The Devils of Cardona (29 page)

Mendoza pushed Segura forward to a space near the barred window above them and stood leaning on his stick, trying to ignore the stench of sweat, wine and vomit, while Daniel squatted on the floor nearby. “I want to know what Péris told you,” he muttered. “In every detail.”

“Is this really the right time, Your Honor?”

“It's as good a time as any other.”

“I have your word that nothing I say will have repercussions for the families of these men, just as you promised last night?”

“I thought I'd already made that clear to Péris.”

Segura nodded. “You remember I told you that Péris was not capable of rebellion?” he said. “Well, it turns out I was wrong.”

Mendoza listened carefully and ignored the background of French and the occasional intrusive questioning from the other prisoners as Segura told him Péris had now admitted to him that he and his companions had sought to launch a Morisco rebellion in Cardona and that they had been encouraged in these efforts by the countess's bailiff, Jean Sánchez. Sánchez had revealed that he was a Lutheran while Péris was working on the church at Cardona. He had told the wood-carver that Lutherans, Turks and Moriscos should unite to overthrow the Catholic tyrant and boasted of his connections with the Protestant nobility in Béarn.

Péris, Segura said, was not a learned or intelligent man, and the bailiff would not have found it difficult to convince him and his friends that King Henry of Navarre and the Turkish sultan were planning to invade Aragon during the royal wedding the following year. While the Béarnese attacked Spain across the Pyrenees, Sánchez promised, the sultan would land a large fleet on the Aragonese coast. At the same time, the Moriscos of Aragon would rise in rebellion under the leadership of the Redeemer.

“Did Péris say anything about who this Redeemer was?” Mendoza asked.

Segura shook his head. “He never met him. Sánchez told Péris that the Redeemer was descended from the Umayyad caliph, like Aben Humeya.
He said that he had returned from Barbary to fight jihad in al-Andalus and free all the Moriscos. He said the Redeemer was as great a general as Khalid ibn al-Walid.”

“Who?”

“A companion of the Prophet Muhammad and a great warrior. He commanded the Muslim forces at Medina.”

“Why am I not surprised that you would know that?” Mendoza said.

Segura shrugged. “Moriscos remember their history,” he said. “Just as Christians do.”

“Go on.”

Sánchez had promised Péris and his companions that the Redeemer would shortly give a demonstration of his power in Belamar itself. Three weeks later, on the date he had given, Father Panalles was murdered. Péris and his friends were so impressed that they agreed to join the rebellion. At Sánchez's instigation the three of them went to Vallcarca, where they expected the bailiff to take them to meet the Redeemer so that they could swear an oath of fealty to him. Instead they were arrested by Vallcarca's men at the prearranged meeting place. Péris had escaped arrest only because he had gone into the forest to answer the call of nature just before the baron's militiamen arrived and had seen his companions being arrested.

“So he wasn't chased on horseback?”

“No.” Segura looked at him in surprise. “He arrived on a horse, but he escaped on foot. He walked back to Belamar, thinking that the arrest was just bad luck. It wasn't until his wife told him about the nuns and Herrero that he realized Sánchez had betrayed him. That's when he decided to come to France.”

“How do I know whether a word of this is true?” Mendoza asked. “The two of you could have made the whole thing up. You could have killed him yourself.”

“For what purpose? You heard what Péris said last night. He regarded me as a traitor and a collaborator. He still did even when I left him.”

“Presumably he knew that you also broke the king's laws and continued to follow the sect of Muhammad?”

“I never advocated rebellion! Doesn't Jesus say that we can worship God
and
Caesar?”

“So now you quote the Bible, yet you bury your dead like Moors.”

“I'm only trying to point out—”

“Never mind. Thank you.”

The jangling of keys brought the conversation to an end, and one of the jailers appeared in the doorway and called out the names of some of the prisoners. To Mendoza's relief the men filed out of the room and some space began to open up around him. He'd been inside many jails, but he had never spent so much time in a cell, let alone in such close proximity to men he himself would normally have arrested, and the stench made him feel faintly nauseous as he pondered what Segura had told him.

If Péris's declarations were true, then Sánchez had murdered the priest on Vallcarca's orders and the baron and the Inquisition had colluded to frame the three Moriscos. Mendoza knew that Mercader was determined to carry out his purge in Belamar, and it was certainly possible, as the countess had suggested, that Vallcarca and her father-in-law were using the Inquisition to frighten her into marrying Rodrigo Vallcarca. But was the implacable inquisitor whom Mendoza met in Zaragoza really willing to collude in a criminal act in order to bring about such an outcome?

And why would the loyal bailiff who refused to allow Mercader's officials to enter the village be simultaneously acting against his mistress's wishes behind her back? Whatever the answers, it was clear to him that from now on these questions should be directed at Christians, not Moriscos.

