy to pry open the few nails that held the lid down, and he lifted it back and held the torch over it to reveal the body, wrapped in a white shroud lying on a bed of stones with the glass of water and the two bowls filled with raisins, figs and nuts that had been placed alongside it. The smell of almonds was much stronger now, and he realized that it was coming from the sheet. There was no need to look in the other coffins, because he knew what they contained, and he shut the lid again and gently tapped the nails down with the hilt of his sword before putting out the torch.
He left the annex, closed the door behind him and walked quickly back to the copse where Necker was waiting with the horses.
“Did you find anything, sir?” he asked.
Mendoza shook his head. “Nothing of interest. Just bodies and coffins.”
Necker looked even more mystified now. The alguacil had not fought in Granada and was not familiar with Moorish burial practices. He did not know that the food was to provide the soul of the deceased with sustenance until the two angels arrived to take it to paradise; that the body had been washed with scented water and its fingers and toenails cut before being turned on its side to face toward Mecca; that the stones had been laid on the floor of the coffin in order to separate the body of the deceased from the Christian soil in which he was to be buried the next day.
Mendoza did not tell him any of these things, because there were things that it was better for the devout constable not to know in case they offended his Christian conscience and prompted him to ask why they did not report them to the Inquisition. Mendoza’s priorities were very different from those of the Holy Office, but he now knew that both the countess and Segura had attempted to deceive him, and if they had lied to him about that, then it was also possible that they had deceived him about many other things as well.
• • •
THE NEXT DAY he returned to the village with Necker and Gabriel to attend the funerals. By the time they arrived, a small crowd had already gathered around the church, a crowd that included Segura and his family, the friends and neighbors of the del Río family and Moriscos from Las Palomas itself. The countess’s carriage was also drawn up outside the church, and Mendoza saw her talking to Father García along with her daughter and Susana while the bailiff and a handful of servants and militiamen hovered nearby. She nodded in acknowledgment of his arrival, but Mendoza sensed that she was surprised to see him there.
For the second time in three days, the priest celebrated a requiem Mass, and afterward the coffins were carried out and laid alongside the graves, where the gravediggers who’d been there the previous day were already waiting with their shovels. Father García commended the eleven slain Moriscos to the everlasting protection of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Blessed Mother Mary, and the countess stood beside him in her black veil with Carolina and Susana on either side of her, intoning the prayers with the same somber intensity that Mendoza had observed in Cardona.
Behind her, Segura was also praying with such sincerity that even the most observant Inquisition official would have had no reason to doubt his faith. Some of the Moriscos wept as the gravediggers began to fill the graves with earth, and the countess’s daughter, Carolina, began to weep, too. The countess held Carolina’s hand, and it was obvious that she was making a considerable effort not to cry herself. She left when the service was over, and he knew that she was avoiding him as she walked back toward her carriage still holding her daughter’s hand, followed by Susana, Sánchez and her servants. One of her servants helped Carolina into the carriage, and the countess was just about to follow her when she saw Mendoza heading toward them.
“Don Bernardo,” she said. “So you found time to come after all.”
“I did, my lady,” Mendoza replied. “And I would very much like a word with you.”
“Can you come to Cardona in the afternoon?” she asked. “Carolina is not feeling well.”
“I need to speak to you now,” Mendoza insisted. “On a very urgent matter.”
Both Sánchez and Susana were visibly taken aback by his rudeness, and the bailiff looked as though he were about to intervene, but the countess nodded, and the two of them walked together in silence along the road leading from the village, with Susana trailing a short distance behind them.
Mendoza waited until they were out of earshot before asking, “How long have you known that Dr. Segura is an alfaquí?”
Her lips parted slightly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“With respect, Countess. I think you do. I think you know very well that Dr. Segura is a Moorish preacher. I also think you know what’s inside those coffins. The del Río family were not buried as Christians.”
There was a faint pinkish tinge on her porcelain cheeks now as she stared at the gravediggers filling in the graves on the other side of the cemetery wall. “Dr. Segura is a good man,” she said finally. “One of the most honorable men I have ever met. He cares deeply about his family and his community. And he also happens to believe the same thing that I do.”
“Which is?”
“That each of us must be saved in our own sect.”
