The Devils of Cardona

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

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New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2016 by Matthew Carr

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eBook ISBN: 9781101982754

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Carr, Matthew.

Title: The devils of Cardona / Matthew Carr.

Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016006811 | ISBN 9781101982730 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Clergy—Crimes against—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Inquisition—Spain—Fiction. | Spain—History—16th century—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Suspense. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PR6103.A7273 D49 2016 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016006811

Map by Meighan Cavanaugh

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

F
OR
J
ANE.
S
IEMPRE.

n the early hours of March 20, 1584, Padre Juan Panalles awoke from a drunken stupor to find his servant girl Inés lying naked beside him. It was the morning after the Day of the Beast, and the skinny little body that had briefly aroused him during the previous night's festivities now took up so much room that he prodded her awake with his elbow, nearly pushing her out of the narrow bed. Inés knew what was expected of her. She crawled sleepily out from under the blankets and slipped on her dress and tied back her hair in the murky half-light before padding from the room to prepare his breakfast.

The priest rolled over and squeezed his eyes shut in a vain attempt to ignore his parched tongue and throbbing temples. Finally he abandoned the effort and hoisted his heavy body upright. He sat on the edge of the bed in his nightshirt with his large feet resting on the cold tiled
floor and grimaced at the acrid smell of sex, wine and stale beer and the sight of the sagging purse on the bedside table. He could not remember how much he had lost, or whether he had lost it on cards or dice, but he knew that it had been a bad night.

He told himself that there would be other games and better nights as he went out into the privy to piss and curse the shriveled cock that had led him again to stray from the path of virtue. He rinsed it clean and sponged his face and body before eating the bread, egg and ham that Inés had left him. After washing the food down with a glass of brandy, he changed into his vestments, first the white alb, then the amice draped over his shoulders, followed by the long black cape. Even when he had acquired at least the appearance of piety, the voice of his conscience told him that he was not fit to serve God or administer the holiest of sacraments. But in all his years in these mountains, he had never failed to celebrate the Eucharist no matter what he had done the night before.

Outside, the first red slats of light were spreading above the high peaks and the towering massif that separated God's chosen people from their enemies. He heard the stream flowing down into the side of the ravine, louder than usual as a result of the melting snows, and the first morning birds that he neither could name nor cared to name. Even though it was late March, his panting breath still gave off a cloud of steam as he stepped out into the courtyard adjoining the church, his sandals squeaking on the hard, stony ground with a heavy tread that anyone in the village could have recognized and which many of them had reason to fear and detest.

Father Panalles knew that his parishioners did not love him, but he had long since ceased to feel any remorse for the fact that a man of the cloth should be the object of fear and loathing. In another place he might have felt different, but not here, in Belamar de la Sierra. Its inhabitants were people from another world and time, savages and heretics who showed more affection for the black-faced performer dressed up as a bear that they dragged through the streets on the same day every year than they would ever feel
for the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Even now, in the penultimate decade of the sixteenth century, they continued to believe that this pagan superstition could expunge all the year's accumulated evil from the town. But as he had told them often enough, the evil was inside them. It was something they carried in their blood, that was passed down through their mothers' milk and handed down from one generation to the next.

Such people could never be saved, not even by the holy apostles themselves, and since they could never willingly embrace the faith, then even the fact that they feared him was a kind of achievement. On this particular morning, however, he took no satisfaction from the power he held over them, but only bitterness, resentment and self-pity at the seven years he had wasted in these mountains when so many others who were just like him, and certainly no better, had obtained high positions in cathedral chapters in Segovia and Salamanca, or rich parishes and fat benefices in Castile, Valencia, and Andalusia and other places where those who served God and his Church could receive their just reward on earth as it is in heaven.

After all the years he had spent in these dismal mountains, he deserved similar reward, and yet there was no prospect of any change in his situation despite the many letters he had written to the bishop and the archbishop, pleading for a transfer to another parish and reminding them of his selfless and unrelenting attempts to plant the seeds of the one true faith in such barren soil. No one understood or cared, and as he glanced up at the white bell tower with its horseshoe arches, the possibility of escape seemed more remote than ever, and as he stared at the dark, silent houses all around him, he began to run through the names of the congregants from whom he might extract something to compensate for his losses when the service was over. He thought he heard a noise nearby and paused to look around him, but the village was dark and silent and the population was still recovering from the previous day's revelries. The church door was unlocked, as it usually was, because the doors to God's house were always open, and whatever else you could say about these heretics, they did not steal from churches.

He pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped inside. In the same moment, he saw the dark shape sitting on the first row of benches, wearing a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped. “I'm not ready yet.”

The man did not answer or even turn around, and it was only then that he realized that there were others standing in the shadows behind him, and he felt afraid. He took a step away, but one of the men now shut the heavy door, and a gloved hand grasped him over the mouth and jerked his head back. Before he was able to make a sound, the blade cut into his throat and slid across it with a swift, effortless movement, penetrating deep into his flesh and cutting the trachea just below the Adam's apple.

