The Devils of Cardona (14 page)

“You in there, come out now!” he called, stepping out onto the ledge, holding up one of his pistols.

There was a faint shuffle from the dark opening, and then, to Mendoza's astonishment, an old man appeared on the ledge and stared blinking down at them. He looked more like a ghost or a walking skeleton than a human being in his long hair shirt and filthy pantaloons, with his unkempt hair and long beard.

“It's a hermit,” Franquelo said. “These mountains are full of them.”

“You mean he lives up there?” Gabriel asked incredulously.

“All year round. People like him live on grass and berries and spend their whole day praying.”

“Don't be afraid, old man,” Ventura said, lowering his pistol. “The king's officers want to ask you some questions. Come down now.”

The hermit regarded them uncertainly and then walked meekly toward Ventura, holding his palms against the rock face to steady himself. After a few minutes, the two of them came down together. Close up, the old man looked even more like a walking corpse, with his hollow cheeks, straggly white beard and wild, staring eyes, one of which was almost completely covered by a cataract. He was barefoot, and his feet and hands were black with dirt, and he emitted an animal-like stench that made Mendoza's nostrils curl as the old man stared at them with a bewildered and frightened expression.

“What's your name
, viejo
?” Mendoza asked.

“Elias the Nazarene, faithful servant of the One True God!”

“Is that your home?” Mendoza pointed toward the cave.

“In the playground of the Lord, I find my dwelling place.”

“You must have a good view of it from up there. Have you seen anything unusual on these roads lately?”

“Blood!” the hermit burst out. “I've seen blood!”

“Seen it where, old man?” asked Necker.

“There!” Elias pointed directly upward at the sky. “The blood of the lamb! Dripping down the face of the moon! I saw a fiery serpent moving across the sky and devils with white faces riding out of hell!”

“What devils? Where did you see them? Was it over there?” Mendoza pointed back toward the
santuario
. The old man's eyes flickered toward the cross, and he looked even more agitated. “I have seen the Son of Man crucified on the road to Santiago! I heard him cry out. I saw the angels weep when his enemies stabbed him with a spear, because they couldn't save him.”

Franquelo tapped his forefinger against his temple. “He's crazy as a goat. These hermits spend so much time up here eating grass and talking only to God that they don't even know what year it is.”

“When did you see him crucified, old man?” Mendoza asked, ignoring Franquelo. “How long ago?”

“Every day.” A sorrowful expression spread across the hermit's cadaverous face. “Every day the Son of Man dies for our sins.”

“You saw him killed on that cross, didn't you?” Mendoza persisted. “How many devils were there? Did you see their faces? Or were they wearing masks?”

The hermit looked confused, as if he had not understood the question, and then he stared at them with an expression of ferocious intensity. “War is coming to these mountains!” he exclaimed. “The lion and the serpent must fight, because the King of All the Spains has allowed the heretic snakes to infest his realms! There will be fire in the valleys and blood on the cross! Satan is coming with his infidel legions, and none of you will ever return to your homes!”

“You see?” Franquelo said. “If this were a city, he'd be locked up.”

“All of you will die!” the hermit repeated.

“You're beginning to annoy me, old man,” Mendoza said. “Go back to your cave.”

The hermit scrambled up the slope, still mumbling to himself. They trotted back down the road, and Gabriel and the two militiamen were noticeably somber. Even Necker looked glummer and more dour than usual.

“Cheer up,
chicos
,” Ventura teased them. “Anyone would think that Satan himself was wandering through these mountains! But this Redeemer is a man, and men can always be killed.”

“Or arrested,” Mendoza reminded him.

Gabriel and the two militiamen tried to look amused, but their anxious expressions told a different story.

“Tomorrow I want you to go up to the frontier and look around,” Mendoza told Ventura as the others went ahead of them. “See who's coming and going across the border on the road and away from it. The fewer people that see you, the better. I want you gone by dawn. If any of the others see you leave, don't tell them where you're going. I'll expect you back here in three days. And be careful, cousin. Whoever killed those boys is up there.”

“You're talking to Luis de Ventura, cousin. They are the ones who need to be careful. And what will you do?”

“It's time to visit the countess.”

n the morning Ventura was gone, and Mendoza told the others that he had been sent on a special assignment and that he himself would be visiting Cardona that day with Franquelo and Daniel while Gabriel, Necker and Martín remained in the village and continued to make inquiries about the priest's death. After saddling their horses, they descended through the valley and approached Cardona via a well-maintained road with stone bridges across the many streams and rivers flowing down from the high mountains that loomed over them.

As always, Mendoza was pleased to see land under cultivation. Even in the higher slopes, there were peasants working terraces cut into the mountains whose impossible heights reminded him of Granada. That was the only obvious similarity between the Morisco lands of Aragon and his birthplace. In the country towns of Granada, it
had generally been possible to distinguish Moriscos from Old Christians, particularly the women, who continued to cover their faces with long head scarves and shawls even after the king's pragmatic.

