by Matthew Carr
As the Moriscos pushed forward to the crest of the hill, they saw bandits riding or running through the ravine and up into the woods in an attempt to escape their pursuers. At last the battle began to ebb, and Mendoza and Ventura gave orders to round up the prisoners. Men, women and children were pouring out of the town now, and they cheered wildly as another horseman came riding up the hill toward them with an upright and almost stately gait, and Mendoza recognized the familiar pennant bearing the lion and shield of the House of Cardona.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
he vultures were already hovering over the village as Mendoza made his way back through the main street, past the bodies of men and horses and the wreckage of the barricades. Juana Segura’s orderlies were beginning to carry the wounded on planks to the village hall while men and women wept or hugged each other or sat on the street looking dazed and exhausted and astonished to find themselves still alive. In that moment Mendoza was concerned with only one person, and he felt a sick feeling in his stomach when he reached the church to find the door half open and streaked with blood and an unknown body lying on the floor next to it.
Gabriel was not there, but Necker was standing nearby watching the men, women and children who were coming out to inspect the aftermath of the battle that most of them had only heard. His two-handled sword was sheathed, but the splashes of red on his face made it clear that he had used it.
“You held them, Constable.”
“We did, sir. And your scrivener fought well.”
Mendoza nodded approvingly. “Do you know where he is?”
“In the village hall.”
“Good work, Constable. Keep your defenses in place. They may try again.”
Mendoza felt positively exultant now as he walked to the main square, which was filling up with wounded men. The stretcher-bearers were bringing in another groaning body on a plank to the village hall, which looked more like a butcher shop. The floor was covered in blood, and the wounded were lying on mattresses or piles of straw or sitting propped against the walls waiting to be treated, while Juana Segura and her assistants stitched, washed and bandaged wounds and hurried back and forth carrying pans of water. Despite the carnage, he suppressed a smile at the sight of his page kneeling over a man who was lying stretched out on a mattress while Segura’s daughter prodded with a knife at a bleeding gash in his shoulder. The Morisco was clearly in agony, and Gabriel was leaning his weight against his chest and shoulder in an attempt to hold him down.
“Are you all right, boy?”
“I am, sir.” Gabriel looked up and smiled grimly as the man writhed around beneath him. “You’re bleeding.”
It was only then that Mendoza was conscious of his aching jaw and the blood trickling down his chin. “It’s nothing,” he said as Juana Segura pressed the point of the knife deeper. “I’ll see you later.”
Outside, some wounded bandits had also been brought under guard to the village hall and were waiting outside to be treated. Their guards stood watching as some of the Morisca women insulted and even spit on them. Mendoza ordered the women to leave them alone and walked down past the bodies and the broken barricades to the main entrance, where Ventura’s Moriscos and the countess’s militiamen were guarding a group of prisoners.
“What shall we do with this rabble, Bernardo?” asked Ventura.
“For now they can carry out the dead. Take the Moriscos to the rectory. You’ll have to give up your bedroom and stay with us. We’ll take them to the ravine and burn them later.”
Mendoza looked down at the valley, where a carriage was coming toward them accompanied by a mounted escort. A few minutes later, it drew up in front of them and the Countess of Cardona stepped off with the help of one of her servants, followed by Susana Segura. She was wearing a long black cloak and a scarlet surcoat embroidered with golden thread, and a white muslin veil hung down over her immaculately braided hair. Mendoza had not seen her since their meeting at Las Palomas, and she looked steely and determined, like a warrior-queen, as she glanced around with a sad, desolate expression at the human and animal corpses and armed men.
“Long live the Countess of Cardona!” one of the Moriscos shouted.
“Long live!” The Moriscos and militia raised their weapons. The countess acknowledged them with a vague nod and smiled at Mendoza. “I’m happy to see you alive, Licenciado.”
“And I am glad to see you, my lady,” Mendoza replied. “We were very much in need of assistance.”
“Is Dr. Segura’s family well?”
“They are, my lady.”
Susana glanced up at the sky and silently mumbled a prayer. The countess also looked visibly relieved. “Go to your sister,” she ordered Susana. “Licenciado, will you join me in my carriage?”
“I’m not sure if it’s safe for you to be out here, Countess. There may be sharpshooters.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But what I have to tell you cannot wait.”
• • •
A SERVANT HELD THE DOOR OPEN for the countess and Mendoza and shut the door behind them. “Did you find Vicente Péris?” she asked.
“We did, my lady, but he was murdered. And whoever was responsible also tried to kill us.”
“And did you know that Inquisitor Mercader has been murdered? And Commissioner Herrero also?”
Mendoza stared at her in astonishment. “When did this happen?”
“Two days ago. They were murdered on the road from Huesca. They were on their way to Cardona to make arrests. The rumors say that Moriscos from Belamar killed them, but I know who is responsible. My bailiff Jean Sánchez and the Baron of Vallcarca. They are the ones behind everything that has happened here.”
Mendoza still did not trust the countess enough to tell her that he had already begun to reach similar conclusions himself, and he listened impassively as she told him about her father-in-law’s visit and Vallcarca’s attempt to use Mercader’s impending investigation to make her marry his son.
