by Matthew Carr
“And you never thought to tell me this?” Gabriel asked in an indignant, critical tone that Mendoza had never heard before.
“What good would it have done? So that you could know that your parents were killed in a war? So you could be a Morisco? You’ve seen here what that means. Be angry if you want to, but it was war. Sometimes in wartime you do things you would never do in other situations. Maybe you can begin to realize that after today.”
Gabriel continued to stare at Mendoza as though he had just turned into another person in front of his eyes.
“Did Magda know about this?” he asked.
“No. Only my mother and my cousin. And I told them not to tell you. Well, now you’ve asked me and I have told you,” Mendoza said. “Go get some sleep, boy. In the morning things might look a little different.”
After Gabriel had gone, Mendoza continued to gaze into the fire, wondering if he’d done the right thing. Just before midnight Martín and Ventura came in together, and the militiaman took over Mendoza’s shift while he and his cousin went upstairs. The faint light from Gabriel’s doorway told him that his page was still awake, and he was tempted to see if he was all right, but he was too tired for any more conversation or reflection. No sooner had he extinguished the candle and lain down on top of the bed in his tunic and hose than he felt himself drifting off to sleep.
• • •
HE WOKE UP to hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs. It was only the faintest of creaks, but the obvious caution immediately aroused his attention, because his own men never took that kind of care. He sat up in the dark room and carefully unsheathed his sword as the door slowly opened. He waited until he saw the forearm and the glint of metal and then leaped from the bed and slammed the door shut. The intruder dropped the dagger with a grunt of pain. Before he could pick it up, Mendoza threw the door open and thrust his own sword into the crouching back, and the man crumpled to the floor.
Mendoza just had time to make out three other figures looming like phantoms in the gloom when Gabriel’s door opened and his page appeared in the doorway.
“Get back inside!” Mendoza rushed forward and shoved him violently into the room. In the same moment, one of the three men grabbed his shoulder. He twisted around to his left as the knife stabbed point-first into the doorframe just behind him and grabbed the attacker’s wrist as he withdrew it, but now the man gripped his throat with his other hand. His assailant was short and heavy, with powerful, thick wrists and muscular arms that smelled of sweat and animal dung, and his blackened face made him look more like a monster or an animal than a human being. Mendoza fell back into Gabriel’s room, holding the knife hand up as the heavy body pinned him to the floor and winded him.
The other hand was squeezing Mendoza’s windpipe as though he were trying to tear it out of his throat, and he felt himself choking. Behind him he heard curses, grunts and the sound of violent struggle, but he could no longer breathe, and still the knife was bearing down inexorably toward his face. Just when he thought he might black out, his attacker reared up and collapsed on top of him. He looked up to see Gabriel pushing a sword with both hands into the man’s back as a pistol shot exploded like a thunderclap in the little hallway.
Necker pulled Mendoza to his feet, and he saw Ventura standing just behind him with a pistol in his hand. There were four corpses on the landing and the stairs, and Ventura now led the way past them and down to the ground floor. Goats and sheep were milling around in confusion before the still-smoldering fire, and the red glow illuminated Martín’s body lying in the half-open doorway that led out onto the street. Mendoza turned him over and examined the wounds in his chest and throat as a group of militiamen and armed Moriscos appeared holding torches.
“He must have opened the door for them,” Ventura said.
Necker made the sign of the cross. It was only then that Mendoza realized that the animals had escaped from the stable. He grabbed one of the torches and rushed over to the open door. Sánchez was sitting on the floor in the same position in which he had last seen him, seemingly oblivious to the horses that were kicking and stamping in the corral alongside him, and it was not until Mendoza bent over him that he saw the dark wound in Sánchez’s throat. Outside, the militiamen and Moriscos were dragging the bodies into the street. All of them were barefoot, bare-chested and dressed in the same dark hose, their faces, arms and upper bodies smeared with charcoal. Mendoza passed his torch across them and gazed down upon the heavy, hairy-looking body who had nearly strangled him.
“I’ve seen that man before, in Zaragoza and Vallcarca. He’s an Inquisition familiar.”
“His name is Pachuca.” Segura’s eldest son, Agustín, appeared in the street just behind them. “A real brute.”
“The Inquisition did this?” asked Ventura in amazement.
Mendoza shook his head. “Someone else sent him. He killed the bailiff, and he would have killed me if Gabriel hadn’t stopped him. We need to find out how they got in.” He looked back at Gabriel, who was standing in a daze near the fire in his blood-spattered nightshirt as the goats and sheep milled around him. Mendoza ordered him to get his boots. The village was wide awake now, and groups of Moriscos were walking around with weapons and torches in expectation of another attack as Mendoza and his men went into the streets to inspect the main entrance and the medieval wall. The sentries were still in place, their braziers still lit, and none of them had heard or seen anything unusual apart from the single shot in the dispensary.
Mendoza doubted that Pachuca and his men could have slipped past them without being seen, but there was no obvious point where they might have entered the village. Most of the houses were built so close together that they made a natural wall, and there was only a narrow, rocky ledge beneath them, which did not allow any room to mount a ladder that could have reached the high windows.
