by Matthew Carr
Once again the courtiers laughed, and Mendoza smiled at the mischievous reference to southern Navarre, which the king’s father had annexed to Castile more than sixty years earlier. “But that doesn’t mean that princes must persecute their subjects,” Henry went on. “Here in France, Catholics kill Huguenots and Huguenots kill Catholics, even though all of us are Frenchmen. We’ve seen our cities burned, our women and children slaughtered, our fields laid barren by people who profess to worship the same God. When—if—I become king of France, I will do things differently, if His Most Catholic Majesty and the pope allow me to.”
“Was His Majesty ever approached by Jean Sánchez, the bailiff of Cardona, to seek assistance for a rebellion in Aragon?” Mendoza asked.
Henry spoke in French to Monsieur LaFranc, who shook his head.
“We don’t know that name. But we have heard a great deal of the Countess of Cardona. A remarkable woman by all accounts. Have you met her?”
“I have, Your Majesty.”
“And is she as beautiful as they say?”
“Very much so. And very sought-after.”
Henry smiled with rueful pleasure. “I would also like to seek after her, because a beautiful woman should never be a widow. But my wife and the interests of the state would not stand for it. In any case I wish her well, and I hope that you find a solution to these difficulties. But you cannot do it here. Tomorrow morning you must leave our kingdom. An escort will take you to the frontier to make sure there is no further unpleasantness. After that you must make your own way.”
“We are most grateful to Your Majesty,” Mendoza said, “and very sorry that we have brought these troubles into your kingdom.”
“And I am very sorry for you, Licenciado. Because from what you say, your troubles may only just be beginning.”
• • •
WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS of his guardian’s departure, Gabriel had completed copies of the investigation reports and sent letters to the Marquis of Villareal and Corregidor Calvo. Even though there were no more depositions to be taken down, he continued to spend hours at the village hall with his writing materials, in order to maintain an official presence or to record any new information that might materialize.
On the same day that Mendoza and Segura left for France, Martín returned from Cardona to bring new supplies of paper and ink, just as Gabriel was preparing a report for Villareal. He still found the militiaman as frosty and unapproachable as he had during the journey up from Valladolid, and he was surprised when he came over to the desk and stood silently watching with a fascinated and almost reverential expression as Gabriel wrote out his report.
“How long did it take you to learn to write like that?” he asked.
Gabriel shrugged. “I learned to read and write at the colegio. When I was twelve my guardian bought me Juan de Icíar’s The Most Delicate Art of Writing a Perfect Hand. I used to copy the letters every day. My guardian also taught me how to write reports. There’s a special way of writing them and certain phrases you have to use. And you have to learn to keep your letters small, straight and even, so that you don’t waste paper.”
“I would love to learn to read and write,” Martín said. “If I could, I might not have had to join the army. I could have worked in my father-in-law’s shop.”
“I can teach you.”
For the first time since Gabriel had known him, Martín’s face softened, and he looked at the younger man uncertainly. “You could do that?”
“Of course. We could start, anyway. And I can continue in Valladolid.”
“Not me, chico.” Martín rapped his helmet with his knuckles. “There’s nothing inside this helmet. That’s why I’m in the army.”
“How do you know if you’ve never tried? All we need is a chalkboard. Segura has one in his dispensary. We can start today.”
That afternoon Gabriel wrote out the first three letters of the alphabet and helped Martín copy them. Afterward the militiaman was glowing with pride, and Gabriel knew that the ice was finally broken. These classes gave him something else to do, in addition to patrolling the village with Necker, Martín and Ventura, who had gotten out of bed the day after Mendoza’s departure in spite of Segura’s instructions. After nearly a month in Belamar, Gabriel now knew each of its streets and recognized many of its six hundred–odd inhabitants enough to nod or say hello to them. Each day he passed the women washing their clothes in the river or pounding and wringing them at the stone trough in the communal lavadero, sitting outside their homes sewing patches on clothes, spinning wool or grinding corn with a pestle and mortar; the shepherds leaving their homes with their animals and their small flocks of sheep and goats; the peasants and laborers departing for the fields in the early morning with their hoes, picks and shovels.
