The Devils of Cardona (10 page)

When Calvo described how he had saved Mendoza's life, Mendoza remembered the awful pain as he fell to the deck and his certainty that he was about to die as the janissary raised his scimitar above his head. Once again he saw the infidel tumble over and his friend's face, splashed with blood and framed by a combed morion helmet as he reached down and pulled Mendoza upright.

“‘Onward rush / The Greeks amid the ruins of the fleet / As through a shoal of fish caught in the net, / Spreading destruction,'” Mendoza quoted absently.

“‘Advance, ye sons of Greece, from thraldom save / Your country, save your wives, your children save!'” cried Calvo.

Cornelia Calvo and the other guests looked at them blankly.

“Aeschylus!” Calvo yelled. “Just because I didn't finish university, that doesn't mean I can't still quote the classics, eh, Bernardo? And if I hadn't picked you off the deck that day, you wouldn't be quoting them now!”

“To friendship,” Ventura said, raising his glass. “To the man who saved Licenciado Mendoza from the infidel!”

Calvo beamed proudly as they raised their glasses. His wife managed a tight-lipped smile. She asked Mendoza if he had ever been to Aragon before. Mendoza replied that he had not.

“And have you ever dealt with Moriscos before?”

“I have, señora. In Granada.”

“Then you will know what to expect,” she said. “The Moriscos of Aragon are just the same. Christians on the surface but Moors underneath.”

“In Granada some of the Moriscos were more devout Christians than the Old Christians themselves,” Mendoza said.

“Not in these mountains,” Señora Calvo insisted. “Oh, they're good at pretending to be Christians, but as soon as your back's turned, they're praying to Muhammad. They'd kill us all in our beds if they got the chance. The only surprising thing about this Redeemer is that he took so long to appear.”

“Does the Countess of Cardona think the same way as you do?” Mendoza asked.

“The countess is a good woman, but she isn't a woman of the world,” Señora Calvo replied with undisguised condescension. “She treats her Moriscos as if they were children, and that only encourages them to believe they can do as they like.”

“She needs a man!” said Calvo with a lewd expression that made his wife visibly stiffen. “The Moriscos run rings around her! What they need is discipline—like Granada.”

Mendoza felt himself becoming irritated. “You were in Flanders, not Granada,” he said. “The Moriscos had real grievances that were ignored.
Too many Old Christians exploited and oppressed them, and when they went to the courts, there was no redress. Even the priests fleeced them, but the Church did nothing. Instead of addressing these concerns, the king issued the Royal Pragmatic. In one year the Moriscos were supposed to abandon their language, their dances, their public bathhouses and their clothes. It was unreasonable to impose these demands. Wiser government could have avoided the rebellion.”

“Are you saying His Majesty is not wise?” Señora Calvo asked with a faint smile.

“I'm saying, madam, that His Majesty does not always receive accurate information. And when it comes to Moriscos, I am often skeptical about the information one does receive—and also about the sources of such information.”

Señora Calvo's smile abruptly faded.

“But the Moriscos were punished,” Calvo said. “And you helped administer the punishment.”

“Of course!” Mendoza replied hotly. “Because they rebelled. And rebellion must always be punished.”

“Well, let's hope you can nip this in the bud, Bernardo,” said Calvo. “Before it gets any worse. Because we need to find these criminals before someone else dies.”

This seemed so self-evident that it barely needed saying, and Mendoza merely nodded. Calvo sensed that he had displeased his old friend, and he seemed eager to make up for it as he accompanied them to the inn.

“Remember, Bernardo,” Calvo said in a slurred voice as his two servants walked beside them with torches, “anytime you need help, you know you can depend on me—just like at Lepanto. You need more men and I'll call out the militia.”

“I don't need the militia,” Mendoza replied. “But I do need to make sure my reports get to Madrid at least within a week.”

“Of course! Franquelo can bring them to me from Belamar. From here the post is very fast.”

On reaching the inn, Calvo embraced Mendoza once more. “It's good to see you again. After all these years! Who'd have thought it? And who'd have thought that the man I pulled off that deck would go on to become a judge?”

