In any event, he had long left all that behind him. Moreover, tasting the tripe caused him a twinge of envy toward the man who refused it. Although it appeared to please everyone else’s tongues well enough.
Unable to sleep, the old priest rose again long before dawn and said Mass privately, seized with longing for all the grace he might wring from God upon this day’s efforts. Doubts were rising in his brain as to the rectitude of passing over so many small signs of possible heresy. Raymonde and Rosemary might applaud such willful blindness, but Raymonde and Rosemary might have been sent by the Evil One to tempt him into the errors of false mercy. Could this present crisis, falling upon him in his age, be divine punishment for years of concentrating on the notorious errors while turning blind eye and deaf ear to petty telltales, of seeking his own benefit more than God’s in prosecuting—when confiscations were needed—the dead and those who had fled, of finally seeking to escape into contemplative life rather than amending his active career? He half promised God to make full report, after all, at the nearest tribunal so soon as he should have Pilar safe.
And yet, to have Pilar safe again… Could this chance, if it came out well, be called in any sense punishment? Would it not be the greatest earthly reward possible or conceivable?
But if, after all this, we should only lose each other again?
Ah, God, show me Thy will—send me Thy unmistakable sign!
* * * *
They were on their way again at earliest dawn, munching bread and cold bacon as they rode. By midday they were in the mountains. Presently Gubbio demanded, “Well, Juan, how much longer?”
“Maybe half an hour,” the boy replied, sounding strangely defiant, “maybe half a day. This is their territory. It is for them to find us.”
“Then where in our Lady’s name are you leading us?”
“The good God knows. They brought me blindfold to those stones we passed back there, that look like the face of an old woman, and told me when I came back to wander away from the path and let them do the rest.”
Gubbio stopped his mule with a jerk. “If this is so, I for one go not a single step farther! Let them come and find us at the old woman’s face, if they want us.”
Juan twisted sharply around in his saddle to glare at the old servant. “They told me to wander off the path! Turn back now, even to those stones, and we risk her life! and the old uncle’s as well.”
“Gubbio, Gubbio,” Don Felipe interposed. “Turn back and wait for us if you wish, but Juan and I will go on as the bandits instructed him. Let me ride in front, since it appears that our exact route no longer matters, and give Juan the reins of our pack mule.”
They rearranged themselves, Gubbio grumbling the entire time; but, when after ten or twelve paces Don Felipe looked back, he was satisfied to see his servant still tagging doggedly along at the end of their small procession.
Perhaps half a rosary later, they heard the harsh cry: “Mouth to the ground!”
It seemed to come from somewhere above. Don Felipe squinted up, but could see nothing.
“To the ground!” the voice repeated.
The priest glanced around. Juan was already lying prone on the rocky soil, Gubbio scrambling out of the saddle to follow his example.
Returning his gaze to the rocks ahead and above, the inquisitor said, as loudly as he could without breaking dignity: “I am an old man and a priest, come to ransom Doña Pilar Labaa.”
“Mouth to the ground!”
“For the love of God!” Juan exclaimed. “If you would see her alive…”
Don Felipe’s heart beat to the point of pain, but still he sat in his place. “What proof have we that you are even of the band that is holding that lady and her uncle, Don Sagesse Labaa?”
A small explosion sounded, and gunshot pocked the earth some yards away, startling the mules. Gubbio’s ran. Juan, still hanging to the reins of both his own mount and the pack mule, was jerked to his feet. Don Felipe kept to his saddle with difficulty.
“Hold them, curse you!” bawled a second strange voice.
Gubbio rescued Juan, who might otherwise have been dragged away before releasing his beasts, and together they got them under control. Felipe found his habitually placid Blanca—the third of that name—easier to calm. Indeed, he envied her ability to recapture quietude. Attempting to emulate it, he looked up again and told the unseen bandits: “You see what such unseemly and useless threats may cost you. Already one mule with her saddlebags has escaped us. If you would have what remains, bring the lady and her uncle out to us safe, unharmed, and in good health, and we will make our exchange with no further trouble.”