Mendoza was momentarily taken aback on hearing the same words he had once heard shouted from the stake more than twenty-five years before by the Lutheran nun during the great auto of Valladolid.
“Even if it requires a gross deception like this?” he asked.
“The Church has left the Moriscos no other choice.”
“But this is heresy, Countess.”
“Indeed.” She let out a despairing sigh. “That is what it is called. And now I suppose you will report me to the Inquisition—and Dr. Segura, too?”
“I have told you I am not an inquisitor, my lady. If you can help me with my investigation, then perhaps it will not be necessary to mention matters that are not strictly pertinent to it.”
“I have no information to give you. If I had, I would have told you.”
“Then I advise you to talk to Dr. Segura. Tell him that if I don’t get some very significant assistance by midday tomorrow I shall send a letter to Inquisitor Mercader to report what he and his sons have been doing here.”
“But if Dr. Segura is arrested, he will be burned,” she protested.
“Then I advise you to persuade him to cooperate.”
She looked at him reproachfully. “Is this how you enforce the king’s justice, Licenciado?”
“Those who try to deceive me have no right to question my methods, Countess.”
She remained silent as they walked back to the carriage. Sánchez looked at Mendoza with suspicion and undisguised hostility, and Susana was staring at her mistress with an anxious expression. From across the churchyard, Susana’s father was also watching him curiously. Mendoza did not acknowledge any of them. The countess’s servants and vassals certainly took a great deal of interest in their mistress’s welfare, he thought, or else they themselves had reason to be concerned about what she might have told him. He did not take pleasure from using the Inquisition as an instrument of pressure, but he could not help feeling mildly pleased with himself. Because whatever came of this strategy, at least he was beginning to make things happen instead of drifting along at the mercy of events. His sense of satisfaction lasted almost until they reached Belamar, when Daniel came riding toward them and announced that Sergeant Ventura had returned from the mountains and urgently needed a doctor.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
n the early hours of the morning, the most powerful man in the world awoke in pain in his darkened chamber at San Lorenzo de El Escorial. This morning the gout was particu
larly bad, spreading through his bones and joints till it seemed that every part of him was on fire. He tried to relieve it by turning from one side to the other, but by the time the clock struck five, the pain was so awful and so overwhelming that it was only through an effort of willpower that he could prevent himself from moaning or crying out loud. As he lay there alone in the darkness in the canopied bed, he imagined his body in the same way that he imagined his country, as a fortress under siege by cruel and barbaric foes intent on its subjugation and destruction, and the thought of the satisfaction that his enemies would take in his agony steeled him to resist and endure the onslaught.
He drew strength also from the pictures of saints on his walls and the metal crucifix in his hands, whose cross of thorns, ribs and nailed feet he caressed to remind himself of an agony that was infinitely worse than anything he had suffered or would suffer. He thought of San Lorenzo, roasted alive on a gridiron, and all the other Christian martyrs who had suffered torments on behalf of the faith, and the bones of the saints in the reliquary in the monastery. He told himself that the suffering God had chosen to inflict on his earthly body was a punishment for his sins, that the body was merely the carriage that would bear his soul during its brief passage through the world as his wives and so many of his children had already been borne, and that he would be reunited with all of them someday.
He knew that that happy day might not be far off. At the age of sixty-two, he had already lived four years longer than his father, whose body had been so racked by gout and piles and so exhausted by his years in the saddle and the wars he’d fought on behalf of the faith that he’d been forced to abdicate. Long before his death, his father had lost his teeth, so that he was forced to suck and slurp his food, but his father had never complained, and nor would he. At six o’clock his manservants drew back the wooden doors to his bedchamber. A wan gray light filtered in from the study while they entered the room as silently as ghosts to empty his chamber pot and dress him. The Hammer of Heretics sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the swifts shrieking outside the window before forcing his stiff body upright so that they could put on his slippers and dressing gown. Soon afterward Secretary Vázquez brought the morning’s first papers to his desk, and the king spent the next two hours working his way through them, scratching or dictating messages with his arthritic hand before signing them off with the signature “I the King” that messengers would take by land and sea to the most remote corners of the empire, from Antwerp and Lisbon to Lima and New Spain to Naples and Sicily.