The Devils of Cardona (24 page)

For a few moments, Leanor's face had been illuminated with a fervid mixture of desperation and hope, as if she had briefly glimpsed the possibility that some good fortune had finally come her way, but now she handed over the pistol and became once again the resigned mountain woman that she'd been only a few minutes before. Had it not been for the pain in his head and shoulder, Ventura might have felt sorry for her, but even after she had tied a rough bandage around his shoulder with a piece of torn shirt, he continued to bleed, and he dabbed the back of his head and realized that he was also bleeding where she'd hit him.

It was turning out to be another very bad day, and there was now a real possibility that after all the battles he'd fought in, death might finally overtake him in this Pyrenean hovel. Andrés was still writhing and cursing on
the floor, and Leanor bent down to tend his bleeding foot, telling him that he was an idiot and it served him right. Ventura stumbled out into the daylight and staggered past the children, who were staring fearfully at his pistols and sword and his soaking shoulder. He felt dizzy and sick, but he noticed that the oldest boy was missing. He knew that the boy had gone to alert the bandits, and he stumbled over to the donkey and climbed onto its bony back.

It was not much of a beast, but a donkey had carried Jesus into Jerusalem, and this one might just be enough to get him back to Belamar.

•   •   •

I
T
TOOK
SLIGHTLY
OVER
TWENTY
MINUTES
to reach the turnoff toward Las Palomas and another half an hour before Mendoza saw the church tower protruding out of the cluster of houses up ahead. The village was situated in a shallow river valley, and surrounded by woods, which made it possible to get close without being seen by the peasants working in the fields nearby. Mendoza and Necker walked their horses into the woods and made their way around the edge of the valley toward the village, until they found a vantage point overlooking the church. The cemetery was small, like the village itself, and they could see the three empty carts that had left Belamar with the bodies earlier that morning drawn up alongside a single-story annex to the church. At least ten men were digging graves among the uneven rows of tombstones that protruded up like broken teeth from behind a low stone wall, and even from a distance Segura's mane of white hair was visible.

For the rest of the afternoon, they watched the workers climbing in and out of graves with picks and shovels, and the sound of saws and hammers from the annex mingled with the sound of birdsong all around them. From time to time, Segura emerged to inspect the graves, and his sons emerged from the annex and walked to the nearby river carrying wooden buckets, which they filled with water and carried back to the church. It was nearly
dusk when they finally stopped, and Segura came out of the building and walked around the cemetery once again. The work had clearly been completed to his satisfaction, and the gravediggers gathered their tools and left the cemetery on two of the carts. Soon afterward Segura and his sons left the annex and rode on the remaining cart back toward the main road, past the laborers returning from the fields.

Mendoza waited until it was completely dark before picking up the unlit torch he had brought with him.

“Wait here,” he said. “I'll be back shortly.”

“May I ask what we're looking for, sir?”

Mendoza suppressed a smile. There were not many
alguaciles
who would have waited for nearly eight hours before asking that question, but Johannes Necker was a man whose patience was matched by a boundless trust in Mendoza's judgment.

“I'm not even sure myself,” he replied as he set off toward the cemetery with the torch in his hand. It was a moonless night, and despite the faint glow from some of the houses in the village, there was no possibility of being seen as he stepped over the cemetery wall and carefully made his way through the rows of tombstones and little crosses and the open graves with mounds of earth piled beside them.

The door to the annex was unlocked, and he stepped inside and closed it behind him. It was pitch-dark inside the room, and he could smell burned flesh, wood and a scent of almonds as he crouched down and rubbed the flint and steel together till the char cloth ignited, before touching the little flame against the tip of the torch. The fat immediately caught fire, and in the wavering light he saw eleven coffins laid out on the floor, one of which was little more than a large wooden box, and the table against the wall that was covered in wood shavings.