Two men stepped into view. Both held handguns and wore blades. With quick darting of his eyes, Don Felipe glimpsed two more, one on either side, letting their heads and the muzzles of their guns be seen above the rocks. Whichever had fired would have had time by now to recharge his piece.
The taller of the two bandits in full view laughed—it sounded more like amusement than cruelty—and said, “Old man, how much trouble can you make for us? Ours is the advantage in numbers, arms, and age. We could take all you bring, leave you dead, and keep the woman for ourselves. What stops us? Your Holy Orders?”
With effort, Don Felipe held his back straight and his voice steady. “Play such tricks too often, and who will trust you and others of your trade far enough to bring you ransom for anyone?”
This time the bandit’s laughter was unmistakably amusement, free and honest. “Old priest,” he said, “your manner pleases me. Come on, then. It will be simpler and quicker to take you to the lady than to bring her here.”
Gubbio, looking round cautiously, climbed into Juan’s empty saddle. Juan remained afoot without protest, silently leading the pack mule. The shorter bandit led the way, the taller dropped back to stride along beside the priest, and the other two presumably followed with their guns.
Don Felipe found that in other circumstances it might have been not impossible to like the man at his side. Perhaps forty lean years of age, he bore himself with the grace of a noble; he seemed almost as well-washed and laundered as a town merchant; his beard looked no more than two days old; his ready grin displayed a set of strong if tobacco-stained teeth with a single upper canine missing; and his brown eyes, only slightly bloodshot, showed both dignity and humor.
“Should we not go blindfold?” the priest inquired.
“You do not like the view, Don Priest?”
“I do not wish to be killed for knowing the way.”
“Ah! No fear of that,” the bandit answered with another laugh. “We are guiding you as through a maze. It will take the rest of the day, but one might find worse ways of passing an afternoon, and this should give Pedro time to catch your missing mule, eh?”
Looking behind, and seeing two bandits still bringing up the rear, Don Felipe guessed that Pedro must be yet a fifth man. That left, by Juan’s original count, no more than three still at their camp, wherever it was, to guard the prisoners. Don Sagesse was at least Felipe’s own age, but a man could be old and still strong—witness Gubbio—and Pilar would be barely fifty. “You give me your word,” he demanded of his guide, “that the lady and her uncle are not only unhurt, but in comfort?”
“When I left, they were in as much comfort as any of us.”
“Neither bound nor chained?”
“Penned up a little, but in bodily comfort for all that, I promise you. Papa Mano does not mistreat guests who can draw wealth to us as the lodestone draws iron.”
“‘Papa Mano’? Then you are not yourself the leader of your people?”
“I am Papa Mano’s lieutenant. You may call me Tiberio,” the bandit explained, making half a bow as he walked. “I do not say whether or not it is my real name, but you may as well call me by it as by any other.”
“Well, Tiberio: if you spend the rest of this day bringing us to those whom we have come to ransom, does this not mean we may find ourselves constrained to pass the night beneath your
roof?”
“‘Beneath our roof’!” Tiberio laughed heartily. “Well, you have my word that you will not be any worse for it. Will you pay for your lodging by hearing our Confessions, Don Priest? And singing Mass for us?”
“Why not? It cannot do you much harm, though I fear that neither will it do you much good.”
The hours passed less slowly, Felipe suspected, for himself than for Gubbio and Juan, or even for three of their guard-escorts. All of the bandits save Tiberio appeared to be men of a taciturn sullenness rivaling Juan’s, and even Gubbio had rarely shown so little inclination to speak. Only the priest and Tiberio exchanged conversation.
At last, late in the afternoon, they reached the bandits’ camp. Two ragged women tended a goat and stirred a small iron pot above a little fire of very dry wood. Four men in various states of age and beardedness sat among the rocks jesting and drinking. Gubbio’s mule, stripped of her bags and harness, stood tethered to graze on sparse mountain grass near the mouth of a cave.
