The Inquisitor

by David Penny

  From outside a rising wash of sound had grown, the calling of many voices, each raised to overcome those around them. The prisoners were being led across the swaying bridge to the castle beyond. Belia finished cleaning al-Amrhan’s face as best she could and went to close the tall windows, shutting out most of the noise.

  When she returned al-Amrhan looked toward her. “Tell this madman who I am. I have purchased your herbs many times. We have sat and talked of cures these Spanish have no knowledge of. And this one is as deluded as all the rest.”

  “Tell him what you have done,” said Belia, taking a seat across the table and staring without any hint of sympathy.

  “I have done nothing!”

  “Then prove it,” Thomas said.

  “How can I prove something I have not done? I don’t even know what it is I am accused of.”

  “Murder,” said Thomas. “Murder going back months, longer. Murder carried out on a pair of victims together.” He leaned close. “Why is that? What is the meaning of the two killed at once, side by side? And why display only one?” Something nagged at him, some wisp of meaning he could not grasp.

  Al-Amrhan shook his head once more. “Nonsense, you speak only nonsense. Tell him, Belia, tell him I am an innocent man.”

  She continued to look on without expression.

  “Help me!” said al-Amrhan.

  “Help yourself,” said Belia. “Tell Thomas what he wants to know. Tell him the truth and it will go easier for you.” She glanced at Thomas, perhaps to check if he agreed, but he showing nothing, could promise nothing.

  “I know no truth!” Al-Amrhan began to weep, tears flowing along his cheeks. “I know no churchmen, no Archdeacons. I scrape what little living I can and keep my own counsel. It is not easy for a Moor in Spain, not these days, and it will only get worse.” He shook his head hard, spraying tears. “If I knew what truth you seek I would give it you, but I do not. Ask me what you will and I will answer true, but ask me sense, not nonsense.”

  It was a good show, Thomas had to give the man that. It was almost convincing.

  “Did Jorge say when he would be back?” he asked Belia.

  “When does Jorge ever give out information such as that? He asked me to stay up for him, which means he may be late or not. Why?”

  “I would like him here. He sees people better than I do. He would recognise any truth this man spoke. My head spins with too many thoughts and I cannot see clearly anymore.”

  “Have you eaten?” asked Belia.

  “No, not since… not since this morning.”

  She rose and began to put out bread, meat and cheese. Al-Amrhan watched as if they had both lost their wits.

  “What about me?”

  “I will help you eat if you are hungry,” said Belia.

  “I mean what is to become of me. You will simply abandon me here while you stuff your faces? But yes, I have hunger. Free my hands and I will feed myself.”

  Thomas laughed.

  “Tie my wrist to the stove then, I am sure I cannot drag it after me.”

  “Belia will feed you,” Thomas said as he reached for the bread and tore a corner from the cheese. He glanced up. “Won’t you?”

  Her lips tightened, a flicker of annoyance, but she wrapped bread around a piece of meat and held it for al-Amrhan to bite. He winced as he did so, but hunger overcame discomfort. Thomas saw Belia grow tired of her role as handmaid. She laid food in front of al-Amrhan and let him snuffle at it like an animal. Thomas rose, opened the window and stepped into the night. Smoke gusted across the ships pulled up at the docks. Someone had lit a bonfire and the sound of the mob was a babble of hate. Thomas wanted to go home. This city was not his, and it did not welcome his presence.

  When he sensed someone behind him he turned to find Belia had come to join him. He glanced beyond her to check on al-Amrhan, saw he continued to push food around the table with his chin.

  “You should come with Jorge when we return to Garnatah,” he said.

  “He has already asked, and I gave him my answer.”

  “Which was?” Thomas leaned across the balustrade, trying to see along the waterfront. From beyond the corner of the city wall came a glow, but the crowd seemed to be thinning now the prisoners had disappeared inside the castle. “We should go inside,” he said, but made no move.