He balanced the torch against the wall and drew his sword, kneeling over one of the coffins. It was easy to pry open the few nails that held the lid down, and he lifted it back and held the torch over it to reveal the body,
wrapped in a white shroud lying on a bed of stones with the glass of water and the two bowls filled with raisins, figs and nuts that had been placed alongside it. The smell of almonds was much stronger now, and he realized that it was coming from the sheet. There was no need to look in the other coffins, because he knew what they contained, and he shut the lid again and gently tapped the nails down with the hilt of his sword before putting out the torch.

He left the annex, closed the door behind him and walked quickly back to the copse where Necker was waiting with the horses.

“Did you find anything, sir?” he asked.

Mendoza shook his head. “Nothing of interest. Just bodies and coffins.”

Necker looked even more mystified now. The
alguacil
had not fought in Granada and was not familiar with Moorish burial practices. He did not know that the food was to provide the soul of the deceased with sustenance until the two angels arrived to take it to paradise; that the body had been washed with scented water and its fingers and toenails cut before being turned on its side to face toward Mecca; that the stones had been laid on the floor of the coffin in order to separate the body of the deceased from the Christian soil in which he was to be buried the next day.

Mendoza did not tell him any of these things, because there were things that it was better for the devout constable not to know in case they offended his Christian conscience and prompted him to ask why they did not report them to the Inquisition. Mendoza's priorities were very different from those of the Holy Office, but he now knew that both the countess and Segura had attempted to deceive him, and if they had lied to him about that, then it was also possible that they had deceived him about many other things as well.

•   •   •

T
HE
NEXT
DAY
he returned to the village with Necker and Gabriel to attend the funerals. By the time they arrived, a small crowd had already
gathered around the church, a crowd that included Segura and his family, the friends and neighbors of the del Río family and Moriscos from Las Palomas itself. The countess's carriage was also drawn up outside the church, and Mendoza saw her talking to Father García along with her daughter and Susana while the bailiff and a handful of servants and militiamen hovered nearby. She nodded in acknowledgment of his arrival, but Mendoza sensed that she was surprised to see him there.

For the second time in three days, the priest celebrated a requiem Mass, and afterward the coffins were carried out and laid alongside the graves, where the gravediggers who'd been there the previous day were already waiting with their shovels. Father García commended the eleven slain Moriscos to the everlasting protection of our Lord Jesus Christ and his Blessed Mother Mary, and the countess stood beside him in her black veil with Carolina and Susana on either side of her, intoning the prayers with the same somber intensity that Mendoza had observed in Cardona.

Behind her, Segura was also praying with such sincerity that even the most observant Inquisition official would have had no reason to doubt his faith. Some of the Moriscos wept as the gravediggers began to fill the graves with earth, and the countess's daughter, Carolina, began to weep, too. The countess held Carolina's hand, and it was obvious that she was making a considerable effort not to cry herself. She left when the service was over, and he knew that she was avoiding him as she walked back toward her carriage still holding her daughter's hand, followed by Susana, Sánchez and her servants. One of her servants helped Carolina into the carriage, and the countess was just about to follow her when she saw Mendoza heading toward them.

“Don Bernardo,” she said. “So you found time to come after all.”

“I did, my lady,” Mendoza replied. “And I would very much like a word with you.”

“Can you come to Cardona in the afternoon?” she asked. “Carolina is not feeling well.”

“I need to speak to you now,” Mendoza insisted. “On a very urgent matter.”

Both Sánchez and Susana were visibly taken aback by his rudeness, and the bailiff looked as though he were about to intervene, but the countess nodded, and the two of them walked together in silence along the road leading from the village, with Susana trailing a short distance behind them.

Mendoza waited until they were out of earshot before asking, “How long have you known that Dr. Segura is an
alfaquí
?”

Her lips parted slightly. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“With respect, Countess. I think you do. I think you know very well that Dr. Segura is a Moorish preacher. I also think you know what's inside those coffins. The del Río family were not buried as Christians.”

