The Devils of Cardona (9 page)

“These Moriscos know that I do not tolerate their heresies.” Mercader's thin smile bore a hint of self-satisfaction. “They have good reason to regard me as their enemy.”

“And does the Holy Office have any information regarding the possible identity or provenance of this individual?” Mendoza asked.

“We believe he comes from Belamar,” Mercader said. “And have no doubt that we will discover who he is once we carry out a full
investigation in the village. The Inquisition of Aragon already has more than sufficient grounds to take such action. And may I ask how you propose to enter Belamar when we could not?”

Mendoza felt irritated by the sarcasm, and by the inquisitor's general demeanor, but he replied evenly. “I shall deal with that problem when I encounter it.”

“Someone needs to deal with it,” said Santos. “There has been no priest in Belamar for two months now. And one of the main roads to Santiago de Compostela runs through Cardona from the Somport Pass. Soon the first pilgrims of the season will begin to cross the mountains. There are shops and inns that cannot afford to lose the trade.”

“The roads will not be safe,” Mercader added, “until Cardona has been cleansed of heretics as well as bandits.”

•   •   •

T
HAT
NIGHT
M
ENDOZA
SLEPT
in a comfortable bed for the first time since leaving Valladolid. The next morning he and Ventura ate a fine breakfast of figs, raisins, bread, cheese, honey and hot chocolate with the viceroy, who apologized for the inquisitor's rudeness the previous night.

“Mercader was only assigned to Aragon last year,” he said. “He just regards the post as a step toward a cardinal's cap. He has no understanding of the way things are done here. He sees heresy everywhere, and he hates the Moriscos. I believe he'd burn them all if he could.”

“And you, Your Grace? Do you believe that the countess is obstructing the Inquisition?”

“Who knows?” Sástago popped a fig into his mouth. “She's certainly very fond of her Moriscos. But then so are many of the Aragonese lords, and if they aren't fond of them, they recognize their usefulness. The Moriscos work hard and they work well, and many lords are more concerned with revenue than faith. That doesn't make them heretics. I met the countess once when she came to the parliament at Monzón with her husband.”

“And what was your impression of her?”

“A real beauty!” The viceroy smiled dreamily. “And a more devout Christian would be hard to find. But a woman such as that is more likely to be found in a convent than an artist's studio—unfortunately.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The countess's mother died when she was a child. Her father passed away six years ago. And then her husband was murdered by bandits. These misfortunes have tempered her faith. No woman is more pious or more anxious to do good works. She is one of the richest women in Aragon, yet she travels with almost no retinue. The demesne of Cardona has about a hundred and fifty towns, villages, hamlets and castles. It has toll bridges, lead and iron mines and flour mills. Its forests send timber to the carpenters of Zaragoza and Valencia. Her neighbor the Baron of Vallcarca doesn't even have half that number.”

“Does Vallcarca have bandits in his
señorio
?”

“Some. But it's worse in Cardona. Vallcarca is a very hard man. He treats his vassals like slaves and bandits like rebels. Some say that the bandits in Cardona fled his estates because they couldn't stand to be his vassals. In any case the banditry has gotten a lot worse since the count died. Some roads, you take your life and property in your hands even by day.”

“Is the countess likely to marry again?”

Sástago blew on his chocolate to cool it. “In theory, yes. And a lot of men would like her to marry them
.
What woman wouldn't have suitors, with an annual income of ninety thousand ducats? Vallcarca wants her to marry his son—a degenerate brute like his father, but without his cunning and intelligence.”

“Could that happen?”

“Who knows? It would suit Vallcarca very well if the two families could be united. He spends money too quickly and manages his estates badly. The countess doesn't. She has an excellent bailiff, Jean Sánchez. He's half French, and some say he's the man who really runs Cardona. But if
Rodrigo Vallcarca married the countess, then he would become one of the richest men in Aragon, and his father would be the one in charge. But they say the countess has no interest in such a match. And really, I can't imagine her with a man like Rodrigo Vallcarca, not by choice anyway. There are stories about how he treats some of the female vassals, stories I hesitate to repeat. Of course, all these are just rumors, and every rumor in the mountains has a counter-rumor. You will have your work cut out up there, Licenciado, mark my words. Are you sure you don't want a larger escort?”