  “Not yet. And my answer is for Jorge’s ears, not yours.” She smiled and touched his arm, a brush of fingertips, then mirrored his stance, but it was the ships she studied, avoiding what was going on further along the river bank. “If you truly want to know, ask him. I suspect he will tell you anything you wish. You know he loves you.”

  Thomas scowled. “So he keeps telling me.”

  Belia laughed. “Yes, he has a surfeit of love. Of words, too. What are you going to do with him?”

  Thomas knew who she spoke of, and it wasn’t Jorge. “Do you think he could be the man we seek?”

  Belia shook her head. “I do not. And you?”

  “He could be. He has the skill, and the tools are his. But no, I don’t think he is who I seek. I would still like Jorge’s opinion.”

  “Then stay. He will return at some time. Quys is not going anywhere. Go and sleep, Thomas, you are exhausted.”

  He thought of lying on the bed this woman had shared with Jorge and something must have shown on his face because Belia laughed. “We have three rooms and three beds now. It is a wonder what can be found when money is shown, and Jorge appears to have an inexhaustible supply. Why is that? How does a palace eunuch become a rich man?”

  “It is a long story.”

  “And we have all night, unless he returns soon.”

  “And if I tell it you may no longer feel the same about him.”

  “Did he kill someone for it?”

  “No.”

  “Then I will feel the same as I do now. But it is your story to tell or not as you wish.”

  Thomas pushed hair back from his face, rubbed a hand across his cheeks as if the act could brush away the veil of exhaustion separating him from the world.

  “What is he doing out alone at this time of night?”

  “He said something about the Cathedral.”

  “Ah, yes. That. He told you what they have been plotting?”

  “You sound as if you do not wish to marry.”

  “No, I do. But it has been snatched from my control, and I have no idea what they plan.”

  “You do not like losing control, do you?”

  “Do you see everything? Are you like Jorge, who misses nothing?”

  “I watch without judging,” said Belia. “So yes, I am like him. He asked if I would apply henna to Lubna and I said of course. It will be my pleasure. Yours too, Thomas.”

  He did not want a reminder of the plot against him and turned to go inside, ready to tell Belia the story of how Jorge had become a rich man, but when he did it was to see the chair al-Amrhan had been tied to tipped over and no sign of him. Thomas cursed and ran outside, but the street was empty. He went to the end and looked across the small square that lay there but it was filled with the crowd returning from the bridge. Al-Amrhan had fled. If he had any sense, Thomas thought, he would keep running until Sevilla lay far behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The door to al-Amrhan’s house remained unlocked. It swung open to Thomas’s touch, but he knew if the man had returned he had already come and gone. He entered in any case, always wanting to be sure he had covered all possibilities. The single room had indeed been emptied, but ransacked. Some passing stranger had seen the door open and entered to steal whatever was worth stealing. Thomas doubted the thief had been much pleased with his haul. He turned, leaving the door open, and ran to the south and the palace, hoping Samuel would be there. Thomas had lost patience with the man, all semblance of friendship draining away. The killing involved a man who possessed the skills of a surgeon, and Samuel had to know more than he had said so far.

  Frustration at a lack of progress m
ade Thomas more forceful than he intended because Samuel cried out when he was held against the wall, his feet twitching as they sought the floor. Thomas sighed and put him down.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Answer my question, Samuel. I am tired and, as you have discovered, in a foul mood.”

  Samuel sought the narrow chair, pulled it from beneath the table and sat. Thomas stayed where he was, leaning against the stone wall.

  “Yes, I know Quys, he is a good physician but struggles to find patients willing to pay him. He’s a Moor, like you.”

  “Not quite like me,” Thomas said. “Might he have become desperate enough to accept money for murder?”

  “We save lives, not take them. Even you should know that.”

  Even me? Thomas had no idea what he meant.

  “If he wanted to hide where would be go?”

  “I cannot help. He has no friends that I know of,” said Samuel.

  “Other than you.”