There was a faint pinkish tinge on her porcelain cheeks now as she stared at the gravediggers filling in the graves on the other side of the cemetery wall. “Dr. Segura is a good man,” she said finally. “One of the most honorable men I have ever met. He cares deeply about his family and his community. And he also happens to believe the same thing that I do.”

“Which is?”

“That each of us must be saved in our own sect.”

Mendoza was momentarily taken aback on hearing the same words he had once heard shouted from the stake more than twenty-five years before by the Lutheran nun during the great auto of Valladolid.

“Even if it requires a gross deception like this?” he asked.

“The Church has left the Moriscos no other choice.”

“But this is heresy, Countess.”

“Indeed.” She let out a despairing sigh. “That is what it is called. And now I suppose you will report me to the Inquisition—and Dr. Segura, too?”

“I have told you I am not an inquisitor, my lady. If you can help me with my investigation, then perhaps it will not be necessary to mention matters that are not strictly pertinent to it.”

“I have no information to give you. If I had, I would have told you.”

“Then I advise you to talk to Dr. Segura. Tell him that if I don't get some very significant assistance by midday tomorrow I shall send a letter to Inquisitor Mercader to report what he and his sons have been doing here.”

“But if Dr. Segura is arrested, he will be burned,” she protested.

“Then I advise you to persuade him to cooperate.”

She looked at him reproachfully. “Is this how you enforce the king's justice, Licenciado?”

“Those who try to deceive me have no right to question my methods, Countess.”

She remained silent as they walked back to the carriage. Sánchez looked at Mendoza with suspicion and undisguised hostility, and Susana was staring at her mistress with an anxious expression. From across the churchyard, Susana's father was also watching him curiously. Mendoza did not acknowledge any of them. The countess's servants and vassals certainly took a great deal of interest in their mistress's welfare, he thought, or else they themselves had reason to be concerned about what she might have told him. He did not take pleasure from using the Inquisition as an instrument of pressure, but he could not help feeling mildly pleased with himself. Because whatever came of this strategy, at least he was beginning to make things happen instead of drifting along at the mercy of events. His sense of satisfaction lasted almost until they reached Belamar, when Daniel came riding toward them and announced that Sergeant Ventura had returned from the mountains and urgently needed a doctor.

n the early hours of the morning, the most powerful man in the world awoke in pain in his darkened chamber at San Lorenzo de El Escorial. This morning the gout was particularly bad, spreading through his bones and joints till it seemed that every part of him was on fire. He tried to relieve it by turning from one side to the other, but by the time the clock struck five, the pain was so awful and so overwhelming that it was only through an effort of willpower that he could prevent himself from moaning or crying out loud. As he lay there alone in the darkness in the canopied bed, he imagined his body in the same way that he imagined his country, as a fortress under siege by cruel and barbaric foes intent on its subjugation and destruction, and the thought of the satisfaction that his enemies would take in his agony steeled him to resist and endure the onslaught.

He drew strength also from the pictures of saints on his walls and the metal crucifix in his hands, whose cross of thorns, ribs and nailed feet he caressed to remind himself of an agony that was infinitely worse than anything he had suffered or would suffer. He thought of San Lorenzo, roasted alive on a gridiron, and all the other Christian martyrs who had suffered torments on behalf of the faith, and the bones of the saints in the reliquary in the monastery. He told himself that the suffering God had chosen to inflict on his earthly body was a punishment for his sins, that the body was merely the carriage that would bear his soul during its brief passage through the world as his wives and so many of his children had already been borne, and that he would be reunited with all of them someday.

He knew that that happy day might not be far off. At the age of sixty-two, he had already lived four years longer than his father, whose body had been so racked by gout and piles and so exhausted by his years in the saddle and the wars he'd fought on behalf of the faith that he'd been forced to abdicate. Long before his death, his father had lost his teeth, so that he was forced to suck and slurp his food, but his father had never complained, and nor would he. At six o'clock his manservants drew back the wooden doors to his bedchamber. A wan gray light filtered in from the study while they entered the room as silently as ghosts to empty his chamber pot and dress him. The Hammer of Heretics sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the swifts shrieking outside the window before forcing his stiff body upright so that they could put on his slippers and dressing gown. Soon afterward Secretary Vázquez brought the morning's first papers to his desk, and the king spent the next two hours working his way through them, scratching or dictating messages with his arthritic hand before signing them off with the signature “I the King” that messengers would take by land and sea to the most remote corners of the empire, from Antwerp and Lisbon to Lima and New Spain to Naples and Sicily.