“And what makes you so certain that your bailiff was in France?” he asked her.
“He left a message saying that he was visiting his father in Lérida on the day of Espinosa’s visit. I sent a servant to bring him back. He found Sánchez’s father in rude health, and the old man hadn’t seen his son in months.”
“Did you have any reason to mistrust him?”
“None,” she replied. “It was because I trusted him that I sent my servant to bring him back. Jean’s mother was my wet nurse. He was my childhood playmate. I treated him as a member of my own family. I let him run my estates. I made him the most powerful man in Cardona. I wanted him to come back to the estates because I depended on him.”
“And you have no idea why he would have turned against you?”
“None. But I’m convinced that he followed you to Béarn.”
Mendoza told her what Péris had revealed to Segura and of his belief that Sánchez had killed Péris to conceal his role in luring the three alleged rapists into the hands of the Inquisition.
“Then he must have been working for Vallcarca,” the countess said, “because it was the baron’s militia that arrested Navarro and his apprentice. And there’s something else you ought to know. I believe that Sánchez killed my husband on Vallcarca’s orders.”
Mendoza raised his eyebrows. This was not a possibility that he had even thought about. “May I know how you reached such conclusions?” he asked.
“Vallcarca told me that I could not defy him after what had happened to my husband! What is that, if not an admission of guilt? And it all makes sense now. Jean was with Miguel on the day he died. He was wounded himself during the attack, with a sword cut to the arm. I used to think he tried to save Miguel. Now I think it was just another deception.”
Mendoza nodded and said nothing. Her allegations were certainly possible, but Péris was dead, which meant that there was no one who coul
d testify that Sánchez had been responsible for luring him to Vallcarca. And without the bailiff, there was only the countess’s own account of her conversation with Vallcarca to implicate the baron in her husband’s murder or the death of Péris or in anything else.
“Well, surely you have enough cause to arrest Vallcarca?” she asked. “Put him to the torment and make him confess!”
Mendoza was surprised by her vehemence, and he also sensed an element of fear behind it. “You say that Vallcarca was using Inquisitor Mercader to blackmail you,” he said. “Did he say what offenses you would have been charged with?”
Once again she looked guarded. “Well, he didn’t mention anything specific,” she replied airily. “I assumed it was heresy or some other concoction.”
“But if the two of them were in collusion, then why would Vallcarca kill Mercader?”
“I am a simple woman, Licenciado. I don’t understand Vallcarca’s machinations. But is it not obvious, after today, that this is a man who is unconstrained by the laws of God and man, who will kill any number of people he thinks necessary to achieve his aims?”
“Someone definitely fits that description,” Mendoza admitted. “And I will certainly speak to Vallcarca again. But now, my lady, I think you should return to Cardona. It’s not safe for you to be out here.”
“Would you like my men to remain to protect the town?”
“I don’t think we’re going to be attacked again, but you could leave half of them for another day, just in case. And I would like you to take our prisoners. We haven’t room for them here. I would also like you to send a messenger to Corregidor Calvo in Jaca. Tell him to send as many men as possible to Belamar as soon as he can. And make sure your messenger has an escort. Enough people have died these last few weeks.”
“Very well. And now there is one thing I must ask of you. Dr. Segura is in the Inquisition jail in Huesca. Can you get him released? His family needs him. Belamar needs him.”
“That is very difficult, my lady. I have no power to alter the course of an inquisitorial investigation. I don’t even know the charges against him.”
Just then they heard a sudden commotion outside. Mendoza looked out the window to see two of the countess’s militiamen coming up the hill on horseback. One of them was trailing a rope attached to the hands of a prisoner who was walking with obvious difficulty, aided by one of his escorts, and as they came closer, Mendoza was astonished to see that the man at the end of the rope was none other than the bailiff, Jean Sánchez.
• • •
MENDOZA GOT DOWN from the carriage and held out his hand to help the countess as the militiamen brought the bailiff over toward them. The haughty official who had once tried to expel him from Cardona was dragging his right leg. His knee was oozing blood through his torn hose. His clothes, face and hair were covered in blood and dust as he stared sullenly at the ground in front of him.
“We found him trying to crawl out of the ravine, my lady,” one of the militiamen explained. “He can’t walk by himself.”
The countess was looking at Sánchez with an expression that was simultaneously sad, reproachful and astonished. “Why, Jean?” she asked. “Was it the money? Didn’t I give you enough?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you,” Sánchez said bitterly.
“But you will explain yourself to me, villain,” said Mendoza, “when I take you to Jaca. This one is my prisoner, my lady.”
“Take him,” the countess replied. “I never want to see him again.”
Mendoza said good-bye to her and accompanied the militiamen and their prisoner back to the village hall while she returned to her carriage. They had almost reached the main square when they saw Susana walking toward them. At the sight of Sánchez, her face hardened.
“What have you done to my father?” she asked.
Sánchez stared at her coldly. “Go to hell, you damned whore,” he said.
