Shades of Red (11 page)

“It was the only ...”

“... not my idea ...”

“... a short time ...”

“And nobody has to know anything about it,” they both blurted.

Darrell dropped her head onto her arms and enjoyed the best laugh she could remember having for a long time. When she finally looked up, she saw Kate's face was scarlet, and even Brodie's cheeks had reddened.

“There was no other way,” he said, standing up abruptly. “There was no one else to act as chaperone, and in those days, no decent girl would be wandering around alone with a guy unless she was married to him.”

Darrell's face was sore from grinning. “He was saving your reputation, Kate,” she spluttered.

Kate rolled her eyes. “Grow up, will you? It was the only thing we could think of to explain ourselves to Brother Socorro.”

Darrell chuckled. “Okay, okay, I'll try to keep it to myself.”

Kate yawned hugely. “I am so ready for a nap,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “A person can take only so much anxiety, you know.” She stood up.

“What's that?” Darrell turned to peer down one of the passages. Delaney lifted his head and cocked one of his ears.

“There's a light.” Kate looked like she was ready to run. “We'd better get out of here.”

Brodie put his hand on Kate's arm. “Just a second.”

The beam of light broadened, and from around the curve in the passage appeared Paris, his hair glowing the faintest lavender in the thin light.

“Thought so,” muttered Brodie.

“Sheesh — you really know how to scare a guy,” said Paris, his voice hoarse. “I've been searching down here for hours, yelling my fool head off.”

Darrell laughed nervously. “I'm so sorry Paris.” She swallowed. “We've been — we've been looking for you, too.”

Kate sat back down with a shaky sigh. “How long have we been lost?” she asked.

Paris directed the beam onto his watch. “A little more than two hours,” he said. He bent down and ruffled Delaney's fur. “I thought I'd be able to find you for sure, boy,” he said and directed his flashlight upward. “What happened back there? Where did that wind come from? It was almost
like it blew you all right out of here. By the time I got the dust out of my eyes I couldn't find you anywhere.”

“Yeah,” Darrell shot a significant glance at Kate. “We got separated, too. Just found each other a few minutes ago.”

Kate nodded. “Yup. How 'bout that wind, anyway?” She lifted an eyebrow at Brodie. “You're the expert underground. Maybe you can tell us how a hurricane like that can blow through a tunnel this far from the edge of the ocean.”

Brodie curled his lip at her, and Kate grinned.

“Beats me,” he said, finally. “But I think we should get out of here before it happens again.”

“Me too,” said Paris, though he shot a strange glance at Darrell. Delaney trotted up the first few steps and then paused to wait for the rest of the group to follow. “Your dog sure seems comfortable down here,” said Paris.

Darrell looked at him sharply, disturbed by the tone of his voice. “I don't know what you mean,” she said lightly. “Delaney is always the same, happy to go for a walk anywhere.”

“Really?” Paris echoed. He gestured for Brodie and Kate to pass, and when they did, he put his hand on Darrell's arm. “I think we need to talk,” he said quietly.

Darrell looked carefully into his face in the dim
glow of the flashlight. “You might be right,” she said with a sigh, then followed the group up the treacherous stone steps.

The flames were burning and someone was dragging her closer. She could feel the pull on her shoulder — smell the burning flesh. She opened her mouth to scream ...

“My goodness, dear. It's only a bad dream.”

Darrell opened her eyes to the placid face of Mrs. Follett. She sat up in bed, befuddled. “Mrs. Follett? What are you doing here?”

“Well, it
is
eleven o'clock. I know it's a Sunday and you young folks need your rest, but I thought I should wake you as there is a call from your mother in the Middle East.”

Darrell flipped over onto her stomach and reached under the bed for her prosthesis. Three days back from the journey to Inquisition-torn Lisbon and she still hadn't caught up on her sleep. “Thanks
for coming to get me, Mrs. Follett. I'll be down right away.”

