The Devils of Cardona (34 page)

That was two days ago. And since then he had not seen anyone except the jailer, who brought him food twice a day and did not speak to him. He had spent his time in darkness, unable to stand or even lie down properly or do anything except kick out at the rats that scuttled around his feet and pray to Allah to suppress the terror that threatened to turn to hysteria. From time to time, he fell into something like sleep, until the cold, the discomfort or the rats woke him. In his worst moments, he felt as though God had
abandoned him, and he did not know why. And it was only now, on the afternoon of his third day in captivity, that Pachuca and the warden had come to his cell and chained him up and brought him back up the stairs, to face the pale official with the thin-lipped smile.

“I don't know you,” Segura said finally. “But I think you are Inquisitor Mercader of the Inquisition of Aragon.”

“‘His Excellency Inquisitor Mercader' to you, Morisco,” Herrero corrected him.

“Well, you may not know me, but I know a great deal about you,” Mercader said. “In fact, I have been looking forward to this meeting for a very long time.”

“I have no idea why.”

“I think you do,” Mercader insisted. “And there will be an opportunity for us to talk about that. But it will save me a great deal of trouble if you confess.”

“Confess to what?”

“Come now, Moor. I'm not someone to play games with. Tell me what I want to know and you may also be able to do something for your children before you leave this earth.”

Segura looked at him with alarm. “What have my children got to do with this?”

“Tomorrow I will go to Cardona,” Mercader replied calmly. “I will arrest the countess and your daughters Susana and Juana, and your two eldest sons. I shall read out the Edict of Grace that your protectors tried to prevent. And then I will cleanse the stain upon the kingdom and remove every trace of your damned sect from Belamar. But if you confess freely to all your crimes, I promise you that your children will not be put to the fire.”

“Before God I have committed no crime!”

“You dare to mention your God in my presence, Moor?”

“There is not my God or your God,” Segura insisted. “Only the same God who judges us all, with a different name.”

Mercader looked at him with disgust. “You damned heretic. Do you think that we don't know what happens when His Majesty's back is turned? Did you really expect that we would allow you to remain in our lands and continue to foul our Church forever? Our Christian martyrs were prepared to die for their faith, but you Moriscos only lie and dissemble for yours, while you dream of some Redeemer who will come and save you. But no longer. We will wipe you out. Every one of you. Till one day there will be no trace of Moor in Spain and no stink of the whoremongering prophet that your ancestors enforced on us.”

“You tell me about force?” Segura exclaimed.

“I do,” Mercader said. “And I promise you that the next time you see your children, Dr. Segura, it will be at the auto in Zaragoza. You will be gagged so that you will not be able to speak to them or say good-bye to them. And then you will burn. There is nothing you can do to prevent that. But you can at least save your children. Confess and you have my word that I will be merciful. If you don't, I will make certain that they burn before you do. And that will be the last thing you ever see.”

Segura stared back at the cold, hateful eyes. “I will confess only to Allah. Not to the Christian bloodhounds who insult his Prophet.”

The warden raised the baton and brought it down hard across Segura's collarbone, hard enough to hurt him yet not to break it. But Mercader was almost smiling as he ordered the prisoner to be returned to his cell, because he and Segura knew that the mayor had already begun to make the confession that would soon be extracted from him.

•   •   •

F
ROM
WHAT
THE
MILLER
'
S
SON
had told them, Mendoza guessed that they had at least one day before they were attacked. He immediately dispatched the town crier to summon the population to the main square and sent his men around the village to spread the same message. Within an hour of the
pregonero
's call, the square was so tightly packed that some people
were forced to climb onto the overlooking roofs while others crowded into any available windows and balconies. Others clogged the surrounding streets, where excited children who had not grasped the reasons for the congregation ran around laughing and shouting excitedly, as if they were celebrating a village festival.

Some of the Moriscos were carrying bundles of their possessions and were clearly poised to take flight, and as soon as Mendoza appeared in the upstairs window of the town hall, the crowd fell silent. Until that moment he had not really thought about what he was going to say, and as he looked out at the anxious, expectant faces, he remembered the speech that Tacitus had placed in the mouth of the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus and of Cortés telling his soldiers to burn their ships.

“People of Belamar!” he shouted. “Tomorrow you will be attacked by men who want to destroy you! These men are your enemies, and they are also the enemies of your mistress and of His Majesty. They have already shown that they will kill without mercy. You all know what happened to the del Río family. Now they have destroyed Las Palomas, and they will destroy Belamar if you allow them to enter it.”

For a few moments, it was impossible to continue, as the Moriscos began shouting at him and also at one another. Mendoza raised his arms and demanded quiet.

“All of you know that I came to this village as a representative of the king's justice,” he went on. “And I have found myself in a village without justice, where men who disgraced the Church have exploited and oppressed you. I know you have no reason to trust me. Some of you may know that Dr. Segura has been arrested by the Inquisition. I assure you that I had nothing to do with this. And let me tell you now that I speak to you as a former soldier in the king's armies. There is no escape from what is about to happen. Belamar is already surrounded. The roads are cut off. Try to run and they will hunt you down in the mountains and kill you, and you will
also make it easier for them to kill those who are left behind. No one can help us. Your survival depends on your willingness to fight for your families and your homes and to remain calm and obey my orders.”

The crowd was absolutely silent now as Mendoza explained how the village was to be defended. A barricade was to be erected in front of the main entrance by the end of the day, and additional barricades were to be established farther back on the streets and in any available entrance to the town, using carts, church benches or whatever else was available. Stones, bricks and anything that could be thrown were to be carried onto rooftops and the wall overlooking the ravine, and firing positions were to be selected as soon as they knew how many guns and crossbows were available.