Susana appeared momentarily disconcerted, and then her anger returned and she smacked the bailiff hard across the face. Sánchez merely shrugged and looked away as Mendoza nodded to the militiamen to take him away. Juana Segura greeted him with equal contempt and refused Mendoza’s request to treat his wounded knee until he reminded her that he would not be able to interrogate Sánchez or put him on trial if he died. She cleaned and bandaged the wound, and Mendoza told the militiamen to chain him up in the stable beneath the dispensary. He ordered them to leave and stood in the doorway looking down at the sullen prisoner, who was leaning against a wooden post among the milling goats and sheep.
“You know, I don’t normally like to put prisoners to the torment unless I have to,” Mendoza said. “But unless you talk to me here, you and I are going to have a very painful conversation when we get to Jaca.”
Sánchez gave a faint smirk. “We’ll see,” he said.
Even though the bailiff could barely walk, Mendoza ordered Martín, Gabriel and Necker to take turns guarding the locked stable door. The rest of the day was spent clearing away the bodies. By nightfall there were fifty bandits and montañeses piled up outside the town and forty Moriscos stretched out in the church. Mendoza insisted that sentries remain on alert throughout the night and assigned a special detail to keep a brazier lit near the stack of bandit corpses to keep the animals and vultures away from them. It was not until the early hours that he finally retired to his room and quietly thanked God for allowing him to live before he closed his eyes and slept.
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING the Moriscos began to dig graves in the cemetery while others carried the corpses outside the main entrance down into the ravine in carts to be burned. Throughout the day the buzzards and vultures continued to circle hopefully over the village as the smell of burning flesh wafted up from the ravine. There was not enough space for individual graves, and Mendoza told them to dig deeper holes so that the graves could be shared. The men performed these tasks with quiet determination as the women and children continued to distribute food and water. Some of the water was taken to the church, where Segura’s sons prepared the bodies. Mendoza deliberately stayed away from it and ordered his own men to do the same so that they would not have to observe what the brothers might be doing.
Sánchez spent the day, as he had spent the night, locked in the back room in chains with Segura’s sheep and goats. He spoke only once, when he asked Necker for permission to use the privy. In the evening Mendoza and Gabriel brought him bread, cheese and water from the tavern. They found Necker slumped on the stone bench in front of the fire with his head resting on his chest, and the embarrassed constable apologized profusely as he unlocked the stable door. Sánchez was still sitting in the gloom among the goats and sheep and the horses on the other side of the wooden corral. He did not even look up when Gabriel laid the tray at his feet while Necker unlocked his chains. He ate his meal in silence, and then Gabriel took the tray back. Mendoza sent the exhausted constable to bed and sat down in the alcove.
“When will we question him?” Gabriel asked.
“Tomorrow perhaps,” he replied distractedly. He was still wondering why Sánchez had called Susana a whore when he noticed the frown that told him that another question from Gabriel was imminent.
“What is it, boy?” he asked wearily.
“Sir, why did you take me from the orphanage? Was it your decision or your mother’s?”
“It was mine. But do we have to talk about this now?”
“Sir, am I a Morisco?”
Mendoza was silent, and he knew from the expression on Gabriel’s face that his silence had already answered the boy’s question.
“Sir, you know I have always looked up to you and respected you,” Gabriel said. “But I have just fought in a battle. I have shed blood. I might have died, and I could still die. Surely this is as good a time as any other to tell me whatever it is that you have not told me.”
Mendoza looked at his page. In that moment Gabriel seemed older and wiser than his seventeen years, and Mendoza knew that he was right. This was not a subject he had ever wanted to talk about, but after everything his page had been through, it seemed suddenly impossible to avoid.
“No, you are not Morisco,” he said finally. “But your parents were.”
For the first time, Mendoza told his page about his service in Granada with the army of the king’s half brother, Don Juan of Austria, about the siege of Galera in the Alpujarras and the house-to-house fighting that took place when the Christian troops breached its defenses, about the Morisca woman he killed outside her house and the toddler he found among the heap of corpses inside it. He described how he had pulled the child away from his dead mother and carried him crying out of the burning house, but he could not bring himself to say that the child he rescued was covered in blood that might have been his mother’s, because there were some details that he could not speak aloud, not only for his page’s sake but for his own. Nevertheless Gabriel looked increasingly distraught as Mendoza continued.
“So you killed my mother?” he asked incredulously.
Mendoza shook his head. “No, boy, I did not. Your mother was killed by a cannon shot. When I entered that house, everybody but you was dead. The woman I killed was too old to be your mother. But if I hadn’t killed her, she would certainly have killed me. The Moriscos of Galera were the bravest fighters I ever met—the women as much as the men. We treated them the same. I ordered her to surrender, but she wouldn’t. I don’t know who she was, but I do know that if I hadn’t pulled you out, you would have died, too. Or you would have been sold into slavery, like all the other survivors.”
“And why didn’t you sell me?”
“Because . . .” Mendoza hesitated as his page continued to look at him with the same pained expression. It was a question he had often asked himself and never really been able to answer. “Because I don’t like slavery, and I felt responsible for you. Perhaps I wanted to perform some act of kindness in the midst of so much evil. I don’t know why, boy. I just acted that way, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.”