Here it was impossible to tell the two apart. Both Old Christian and Morisco men wore the same red, black and Aragonese head scarves, the same waistcoats, short capes and rope-soled sandals strapped up around their calves, while the women wore the same long dark skirts and bright shawls and head scarves or wide hats. Had Franquelo not told him which villages were Old Christian or Morisco and which were mixed, he would not have known. Franquelo knew many of their inhabitants by name, and he introduced Mendoza's group to the local notary, mayor or
alguacil
so that they could ask them about the murders. Most of the local officials seemed cut from similar cloth to Franquelo himself, but all of them were concerned by the potential impact of the murders of the Quintana brothers on the districts they served. One mayor reported that a Morisco tinker returning from Huesca had been forced to eat pork by a group of Old Christian shepherds and was badly beaten up when he refused. Another said that a group of
montañeses
had fired upon Morisco charcoal burners near a village in the mountains above Cardona.

All of them agreed that the
señorio
was becoming progressively more lawless and disorderly. There were robberies of merchants, travelers and pilgrims on the roads on a weekly basis, and bandits were entering the more isolated villages and hamlets and robbing their inhabitants. Mendoza also spoke to peasants and laborers working in the fields, both Morisco and Old Christian, and many of the latter had brought their weapons with them in anticipation of attacks from the Moorish Redeemer. None of the men and women he spoke to had seen him or knew who he might be, but many of them were clearly frightened and prepared to believe in rumors and fantasies that were unhelpful at best. Some said that the Redeemer was a giant with six fingers who rode a green horse. Others claimed he had a scar in the shape of a crescent on his left cheek and fought with a gold scimitar that
had a handle made of mother-of-pearl. An Old Christian blacksmith told them that a column of Turkish warriors had been seen crossing the frontier from France, armed to the teeth, but he could not say where they had crossed or who had seen them. Another woman said that the Redeemer was a Morisco from Granada who had come to Aragon on a corsair ship from Barbary to steal Christian children.

Many Old Christians were clearly as afraid of their Morisco neighbors as they were of the Redeemer himself, and some of them expressed their satisfaction that the king had sent a judge all the way from Valladolid to find him. Others looked less reassured and said that they needed soldiers as well as judges to protect them if the Moriscos rose up. These conversations produced no new or useful information, but they nevertheless slowed to nearly three hours what was in theory a forty-minute journey to Cardona.

The seat of the Cardona family was built on a high plateau and was surrounded on all sides by old fortified walls. The town was grander than anything Mendoza had seen in the
señorio
so far, with cobbled streets and tall three- to four-story houses with carved wooden eaves and painted adobe façades and ornate balconies that would not have been out of place in Zaragoza. There was a splendid Gothic church with high walls, gargoyles and spiked spires dominating the large, rectangular Plaza Mayor. Its inhabitants also looked better clothed and fed than those of the towns and villages they had passed through, men and women of obvious distinction mingling with the peasants,
labradores
and artisans sitting outside their open shops or strolling along the medieval walls of the main square to look at the lakes, rivers and valleys and the looming peaks of Monte Perdido.

Mendoza had always thought of Granada as the most beautiful city he'd ever seen, but Cardona was a perfect jewel of a town that impressed him all the more because he had not expected to find such a place in these mountains. The Cardona palace was an enormous building just off the Plaza Mayor, with sturdy walls built from smooth, rounded stones and narrow
windows with wooden shutters and carved stone lintels. The main entrance was wide enough for a small carriage to pass through, and above it, carved into the stone frame, was the Cardona family coat of arms, consisting of a lion and crossed swords and the striped shield of Aragon.

They knocked on the heavy wooden doors, and Mendoza gave his name to the servant who appeared. A few minutes later, he returned with two more servants, who took their horses and escorted Daniel and Franquelo to the servants' quarters. The servant led Mendoza through a long hallway lined with suits of armor and paintings depicting religious scenes or portraits of the Cardona family and ushered him into an enclosed courtyard filled with lemon trees and potted plants, its walls covered in creeping vines, that echoed to the trilling of a nightingale.

A priest in a black soutane and a venerable-looking elderly gentleman with a white goatee were seated at a table watching a young girl who looked to be about nine years old, who was leaning over a caged mynah bird, trying to make it talk. Two women were seated on cushions while an older woman who appeared to be the girl's personal servant hovered nearby, smiling down on her benignly. One of the two women looked like Juana Segura, and Mendoza knew instantly that her companion was the Countess of Cardona.

“What kind of talking bird is this, Mamá?” the girl cried. “It won't even say hello!”

The countess laughed indulgently. “It takes time, my love. They won't always say what you want them to when you want them to say it.”

“Hello,” the girl repeated. “Hello.”