He saw the Moriscos on the terraces or in the valley digging, scratching and picking at the hard soil, dragging wooden plows by hand or oxen, opening or closing the irrigation channels that led down from the water deposit higher up or carrying water from the wells, bent over the little plots or gardens outside the town where they grew their own vegetables, pulling up weeds from rows of grapes or pruning olive and almond trees. Each day he said good morning to the old men and women who sat outside their homes drowsing in the sun. He passed Carlos, the mad orphan with one eye who called him “Jesus,” whom various families fed and looked after among them. In the early evenings, he saw the woodcutters bringing back piles of branches from the forest on the other side of the ravine, the children playing blindman’s buff or fighting one another with wooden swords.
In Valladolid he was used to the daily clatter of carriages, carters and horses, to the cries of water carriers and street vendors calling out their wares. Here the day began with the sound of the cockerel crowing before dawn and ended with high-pitched shrieks of swifts wheeling above the village in the early evening. He realized that he had gotten used to Belamar and the valley below, to the point where it was Castile that now seemed like a foreign country, and he was able to tell what time of day it was from the shadow cast by the sun against the surrounding mountains, and he had grown to look forward with pleasure each day to the warm purple glow that bathed the town at sunset as the darkness slowly flowed into the ravine below like water.
All this had become his world, and so, too, was the pervasive fear and anxiety that percolated through the village. It was evident in the strained faces of the Morisco laborers and their families working in the fields, in the sentries who continued to guard the lower entrance to the village despite Mendoza’s advice to leave the protection of the village to his men, in the rumors that coursed constantly through the town of bandit attacks on the road or in the next valley, in the reports that journeymen and peasants and tinkers brought back with them from Jaca and Huesca of fights and quarrels between Moriscos and montañeses, of impending inquisitorial investigations, of another pilgrim or merchant attacked on the roads.
Many of these stories were impossible to confirm or disprove, and they only added to the collective unease. Perhaps it was because these threats emanated from outside the village, but the Moriscos no longer seemed to hold Mendoza and his men in suspicion, and many of them seemed glad to have armed constables patrolling the streets. The most notable exception, from Gabriel’s point of view, was Segura’s family. Since their father’s departure, Juana and her brothers no longer brought him breakfast or invited him next door to eat with them, and they ignored him when they passed him in the street. Gabriel knew that they were angry with Mendoza, not him, but Juana’s hostility was particularly difficult to endure, because of all Belamar’s inhabitants there was no one whose goodwill he was more keen to maintain and no one he thought of more frequently or more fondly.
• • •
IT WAS PARTLY in hope of seeing her that he kept his lonely vigils at the village hall. On the third day after Mendoza’s departure, Gabriel was sitting by the window in
Segura’s office in the late afternoon, waiting for Martín to come for his class, when he glanced out and saw her crossing the square. She was wearing the same long loose skirt, shawl and sandals that she always wore, plus a white head scarf that covered most of her dark hair, and she was carrying a basket. He hurriedly put away his book and picked up his pen and stared intently down at the blank paper until she entered the room and stood looking at him dubiously.
“I want to see Constable Necker,” she said.
“He’s out on patrol. Can I help?”
“I think I’ve seen a bandit. I was up in the woods picking herbs. I saw a man on a horse near the charcoal burners’ camp. He was staring down on the village as if he was spying on it.”
“You shouldn’t be out in the woods alone.”
Juana regarded him pityingly. “I’m not afraid, scrivener, even if you are. I was only on the other side of the ravine. I saw the horseman looking down from the ridge.”
“Well, then.” Gabriel got to his feet and picked up his borrowed sword from the table. “You’d better show me where you saw him.”
