Never an Empire (11 page)

‘Money?'

The smile widened once more.

‘They told me, Father, how very unworldly you are. I mean payment. You have travelled a long way, you are rendering us a great service. We must show our gratitude. We must pay.'

‘Pay?'

The lieutenant laughed and turned to Carmen.

‘See, this is a real priest, not one who lives in comfort and feeds well while his people suffer. He comes all this way and doesn't even think of payment.'

Carmen looked at Father Enrique shyly.

‘He is indeed a very special man.'

‘A holy man.' The Lieutenant turned back to Father Enrique. ‘You must be paid, Father, to take so much and give nothing in return would bring shame on the whole village.'

Father Enrique felt he must say something, anything. He looked around and saw Maria standing silently by the fire on which the bowl of porridge was beginning to burn. He looked at the porridge.

‘Yes, I see, but it is a poor village.'

The Lieutenant laughed again.

‘Good heavens, Father, you can't refuse; besides the village isn't paying. I am.'

‘You?'

‘Well, not me personally but I carry the money. It is from General Sakay himself.'

‘General Sakay? But why should he pay me anything?'

‘Partly for what you have done here for the village and partly for what you have done for him.'

‘But I have done nothing for the general.'

‘Oh yes you have, Father, you have brought us two policemen who are now tied up and will soon go with me and my men back into the mountains. See.'

The lieutenant pointed and Father Enrique looked. Standing in the shadow of a hut with four armed men around them were the policemen with their hands tied, looking very sorry for themselves.

‘You have captured the policemen?'

‘Yes, they are not very good policemen, Father, instead of doing their job of protecting you they preferred to sit and drink. When we came this morning we didn't even have to capture them, we only had to wake them up and believe me that was hard enough.'

‘But why?'

‘The chief of police in San Juan has four of our men in his gaol waiting to be sent to Manila where they will be tried and hung. We will free his policemen if he frees our men. If our men go to Manila and die his policemen will die in exactly the same way.'

‘But that is dreadful.'

‘No, Father, that is war, and in this war everyone has to choose a side. The police have chosen the Americans. We have chosen freedom and independence and you have brought us the hostages we needed. Welcome to the revolution, Father; like it or not you have chosen a side.'

Chapter Twelve

Despite his rather grand uniform the chief of police of San Juan de Bautista couldn't help but look a comfortable man. Middle aged, short and stout, with a handsome flowing moustache, he seemed like a favourite uncle who would smile easily, laugh willingly, and give generously at Christmas and birthdays. At the moment, however, he looked far from comfortable and showed no inclination whatsoever to laugh or even smile. He pulled agitatedly at his moustache as he stalked about his office.

Father Enrique waited silently, sitting by the imposing desk, watching, listening, and doing his best to preserve an air of impartial detachment. He did not want to be part of what was happening and, as a priest, he should have no part. Quite how he had become embroiled in such an awful matter he still did not clearly understand.

‘I don't understand why you had to go there in the first place.' The chief stopped and shot a suspicious look at Father Enrique. ‘Did anyone suggest it to you, anyone at all? Think carefully.'

‘I do not need to think; it was entirely my own idea.'

The chief of police came back to his desk, sat down heavily, and began his questioning again.

‘And who did you tell you were planning to go to this village?'

‘But we have been over this already. You have asked me these same questions twice and if you ask them twice more my answers will not change.'

‘Never mind how many times I ask them. I'll ask it twenty times if I like, priest or no priest.'

Father Enrique gave a small sigh of resignation.

‘I told my housekeeper and my sacristan four days before we set off. They would have told other people that I'd be away and everyone in the town would have known where I was going by the time I left.'

‘But the bandits were waiting for you in the village?'

‘That's possible. They may have been there when I arrived but if they were I didn't see them until the morning of the following day.'

‘And by that time my men had been taken?'

‘Yes.'

The chief stood up again, took another turn round the office, then came back and stood in front of Father Enrique.

‘Now look, Father, I'll tell you something. In the normal course of events I wouldn't dream of giving an inch to those cowardly brigands. I'd let them hang my men rather than negotiate. Then I'd hunt them down like the scum they are.' He paused and pulled awkwardly at his moustache and a change of tone came into his voice. ‘That's the official line, Father, that's what Manila expects me to say, and that's what I'll have to say unless we can find some other way.'

‘We?'

‘Yes, we. You got me into this mess, didn't you?'

‘Me?'

The tone changed back.

‘Yes, you. You're the one who went running off to some godforsaken village stuck out there in the middle of bandit country and if you insisted on going I had to send an escort with you didn't I? You knew that.'

‘No, I didn't.'

The chief waved aside his answer.

‘Of course you did. Everyone did. I couldn't let an important man, our only priest, make a dangerous journey like that without proper protection.' He made a wide gesture with both arms. ‘The whole town knew I would have to send an armed guard, that there would be my men with you.'

Father Enrique shrugged noncommittally; he didn't want to argue: he wanted to be on his way. He had come directly to the chief of police's office as soon as he returned from the village and handed over the written message Carmen's husband had given to him just before he left.

‘If you say so. I know nothing of these things.'

‘Oh? You know nothing, eh? Well I say you know enough to arrange a trip to nowhere for no good reason other than to drop my men into an ambush.'

Father Enrique looked up at him genuinely surprised.

‘Are you saying that I was part of some plot to kidnap your men?'

The chief of police, who had been standing over Father Enrique in a menacing manner, now deflated, walked round the desk, and almost collapsed into his chair.

‘No, Father, of course not. I was just trying to find out if it might sound right if I said it to anyone else.'

‘Well if you do say it to anyone else I hope it sounds as preposterous to them as it does to me because it's nonsense.'