“Thank you, Your Excellency. But I prefer to travel as unobtrusively as possible. And I want to get there quickly.”

“Well, I've brought you a map of Cardona and the surrounding area. It's not much good—many of the roads and paths are not even marked—but it does tell you more or less where the main roads and towns are, and the location of the frontier and customs posts. You may take whatever food you need from my kitchen. Just tell the servants what you require, and they will get it for you.”

“That is most helpful.”

“No need to thank me, Licenciado. If you find this Redeemer, you'll be doing all of us a favor.”

Mendoza told the others to be ready in two hours and returned to his room to look at the map the count had given him. Soon afterward he heard footsteps coming rapidly down the stone corridor, and one of Sástago's servants appeared to say that the viceroy needed to see him urgently. Downstairs in the patio, Inquisitor Mercader was engaged in agitated conversation with Sástago and two other men. One of them was the Inquisition
familiar
who had been flogging the unfortunate adulteress the previous day. Mendoza had never had much respect for the Inquisition's secular helpers, but this one was a particularly unpleasant example of a bad breed. Close up he exuded cruelty and malice, from his broad shoulders and low, thick neck to his apelike hands to the sunken, narrow eyes that peered pitilessly from beneath the fringe that fell down over his forehead. His companion
was a young, earnest-looking man whose mud-splattered boots and dusty cloak testified to his recent arrival from the countryside.

“Bad news, Mendoza,” the viceroy said. “This is Constable Vargas, the chief constable of Jaca. It seems that three brothers have been found murdered near Belamar. All of them are Old Christians.”

“One of them was nailed to a cross!” Mercader exclaimed. “With the heads of his brothers arranged next to him!”

“You saw this?” Mendoza asked.

“No, Your Mercy,” replied the
alguacil
. “But some
montañeses
found him hanging on a cross by a shrine, about two leagues above the town, and they took him down. The constable at Belamar saw him and sent a messenger to Don Pelagio.”

“When did this happen?”

“The bodies were found four days ago, in the afternoon.”

Mercader's narrow eyes glittered, and his cadaverous features bore an expression of bitter fury as he turned toward Mendoza. “Now do you understand the kind of people we are dealing with, Alcalde?” he said.

hey headed northward through a treeless landscape broken by eroded, lightly cultivated fields and white hills before climbing gradually up toward Huesca and the Pyrenean foothills. After spending an uncomfortable first night in a damp and bug-infested inn near Huesca, they resumed their upward progress through the Monrepos Pass the following morning. On reaching the pass, they found themselves looking over a series of immense, wide valleys with forest-covered slopes that stretched out toward the snow-tipped peaks of the Pyrenees.

Mendoza was impressed by the scale of the mountains, by the towering slabs of rust-colored rock and the dense forests of oak, birch and pine, by the castles and fortified towers and the alpine meadows speckled with edelweiss and sweet basil, but he was also wary. He had ordered his men to load their pistols, but the only traffic they
encountered on the roads consisted of peasants bringing their produce down to the markets in Huesca or Zaragoza or shepherds driving cattle, sheep and goats up toward the higher valleys. From time to time, they saw the raftsmen precariously balanced on giant rafts made from tree trunks that they were taking to Zaragoza on the fast-moving rivers, skillfully navigating their way through the surging waters with wooden rudders at the front and back.

The roads were poor, and progress was slow as they guided their animals across streams and rivers, with Necker riding ahead of the group and scanning both sides of the road while Ventura kept up the rear guard. On the second afternoon, they reached the plain of Jaca, the former capital of Aragon, and followed the flat road into the city through the former Jewish quarter, past the old Roman walls, converted synagogues, Romanesque churches, elegant three- and four-story houses with painted wooden eaves, and a large square tower that had once been the town jail.

Constable Vargas took them directly to the stone courthouse, where dozens of vagabonds, beggars and poor women were lining up to receive bowls of soup and hunks of bread. Mendoza saw a short, plump man in a cape and a soft green bonnet checking begging permits with another official who wore the red badge of an
alguacil
on his chest. It was not until they turned around that he realized that the man in the bonnet was his old friend Pelagio Calvo.

