by Amy Maroney
The ridges across the valley were dusted with snow. Pelegrín filled his lungs with cool autumn air. He was grateful to be an ocean away from the fetid battlefields of the Kingdom of Naples, where the stench of sweat and blood and iron festered under a brutal sun. How he longed to return to Oto during the endless days of war, during the ordeal of his father’s injury and death, during the tedious months after the Great Captain had claimed victory for Spain and insisted Pelegrín stay at his side.
He turned away from the window, surveying the correspondence on his father’s desk. Reluctantly he sat down in Ramón’s favorite chair. To his surprise, several letters were from the family of Beltrán, who had disappeared from the face of the earth after failing to carry out Ramón’s orders to kill Mira.
Pelegrín had gleaned from the servants that Marguerite learned of Beltrán’s plans to attack her daughter, sent Mira away, and stationed herself in Mira’s chamber. When Beltrán came for Mira in the night, he found her mother instead. Had Beltrán only discovered after the deed was done that he had murdered the wrong woman?
This question plagued Pelegrín. Mistake or no, Beltrán was undoubtedly pleased with the outcome. After all, the steward’s desire for Marguerite was only eclipsed by his anger at her power over him. When the opportunity came to run her through with a sword, he would not have hesitated.
But what happened next? Several castle dwellers told him Beltrán sent out hounds and men after Mira that night. Beltrán himself set out to track her at dawn. A dozen people watched him exit the castle gates. But none of the hounds or hunters found Mira, and the steward never returned.
A cold breeze ruffled the pile of correspondence. Pelegrín pulled the wolfpelt off the back of the chair and wrapped it around his shoulders, inhaling the scents of hide and fur. For a time he listened to the whispers of the wind, then forced his attention back to the letters from Beltrán’s family.
The first two were polite in tone, inquiring about Beltrán’s health. The third letter was threatening. Word had reached the family of the steward’s disappearance. They declared that knights would be dispatched from Barcelona to Castle Oto, demanding justice for their son.
Pelegrín shook his head. How often had he heard Beltrán complain of his lowly stature within the family? As a fourth son, he was ignored. The only value he offered was the gold he sent home regularly from Castle Oto. It was the gold that finally got his family’s attention—or the lack thereof.
So this was why a group of armed men had approached the castle not long ago. They had been sent from Barcelona to demand the gold Beltrán no longer sent home. But no one here knew any of this, and so they treated the men as attackers and harassed them until they went away.
Pelegrín leaned back in his seat and let the letter drift to the floor. Now he understood the significance of the red cloth he had found on the roadside during their approach to the castle. It was the banner of Beltrán’s family. The sigil it bore, though only a fragment, matched the seal on these letters.
He sighed, shaking his head. Beltrán’s family would have to be appeased—and soon. Before winter shut down the roads, he would send a pair of knights to Barcelona with a letter of explanation about the steward’s disappearance, along with a final payment of gold. He hated the thought of paying off the family of the man who murdered his mother, but it was best to resolve the matter once and for all.
He turned his attention back to the desk and picked up a heavy scroll. On its face was the royal seal. Carefully he cracked it open and unrolled the parchment.
It was a demand for an inventory of all the bounty his family had been given after the war for the Kingdom of Naples. What was more, Pelegrín himself was being summoned to Barcelona in the spring to personally hand over this list of items to King Ferdinand, along with a hefty tribute payment. If he did not comply, royal guards would be dispatched to escort him to Barcelona.
Dread seized Pelegrín’s stomach.
He knew exactly what had prompted this request. It all stemmed back to Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the Great Captain. With Queen Isabella now dead, King Ferdinand picked loose the complex web of patronage and favoritism she had woven. Her relationship with the Great Captain had been the source of whispers and gossip since she was a young woman. Whether any of it was true, the fact remained that under her rule, the Great Captain had risen through the ranks of her army and led Spain to victory first in battles with the Moors, then across the sea in the Kingdom of Naples.
And he was now at the top of Ferdinand’s list of people to demote from royal favor, though he remained in Naples overseeing Ferdinand’s reconquest of various lands in Italy from the French invaders. There was some truth to the rumors about the man: when payment to soldiers never materialized from the royal coffers after the war, the Great Captain took it upon himself to distribute booty to his most valuable soldiers.
Including Pelegrín.
There was no one Pelegrín admired more on the battlefield. And during his father’s convalescence and death in the Kingdom of Naples, the Great Captain had become a friend, offering his personal surgeons, his priests, his counsel, and his sympathy.
Pelegrín was struck anew with shame at the memory of his father’s terrible confession in the days before his death. The agony of learning of his family’s grisly tradition, of discovering his father had ordered the murder of the twin sister he had never known simply because she was female.
He still did not know which was more powerful, the horror that suffused him at his father’s admission or the pride he felt in his mother Marguerite for defying her husband. After giving birth to twins, she had hidden her baby girl away—and given Mira a new life across the mountains.
He sighed, turning over the scroll in trembling hands. Then he put it aside and shuffled the pile again, selecting a letter sealed with the mark of the monastery of San Juan de la Peña. He unfolded it and held it up to the light. Reading the lines of script, he became uncharacteristically still.