“Did anyone come into the town during the day?” he asked Ventura as they stood next to the cemetery looking over the wall.
“Only the Moriscos who buried the bodies and collected firewood.”
“Doesn’t it seem strange to you that I arrested Sánchez only yesterday, yet Pachuca knew exactly where he was? And he also knew where I was. Who went to chop wood? Was it only Moriscos?”
“No, there were some Old Christians, too. Romero took his children to help him. They brought back a cartload of wood. He said he needed it for his oven.”
At the mention of the baker, Mendoza walked away from the church to the edge of the old wall and glanced back up at the row of houses on the main square overlooking the valley. All of them had the same high windows and the same narrow edge beneath them, but he noticed that one of the windows had a metal crossbar in front of it.
“That house with the bar. Isn’t that the bakery?”
Agustín Segura said that it was.
“Come with me, señores” Mendoza said. “I think I know how this was done.”
They followed him to the bakery, where he banged loudly on the door until Romero’s wife appeared in a nightgown and shawl, holding a candle in her hand, and peered out at them with an expression of abject terror.
“Where’s your husband, señora?”
“He’s in bed,” she quavered. “He’s not well. What do you want?”
Mendoza pushed past her and went up the little staircase leading from the shop into the house, with his men following behind him. He had just reached the first floor when Romero appeared in the doorway of his bedroom in his nightshirt.
“What are you doing in my house?” he demanded in a voice that sounded more fearful than defiant. Mendoza walked over to the window, gripped the bar with both hands and shook it before leaning out to look down.
“Where’s the rope?”
“What rope?” Romero replied in a tremulous and slightly hysterical voice.
“The one that you brought back from the woods today to let Pachuca i
n.”
“I don’t know anything about that!” the baker insisted.
“Really? Then what’s this?” Mendoza took the torch from Ventura and held up Romero’s left hand in front of him. “Charcoal. And these look like charcoal footprints on the floor.”
“I was cleaning the oven.”
“In your nightshirt with no shoes on? When your wife said you weren’t feeling well? Get your clothes on. You’re under arrest. Tomorrow we’ll search the house and take a look down below. I think we’ll find the rope soon enough.”
“I work for the Inquisition!” Romero protested. “You can’t arrest me!”
“Constable Necker, please keep an eye on the prisoner while he dresses.”
Romero’s three children were peering out of the adjoining doorway now, and his wife shooed them back into their room.
“Shame on you, Licenciado Mendoza, depriving three children of their father!” cried Romero’s wife.
“You should have thought about that when you allowed your husband to bring in assassins to try to kill me, señora,” Mendoza replied. “And you should hold your tongue unless you want to join him.”
Señora Romero hastily retreated into her children’s room. She did not even come out when they led her husband back to the dispensary, where Segura and some of the Moriscos had lined up the six bodies in the street.
“Take a good look, baker,” Mendoza said. “This is your handiwork.”
“The bailiff is still inside, sir,” Agustín Segura said. “We didn’t have the key to his chains.”
“Leave him where he is.” Mendoza glared at Romero. “He can keep our new guest company.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
he country house at Aceca was only a short ride from Madrid, and from his vantage point on the banks of the Tagus the Marquis of Villareal watched the royal hunt unfold. He heard the sounds of trumpets, dogs and beating drums coming through the trees, and he could see the royal carriages that were drawn up in a semicircle in a wide clearing between the forest and the river. Immediately behind him the rowboats and sailing ships were lined up along the bank, waiting to take the king and his entourage back downriver to Aranjuez later that day, their sails, flags and ornate canopies rippling gently in the light summer breeze. To the west, beyond the hunters and woods, he saw the great house where Philip and his family had spent the last two days.
Although the woodlands fell within the boundaries of the Royal Forest of Aranjuez, the hunt had been organized by the majordomo at Aceca, who stood waiting anxiously a short distance away from the king’s own carriage to see the results of his meticulous preparations. There were forty carriages altogether, with those of the king, his sister María the Holy Roman empress, and his three children at the center; followed by the members of their respective households; the gentleman of the king’s bedchamber; the infante Philip’s tutor; the maidservants and bodyguards of the empress; the servants and maidservants of the two princesses; and assorted bodyguards, pages, cupbearers, coachmen, dwarves and fools.
Standing on foot around the carriages were various soldiers, hunters and gamekeepers whose task was to prevent the animals from slipping through the gaps and keep the royal family equipped with a constant flow of weapons, arrows and ammunition. Only members of the family were permitted to shoot, but the entire party waited with tense excitement as the noise of dogs and beaters grew louder and flocks of startled birds flew up out of the trees. The king was sitting next to the Catalina, with one pistol pointed toward the forest and another waiting on the seat beside him while his daughter leaned out of the window with the stock of the light hunting rifle pressed against her cheek. In the adjoining carriage, her older sister, the infanta Isabel, was also resting against a light hunting rifle with a long, thin barrel and a beautifully carved fishhook stock, while her sickly six-year-old brother, Philip, sat opposite her with the king’s sister and his tutor, who attempted to ensure that the boy fired his little crossbow at the forest and not at the waiting servants.