“Well, well, if it isn't Bernardo de Mendoza!” Pelagio grinned. “Should I call you ‘Licenciado' or ‘Your Honor'? How long has it been, my friend?”

“Too long,” Mendoza replied as the corregidor enveloped him in a warm embrace. He looked at his old friend's thick walrus mustache and stubbled jowls and protruding belly. Calvo had not aged well. His hair and beard were tinged with gray, and he was barrel-shaped where he had once been firm and stocky. His clothes were of good quality but not especially rich or extravagant, and he looked like so many other provincial magistrates. Organizing soup kitchens and food distributions for the poor was as
much a part of the duties of a corregidor as arresting vagrants, and Calvo exuded a mixture of quiet authority and obvious boredom as he looked over the proceedings.

“A real hornet's nest you've walked into, Bernardo,” he said. “This is Constable Franquelo from Belamar. He brought in the three dead shepherds this morning.”

“The Quintana brothers are here?”

“Yes, they're at the hospital. Their father is coming to collect them today.”

“I'd like to see their bodies first.”

“Vargas can take care of this. But it's not a pretty sight. Are these all the men you've brought with you? You'll need more than that if you're going to Cardona.”

“I was told that discretion was required,” Mendoza replied.

“If you want my opinion, Bernardo, His Majesty has shown a little too much discretion in these parts already. We only buried the priest last month, and now this! I don't have the manpower to deal with this level of mayhem! In theory I can call up seventy, even a hundred volunteers for the militia. But you can't do it just like that. I have to send my people all round the towns and villages to get them, and that takes time. And they can't stay out permanently. This is the Pyrenees, Mendoza, not the
meseta
. I don't think they always understand what that means in Madrid—or even in Zaragoza.”

The hospital was a large, three-story building only a few minutes from the courthouse. It was staffed mostly by nuns, and in the mortuary the three bodies were lying side by side on wooden tables. Mendoza had seen many corpses in his life, but the three naked, headless shepherds were a shocking and disturbing sight. One had been shot in the chest. Another had been struck in the chest by a crossbow bolt. The third had a deep diagonal cut just above his right shoulder. The boy with the crossbow bolt bore the marks of wounds on his hands and feet and also on his chest. All the bodies had been washed, including the three heads lying neatly in a basket, and as
Mendoza looked more closely at the boy's chest, he saw that the wounds were in fact letters that had been carved into it with a knife.

“IHS,” he murmured. “The Holy Name of Jesus.”

“That's what it says?” Franquelo made the sign of the cross. “The dirty heathen scum.”

Mendoza thought of the first weeks of the Morisco rebellion in Granada, when the Moriscos had slaughtered the Christians of the Alpujarras. It was all strikingly similar, from the grotesque blasphemy and sadism to the mockery of religious symbols and rituals. And yet it seemed incredible that the Moriscos of Aragon should have dared to embark on such a provocation after the terrible punishment that had been inflicted on Granada. Gabriel was standing nearby, looking pale and distraught, and he suddenly hurried from the room with one hand over his mouth.

They found him outside in the street, leaning over a pool of vomit.

“Are you all right?” Mendoza asked.

Gabriel nodded, obviously embarrassed at being the center of attention. Just then they heard the clatter of hooves, and a mule-drawn cart pulled up outside the entrance to the hospital. In the driver's seat, a bearded old man in a frayed gray tunic and cloth cap held the reins. He was flanked by two younger men, both of whom were carrying swords and daggers. Two more men were seated in the back, one of whom was holding an escopeta across his lap.

“I've come for my boys, Franquelo,” the old man said.

“They're inside, Paco. This is Alcalde Mendoza. The king has sent him from Valladolid to bring these villains to justice.”

“There's only one kind of justice these devils understand.”

“I promise you, Señor Quintana, that I will do everything I can to find who killed your sons,” Mendoza assured him.

“Then you better go to Belamar de la Sierra, because that's where those devils came from, and everybody knows it.” Quintana turned away into the hospital without waiting for a reply.

•   •   •

“D
O
YOU
HAVE
ANY
SUSPECTS
?” Mendoza asked Franquelo as they walked back to the courthouse.

“No, sir, but the killers went to a lot of trouble to crucify them. The campsite where they were killed is nearly an hour away on horseback.”

“Have you searched this place?”