Without warning, tears blurred his vision. He blinked, startled at the ache they produced in his eyes. It had been a long time since he cried. He had almost forgotten how it felt.
Pelegrín vaulted from his chair, the letters scattering like autumn leaves in his wake, and made for the door.
20
Autumn, 1505
Oto, Aragón
Elena
Elena strode through the great hall carrying an armful of linens. She would never get used to the idea of servants doing her housekeeping.
Her eyes were drawn to a pool of wax on the stone floor under the massive circular chandelier made of iron and deer antlers. A kitchen maid would have to clean up the mess before someone slipped and broke a bone. Elena paused, glancing up. The chandelier had inspired awe in her the first day she entered the castle as a young, frightened woman. These days, she rarely noticed the thing.
“Elena,” a deep voice called out.
Pelegrín descended the stairs two steps at a time and loped across the cavernous hall toward her. Despite his size, he moved with surprising grace. Just like his father before him. Without his armor, his hair tied back with a leather cord, Pelegrín looked nothing like a baron. But in the soft autumn light spilling through the high windows on either side of the oak doors, the gold ring on his left hand glimmered faintly. Elena recognized it as one Ramón used to wear. The baron’s ring, passed down from generation to generation.
No matter how humbly Pelegrín dressed, this ring was a herald to all he encountered that he ruled the house of Oto and everything in it.
Everything but her.
“Yes?” she asked.
“There were many letters waiting for me in my father’s chamber,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “One of them was from Brother Arros.”
She felt her knees go weak.
“He wrote of your mother Maria,” Pelegrín went on, “how she
found you in the village of Arazas as a child, and what she found with you.”
Elena stared at him levelly. “The blanket.”
His eyes flicked to the chain around her neck. “And the medallion.”
“I didn’t want to believe it either,” she said, feeling defensive. Though no one else was about, she lowered her voice to a hiss. “Your father is the last person on earth I’d choose for a brother. Why would I want to be a member of this family? You know your history. You know what they did.”
“All of that is finished,” he vowed. “It will never be repeated.”
There was a tiny loosening in Elena’s chest. She searched his eyes and saw only sadness.
“I’m not here to take advantage,” she finally said. “I care nothing for the trappings of the rich. I’m here for Alejandro’s sake. Or I was, until you returned. Now my duty is done. I’ll be off in a few days for the west.”
Pelegrín looked confused. “You have a home here. This is where you belong.”
Elena gave a short laugh. “I’m useless within these walls. And I’ve a family waiting for me in Basque country. Though they’ve likely given me up for dead.”
“A family? What do you mean?”
Elena considered his words. Xabi was her family, and his relatives the unfortunate consequence of that fact. However annoying they could be, a life spent alongside Xabi was worth it.
“I’m getting married,” she said after a moment. “To a shepherd called Xabi, who’s a farmer, too, because he inherited everything when his sister died.”
“But you are a noblewoman,” Pelegrín argued. “You cannot marry a shepherd.”
She snorted. “I’m not a noblewoman. No one would ever mistake me for one.”
“We will remedy that,” he promised. “You can have some gowns made. Or wear my mother’s.”
Elena was startled. “I would never wear Lady Marguerite’s things. A person can’t move in all those skirts and dangling sleeves, those bodices that strip the breath right out of your lungs. No, I’m perfectly happy in the clothes I’ve always worn.”
“Happiness aside, you have a new life now, and you must accept it.”
Elena could swear Pelegrín’s chest puffed up as he spoke.
“What do you mean?” she snapped. “My life’s my own. I’ll leave when I want to.”
Pelegrín took a step toward her.
“Do you mean to order me to stay?” she asked quietly. “Have you become the tyrant your father was, and his father before him?”
Pelegrín’s resemblance to his father was unsettling. And the coldness in his expression gave her pause. Perhaps he was cruel. Perhaps the brutality of his forefathers was inescapable, flowing through his veins like a torrent of snowmelt, icing the pathways to his heart.
“I do not wish to cage you, Elena. Aunt.” His voice softened. “But it is nearly winter. You cannot hope to travel all the way to Basque country at the change of seasons. Surely you see the folly in that?”
Both of them glanced at the windows. The light was pale and weak. A few snowflakes straggled down into the courtyard.
She hesitated. Eyed him again.
“Stay,” he pleaded. “Please. For the winter. Come summer, we will all go west together.”
“Together?” she asked, mystified.
“You, Alejandro, and I. We can travel together, with knights for protection. I shall see you safely to your wedding.”
“You just said I can’t marry a shepherd and now you want to come to the wedding?” The thought of it made her queasy. “I can’t imagine a baron at a country wedding.”
“Then think of me not as a baron but simply as the brother of your favorite nephew.”
“I don’t know what to make of you, Pelegrín,” she said slowly. “I always saw your mother in you when you were a lad. But then your father took you to war, and I figured you’d come back a man molded in his image. Now you stand before me and I’m not sure what to think. I see him in you, I hear him in you, but I swear she’s in there too. I want to believe that, anyway.”