The village hall was to serve as a field hospital, and he needed volunteers to gather water and mattresses, plus shirts and cloth that could be used for bandages. All men who were able to fight were to get their weapons, return to the main square and report to Constable Necker and Sergeant Ventura. Women and the elderly were to take shelter in the church. The neighbors in every ten houses were to form work details and assign a foreman to direct them. Work on the village's defenses was to continue throughout the night.

As soon as he had finished, the square erupted into noisy chaos. Ventura congratulated Mendoza as he withdrew from the balcony and went downstairs, where he was surprised to find Juana Segura waiting for him.

“I will take charge of the hospital,” she said. “And I'll bring volunteers to help me.”

“Are you sure you can do this?” he asked. “This is war.”

“I've seen blood before, and my father has shown me what to do,” Juana replied. “Without him I'm the best-qualified person in the village.”

“Thank you.”

“I'm not doing it for you,” she said coldly, and turned to walk away.

•   •   •

W
ITHIN
MINUTES
the first volunteers began to assemble in the square with their weapons. Half an hour later, more than a hundred men of various ages had presented themselves to their two commanders. Some carried lances, some swords, and there was a sprinkling of pistols, hunting rifles, escopetas and harquebuses. But the majority were armed with stakes, or homemade bills or halberds made from farming tools, or pikes with knives tied to long sticks, or with axes and clubs. It was not the most impressive arsenal, Mendoza thought, and it certainly did not bear out the reports that the Moriscos of Belamar were stockpiling weapons and gunpowder, unless they were intent on committing collective suicide.

Throughout the afternoon more Moriscos began to trickle into the village with tales of burning, killing and destruction. Ventura and Necker formed the volunteers into separate groups and details and gave them at least the semblance of a command structure, with designated runners who knew their officers by sight and a mobile group of fighters able to move to where the defenses were weakest. Alongside the fighting groups, men, women and even young children gathered stones, bricks and roof tiles. One detail set to work dismantling the ruined house near the mill, to use its bricks and rotting beams for barricades. Others piled carts, beds and household furniture, dug shallow trenches and sharpened stakes to make primitive chevaux-de-frise.

Even old men and women carried stones in baskets or in their skirts down to the old medieval walls or brought food and water to their fathers and brothers. Some of them also brought food to Mendoza and his men without being asked. Mendoza was struck by the transformation that had taken place since the day he and his team first arrived. Having once feared them, the Moriscos now appeared to accept them as their defenders and fellow fighters. Necker had acquired an entourage of children who followed him everywhere and competed with one another to carry out his orders or
run an errand for him, while many of the Moriscos now called Mendoza's men by their first names.

The Moriscos continued to work purposefully and resolutely into the evening with a cheerful confidence that Mendoza had often seen in soldiers on the eve of battle, who had convinced themselves that others, not themselves, would die and who knew that their chance of victory was dependent on one another. The response of the other Old Christians was more mixed. Those with Morisco wives and husbands immediately joined in the defense of the village, and so did some of the Old Christian families without Morisco connections. One Old Christian shepherd told Mendoza that his Morisca wife was more Christian than he was and that he would rather die with her than leave her. Two Old Christian millers approached him and said that the village was home to all of them and that all of them should fight for it.

The baker Romero was noticeably absent from these efforts. Shortly after Mendoza's speech, he closed his shop, until Mendoza ordered him to open it and make extra bread throughout the day to add to the village's food supply. When he refused, Mendoza threatened to arrest him and told him that the bread would be distributed free if an attack took place.

The baker was furious and was only partly mollified when Mendoza told him that he would not have to pay for the flour from the mill. From time to time, Mendoza saw him scowling in the doorway of his shop with his arms crossed, sometimes with his wife beside him. In the late afternoon, Mendoza and Gabriel were standing outside the village hall watching Juana and her female volunteers tearing and cutting shirts, skirts and sheets into bandages when they spotted Romero and his wife coming toward them, followed by a small group of frightened-looking Old Christians.

“Licenciado Mendoza, we wish to speak with you in private,” the baker announced pompously.

“You can speak to me here,” Mendoza replied.

“We wish to leave Belamar in the morning,” he said. “This is not our fight.”

The other Old Christians nodded and murmured in assent, and Mendoza looked at them in disgust.

“This is not your fight?” he repeated. “Isn't this your
pueblo
?” He gestured toward the Moriscos who were hurrying back and forth across the square carrying bricks and furniture. “Are these not your neighbors?”

“They are Moriscos, Licenciado,” Romero said. “It is not right that we should be forced to take part in this battle and that our families should be in danger. Our blood is clean.”

“Enough!” barked Mendoza. “So you feel closer to these bandits and murderers than you do to the town where your own children were born? Why do you live here? What do you think will happen when this is over, that you will just return to your homes as if nothing happened? No, I won't make you fight, but you will not leave. And you will work alongside your neighbors to prepare the town, or I will lock you up.”

“You have no right to do this!” Romero exclaimed.

“I have all the right I need. Now, go and get to work before I change my mind and lock you all up.”

Gabriel and Juana exchanged complicit smiles as Romero and his wife withdrew to their shop and the other Old Christians left the square, looking chastened. Mendoza was not amused. Tomorrow he knew that some of those who were working to defend the village would be killed, and if the whole lot of them did not fight well, they would all die, and he and his men would die with them. If that happened, then there would be nothing left of Belamar, and the king and his ministers would never know what Mendoza now knew for certain: that everything that had taken place in Cardona since the murder of the priest and possibly even before it had been nothing more than a piece of theater or a game of chess in which the Moriscos, the bandits, the mountain men and their victims were only pawns being moved by unseen hands for purposes that would always be hidden, unless he survived to report them.