The countess and her guests laughed as the bird remained silent, and then she saw Mendoza and got up to greet him. Mendoza regarded himself as something of a connoisseur of female beauty, and by any standards the mistress of Cardona was a masterpiece. Her fair hair was tied up in folded braids across her high forehead, offsetting her smooth, milk-white skin, her angular, tapered cheekbones, a long, almost Basque nose and the palest
blue eyes he had ever seen. She looked about Elena's age, but unlike Elena she did not attract him physically, and there was an air of dreamy etherealness about her that seemed to preclude any suggestion of sensuality.

She was wearing a simple black satin overskirt with wide flowing sleeves, stretched over a hooped farthingale skirt that accentuated her slim, tapered waist and revealed the outline of her breasts—something that was becoming increasingly rare in the chaste, tight-fitting dresses worn in Castile. Unlike many Castilian women, she was not wearing a collar or a ruff, and her décolletage was low enough to expose her long, deerlike neck.

“Good afternoon, Licenciado. I'm very pleased to see you.”

“The pleasure is mine, Countess.” Mendoza bowed and kissed her hand.

“Come and eat with us. This is Father García, our local priest. And Don Lucas Tallada, first magistrate of Cardona.”

“Licenciado.” The priest stood up and shook his hand. The old man attempted with obvious difficulty to do the same, but Mendoza took his outstretched hand to save him the trouble.

“And this is my daughter, Carolina.”

“The image of her mother,” said Mendoza.

Carolina smiled back and curtsied sweetly, which brought another pleased smile from her mother. “And my chambermaid, Susana. I believe you have met her father?”

“Indeed I have.” Mendoza smiled at Segura's daughter, who bowed slightly and stared back at him coldly.

“It's time for you to continue your lessons, Carolina,” the countess said. “We have business to discuss.”

“But, Mamá, I want to meet the judge!”

“And now you have met him. Mercedes, please.”

The governess took the girl's hand and led her away, and one of the servants drew back a chair for Mendoza.

“Please eat, Don Bernardo,” the countess said. “You must be hungry. And the tavern in Belamar won't be what you're used to.”

Mendoza needed no persuading as he looked at the splendid assortment of cold meats, cheeses, fried eggplant, sliced tomatoes, marzipan and almond cake, and he pointed out to the servant what he wanted. The countess sat down on the other side of the table, and he was surprised to see that Susana Segura sat down beside her, as if she were a member of the family rather than a servant.

“I understand that you are staying at Dr. Segura's dispensary,” the countess said as he sipped a glass of honeyed water.

“That is correct, my lady.”

“Dr. Segura is a fine man. He tended to my mother and my father before they died. But he will see anybody, even the poorest. And if they can't pay him, then he'll treat them for free.”

“And your bailiff, my lady? What kind of man is he?”

“I must apologize for what happened the other day. Jean is an able man, but sometimes his devotion to my interests leads him to overstep himself.”

“Inquisitor Mercader certainly thinks so,” Mendoza observed.

The countess frowned. “The inquisitor is also a little too zealous in the defense of the Church's interests. This leads him also to overstep certain boundaries that have been long established in these parts.”

“You're referring to the
fueros
?”

“I'm referring to the very specific seigneurial statutes enacted by His Majesty King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon for the first Count of Cardona in 1085, which granted full legal jurisdiction over the
señorio
to the count and his descendants. These privileges were extended by King Pedro of Aragon in 1212, when the House of Cardona was granted new territories as a reward for its contribution to the defeat of the Moors at Navas de Tolosa. They were ratified by His Majesty the emperor when he came to Aragon in 1519—my grandfather was present at that meeting. They clearly state that
any external authority wishing to enter the Cardona estates can do so only with the consent of the Cardona family itself. That includes both the Inquisition and His Majesty's own officials.”

She gave him a meaningful look, and Susana Segura smiled faintly.

“But the Catholic monarchs also agreed with the lords of Aragon that the Inquisition would be permitted to operate freely across the kingdom,” Mendoza said.

“They did,” the countess agreed. “But these powers were not intended to be without limit or constraint. My late husband was more favorable to the Inquisition than I am. He was from Toledo, like his father. But I am Aragonese, Don Bernardo. When I was a girl, I remember my grandfather telling me how the inquisitors were turned away from Teruel when they first came to the city. It was a matter of pride for him.”

“Times have changed, my lady.”

“Not as much as some Inquisition officials think. I presume that you have heard what kind of man Father Panalles was?”

At the mention of the priest, Mendoza noticed that Susana looked away and her pretty mouth tightened with anger and contempt.

“I have heard certain allegations,” he replied.

“They aren't allegations. There were Moriscos from Belamar arrested by the Inquisition on his testimony who had done nothing except to refuse to pay him or sleep with him. Neither the Church nor the Inquisition investigated that. And now Inquisitor Mercader would like to use the death of Panalles as an excuse to purge the town. But his real aim is to punish
me
.”