There were few activities that King Philip enjoyed more than hunting with his family, and the knowledge that this would be the last summer that Catalina hunted at Aceca gave this particular hunt a bittersweet poignancy. In less than six months, the court would set out for Aragon, and before the following spring Catalina would already be in Savoy. Philip regarded both events with almost equal dread, and he tried not to think about them now as the first terrified animals burst through the clearing and ran toward them.
Catalina fired first and missed, and her servant immediately handed her a pistol while another reloaded the rifle. The other members of the family fired off their guns and crossbows until the forest echoed with shots, horses’ hooves and barking dogs as the gamesmen tried to cut off the animals’ headlong flight. By the time the fusillade was over, the clearing was scattered with dead and wounded beasts. In total two boar, three deer and thirteen rabbits had been killed, and the gamesmen and beaters now gathered up the carcasses as the royal party withdrew to the boats to eat a picnic lunch.
As was his custom, the king remained alone in his carriage a short distance away and opened his document bag. A servant brought him a quill, ink and his portable desk, and once again he began to work through the interminable flow of letters, council minutes, reports and ciphered dispatches that poured in from every corner of his empire. There had been a time, at the beginning of his reign, when he’d been able to keep up with the paperwork and even derive some satisfaction from it. Now it constantly threatened to overwhelm him, flowing into every spare moment of the day in such quantities that he could not keep up even if he replicated himself ten times over. He saw himself as Tantalus of Tartarus, perpetually reaching for fruit that was always out of reach, or Sisyphus, pushing a rock that continually rolled back a little farther despite his efforts.
It was true that his rock was only made of paper, but there were times when his gout made the task of administration no less grueling and exhausting, regardless of whether he wrote sitting or standing. After forty minutes he was feeling about ready for lunch when Secretary Vázquez told him that the Marquis of Villareal was waiting to see him on a matter of urgency. It was only then that Philip noticed the marquis lurking by the boats with the large entourage that he took with him everywhere. The sight did not please him. The only business Villareal could have brought with him was the business of Aragon, which was never good, and the fact that the man had come all the way from Madrid to see him suggested that it was likely to be even worse than usual.
These suspicions were immediately confirmed when Villareal approached his carriage and bowed before him.
“Your Majesty, I apologize for this intrusion, but I have received grave news from Cardona, which I believe requires an immediate response.”
Philip said nothing and listened solemnly as the counselor informed him that Inquisitor Mercader of the Zaragoza Inquisition, together with Commissioner Herrero of the Huesca Inquisition and seven members of their party, had been murdered by the Moriscos of Belamar de la Sierra and members of the Countess of Cardona’s militia.
“But this is an outrage,” he said.
“Indeed, sire. Corregidor Calvo believes that they were murdered on the orders of the Morisco who calls himself the Redeemer, in revenge for the arrest of the mayor of Belamar, the Morisco Dr. Segura. And now the montañeses have taken matters into their own hands and attacked Belamar. Corregidor Calvo believes that Licenciado Mendoza and his men have been killed. He has asked Your Majesty to send troops immediately to Cardona to restore order and prevent further bloodshed. I have the corregidor’s report here.”
He handed Philip the letter and stood by as the king scanned it quickly. Philip’s face, as always, showed no emotion, but his somber expression and long silence made it clear that the letter had not been without impact.
“This is . . . unacceptable,” he said finally.
“It is. And I
believe—and Your Majesty’s ministers also believe—that we must act with all the urgency that this matter requires. We must send troops and place Cardona in the royal domain. The authority of the Inquisition and the Crown must be restored. If this is not done, the disorder will certainly spread. It may not be possible for Your Majesty and the court to travel safely to Aragon in January. It may even be necessary to postpone the wedding in March.”
Philip considered this for a moment. “And what makes you think that the lords will accept the measures you propose?”
“Your Majesty, the Aragonese Cortes will not oppose a royal intervention so close to the infanta’s wedding. They will accept whatever is necessary to restore order in Cardona, and they will not oppose His Majesty’s claims in the absence of any obvious heir, because dividing her estates up would cause too much conflict between the lords. Most would prefer to see the countess’s estates managed by the Crown. Any objections can be addressed by Your Majesty in person when you visit Aragon next year. Sire, I cannot emphasize enough the gravity of the situation, but I also believe that if we act quickly, we can turn it to the Crown’s advantage.”
“How many troops do you think will be necessary to achieve this?”
“The corregidor believes that two thousand will be sufficient.”
Philip stared out the window for a long time at the servants carrying trays to the canopies on the boats while Villareal remained as motionless as a statue. It was impossible to know what the king was thinking or even if he was thinking at all, but the marquis knew that it was now incumbent upon him to remain absolutely still and silent, even if the Prudent King said nothing for the next hour.