At eight o'clock the chamberlain returned with his servants to dress him for Mass, but he was still in too much pain to attend, and he told them to
open the door on the other side of the bed so that he could listen to the service. Once again they shut him in the semidarkness, and he lay on his side looking up at the marble stairs and pillars and listening to the monks and congregants entering the church. From this position he was able to follow the whole service, murmuring the prayers and responses aloud till the army of pain gradually began to withdraw its forces. By the time the doors opened once again and his servants drifted noiselessly back into the room, he was already sitting up in bed. The King of All the Spains got to his feet and stood passively with his arms raised as they swarmed around him in silence, dressing him entirely in black except for his white collar, first the hose and shirt, then the black tunic with gold threads, the leather shoes with the black bow ties, lastly the medallion of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which they hung around his neck. Afterward they brushed his hair and his white beard and wiped the sleep from his eyes and dabbed him with the scent of lavender.

As was his custom, he ate no breakfast, but the infanta Catalina came to sit with him briefly, as she had done almost every day since the queen and the children had come to join him for the summer. As always, the girlish chatter of his younger daughter softened and delighted him, but now it was impossible to look upon her shining dark eyes and jet-black hair without a sense of imminent loss at the prospect of the wedding next spring. That was not such a bad way to lose a child after the many that death had taken from him, but it was no less conclusive and complete because once she left Spain with Savoy, there was very little possibility that he would ever see her again.

He knew that Catalina was conscious of this, too, and that she, too, was keen to share the precious moments that remained to them, whether helping him with state papers or simply sitting with him to pass on the latest gossip. Her dark beauty never failed to lift his spirits, and even though her elder sister, Isabella, would remain at court until a husband could finally be found for her, every meeting with Catalina was a painful reminder that he
would soon be forced to say good-bye to her for the last time. This morning she made him laugh by describing the latest temper tantrum of Magdalena, their favorite dwarf, and the laughter revived and revitalized him.

At 10:25 precisely, Vázquez came to take him to the reception room, and Catalina kissed him on the cheek and promised to see him later. The king took up his position behind the ornate German console table with its carved panels of leaves and animals, directly in front of the doorway, with his hand resting on the silver statuette of Jesus on the cross at Golgotha that resided on the lower desk. Once again he resisted the urge to sit and forced himself to stand tall and present an appropriate image of power and magnificence to his visitors and petitioners.

•   •   •

A
T
10
:
30
V
ÁZQUEZ
USHERED
IN
the mayor of Madrid. As always, Philip said nothing and waited for him to speak first, but the mayor was so unnerved at being in the royal presence that he tried to shut the door—an unpardonable breach of etiquette that obliged the king to remind him curtly that it must be kept open. The mayor was sweating now and looked as though he might faint as he apologized profusely and launched into a tedious and repetitive description of the hunger and misery and the shortage of bread in the capital. Finally Philip put him out of his own misery by informing him that the previous day he had authorized a grain shipment from Sicily.

The mayor thanked him and apologized again, then bowed and apologized once more before finally leaving the room with obvious relief. He was followed by the Marquis of Villareal, who was experienced enough to leave the door open. Unlike the mayor, the marquis was a grandee who was not obliged to take off his hat in the royal presence, and the counselor for Aragon had attended too many meetings with the king and his ministers to be overawed by being in the royal presence. He bowed and got straight to the point.

“Your Majesty, I have received the second report from Licenciado Mendoza in Cardona. The news is not good.”