  “I am not a friend. I have used him now and then when I could. I feel sorry for him. It is not his fault people object to his religion. He had enough work before the Inquisition came, but these days it has made everyone suspect their neighbour.”

  “Might it have turned his mind?”

  “You are persistent, aren’t you? I do not know him well, as I have already told you, but well enough to judge him incapable of cold blooded murder. And these deaths are nothing if not cold blooded. You will need to direct your suspicions elsewhere.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  Thomas turned to leave, tiredness making his head spin for a moment and he reached out to lean against the wall. When he moved again his foot kicked at something set on the floor in an alcove and he glanced, incurious, then stopped.

  “What is this?” He tapped the bottle with his toe.

  “You know what it is. It is your mixture, is it not?”

  “How do you come to have it? I left none after I treated Juan.”

  Samuel smiled. “Once a thing is known it can be copied, you know that as well as I. Theresa told me of the magical liquor you brought with you. She described it, not well, but well enough. I have a friend, far more skilled than me, and between us we managed to create something close.” Samuel frowned, something troubling him, but rather than speak it he went on. “It is not as effective as yours, I know, but I use it to help alleviate the suffering of those who are about to burn.”

  Lubna was awake when Thomas reached their rooms, Will too, though dressed like some gilded popinjay.

  Thomas held his arms out and Will ran at him, launched himself from some distance but managed to clear the gap. His solid little body knocked Thomas onto the bed and he held his son up in his hands, letting love drive out the coldness that had entered his heart.

  “Hey babbaga!” he said, laughing, using the Arabic word because Will would not understand the Spanish, let alone the English. “Who has dressed you up like a girl?”

  “Not girl,” said Will, kneeling and leaning on Thomas’s chest as he put him down. He wrapped his arms around his neck and squeezed, making Thomas laugh again and to tickle him in order to allow a breath.

  “What are you then?”

  “Prince Will,” he said. “Isbel call me Prince Will.”

  “The Queen calls you a Prince?”

  “No! Prin…princess Isbel. And Hana is funny.” Will struggled over princess, too many sibilants in the word for him.

  “Hana?” Thomas frowned. “Who is this Hana?”

  “He can’t say Joanna,” said Lubna, lying the other side of Will and wrapping her arms about his round belly. “She is funny, or mad, or something. One moment she is a serious little thing and the next she is even wilder than this one.”

  “Isabel is good at birthing girls,” Thomas said. “Everyone would be happy if this one is a son.”

  “Too late to change that now,” said Lubna. She placed a hand on the swell of her own belly. “What do you think our child is? It does not kick so much of late, so I think a girl.”

  “Don’t believe what the crones tell you.”

  “Crones have more knowledge than you credit them with.” She leaned over Will to offer Thomas a kiss, and the boy giggled and wriggled as he was trapped between them.

  “What would you like, boy or girl?” Thomas asked, lying on his back, hands behind his head. His body was starting to relax and he felt as if he was melting into the feather stuffed mattress. Lubna’s presence did that for him, just one more reason he loved her as much as he did.

  “What about one of each?”

  He laughed. “No, there’s only one in there.”

  “I mean later, after this one. I think we should have at least five children, perhaps more. I like carrying a child, it makes me feel I have fulfilled my potential as a woman.”

  “I want to talk to you about that.”

  “Oh, Thomas, not in front of Will!” She laughed, covering the boy’s ears.

  He shook his head, smiling. “Well, that too later, if you wish it. I meant you and your skill. I would have you learn all you are capable of.”

  A smile and a touch of her hand against his face. “Not so much, then.”

  “A great deal, and don’t make a pretence otherwise. I have been thinking of Malaka.”

  “Well, I suppose you have to think of something. Better than murder, at least.”

  “We could live in Malaka for a few years while you attend the infirmary there.”

  “I’m a woman,” said Lubna.

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Oh, I think you may have, once or twice. I will not be accepted because of my sex.”

  “You will if I ask it,” Thomas said.

  “You have that much influence?”