“Don’t you have to ask for permission first?” she said mockingly.
Gabriel reddened. He heard his guardian’s voice telling him that she was right, but in that moment he was filled with a sudden desire to prove to her and to himself that he was not just a scrivener who wrote down the things that other people told him.
“There’s no need for that. Just show me what you saw.”
A faint smile briefly flitted across her face before she resumed the same expression of frosty disdain. He followed her down to the old village wall, and they descended the steep footpath past the stream till they reached the floor of the ravine where he had watched his guardian disappear only three days before. Within a few minutes, the village was out of sight, and for the first time in his life he was alone with a girl, and with a sword hanging from his belt. The experience was so unusual and so pleasant that it left him tongue-tied as the two of them walked side by side along the ravine.
“My father’s too old to go to France,” she said suddenly. “It was wrong of Licenciado Mendoza to make him go.”
“He didn’t make him. And he wouldn’t have gone if he didn’t think it was necessary.”
“Well, if anything happens to him, I’ll hold Mendoza responsible—and you as well.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to him. My guardian will make sure of it.”
She did not look convinced, but she seemed less hostile now that they were away from the village. He asked her what she had in her basket, and she explained the names and properties of the flowers and herbs she had collected: chamomile for settling stomachs, yarrow for treating wounds, mint for toothaches and resin for improving the flow of blood. He barely paid any attention to the names, and as he glanced at her jet-black hair under the head scarf and listened to the sound of her voice, he remembered what his guardian had told him about women and realized that Mendoza was right about that, as he was about most things. Her company was so enjoyable and so sweetly intoxicating that Gabriel felt disappointed when she pointed to the hill above the woods where she had seen the horseman and he saw that there was no one there. Once again he heard Mendoza’s voice telling him to go back, but he found himself saying that he was going to take a closer look.
Once again she smiled, but this time there was no mockery in it. “If you’re going, then I’m going, scrivener,” she said.
He smiled back at her as they walked toward the path leading up into the woods. They had just reached it when he saw the dark shape running down the path toward them. At first he thought it was an animal, but as it drew closer, he saw that it had two legs and that its face was entirely black. It was not until the creature was nearly upon them that he realized that it was a young girl. She looked about ten years old, though it was difficult to tell from the smoke that covered her matted hair, her face, legs and arms and her hessian smock.
“It’s the charcoal burner’s daughter!” Juana said as the girl gesticulated back toward the woods.
“Why doesn’t she say anything?” Gabriel asked.
“She doesn’t speak or hear.”
Even without words the girl was obviously terrified. Gabriel’s first instinct was to return to the village. But then he thought once again of all the times he had taken the long way around to the colegio to avoid the boys who would be waiting to attack him, or had run away when he saw them coming. He thought of Ventura and Necker and knew that they would not turn from danger, and he was filled with a sudden surge of bravado.
“How far is the charcoal burners’ camp?”
“It’s about ten minutes from here,” Juana replied.
“Take her back to the village and send Constable Necker and Sergeant Ventura,” he said. “I’m going to take a look.”
• • •
HIS VOICE SOUNDED strange and new to him. It was a man’s voice—bold, fearless and decisive—and he sensed that even Juana was impressed by it. She took the girl’s hand, and the two of them hurried off. As soon as they were gone, he felt his courage begin to falter. He heard a bird fly out of the trees and a sudden breath of wind that made the leaves tremble all around him. Fragments of old myths and stories flitted through his mind, of dragons and witches and brave knights on quests. He thought of stories he had read about Amadis of Gaul, the perfect knight, slayer of giants and dragons. He thought of Theseus in the labyrinth, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Perseus and Medusa, as the forest swallowed him up till he could no longer see the ravine.