“That's one man with his cojones in a vise,” Ventura murmured as Calvo stumbled away, flanked by his two servants. “And someone should tell him to hold back on the wine and brandy.”

“He always drank too much,” Mendoza said. “But he wasn't like this when I knew him. He gave up the law for the legions because he liked to fight. I always expected him to come back.”

“Well, he should have stuck to soldiering. His wife may be pretty, but a woman like that is not for marrying.”

Mendoza laughed. “I didn't know you were such an expert on the subject of marriage, cousin. Now, sleep. Tomorrow we shall be in Belamar.”

•   •   •

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
they left before sunrise. As they rode out onto the darkened plain, they heard a wolf howl from the direction of the mountains farther north, and Mendoza wondered whether he had made the right decision to reject the viceroy's offer of extra men. By the time they reached Sabiñanigo and the Valle de Tena, the sun had already risen above the mountains to the east, and they rode parallel to the Gállego River across a wide plain flanked by rows of valleys that folded back like waves.

After about two hours, they crossed the hanging bridge that Calvo had told them about, where they paid yet another exorbitant fee to the toll keeper before crossing into the
señorio
of Cardona. They followed the road eastward and upward through ravines and passes and stepped valleys dotted with farmhouses, villages and hamlets, interspersed with the occasional
crumbling remnants of old defensive towers. The mountains now enclosed them so completely that at times it was not possible for them to see beyond the immediate ravine or valley they found themselves in as they ascended toward the towering massif.

Much of the road passed through woodland that offered numerous potential points of ambush, whether from bandits or a would-be Morisco avenger with even the most rudimentary grasp of military tactics. The Moriscos of Granada had staged surprise attacks against armed columns that were considerably larger, and Mendoza ordered his men to be especially vigilant. By midmorning they were climbing through a forested slope when a young man on a mule appeared on the road in front of them. He halted his animal and looked warily at their weapons, with one hand poised over the handle of the short pistol protruding from the sash around his waist. As they came closer, Mendoza saw that he also carried a long dagger in his belt. Both were weapons that would have been banned even among Christians in Valladolid, let alone Moriscos, Mendoza thought as Necker approached the man and called out imperiously, “Where are you coming from, sir?”

“Damián Alarcón from Belamar de la Sierra at your service, señores.”

“Are you a New Christian?”

“I am. But what I lack in pure blood I make up for with a true Catholic heart!”

Necker scowled, and his jaw jutted out even farther. “Do you mock us, Morisco?”

“No, señor. My mother taught me to be polite to strangers.”

“And why are you carrying weapons like these?”

“Because these mountains are dangerous, Your Mercy.”

“Well, we are officers of the king
.
This is Licenciado Don Bernardo de Mendoza, alcalde of the Royal Chancery of Valladolid. Do you have reason to fear us, youth?”

“By God, no,” the young man said. “But being the king's officers, you
will know that it is not illegal for Moriscos to carry weapons in Aragon—especially in these evil times.”

“So you think you know the law,” Necker thundered, “when your people have been murdering priests and Christians?”

“I know nothing of that, señores,” the Morisco protested. “I only came back two days ago to see my family. I'm a muleteer. I'm away most of the year. Castile, Andalusia, Portugal—I've been everywhere, and now I'm going back to Zaragoza to work. If I don't get there tomorrow, I'll lose my job.”

Mendoza nodded at Necker to let him go, and they continued on their way until the road leveled out and they emerged onto a wide cultivated valley, where men and women were working side by side. At the far end of the plain, a cluster of white houses cascaded down a sloping promontory that gave out onto a narrow ravine, and Mendoza knew even before Franquelo told them that they had almost reached Belamar de la Sierra. The road led directly through the valley, past men, women and children working the fields and orchards with forks, hoes and scythes. Others were leading mules piled with herbs, hay and firewood. As they came closer, Mendoza saw the high cliff at the upper end of the town and the church tower farther down toward the ravine, where men and women were working on terraces cut into the hillside below the old medieval walls.

The valley did not look like a hotbed of murder, heresy and sedition. On the contrary, everything emanated a timeless rustic serenity, from the barking dogs and the birds of prey lazily hovering overhead to the tolling bells that counted out eleven o'clock.