‘Yes, yes. I didn't really think it could work and you're right, it wouldn't. But the fact is I'm desperate.' He pushed the letter from the lieutenant across the desk. ‘You've read it?'

‘No, but the lieutenant who gave it to me told me what it said. Your men for theirs or your men hang when theirs do.'

The chief pulled the letter back.

‘And he gives me only a week. I ask you, Father, what can I do in a week?'

‘I wouldn't know. I'm a priest, not a policeman or a soldier.'

A sudden anger came into the chief's voice and his fist banged in the desk.

‘They're not soldiers, they're bandits, criminals. The Americans passed a law that says so, that anyone who opposes their occupation is a bandit and that includes anyone who helps them. You know that as well as I do even if you are a priest.'

‘All I know is what I saw. The man wore a military uniform, spoke like an officer, and behaved like one.'

The flash of anger passed as quickly as it had come. He might be chief of police, but he also had a problem, a bigger one than just having two of his officers taken by the rebels.

‘Look, Father, I'll tell you the truth. I'm in a difficult spot and I'll need your help. One of those two men I sent to look after you is my wife's nephew, her sister's boy. He's not very bright and I doubt he's very honest but he's still my wife's nephew so I had to give him a job when no one else would have him. Not that I blame them: he's caused me enough headaches with his lazy ways, but if the rebels kill him my wife will never forgive me, and you know what that would mean in any household? Oh, no, sorry, Father, I was thinking out loud more than talking. But I need the boy back safely and I'll need help to do it. Your help.'

‘Me? What can I do?'

The chief leaned forward. He may not have looked like a man of intellect and action but it was not for nothing that he had become the chief of police. Already he had begun to form a plan in his mind. His difficulty was the plan only worked if he had an absolutely reliable man communicating for him with the rebels. He looked at Father Enrique. This priest had to be that man.

‘I want you to go back to the village and get a message to the rebels. I will release their men and make it look like an escape but they must put my two men where I know I can get them back safely once the escape has taken place. Will you do that, Father? Will you go and take that message to the rebels?'

‘No.'

‘No? Not to save lives: my men and the rebels I'm holding?' He tried to get a sneer into his voice, ‘And you say you're a man of God.'

‘I am a priest, not a policeman nor a police messenger and I don't want to get any more involved in this thing than I already am.'

‘But that's the point. You
are
already involved. You led my men to the village. You were there when they were taken. You spoke to the leader of the bandits and you were his messenger to me.'

‘And my answer is still no.'

But Father Enrique's voice was not as final as he would have wished and the chief noticed it. He sat back and smiled and stroked his moustache. He was back on familiar ground now.

‘Don't worry, Father, nothing will happen to you. You are our priest, respected, admired. You gave us the orphanage and the sewing school. You brought us Mass and the sacraments. People know you to be a good and holy man. But you are also somewhat otherworldly, you are an innocent among the devious ways of the wicked. You trust too easily and cannot see when villainy stands right beside you, even perhaps in your own house.' He held up a hand as if to prevent some refutation of his comments although Father Enrique had made no attempt to speak. ‘Oh I don't blame you, Father, it is good for a priest to be like that, but someone led my men into a prepared ambush. Someone who knew that you would be going to the village gave that information to the rebels in plenty of time for them to get ready.'

‘I told you. Everyone would know: the whole town would have been told there would be no Masses while I was away.'

‘True, but that was only just before you left, not time enough to contact the rebels and for them to make their arrangements. No, it had to be someone who knew about your visit as soon as you had decided to go. Let me see, who did you say knew you were going?' He put his fingertips together as if trying to remember and waited a moment. Father Enrique felt a knot of fear form in his stomach. He knew what was coming.

‘Ah yes, your housekeeper and your sacristan. You told them both because you said you would be taking them with you. Yes, that's right. I remember now. Well, Father, one or the other must be in league with the bandits. Or maybe they're in it together. I will have to have them brought in and questioned, questioned quite severely. Of course my men will have to be told what it's all about and no doubt they will take it badly. I'm afraid the interrogation might be used by them to get some sort of revenge.'

He spread his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘I couldn't approve of any such brutality but I can understand how it might happen and of course I could do nothing to stop it until it was probably too late. The woman would suffer more I think. Men, even policemen, can become animals when women are involved in violence; who knows what might happen to her before I could intervene. And your sacristan is an old man, not strong. It is not impossible that he might not survive a really severe interrogation. Any misjudgement by …'

But Father Enrique had heard enough. If Maria was questioned she might admit it was her idea to go to the village and if that happened he would be caught out in a lie. Then there was the matter of Carmen. No, for more reasons than the chief understood Father Enrique knew he could not let Maria be interrogated.

‘Very well. I will take your message.'

The chief of police beamed at him.

‘Good. I knew I could rely on your help, Father, after all, you are a man of God and lives are at stake here. Now go home and don't mention any of this to a soul.'

‘My housekeeper and sacristan will not be questioned?'

‘No, not as long as they keep their mouths tight shut. Tell them that, Father, tell them to forget everything they heard and saw. Tomorrow, just before dawn, I will send a man to your house. He will bring you a good horse and go with you most of the way.'

‘And what excuse will there be for no morning Mass?'

‘You're unwell. You have to stay in bed. You caught something at the village.' The chief grinned, pleased with himself. ‘After all, it's not so far from the truth, is it?'

‘And your terms for the exchange? Will this man bring me your message to hand over?'

‘Oh no, Father, nothing in writing, not from me anyway. You can remember all that's needed, I'm sure. The rebels I'm holding in gaol will escape as soon as I know my men are safely deposited somewhere I can be sure of getting them back unharmed. That's not so hard, is it?'