Even though he was walking slowly and cautiously, his footsteps seemed to echo, and he stopped frequently and looked around at the silent forest to ensure that no one was following him. He’d been walking for nearly ten minutes when he heard the strange wail from somewhere ahead of him. It was midway between a moan and a scream, and he was not sure whether it came from a man or a woman or whether it was even human at all. Once again he wanted to turn back and run, but he told himself that if he did, he would be abandoning whoever had screamed, and no man who wanted to be a hero would ever do that. He could smell smoke now, and he saw a clearing up ahead through the dim light as he continued to inch forward, holding the sword in both hands.
At the edge of the clearing, he stopped, lowered the weapon and stared in disbelief at the scene of horror that confronted him. Directly before him a dead dog was lying in the still-smoldering fire pit. To the left of it, on the other side of the clearing, a man and a woman were dangling side by side from the tree where they’d been hanged. Both of them were barefoot, and their blackened faces and clothes gave them an inhuman, ghoulish appearance.
On the right of the clearing, a man in a brown tunic and a cloth hat folded down over his ears was sitting on a bench outside a wooden hut, nonchalantly gnawing on a piece of bread. He had his back turned, and a short broadsword was thrust into his belt behind him. He was looking into the dark doorway, where Gabriel heard the sound of violent movement and the unmistakable moans of a woman.
“God’s blood. Aren’t you whoremongers finished with her yet?” The man yawned.
The moans abruptly stopped, and a moment later a tall, bearded man emerged from the doorway.
“We have now.” He bent down to wipe his knife on the grass. As he did so, he looked up and saw Gabriel standing by the clearing.
“Well, well. We have company.”
Gabriel felt his bravado draining out of him now as he turned sideways and raised the sword horizontally in front of him with his palm turned upward, holding the other hand out for balance as Ventura had taught him. But the weapon no longer felt the same as it had when he’d practiced with it or cut elegant shapes in the air in the solitude of his own room. It seemed to have gotten heavier, or else he’d become weaker. The man in the cloth hat had turned around and reached for his own sword, and now another man emerged from the hut. The two of them m
oved away from their bearded companion, who crouched down slightly, moving the knife back and forth in slow, almost playful movements.
“So you want to fight, boy?” he sneered. “Let’s see, shall we?”
It was only then, as the three bandits spread out and slowly advanced toward him, that Gabriel gave in to panic and turned to run. But his movements were too clumsy and too sudden, and he tripped and let go of the sword. Before he could retrieve it, the bearded man had grabbed him by the hair and pulled him upright till Gabriel was kneeling on the ground in front of him. All thoughts of great deeds had evaporated into the chill dark forest now, and his whole body flinched at the awful realization that he was about to be slaughtered like an animal and that it was all his own fault.
“Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered.
“The Morisco says we shouldn’t kill him!”
“Por Dios, stop playing with him and get it over with, Manu,” said the man with the cloth hat. “We haven’t got all night.”
“I’ll finish him, all right. But the boss said he wanted a show. Let’s string him up with the others.”
“Hombre. There’s not enough rope.”
“There’s some in the shed. Go and get it.”
The bandit gripped Gabriel’s neck with one powerful hand and dragged him to his feet while his companion rummaged around in the shed. It was nearly dark now, and Gabriel looked up at the purple sky and tried to pray, but he could not remember the words to any prayers. Instead he found himself saying, “I’m not Morisco.”
“Well, isn’t that your bad luck!” the bearded man exclaimed.
“I can’t find it, Manu,” the bandit called nervously. “And I don’t like being in here with her.”
“Believe me, she won’t get up.”
“Her eyes are still open.”
The bearded man chuckled. “They can’t see you!”
“But I can.”
The two bandits turned around and stared at the dark figure standing in the path from which Gabriel had emerged only a few minutes before. It was impossible to see his face, but Gabriel recognized Ventura’s voice even before the pistol shot rang out. The bearded man relaxed his grip and fell back across the dead dog and the burning coals. The other bandit ran toward the two hanging bodies, but Ventura calmly aimed the other pistol and shot him in the back before he reached the shelter of the trees.