“How do you tell the Old Christians from the Moriscos?” Gabriel whispered as they rode into the main entrance to the village.

“The Moriscos are the ones with horns and tails,” replied Ventura.

The houses were built in the Aragonese style, tall and narrow with few windows and tiled roofs that sloped down on both sides in a V shape and brick or stone walls. The ones that faced out onto the road and the valley
were built so close together that they made a natural defensive wall, with a single opening at the road that was barely wide enough for a carriage or a cart to pass through. The road went straight past a
lavadero
, where a group of women washing piles of clothes at a sheltered stone trough stopped to look at them warily as they rode up the narrow, winding street. Other people stopped and stared at them with expressions that might have been hostile or fearful or both. At the front Necker looked around him with a belligerent expression, while Mendoza glanced down at the even narrower streets and cul-de-sacs that once again reminded him of the Morisco towns and villages of Granada.

It was clear from the bare, unpaved streets to the narrow windows, many of which had no glass and were covered with sheets of greasy transparent paper or nothing at all, that this was not a prosperous village. Mendoza was conscious of the eyes watching them from the darkened interiors, and some women actually pulled their children back into the doorways as they rode past. It was not until they reached the Plaza Mayor that they found themselves on cobblestones as they drew up their horses in front of a nondescript two-story building painted with a faded pink, which Franquelo said was the village hall.

On the opposite side of the square, there was a bakery and a butcher shop, whose customers stood watching them with the same wary suspicion they had already encountered. They had barely dismounted when they heard voices coming toward them, and a moment later about twenty armed men came into the square carrying an assortment of swords, daggers and farming tools.

“What is this, Vicente?” Franquelo asked one of them. “Are you going to war?”

A sullen, handsome young man stepped nervously forward, holding a short sword. “We heard strangers with guns had entered the town,” he said. “We thought they were bandits.”

“Well, you can put your weapons away. This is Judge Mendoza from Valladolid, come to bring the king's justice to those who have murdered his subjects!”

“And we bid him welcome.”

Mendoza turned as the door of the village hall opened and a tall, upright-looking man with a gray beard and a mane of white hair stepped into the square. He appeared to be in his early fifties, though his blue eyes seemed much younger than his tanned and deeply lined face.

“Good afternoon, señores,” he said. “I am Dr. Pedro Segura, physician and mayor of Belamar. I've been expecting you. Someone like you anyway. What can I do for you, Your Honor?”

“I need food and lodging for myself and my men until my investigation is completed.”

“Well, we have no inn in Belamar—only a tavern. Didn't Constable Franquelo tell you that? You'd be better off in Cardona.”

“We're staying here,” Mendoza said firmly. “Even if we have to sleep in a barn.”

“That won't be necessary. I have two rooms and a storeroom at my dispensary. I'm sure they will cook for you at the tavern if you buy your food. My daughter can assist you as well.”

Mendoza thanked him. “I also need a room where I can take statements and depositions and a secure place where any prisoners can be detained.”

“You can use my office. There's a back room there with a solid door and a stable in the dispensary. And there's also the seigneurial prison in Cardona.”

“Any prisoners will be held under my jurisdiction, not the seigneurial courts. And one more thing. I want the town crier to announce our investigation first thing tomorrow morning. My scribe will give you the exact wording for the proclamation later.”

“Will that be necessary, Your Honor? This is a village. Everyone will know what you're doing by the end of the evening.”

“This is a royal investigation, not a rumor.”

“As you wish.”

•   •   •

T
HEY
FOLLOWED
S
EGURA
to a three-story stone house on a street behind the village hall and led their animals through the wide double door and into the stable past the fireplace alcove and stairwell, next to the little kitchen. After unpacking their weapons and saddlebags, they went up the narrow stone stairs and into a large open room with two smaller rooms at the back. Mendoza was pleased to see that one of them contained a double bed as he looked around at the bag of surgical tools lying on a table near the window, the shelves bearing glass bottles and apothecary jars containing ointments, powders, crushed herbs and the skeletons and skulls of mice, rabbits and sheep, plus anatomical prints on the walls showing muscles, bones and veins.