All this was accomplished so quickly that the priest felt no pain, but only boundless shock as the grip released him and he stumbled forward, one hand clutching at his perforated throat in a vain attempt to stem the flow of the warm blood that sluiced irresistibly through his fingers. Directly in front of him, he saw the pallid shoulders of the Prince of Peace hovering in the darkness just above the altar with his arms outstretched, his dear crowned head illuminated by shafts of light coming through the stained-glass window at the beginning of a day that the priest knew he would not see. For the first time in many years, he sincerely wanted to kiss those nailed feet and beg forgiveness, because he knew now that his soul would not be saved and that there would be no resurrection for him.

The priest reached one hand out toward the altar and was still desperately trying to suck in air when one of the dark shapes stabbed him in the lower back with a sword, driving it so deep that the point protruded through his stomach. Even then he remained standing, shuffling his feet like a heavy dancer and trying to remain upright. Now the seated man finally stood up and came toward him, and disbelief and incomprehension compounded the terror as Father Panalles saw the silver mace hanging by the man's side, with its spiked ball and the handle with the leather grip. Beyond him the Black Virgin of Belamar was looking down on him with an expression of
infinite compassion, and he wished that he had done more to live up to her expectations.
In te, Domine, speravi,
he thought as the mace came swinging up and around and smashed into the side of his skull.

He was dead before he hit the floor.

•   •   •

T
HE
NIGHT
BEFORE
THE
EXECUTION
, Licenciado Bernardo Mendoza dreamed about the first auto-da-fé he had ever witnessed. It was the great burning of the Lutherans on October 8, 1559, and his uncle had insisted on taking him, even though he was only nine years old, because the new king was present and it was important, he said, for the child of conversos to know from a very early age what would happen to those who defied the laws of God and his Church. He saw once again the Plaza Mayor packed with people, at least two hundred thousand, it was said, many of whom had come from all over Castile and slept out in the streets and fields in anticipation of the great event. He saw the dignitaries seated on the scaffold, the judges and
letrados
, the archbishop and priests, the tonsured friars in their white-and-black robes, the lords and ladies in their finest clothes looking down from every window and balcony.

In his dream he heard the murmur of anticipation as King Philip climbed onto the scaffolding with his family, sitting beneath Inquisitor-General Valdés, because the power of the Inquisition, his uncle said, was even greater than the power of the Crown itself. He remembered how the square fell silent as the king and his family swore to support and uphold the Inquisition. He heard the great roar of affirmation when the vast crowd was called on to do the same, as though all the people in the square had now a single body with one voice, from the king and his grandees to the lowliest beggar, all of them united against the heretic enemies of God, Spain and the Holy Inquisition. He was so moved that he wanted to weep and kiss the hands of those wise men in their scarlet robes who watched over Spain day and night.

In his dream Mendoza recalled once again the anger and fascination that he had felt as the thirty-one Lutherans were led barefoot into the square, accompanied by the Inquisition commissioners and officers bearing the silk-fringed Inquisition standard with the green cross and olive branch; the jailers, priests and monks; and the green-clad
familiares
who assisted the Holy Office in its ceaseless war against the enemies of God and the king. He flinched at the sight of the yellow-and-black sanbenitos—the tunics of shame that reached down to the bare knees of the Lutheran heretics, painted with devils, monsters, skulls and flames, some pointed upward and some down. He heard his uncle say, “Remember this, boy—this is what hell looks like,” and he sensed even then that he would always remember the rage of the crowd as it jeered and screamed furiously at the prisoners, some of whom were carrying candles and wearing ropes around their necks and conical hats on their heads that were also painted with devils and beasts. Others were in chains, which jangled against the paved square and mingled with the urgent prayers and imprecations of priests and Jesuits pleading desperately with the condemned to repent and save their souls before their bodies were burned.

But what drew his attention most was the young woman in the black sanbenito that hung halfway down her calves. Her head was crowned with the conical hat known as the
coroza
, and her soft, sweet expression was so strikingly at odds with the yellow devils dancing around the ragged sackcloth tunic and the pointed hat that he could not imagine what she had done to deserve the rage, revulsion and condemnation that accompanied her passage through the packed square. He heard someone say in a tone of outrage and disgust that she had been a nun, but she looked so much like an angel or the Virgin Mary that he could not help feeling an urge to rescue her. And even though he knew that it was wrong to feel pity toward these minions of Satan, her sad face continued to haunt him as a succession of priests, bishops and Inquisition officials delivered interminable homilies and sermons and proclaimed the dreadful crimes of the penitents. Most of these offenses
were incomprehensible to him, and the inquisitorial recitations were sprinkled with Latin words and phrases that he did not know. But again and again the word “heresy” was passed down from the scaffolding and back and forth through the crowd, reverberating through his mind with a sibilant, menacing hiss, conjuring up vague possibilities of unimaginable depravity, obscenity and horror that he could not even define.

In his dream he accompanied his uncle once again to the burning place in the Campo Grande and saw the stakes protruding from the pyres. He watched the prisoners ascend the platforms, accompanied by the priests who were still nagging agitatedly at the unreconciled to repent. He saw the executioner fasten them to the poles one by one, and then he witnessed what was at that point the single most shocking event in his life, as those who recanted were strangled with ropes wrapped around the stakes and attached to a small stick that the executioner slowly tightened, while the spectators variously applauded and prayed aloud, before the torches were applied to the piles of gorse and branches.