“Hey! Papa Mano!” Tiberio shouted joyously. “Look what we bring you! Not only ransom, but a priest to hear our confessions and sing Mass for us!”
One of the oldest bandits raised his head from his drinking bowl and stared at Don Felipe. The priest stared back. He knew those blue eyes, that straight nose… if he could but peel back the years, shave away the silver beard and smooth the brow of its wrinkles…
The bandit recognized him first, if only by a heartbeat. “Don Felipe de Bivar y… whatever! ‘Priest’ you said, Tiberio? By God’s holy backside, this is no ‘priest’ you have brought us—it’s a damned inquisitor!”
Gripping his saddle, Don Felipe replied: “As who should know better than you?—Manuel Urtigo!” He spoke calmly but quickly, to make his statement before the impending tumult.
“Inquisitor?” said Tiberio, the first by a syllable to repeat the word. Some whispered it, but most barked and spat.
“Yes!” cried Gubbio. “Maltreat us at peril of the displeasure of the Holy Office!”
“Put up thy sword, old friend,” Don Felipe told him, not wanting these rough men to hear the edge of desperation in his servant’s voice. “Did the Holy Office not prove, years ago, that this same Manuel Urtigo had kept his Catholic faith pure and true? Scarlet and mortal his other sins may have been even then, but they were not among those that the Inquisition may judge. Where are they whom I have come to ransom?”
“Take him to them!” shouted Urtigo. “Let him spend these next hours thinking about all that we can do to him!”
“Wait!” said Tiberio. “I have given him my word that he will not fare any worse for passing the night with us.”
For the length of an Ave Maria, the old chief and his lieutenant stared into each other’s eyes like dogs locked in a test of will. At last Urtigo said, “He will not fare any worse for spending the night. Nothing but my command stops us from doing to him at once whatever we may save for later. Take him! Take them all!”
Further revelations trembled on Felipe’s tongue. He bit them back just in time.
“Your Excellency,” Tiberio murmured, with a not ungentle pressure on the priest’s elbow, “you must get down and come on foot.” Half apologetically, he helped the old churchman dismount and led him past Gubbio’s mule toward the cave, pausing at its mouth to strike flint and steel to a small clay hand-lamp that waited in readiness on a little ledge. Three more bandits followed, one bringing Juan and two Gubbio.
The tunnel smelled of the needs of sinful flesh. Don Felipe held his handkerchief to his nose and wondered how much suffering such an atmosphere must cause the Calé. The passage was not, however, excessively rough underfoot, nor excessively long. Presently a tiny flame appeared at the tunnel’s end. As they neared it, Don Felipe saw that there were also bars. Behind them, something moved with a swishing of cloth and audible intake of breath.
“Pilar?” he exclaimed.
“Felipe! Ah, my own, is it you!” Her voice held anger—but not, he thought, directed at him.
Gubbio attempted another ill-placed threat involving the vengeance of the Holy Office. Don Felipe cut him off. None of them said anything more until after Tiberio and his men had opened the makeshift cage long enough to push the new prisoners in with the old, shut the door and secured it again with a large if rusty padlock, and departed.
The instant the last bandit was out of sight, Pilar seized Juan by one arm and said in low, fierce passion, “You fool! What do you mean by coming back? By bringing him back?”
“Could I leave you, mother? Could you truly ask that?”
“So now you will lose both parents, and maybe your own sweet life as well!”
“Both parents?” Don Felipe caught the bars to help hold himself on his feet.
“She did not even tell you? Felicitas! You did not so much as tell him? Yes, my husband—when I told you I was barren, I spoke the truth as I thought it to be, but I was mistaken—this is our daughter! This young fool who could have lived, but chose instead to throw away both your life and her own!”
All these years… Rosemary had spoken the truth.