“Don't worry dear, your mother told me she would call back in fifteen minutes, so you have time to get dressed.” Mrs. Follett bustled over to the window and drew back the curtains. “Raining again today, I'm afraid,” she said, and scurried out of the room.

Darrell looked around as she adjusted her prosthesis. Lily's bed was empty and neatly made, and Kate's looked like a charging rhino had roared through it. Darrell grinned at the glimpse of tousled red hair sprouting like a patch of hawk weed from somewhere near the bottom of the bed.

She pulled on her jeans and reached into the back pocket to pull out a creased and torn piece of paper. Folding the page carefully, she replaced it in her pocket and shook her friend by the shoulder. “Wake up, Katie. I'll meet you downstairs in the dining hall, okay?”

No reply.

A moment later as Darrell was lacing up her shoes, Lily came bounding into the room, bearing a load of swimming paraphernalia.

“You mean she's not up yet?” sniffed Lily, disdainfully. “I've been up since six, swimming laps.”

Darrell grinned. “If anyone can wake her up, Lily, you can. Go for it.” She left the room to the sound of
a torrent of abuse erupting from somewhere under Kate's bedclothes.

“I don't know what to tell Paris,” Darrell said. It was late in the afternoon, and after a reassuring talk with her mother, she had managed to drag Kate out from under the covers. Brodie sat beside Kate, the waning light of a grey afternoon casting sepia shadows in the empty study hall. Darrell's mother was deeply involved in a peacekeeping effort but still managing to stay out of the hot zone, and Darrell was relieved to hear her sounding so happy. Less comforting was how often her mother referred to Dr. Asa. By the end of the conversation, Darrell was convinced that almost every sentence she'd heard had been prefaced with “David and I.” Still, it was reassuring to know that there was someone watching her mother's back —
as long as he keeps his mind on his job,
she thought. It meant Darrell could turn her attention to a more immediate concern, in the form of one Paris Mercer — the troublemaker.

“Don't tell him anything,” snapped Kate, still not quite recovered from Lily's rude awakening technique. “All he needs to know is that we all got lost down there, it's not a safe place to go, and that's that.”

“I did tell him that,” said Darrell, “but he just looks at me like he doesn't believe me.”

“I'm with Kate,” said Brodie. “I think if you keep changing the subject, he'll drop it sooner or later.”

“Okay, I guess.” Darrell fiddled with the folded page she had pulled from her pocket. “I've got something to read to you,” she blurted. “I've been going over it, and I think it can mean only one thing.”

She quickly related story of examining the old ledgers in the cottage while waiting for Brother Socorro to return. “He obviously felt they were really important or he wouldn't have tried to hide them from the soldiers,” she said. “I think they must have held a list of initials of the people he had helped save from the Inquisition in Spain.”

“He didn't tell us anything about his life when we were with him.” said Brodie, “He did say that many
conversos
had escaped to Portugal, but that it was no longer safe. I think he believed we were all trying to do just that.”

“
Conversos
?” Darrell repeated the word slowly, and her fingers traced across the worn paper on the table in front of her.

“
Conversos
were the Jews that were persecuted by the Inquisition for their religion,” said Brodie. “Remember what Gramps told us?” He whipped open his notebook and read: “Queen Isabella of Castile, a devout Catholic, was also a bold warrior. She and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, had united Spain and
were seeking to strengthen their territory against the Spanish Moors. One way to get the money for this expensive war was to take it from their own countrymen. The money was raised when Isabella declared her personal confessor the head of the Inquisition and gave him the right to torture and murder anyone not a member of the Roman Catholic Church as a way to convince them to change their minds.” He closed his notebook.

Kate nodded. “And if the people agreed to convert, their souls were deemed saved, but they were still put to death and their money confiscated for the war effort,” she added.

“But the soldiers who chased us called us
marranos
,” said Darrell. “Not
conversos
.”

“The people who converted were often called pigs,” said Kate sadly. “We heard that expression everywhere on the streets of Lisbon. It seems some people didn't believe that the
conversos
had truly accepted Christianity.”

