The Devils of Cardona (11 page)

“I see you're a student of Vesalius,” he observed.

“Is there any doctor worthy of the name who isn't?” Segura said. “This used to be my parents' house. Now I use it as an apothecary and a consulting room. My hope one day is to turn this building into a small hospital for the people in the area. I assume that you and your page will stay here. Your men can sleep upstairs. My sons will clear it out for you and see if they can find some more mattresses.”

Mendoza examined the titles on the shelves while Ventura, Necker and the two militiamen carried their bags and weapons upstairs. Some of them were old leather-bound copies, but the majority were folios without covers. It was an eclectic and wide-ranging collection for a country doctor in a remote mountain town. In addition to the Bible and the catechism, there were editions of Ambroise Paré's
Journeys in Diverse Places
, in addition to
Amadis
of Gaul
,
El Lazarillo de Tormes
and
La Celestina
, Pedro de Medina's
Book of Cosmography
, and an assortment of medical texts that included Vesalius's
De humani corporis fabrica
, a French translation of Hippocrates and Castilian translations of Galen and Avicenna.

“Did you know that
Lazarillo
is on the Index now?”

“I didn't,” Segura said. “Well, that's a pity.”

“It doesn't bother me, but an inquisitor might see things differently.”

Segura sighed and took the book down from the shelf. “Better burn it then,” he said.

“But there must be at least twenty books here!” Gabriel exclaimed. “And some of them are in French and Latin.”

“Some of them were given to me by the countess and her late husband,” replied Segura. “And many of us speak French in these mountains. I studied medicine in Paris. You like books, young man? So do I. Have you read
The Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa
? A noble tale!”

The third floor, as was the custom in the country, was a winter storehouse filled with fruit, grain and vegetables, and two of Segura's sons now dragged up two mattresses for Ventura, Necker and the two militiamen to share. Mendoza asked to be taken to the scene of the crime, and they followed Segura once again back into the street. The church was a solid white building with a sloping slate roof, its stained-glass windows reminding Mendoza of some of the smaller churches in Castile rather than the rounded Romanesque churches that he had seen while coming up through the mountains, but the horseshoe arches on the bell tower suggested that at least part of it was of much older construction.

“Was this a mosque?” he asked.

Segura said it had been until 1524, when the Moors of Belamar were baptized. It had remained unused since Father Panalles's murder, he said, because it had not yet been purified, but they continued to use the bells to mark the hours. Inside, they could still smell the slightly sweet and pungent
combination of incense and spilled blood as they looked around at the thick stone arches, the alcoves containing headless or broken statues and the slashed sanbenitos.

“This is where we found him,” Franquelo said, pointing to the bloodstained altar.

“Who found him first?”

“His maid, Inés. She's moved back to her parents' house in Villamayor since the murder. It's about an hour from here.”

“I want to speak to her. Bring her to the town hall tomorrow.”

“With respect, Your Honor, we already questioned her when the corregidor came here. She didn't hear anything or see anyone.”

“
I
haven't questioned her,” Mendoza said.

Some footprints were still visible in the dried blood, and he placed his boot alongside them and asked Necker to do the same. “One of them had boots—and large feet, too,” he said. “Even larger than yours.”

“Yes, sir,” said Necker as Mendoza followed the dark streak where the priest's body had been dragged to the altar. There was blood all down the side of it and a thicker pool on its surface. He walked carefully around it and followed the trail of bloody footprints to the lectern, where a large leather Bible had been slashed with a knife and its pages torn. The headless statue of the Virgin also bore white marks that looked like blows or stab marks, and there were Arabic letters written in red on the wall behind it. It was impossible to compare the Arabic with the handwriting on the note that Villareal had given him, except for the fact that the message on the wall was neater and more level, and whoever had written it had clearly taken his or her time.

“Do you know what this means?” Mendoza asked.

“I don't speak Arabic,” Segura replied.

“Dr. Segura, I'm not the Inquisition,” Mendoza said impatiently.

“I don't speak it,” Segura insisted.

Ventura peered at the wall. “‘Slay the unbelievers wherever you may find them,'” he read.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Mendoza said as Segura and Franquelo looked at his cousin in astonishment. “I assume you examined the priest's body?”

“I did, Your Honor,” Segura replied. “His throat was cut, and he suffered ten separate wounds from sword and dagger. His skull was also shattered by a heavy weapon. It was some kind of pointed mace.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because of the hole it made. The same weapon was used to destroy the head of the Virgin, as you can see.” Segura showed him the stone head of the black Virgin and the conical hole that had cracked it.

“Does anyone from the village carry a weapon like that?”

“Absolutely not. The people here are mostly peasants and farmers. A weapon like that is a soldier's weapon.”

“Peasants and farmers can be soldiers, too,” Mendoza said. “Especially when they have someone to lead them. Someone who acts as their champion.”

“If you mean the Redeemer, I assure you that he did not come from the village.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the existence of such a thing could not be concealed!”

“And you would reveal it if you knew?”

“Yes I would,” Segura said firmly. “Because a man like this can only bring disaster to all Moriscos. I believe that the priest was killed by at least three men.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“The variety of the size and depth of the wounds. The angle at which they were struck. And no one from Belamar would be capable of such a thing.”

“What about from outside the village?”

Segura's face hardened. “You won't find many people around here who mourned his death. Father Panalles was a drunkard, a lecher, a thief and a disgrace to his faith.”

“You defame a man of God in his own church?” Franquelo said.

Segura did not even look at him. “The truth defames no one. Everyone knows what kind of priest he was. Especially you.”

“With respect, sir,” said Franquelo, “you cannot believe what these people say about anything.”

“That's enough, Constable. Leave us. All of you. Wait outside,” Mendoza ordered. “I wish to speak to Dr. Segura alone.”