He bowed his head. “I loved my father, but I did not love all of his ways. I defied him once, made an enemy of his steward. I knew when I became baron I would forge my own path.”
Elena frowned, trying to remember what Pelegrín did to spark Ramón’s anger.
“My father was away,” Pelegrín explained. “I stopped Beltrán from ravishing a servant girl, then locked him up in punishment.”
Elena nodded, recalling the turn of events. “And when your father returned, he lopped off Beltrán’s finger for good measure, then forced you to practice your swordplay with the man every day.”
“That about sums it up,” Pelegrín said wryly.
“The devil deserved it,” she said. “He should have lost more than a finger. Beltrán had many enemies, most of them powerless. You may have rescued one girl, but there were plenty of others not so lucky.”
Pelegrín grimaced. “He still has some allies. His family sent letters here, wondering what happened to the stream of gold he once provided them. Why he vanished.”
“Vanished?” Elena asked. “Don’t you mean died?”
“Where is the evidence? He disappeared, shirked his duty to my father.”
She stared at him, astonished. “Nonsense. Beltrán ordered his men to kill your mother, tried to kill me, then tracked your sister Mira to a cave. He meant to ravish her, then murder her. But she was much stronger than he realized.”
Pelegrín became very still. “Mira killed him?”
“It was that or die herself.”
“He tried to kill you, too?” he asked after a moment, the slow cadence of his speech betraying his shock. “How?”
“He shot me with an arrow. In the chest.”
“And yet you live,” Pelegrín pointed out.
“Only because of a painting.”
“A painting?”
Elena nodded. “Mira painted your mother’s portrait. She gave it to me for safekeeping. I hid it under my cloak when he came to my cottage and said he was going after Mira with his hounds. He let fly an arrow and the force of it toppled me backwards. Then he rushed away, eager to murder your sister. Never dreaming his arrow was buried in wood, not flesh.”
“What has become of the painting?”
Elena shrugged. “I hope it hangs in a fine home by the sea, and Mira gazes upon it each day. But so much time has passed since I saw her, I’ve no idea if it still exists. Or if she does.”
Pelegrín closed his eyes, rubbed a hand over his face. “I do not have good news for you on that account, I regret to say.”
Elena stared at him, aghast. “Out with it!” she ordered.
“When I returned from war, I discovered Mira’s traces in Perpignan, a city on the shores of the Mediterranean. She worked as an artist there. She had a husband and a daughter.”
“A daughter?” Elena whispered. “Mira has a baby girl?”
“Her name was Rose.”
“Was?”
“They traveled to a country manor where she worked as an artist for the lord and lady. But the baby died and Mira and her husband were turned out.”
The linens tumbled out of Elena’s arms. She swayed in place, the strength leaching out of her body. In the space of little more than a year, Mira had birthed a baby and watched her die. Why had the gods seen fit to punish her in this way? Hadn’t she endured enough pain in her short life?
“The stars and sun above,” she murmured. “Poor Mira. Poor Arnaud.”
“Her husband is called Arnaud?”
“Yes.”
Pelegrín shook his head, his expression tightening. “I met a man called Arnaud when I was searching for Mira. He helped us hunt for her.”
Elena narrowed her eyes. “How so?”
“We came upon him lo
dged in the guesthouse of a convent as we searched for Mira. He said he had seen her and her husband traveling east. He led us to a border town swarming with French soldiers. Carcassonne, it was called. We did not dare enter the walls of the place, but he did. The next morning he told us he saw Mira’s husband at the market selling off all her pigments and brushes—for she had died.”
Elena felt light-headed with relief. She couldn’t repress a smile. “Got you off her trail, didn’t he?”
“He played me for a fool,” Pelegrín admitted, looking sheepish. “I wanted to go investigate the matter myself. But we had to get away from Carcassonne. I could not risk the safety of my men. After years of battle with the French across the sea, if I allowed them to walk right into the hands of the enemy...” He shook his head. “Even so, we got in a scrape with some French soldiers on the roadside. That fellow Arnaud helped fight them off, rode back to Perpignan with us, said he had business there. He saw us off at the river harbor. Now I understand why.”
The look of chagrin on his face made Elena feel a sudden rush of sympathy for him. In his eyes she saw the boy she knew long ago, when her days were spent tending to his mother, Lady Marguerite.
“Arnaud was protecting Mira from you,” she said gently. The knot of fear in her belly began to ease.
“But I meant her no harm!” Pelegrín protested. “I made that clear to the man.”
“Why would he ever trust you? Your father wanted her dead. Perhaps when the steward failed to carry out Ramón’s bidding, you were dispatched to finish the job.”
Pelegrín regarded her bleakly. “I would never harm my sister. All I want is to offer her my protection.”
“She doesn’t need it,” Elena insisted. “She’s spent her lifetime learning to survive without your family. Stop searching for her. Be content she’s found a way to thrive in the world, and wish her well.”
He scowled. “I cannot. I will never stop searching for her. She deserves the advantages of her noble birth.”
“The greatest act of respect you can show Mira is never to seek her out again.” Elena spoke softly to take the sting out of her words. “If your heart’s as big as you say it is, you’d be wise to remember this.”