“It also made it easier to kill them,” said Brodie, flatly. “It's easier to slaughter pigs than kill your fellow human beings, I guess.”

“So Socorro thought he was saving us from the Inquisition,” said Darrell, quietly, “when really he was leading us to an old friend.”

“An old friend?” Kate looked surprised. “What are you talking about?”

Darrell unfolded her piece of paper and smoothed it out on the table. The page looked incredibly old and worn, its creases brittle to the point of breaking.

“Where did that come from?” asked Kate.

“I brought it back with me,” said Darrell eagerly. “I copied it out from the back of one of Socorro's ledgers. Listen:

March 17, 1505
Numbers slowing down, the wealthy are more able to pay for passage abroad. Have taken on an assistant, a young man from one of the madhouses of Madrid where I went to offer what little help I could. The wars and rule of Torquemada brought much pain to so many and this boy has suffered beyond any I had seen. Still, he has been a great help thus far and I plan to further train him in the earthly goal of kindness to all things that is so sorely missing from these times.

“Then he goes on a bit about how perhaps it is the people that the church calls insane are really the only ones thinking straight, so I skipped that bit, but listen to this ...

June 11, 1505
My new assistant has proved to be of enormous help in redirecting the conversos. He raves less often about what he calls his “old life” but has much to say of his experiences getting caught up in war and mayhem on his way from Florence to Madrid. He has surely been sent by God himself to help me with the plight of these poor people.

Darrell looked up at Kate and Brodie. “Do you see? He spoke to me about an assistant, too. And I think it must be Conrad!”

Kate shook her head. “I think it should be you in the madhouse, Darrell. How can you make a connection like that? What makes you think it was Conrad? It could have been anyone.”

“Look, I didn't have time to copy out any of the part with the messy handwriting, but I feel sure it was notes taken by Conrad. Kate, I think he was there all along. It was 1506, right? That is only three years past the time when we left him behind in the fire. Don't you see? He could still be alive!”

The study door closed softly behind them.

Brodie looked over his shoulder nervously. “Better keep your voice down, Darrell,” he said quietly.
“You may be right, though it sounds more like a coincidence to me.”

“It's no coincidence,” said Darrell. “You guys, I need to go back there. There has to be some meaning to these trips into time — otherwise why would this evidence just become available under our noses? It can't just be coincidence.”

Kate jumped to her feet. “Look, Darrell, these notes could be about anybody. If it is Conrad, how did he end up in a madhouse in Madrid? He stayed behind in Florence. Italy is a long way from Spain.”

“It said in the notes that he had come from Florence!” Darrell slammed her hand on the table. “It's him, I know it.”

“Okay, calm down, calm down,” said Brodie. “We can't do anything about it right now, anyway. And keep your voice down, Darrell, or we'll be explaining ourselves to the whole school, next.” He pulled out a blank sheet of paper. “How does this sound? We have to do research for Gramps's project anyway, so let's find out more.”

He started making notes. “We need to find out all we can about the Inquisition and also about the Protestant Reformation that followed it. Everything was changing in Europe at the time, maybe we can find the key to what was really going on.”

“Look — this isn't going to get us any closer to
finding out if Conrad survived the fire,” said Darrell impatiently. “I vote we just go back and take our chances. The portals through time have never steered us wrong before.”

“Are you kidding? You can't just go back into that crazy time without knowing a bit more about it,” said Kate, her voice rising. “We got out of there just as two thousand people were about to be massacred in one day. In
one day
, Darrell! There's no way I'm going back unless I know that we will be as safe as possible when we arrive, especially to find someone as unpleasant as Conrad.”

“Listen, you two.” Brodie pointed to his notes, his voice calm. “If Darrell researches everything she can find about the Spanish Inquisition, I'll do the Portuguese, and Kate, you can look into the Reformation. It'll help with our projects for Gramps and it will help us be more informed about what we're getting ourselves into if we decide to go back.”

“
When
we decide to go back, you mean,” said Darrell pointedly.