The king's gray eyes were expressionless as he listened to the counselor's summary. In the month since Mendoza's departure, three Christian boys had been crucified, two nuns had been violated, two tailors bringing cloth from Paris to Monzón to make dresses for the royal wedding had been robbed, and one of them had been killed. Now a family of eleven Moriscos had been massacred. Mendoza had not identified the perpetrators, and the only arrests had been those made by the Inquisition, who were preparing to put two of the Morisco rapists on trial.

“And may I ask why you thought it necessary to bring this matter to me in person?” Philip inquired.

“Your Majesty, there are reports that Moriscos and Old Christians in Cardona are arming themselves for war. If this disorder should spread, then it may have consequences for the happy event that we all anticipate next spring.”

“And where do these reports come from?”

“From the corregidor at Jaca, Majesty. And also from the Holy Office.”

Philip nodded gloomily. He was already tired of the Moriscos. They had caused him enough problems in Granada, and now Archbishop Ribera of Valencia and other clerics were badgering him to expel them all from Spain. It was only two years since he had agreed to do this in principle, though how he was supposed to accomplish it in practice no one seemed able to explain.

Aragon had also been a problem for the Crown for some time. His father had been obliged to promise the Aragonese in person that he would recognize their precious
fueros
before they agreed to recognize his authority. That was nearly seventy-five years ago, and still the lords of Aragon seemed to forget that they owed the king obedience, so that he was obliged to go there next year to remind them and undertake a journey that he knew
would be both painful and injurious to his health. And even though he did not agree with his more pessimistic ministers that Aragon might one day become another Flanders, Moriscos and the Aragonese were a bad combination from which no one could draw any comfort.

“Assuming that these reports are correct,” he said, “what action do you propose we take?”

“It seems to me that there are three options at this stage, Majesty. We can allow Judge Mendoza's investigation to run its course and wait to hear his conclusions and recommendations. Or we can suspend the investigation and send troops to pacify Cardona immediately, including troops from Castile if necessary.”

“Has Judge Mendoza asked for this?”

Villareal admitted that he had not.

“And the third possibility?” asked Philip.

“That the Crown take formal possession of Cardona and incorporate it into the royal domain.”

The king's sphinxlike inscrutability momentarily gave way to an expression of mild surprise. “On what grounds?”

“That Cardona has become a danger to the realm.”

“And you expect the parliament of Aragon to accept this?”

“There is a legal basis for the Crown's claims, Majesty. Your father the emperor ratified the seigneurial rights of Cardona on condition that the estates be passed down through the male line. The Countess of Cardona is a widow. Her parents are dead, and her only child is a girl.”

Villareal paused to allow this to sink in before proceeding to list the number of towns, vassals and villages in Cardona and the annual income that would accrue to the Crown at a time when the king's regiments in Flanders had not received their wages for months, when there was grain in Sicily to be paid for, and the treasure fleet from the Indies was under threat from English ships.

Philip still did not look convinced. “Even if what you say is true, I fail to see how provoking conflict with the Aragonese the year before the infanta's wedding can serve our interests.”

“I believe that if we act quickly and firmly, then this affair can be resolved and concluded long before then. His Majesty now has a real opportunity to demonstrate his power and authority in a way that the Aragonese will have no choice but to accept.”

“And the countess? She is still young. She can marry again.”

“She can. But the Zaragoza Inquisition intends to bring charges of heresy and sedition against a number of prominent individuals from the town of Belamar de la Sierra shortly, Your Majesty. These charges will directly implicate the countess herself. If—when—that happens, there will be no master or mistress of Cardona.”

At the mention of the word “heresy,” the king's full, sensual lips tightened, as if he had just experienced a sharp jab of physical pain, before his face resumed its expression of frosty magnificence. As always, the number of conflicting options oppressed him, and he glanced toward the window at the thick cluster of low-lying black clouds drifting beyond the forested plain and remembered the advice that his father had written to him in his abdication testament: “Support the Inquisition and never do anything to harm it.”