“No,” Felipe answered, shaking his head. “Not her own. She will live… at least long enough to bear one child. This I know. This I know from visions… visions I never fully understood until this moment. Felicitas? Not ‘Juan’—Felicitas! My daughter.”
Don Sagesse spoke. “Our last daughter. The last of all my tribe.”
“What happened?” said Don Felipe, speaking more to his wife than to the poor, broken old count of the Calé.
“It was a village of lawless men,” Felicitas took it upon herself to answer. “Beyond the mountains. ‘Lutherans’ you would have called them, I think. Their own priests stopped them in time to leave a few of us alive. Alive and hiding. The gadje here on this side of the mountains are better. They at least offer us a chance to be ransomed.”
“A trap for your father, you mean, little fool!”
“No,” Don Felipe interjected. “Stop blaming her. Do you think I could have rested without coming for you myself?”
“She was to tell you that she is your daughter, not that I was still alive! That letter—she even showed you that, I suppose—it was written only to fool them into letting her go. She was to have destroyed it and kept only the jewel, to show it to you and prove who she is.”
“I bless her for bringing me this chance to save you, or at least to see you once more, to hold you in my arms once more, whatever the price.”
Gubbio mumbled something beneath his breath.
Ignoring him, Don Felipe went on, “As for their intention to trap me—had you told them my name?”
“Them? Never! I had told Felicitas whom to find, that was all.”
“I thought as much. They did not even seem to know me for a man of the Holy Office until their leader recognized me. We have an ancient score to settle, Manuel Urtigo and I. Had it been otherwise, I think they would have accepted the ransom and let us go.”
Gubbio grumbled, “Pity it is not otherwise, then.”
“And I rejoice in this chance to settle it!” the inquisitor said firmly. “Although not the tenth part as much as I rejoice to find you again, my love, my wife. And… can this truly be our child? My daughter… you looked younger as a boy, by several years.”
“She was born half a year after they drove us from Agapida, that time you were not there to stop them. You cannot think I would ever have married another, as long as you might still be alive.”
“And searching for you. Oh, God, if even one of my messengers had ever found you!”
Gubbio muttered, “I would God they had, and none of us be here now.”
“Shame!” Don Sagesse cried unexpectedly. “Is it not shame for a priest’s man to complain against the fate Christ hands him?”
“God graciously allows us to bear our fate more easily by complaining about it… does He not, master?”
Don Felipe hardly heard his servant and Don Sagesse. Holding Pilar
tightly, he said, “If there is any honor among thieves, they will let you go. At need, appeal to Tiberio. He is, I believe, the most nearly honorable among them. In Rome I have a friend from my earliest boyhood—one Gamaliel Ben Joseph—a rabbi of the Hebrew people. My visions warned me that Rome would be sacked, in time to warn him of it in a letter before it happened, these two or three years ago. My warning saved him and his family. Only last year I had word through my Italian bankers that they were living once again in the city, alive and in good health and comfort. Even if Gamito has passed on into the bosom of Abraham since my last news of him, his family should remember me, what I have done for them.”
“And you, my husband?” said Pilar.
“And me?” Gubbio put in. “Master, what about me?”
“If we survive, Gubbio, we shall go to Rome along with my wife and family. If you survive, old friend, and I do not, my last command is that you serve them with all the faithfulness you can find within your bones. And that you arrange for Diego Sos to join you, if he so chooses, and Don Martin also.”
“But what if these bandits know me?” Gubbio’s voice dropped to a barely audible whisper. “Oh, Mother Mary, what if the villain remembers my face, too?”
“Pray that we both escape,” Don Felipe told him. “For if I escape, you will, also. If God grants me justice this time against my ancient enemy…” He lowered his own voice still further. “But even if not, you had no direct part in Manuel Urtigo’s case. He may ignore you. Provided, of course, that you play your canny old self, and never let it slip to them that you might ever have enjoyed any connection with the Holy Office beyond that of an inquisitor’s personal domestic.”
Inquisitor Dreams Page 32