  “It depends – if the people I know are still there, which they may not be, I may have influence. And if not I am known. Am I not surgeon to the Sultan of Gharnatah and his family? Surely my reputation carries some weight. I will have you accepted.” He turned his head. “If it is what you wish. I will not force it on you.”

  “How many years?” asked Lubna. She stroked Will’s brow, the boy’s eyes closed, his breathing slow.

  “One or two. There is a great deal to learn.”

  “Can you not teach me?”

  “Not as well. And there are advances I do not know of, and the depth of knowledge there is as the abyss of the ocean. You will learn more than with me alone.”

  “But you will come too? I won’t go without you. You and Will and whoever I carry, we will all go, yes?”

  “We will all go,” Thomas said. “Jorge too, and Belia if she wishes it.” He lifted Will and carried him through to his bed in the next room, removed the ridiculous clothing and tucked him beneath a cotton sheet. The window above the bed was open and he drew it shut in case Will woke and tried to climb out. The boy would climb anything, oblivious to all danger. A reflection of his grandfather’s lineage no doubt, though Thomas was aware of the same wildness inside himself, a wildness he fought to keep in check and sometimes failed. Did that mean Will was his son? He could still not tell. There was much of Helena in the boy as well, her beauty, her hair, in the shadow of the handsome man he would become.

  Thomas kissed his son’s brow and went back to Lubna, who was already in bed and waiting for him.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Isabel was in a flirtatious mood that did not suit her. Only later would Thomas discover the reason why. While Theresa examined her and Thomas stood behind a screen the Queen maintained a string of conversation that bordered on the immodest. She remarked on Theresa’s beauty before fortunately moving on to Will.

  “He looked so handsome yesterday when my daughters dressed him,” she said. “Just like this father.”

  Indeed, Thomas thought, whoever that might be, but of course he dare say nothing of such a matter.

  “Jorge is coming again today,” said Isabel, uncaring if Thomas spoke or not for she had enough words for both of th
em this morning. “I need him to tell me exactly how a Moorish wedding is arranged.”

  Thomas knew she was waiting for him to answer. “I thought we were marrying in the Cathedral, in a side Chapel that is already Moorish.”

  “You are, and there will be a Christian ceremony, but there must be a flavour of the Moorish, too. Your culture is so rich, Thomas. Misguided, but rich. Jorge tells me Lubna will have her skin painted with henna. I have never seen such done and have asked if I might observe. And you must visit the chapel we have chosen so you can approve it, though I am sure you will. Lubna and I have had long conversations about the truth of God, both our Gods, but perhaps only one God just the same. She is intelligent, your wife to be, is she not?”

  “She is, your grace. How is the Queen, Theresa?”

  “Fully recovered.”

  “Am I?”

  “So far as I can tell, your grace,” said Theresa.

  “Am I well enough to travel, Thomas? And you can come from behind that silly screen now for I am quite modest.”

  “Where do you want to travel to, your grace?”

  Theresa carried a bowl of water and cloths from the room, closing the door behind her. It was against protocol for Thomas to be alone with the Queen, but he had done so often enough in the past he thought nothing of it. He glanced around to find a chair and drew it closer, sat.

  “I have decided my child should be born in Alcala de Henares.”

  “Where is that?” Thomas stretched his legs out, a lethargy settling deep in his bones. The night had been tumultuous and he had not yet managed to make sense of any of the information he had managed to glean, if indeed he had obtained any at all.

  “It lies almost exactly in the centre of Spain,” said Isabel. “Appropriate for the birth of my second son, no?”

  Thomas smiled. “Or fourth daughter.”

  Isabel made a face and Thomas laughed.

  “Tell me, do you think the God of Islam could be the same God you and I worship, or is he the Devil incarnate as some of my advisors would have me believe? Lubna is an intelligent woman, but she claims her God is as forgiving and loving as mine.” Isabel leaned forward, eyes bright. “We have discussed the possibility our God is one and the same, only the manner of worship different.”