And it was also obvious that whoever had killed Péris had no reason to allow Mendoza to return to Spain to ask them.

ver the next two hours, the cell continued to empty out to the point where the three of them were finally able to sit on a bench. They remained there for some time until the jailers returned, accompanied by the chief constable and his officers and another official whom Mendoza had not seen before. Segura introduced Monsieur LaFranc, the chief magistrate of the city of Pau, and Mendoza told Segura to ask if he could fetch the royal seal from his saddlebags. LaFranc's demeanor did not change as he ordered them to accompany him. Once again they were escorted back into the street and across the bridge toward the château and up the steps leading beyond the old medieval wall to the royal palace, where two well-turned-out halberdiers in armored breastplates and striped breeches stood by the main entrance.

Monsieur LaFranc led them down the spacious
corridor, where Mendoza heard what sounded like someone being kicked or beaten, accompanied by laughter, cheers and applause.

“Are they going to torture us, sir?” asked Daniel anxiously.

Mendoza was beginning to wonder the same thing when LaFranc halted before one of the dozens of doorways and ushered them into an enormous rectangular room with paneled walls and wooden galleries, where a handful of male and female spectators were watching four men in pantaloons, shirts and stockings hitting a ball across a fringed rope with leather gloves. Mendoza had heard of the Game of the Palm, but he had never seen it played before. He immediately recognized King Henry of Navarre from the previous afternoon. He was a stocky, robust-looking man in his early thirties with a ruddy, healthy complexion, a full, well-groomed beard and a shock of brown hair combed back high across his forehead that shook when he jumped about.

His Majesty was clearly enjoying himself and let out enthusiastic exclamations of triumph or dismay when he won or lost a point, or shouted “Bravo!” when his opponents did well and called on the spectators to applaud them. He had noticed their entrance, and as soon as the game ended, he came toward Segura with a broad smile, wiping the sweat from his forehead with one hand and shaking Segura's hand with the other.

Mendoza was struck by the stains on Henry's tunic and the pungent smell of garlic on his breath and clothes as the king of Navarre turned to him with a curious but not unfriendly expression.

“So you are the Spanish judge,” he said in Latin. “Some of my officials were concerned you might be a spy or an assassin. They thought the Guises might have sent you to kill me or that you might be agents of the Catholic League.”

“Absolutely not, Your Majesty,” Mendoza replied in the language that he had not spoken since university. “I've come to solve a murder.”

“And now you have left us with three. Strange, it seems that whenever Spaniards come to our country, they leave corpses behind them.”

“That was not my intention, sire. And I have a letter from the king with the royal seal to prove it, if I can be allowed to get it.”

“No need for that, Maître Mendoza. My officers have already inspected your credentials—otherwise you wouldn't be here. And Dr. Segura's father is an old friend of my mother's, God bless her soul. Come, let us eat something. Prison makes men hungry, and so does tennis.”

Henry draped a towel over his shoulders, and they followed him out into the corridor, accompanied by Monsieur LaFranc and some of the male courtiers, to another room, where a long table was laden with wine and an array of cut meats, pies and cheeses.

“So, Maître Mendoza,” Henry said, gnawing on a chicken leg with one hand and holding a cup of wine with the other. “Perhaps you can tell us why His Most Catholic Majesty has sent a judge all the way from Valladolid to our humble little kingdom?”

In his student Latin, Mendoza did his best to explain the investigation in Belamar, and Segura added other details in French. The king listened attentively while continuing to pick at random from the assortment of dishes with his hands, much like some of the revelers Mendoza had seen the previous day.

“So your wood-carver came to us for sanctuary, only to be murdered,” Henry said. “It's curious. Three hundred years ago, the Cathars crossed these mountains into Spain to escape the Inquisition. Now Moriscos are coming across the same mountains to seek our help for the same reason.”

“And does Your Majesty help them?”

Henry laughed, and his courtiers laughed with him. “It's a good thing that you took up the law rather than diplomacy, Maître Mendoza. As a matter of fact, we Huguenots have had quite enough wars lately without giving His Most Catholic Majesty further reason to attack us. My ministers tell me that Monsieur Péris asked us for weapons and gunpowder to help the Moriscos, but we refused—politely, of course, because master wood-carvers are always in high demand. In Spain, His Most Catholic Majesty drives his
Morisco subjects to rebellion when they could be an asset to him. Take Dr. Segura here—he could have worked in any hospital in Paris. We ourselves have asked him to work for us here in Pau, but he prefers to work in the land of his birth. Such men are worth holding on to, Maître Mendoza, and yet your king persecutes these people, and perhaps one day he will drive them away, just as his predecessors once expelled the Jews.”

“I very much doubt that His Majesty would do such a foolish thing.”

“Wouldn't he? He expelled them from Granada after the Morisco rebellion.”

“To ensure the security of his realms and punish rebels—as any king would do in the same circumstances.”

“Not always,
maître
. Sometimes even rebels have good cause.” Henry picked a clove of garlic from a plate and chomped on it with gusto. “Here we also accept the principle that each prince must decide the faith—even in Pamplona.”

Once again the courtiers laughed, and Mendoza smiled at the mischievous reference to southern Navarre, which the king's father had annexed to Castile more than sixty years earlier. “But that doesn't mean that princes must persecute their subjects,” Henry went on. “Here in France, Catholics kill Huguenots and Huguenots kill Catholics, even though all of us are Frenchmen. We've seen our cities burned, our women and children slaughtered, our fields laid barren by people who profess to worship the same God. When—if—I become king of France, I will do things differently, if His Most Catholic Majesty and the pope allow me to.”