“Not yet. We haven't had time.”

Like many rural
alguaciles
Mendoza had known, Franquelo did not seem overburdened with energy or intelligence. “And what about the priest? Do you have any suspects for that?”

Calvo laughed. “Yes—the whole town! Panalles was stuck like a pig, but no one heard him scream. Whoever did it also had time to desecrate the church, but the whole town just slept through it! No one is talking! Not to me. Not to the Inquisition. And not to Franquelo. I tell you, Bernardo, what we need to do is make a couple of arrests, bring them down here and stretch them till they talk. Then maybe the fear will open up some lines of inquiry. Especially after this.”

Mendoza said nothing. Even though he himself had subjected suspects to the torment, he did not approve of torture either as a first resort or as a substitute for a full investigation, and he was disappointed to hear his old friend advocating such primitive methods.

“One thing is certain,” Calvo said. “This was some kind of message. Bandits would just have robbed them. They wouldn't have carved them up like this and carried them up to the road for every pilgrim to see.”

“The Redeemer?” Mendoza suggested.

“Oh, so you've heard about our Morisco avenger? Who knows? There are all kinds of wild stories going around the villages about this man. That he hides in a magic cave whose entrance opens and closes on command and rides a green horse and is armed with a scimitar. Some say he's seven feet tall and has four fingers on his right hand. There are even those who
will tell you that he isn't a man at all but the ghost of Tariq ibn Ziyad, come to reconquer Spain for the Moors. Of course, when you actually ask around, you find that nobody's actually seen him—they've just heard of someone who has. These are simple people, Bernardo, people of the mountains. Some of them still believe that the high peaks are filled with dragons and monsters.”

“And you? What do you believe?”

Calvo shrugged. “Well, these bodies are real. And they weren't killed for their money. Those shepherds weren't rich.”

Mendoza had intended to continue to Belamar that same day, but Calvo now pressed him to stay for supper and offered to find them rooms in a local inn that was used by pilgrims. The prospect of a bed and good food swayed Mendoza, and that night they ate at the corregidor's well-appointed house. Unlike the viceroy, Calvo did not stand on ceremony, and Necker, Gabriel and the militiamen were also allowed to eat with him and his wife. Calvo had not been married when Mendoza last saw him, and his Dutch wife, Cornelia, was definitely something of a catch for a man who was not the most imposing physical specimen. She looked at least ten years younger than Calvo, with lustrous blond hair and creamy white skin and a voluptuous figure that her loose-fitting robes accentuated, to the obvious admiration of her husband's guests.

Mendoza found her less appealing. He disliked the way that she flirted with Ventura and the two militiamen as if her husband were not there. He noticed how Calvo gave her endearing looks that she did not reciprocate as he told anecdotes that were obviously designed to impress her with his manliness and boldness, about their student days in Salamanca and tavern brawls and scrapes with tutors, about his attempts to serenade the ladies accompanied by Mendoza on guitar.

These reminiscences inevitably turned to Lepanto. Calvo delivered a colorful and exciting account of the battle that reminded Mendoza of the stories he had once told in Salamanca taverns. He described the sultan's
ships spread out in a crescent shape across the Gulf of Patras with their sails billowing in a great curtain, the tambours and cymbals beating out the rowers' strokes from the Turkish decks, the turbaned soldiers dancing and brandishing their weapons in anticipation of the battle as they waited on the walkways.

Calvo told his wife and guests how the Christians broke the fetters that held their galley slaves so that they could use their chains as weapons and promised freedom to those who survived, how the Turkish arrows bounced off their boarding nets, how Don John danced a gay galliard in full view of the enemy before boarding the Turkish flagship, how the huge Venetian gunships blasted the Turkish galleys at the center of the sultan's fleet, wreaking terrible damage. Gabriel was spellbound, but Mendoza found these recollections oppressive. War stories told at suppertime might be entertaining, but Calvo's narrative did not include the thrashing of the bosun's bullwhip on the backs of the slaves as they crashed into the corsair ships, the exploding grenades and incendiaries and the screams of men jumping from burning ships with their clothes on fire into the churning red waters among the entrails of their own comrades where they were stabbed with pikes, shot dead by harquebusiers or drowned, weighed down by their armor.