Franquelo glared at Segura and followed the others out of the church, leaving the two men standing by the bloodstained altar.

“These are serious allegations,” Mendoza said.

“Everything I say is true. There is nothing that this priest didn't do to us. How many times did I sit here in this church and listen to him standing by this altar insulting and dishonoring us—even during Mass! In the middle of a sermon, he would abuse us and tell us that we were heathen swine who could not be saved. We were not worthy of his God—
his
God!” Segura grimaced. “That man could not have been further from God. Sometimes he was so drunk that he used to shout and swear at us—in church! He fined us if we missed saints' days or feast days, or for anything that came into his mind. If the people didn't have money, they had to bring him a chicken or a basket of fruit or perform some service for him. He took our women, even our wives and daughters! Some of our women, when they went to confession, were told that if they didn't sleep with him, he would report them to the Inquisition for some religious offense or denounce their husbands.”

“What offenses?”

“Anything! They didn't have to be real. He could just invent them, and the Inquisition always believed him. Many people here were taken to the Aljafería because of him. Two men from the town are still serving eight
years in the king's oars because Father Panalles wanted their wives. Three families have lost most of their property. Two women were flogged. I don't know how many were fined. Most of that was because of Panalles. Your Honor, this was a man who deserved to die, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that his soul is now burning in hell.”

Mendoza leaned onto his stick to take some of the weight off his aching leg. He had chosen to linger in the church to see how Segura reacted, since it was not uncommon in his experience for criminals to reveal more than they intended at the scene of the crime, but there was nothing in the doctor's manner to indicate a guilty conscience.

“Did
you
have any reason to kill him?” Mendoza looked at him intently.

“No.” Segura's face was stonily impassive. “But if I did, I have sufficient medical knowledge to kill a man without stabbing or bludgeoning him to death. And enough humanity to refrain from doing so, and so does everybody else from this village.”

“Did you report these matters to the proper channels?”

“Of course. I wrote letters to the bishop, and I spoke to him when he came to visit us two years ago. I myself went to speak to the archbishop, to the bishop of Jaca, His Excellency Don Pedro de Aragon, and the corregidor Pelagio Calvo.”

“And what did they say?”

“His Excellency Bishop Santos promised to look into it. Don Pedro also said he would report the matter to his superiors. The corregidor told us to take our complaints to the Church or the Inquisition, not him. Even though his own constable was one of Panalles's cronies.”

“You mean Franquelo?”

Segura nodded. “They gambled and drank together. Franquelo also collected fines and threatened people who refused to pay.”

“Can you give me the names of anyone who can support these claims?”

“I won't denounce my people, Your Honor.”

“I'm not asking you to denounce anyone. But what you've told me raises
questions that must be answered. It will be easier if you ask people to come forward voluntarily. Tell them that I will be taking depositions at the town hall all day tomorrow. Tell them no one will be harmed or arrested. But whatever kind of man Father Panalles was, I mean to find out who killed him and see that the perpetrators are punished accordingly. Is that clear?”

•   •   •

S
EGURA
AGREED
AND
RETURNED
to the village hall while Mendoza asked Franquelo to take them to the rectory. At first glance the sparsely furnished rooms suggested the typical home of a humble country priest, but this impression was quickly dispelled by the unmade bed with its silk sheets and the crucifix on the wall above it, the faint smell of wine and brandy emanating from the kitchen and bedroom, the pack of cards on the kitchen table and the two expensive-looking women's dresses, which Ventura discovered in the chest of drawers in the bedroom.

“Did Panalles have any women living with him?” Mendoza asked.

“Only the maid. And I never saw her wearing clothes like that.”

“Look at this.” Ventura opened the drawer on the little unit next to the bed and held up a wheel-lock pistol and a powder bottle. “Not a bad weapon for a priest,” he said, stroking the embossed cherry-colored handle. “There are about a dozen balls here. Too bad he didn't have them with him the day he died.” He knelt down under the bed and pulled out a double-edged sword, followed by a small wooden casket with images of winged angels engraved in its sides. “Maybe this explains the weapons,” he said. The others clustered around him and peered at the tufts of different-colored hair.

“This is women's hair,” Ventura said, sniffing at it, “and not just one woman.”

Mendoza turned to Franquelo. “You knew nothing about this behavior?”

“No, sir,” the
alguacil
insisted. “Absolutely not.”

Mendoza said that he had seen enough, and they were just about to leave when Ventura sat down on the bed, as if testing it.

“Is it all right if I stay here, Your Honor?” he asked. “I don't sleep well with vegetables and snoring constables.”

Necker looked horrified. “You'd sleep in a dead man's bed?” he asked.

“Well,
he
won't need it, will he?”

Mendoza had no objections, and they returned to the dispensary, where Segura appeared to tell them that their food was ready. The tavern was not as bad as some of the places they had stayed along the way, with a single table in a dimly lit room that smelled of burned oil, meat and mutton from tallow, with rushes on the dirt floor. The widow Señora Ortega and her daughter, Beatriz, were clearly glad of the custom, and Beatriz immediately caught Ventura's eye as she served bowls of meat and garbanzos wearing a stained apron that accentuated her wide, curvaceous hips.

“Well, well,” he said. “I didn't expect to find such a delicate alpine flower growing in these wild mountains.”

Beatriz grinned, but Necker looked disapproving as Ventura appreciatively studied the sway of her hips as she returned to the kitchen.

“Look at that.” He sighed and shook his head. “Enough to make Adam eat a whole orchard, wouldn't you say, Constable? And her mother isn't bad either for her age.”

“I'm a married man!” Necker reminded him.

“Well, I don't see your wife here. And what the wife doesn't see can't hurt her.”

“God sees.”