“Was His Majesty ever approached by Jean Sánchez, the bailiff of Cardona, to seek assistance for a rebellion in Aragon?” Mendoza asked.

Henry spoke in French to Monsieur LaFranc, who shook his head.

“We don't know that name. But we have heard a great deal of the Countess of Cardona. A remarkable woman by all accounts. Have you met her?”

“I have, Your Majesty.”

“And is she as beautiful as they say?”

“Very much so. And very sought-after.”

Henry smiled with rueful pleasure. “I would also like to seek after her, because a beautiful woman should never be a widow. But my wife and the interests of the state would not stand for it. In any case I wish her well, and I hope that you find a solution to these difficulties. But you cannot do it here. Tomorrow morning you must leave our kingdom. An escort will take you to the frontier to make sure there is no further unpleasantness. After that you must make your own way.”

“We are most grateful to Your Majesty,” Mendoza said, “and very sorry that we have brought these troubles into your kingdom.”

“And I am very sorry for you, Licenciado. Because from what you say, your troubles may only just be beginning.”

•   •   •

W
ITHIN
TWENTY-FOUR
HOURS
of his guardian's departure, Gabriel had completed copies of the investigation reports and sent letters to the Marquis of Villareal and Corregidor Calvo. Even though there were no more depositions to be taken down, he continued to spend hours at the village hall with his writing materials, in order to maintain an official presence or to record any new information that might materialize.

On the same day that Mendoza and Segura left for France, Martín returned from Cardona to bring new supplies of paper and ink, just as Gabriel was preparing a report for Villareal. He still found the militiaman as frosty and unapproachable as he had during the journey up from Valladolid, and he was surprised when he came over to the desk and stood silently watching with a fascinated and almost reverential expression as Gabriel wrote out his report.

“How long did it take you to learn to write like that?” he asked.

Gabriel shrugged. “I learned to read and write at the
colegio
. When I was twelve my guardian bought me Juan de Icíar's
The Most Delicate Art of
Writing a Perfect Hand
. I used to copy the letters every day. My guardian also taught me how to write reports. There's a special way of writing them and certain phrases you have to use. And you have to learn to keep your letters small, straight and even, so that you don't waste paper.”

“I would love to learn to read and write,” Martín said. “If I could, I might not have had to join the army. I could have worked in my father-in-law's shop.”

“I can teach you.”

For the first time since Gabriel had known him, Martín's face softened, and he looked at the younger man uncertainly. “You could do that?”

“Of course. We could start, anyway. And I can continue in Valladolid.”

“Not me,
chico
.” Martín rapped his helmet with his knuckles. “There's nothing inside this helmet. That's why I'm in the army.”

“How do you know if you've never tried? All we need is a chalkboard. Segura has one in his dispensary. We can start today.”

That afternoon Gabriel wrote out the first three letters of the alphabet and helped Martín copy them. Afterward the militiaman was glowing with pride, and Gabriel knew that the ice was finally broken. These classes gave him something else to do, in addition to patrolling the village with Necker, Martín and Ventura, who had gotten out of bed the day after Mendoza's departure in spite of Segura's instructions. After nearly a month in Belamar, Gabriel now knew each of its streets and recognized many of its six hundred–odd inhabitants enough to nod or say hello to them. Each day he passed the women washing their clothes in the river or pounding and wringing them at the stone trough in the communal
lavadero
, sitting outside their homes sewing patches on clothes, spinning wool or grinding corn with a pestle and mortar; the shepherds leaving their homes with their animals and their small flocks of sheep and goats; the peasants and laborers departing for the fields in the early morning with their hoes, picks and shovels.

He saw the Moriscos on the terraces or in the valley digging, scratching and picking at the hard soil, dragging wooden plows by hand or oxen, opening or closing the irrigation channels that led down from the water deposit higher up or carrying water from the wells, bent over the little plots or gardens outside the town where they grew their own vegetables, pulling up weeds from rows of grapes or pruning olive and almond trees. Each day he said good morning to the old men and women who sat outside their homes drowsing in the sun. He passed Carlos, the mad orphan with one eye who called him “Jesus,” whom various families fed and looked after among them. In the early evenings, he saw the woodcutters bringing back piles of branches from the forest on the other side of the ravine, the children playing blindman's buff or fighting one another with wooden swords.

In Valladolid he was used to the daily clatter of carriages, carters and horses, to the cries of water carriers and street vendors calling out their wares. Here the day began with the sound of the cockerel crowing before dawn and ended with high-pitched shrieks of swifts wheeling above the village in the early evening. He realized that he had gotten used to Belamar and the valley below, to the point where it was Castile that now seemed like a foreign country, and he was able to tell what time of day it was from the shadow cast by the sun against the surrounding mountains, and he had grown to look forward with pleasure each day to the warm purple glow that bathed the town at sunset as the darkness slowly flowed into the ravine below like water.