The Devils of Cardona (28 page)

As they drew closer to Pau, the traffic on the road began to thicken and their progress was slowed by the flow of carts, wagons, soldiers and merchants, by peasants carrying bundles on their backs and families with their children, many of whom were in a boisterous and exuberant mood. When Segura asked where they were going, he was told that the Whitsun celebrations in Pau were now in their third day and that the king of Navarre
and his court had come from his residence in Nérac to attend the jousting tournament.

By the time they reached the capital, the road was so crowded that they had to slow the horses to walking pace as they crossed the great stone bridge that spanned the Gave and headed toward the enormous gray château that loomed out of the trees and buildings on the opposite bank. They eased their way through the holidaying crowds along an unpaved road overlooking a narrow ravine, past elegant stone houses with sloping tiled roofs and balconies draped with banners bearing the Navarre coat of arms and an assortment of silks and colored cloths and streamers.

All around them revelers were tottering away from stalls and overcrowded taverns selling crepes, pies and pastries, sausages, meats and cooked fish or wine and cider, or gathered in rowdy groups to watch the bear baiters, cockfighters and chicken races, the clowns, jesters, jugglers and storytellers, and the hawkers selling ointments and fluids with miraculous healing powers. Many of the spectators were in an advanced state of inebriation. Some were singing and dancing lewd dances to the music of drums, flutes and horns. Others were throwing up, or lying facedown by the side of the road, or stuffing themselves with food at crowded tables where beggars and vagabonds mingled with the dogs circulating around them waiting for scraps and bones.

Even a cursory inspection of the crowd revealed numerous offenses that Mendoza would have considered worthy of a warning or an arrest had he come across them in Valladolid, from the cardsharps and shell gamers to what appeared to be a couple openly copulating in an alleyway. But there was no evidence of any authority or control, and many of the soldiers and officers of the peace mingling with the crowd seemed no less inebriated than those around them. In the main square in front of the château, a jousting tourney was in progress, and Segura pointed out the grandstand just below the medieval wall, where the king and his guests were looking down on the proceedings. Below them spectators and
combatants swarmed around the gaily colored round tents and ornate cloth-covered tilts, and armored knights charged each other with wooden lances or clashed with swords while others waited with their horses and squires for their turn.

Normally Mendoza enjoyed such events, but he was impatient to find Péris. Finally they rounded the château and entered a warrenlike neighborhood that was noticeably humbler and quieter than the rest of the city. They dismounted and led their horses through the narrow, evil-smelling streets and lanes whose houses were so close together that it was almost possible to step from one roof to the other. Most of their occupants appeared to be at the festivities, and Segura asked the few people they encountered for the address that Péris's wife had given him, until they reached a dank, unpaved street flanked by overhanging houses that reeked of the powerful stench of urine.

Mendoza left Daniel on the corner to look after the horses and accompanied Segura to a door about halfway along the street. The mayor knocked discreetly, and a small, grizzled old man half opened the door and stared at them without a word. When Segura asked in French for Vicente Péris, he looked blank and shook his head. Mendoza was tired and hungry. The pain in his leg was returning now that Segura's medicine had worn off, and he had not crossed the Pyrenees only to be told that he'd gotten the wrong address. Before the old man could shut the door, Mendoza drew his pistol and pointed it directly at his face.

“Tell him I want to see for myself.”

The old man did not require a translation, and he raised his arms and stepped backward as Mendoza followed him into the little room.

“Vicente Péris!” Mendoza called out. “Vicente Péris from Aragon! Come out now!”

There was the sound of footsteps from a back room, and then the young man whose handsome, angry face he had first seen in Belamar on the day of their arrival appeared in the doorway.

“You're not in Spain now, Alcalde Mendoza,” he said. “You can't arrest me here.”

Mendoza put the pistol back in his belt. “Is there something I ought to be arresting you for, Señor Péris?”

“In Spain you don't need a reason—not when it comes to Moriscos. Here you do.” Péris looked disgustedly at Segura. “So you brought him here, old man. I didn't think even you would sink this low.”

“He just wants the truth about what happened in Vallcarca, Vicente.”

“There are those who say you are the man they call the Redeemer,” Mendoza said.

Péris looked both angry and surprised. “Who says so?”

“Baron Vallcarca.”

“And of course you believe him.”

“I never said I did.”

“I had nothing to do with those nuns!” Péris burst out. “We never even saw them.”

“What were the three of you doing in Vallcarca?” Mendoza asked.

Péris looked suddenly guarded. “I can't tell you that.”

“Why not?” Mendoza sat down on one of the chairs and stretched out his aching leg. “You yourself said I can't arrest you.”

“I may be safe. But my family isn't. Or the families of the others.”

“I swear to you that nothing will happen to any of them as a result of anything you say to me here.”

“You swear!” Péris gave a bitter half smile. “Like Queen Isabel and King Fernando swore to our great-grandfathers in Granada that they could continue to practice their faith in peace and then forced them to become Christians? Like the lords of Aragon swore that we would be protected from the Inquisition? No, Licenciado, here I don't have to obey any Spanish officials, and I don't have to tell you anything.”

Mendoza patted his thigh with the pistol. “Then I will have to take you back to Spain and make you talk.”

“You'll have to shoot me first.”

“No one is going to shoot anybody,” said Segura nervously. “Your Honor, may I have a word?”

Mendoza was reluctant to leave Péris alone, but his defiance made it clear that he was not planning to go anywhere. He followed the mayor out into the street and stood facing the doorway, still holding his pistol in his hand.

“If I may be so bold, Don Bernardo, you aren't thinking with your usual clarity,” Segura said. “You can't just come here and wave a pistol around. This isn't some pagan kingdom. They have laws here.”

“The old man was lying.”

“That may be so, but I know Péris, and I'm telling you he won't respond to threats from you or anyone else. I know a place where we might be able to stay. Let's go there, and I'll come back and talk to him alone. I'm sure if I explain the situation to him calmly, then I can get him to speak to you.”

“And suppose he tries to escape?”

“He's already escaped,” Segura reminded him.

Mendoza did not like the idea of Segura and Péris talking in private, but forcing the wood-carver to come to Spain at gunpoint was not practical. He grudgingly agreed, and Segura went back inside to explain the situation to Péris. The mayor emerged a few minutes later saying that Péris had agreed to talk and that he would return when they had found somewhere to stay. It was getting dark as they threaded their way on foot back through the teeming crowds and crossed the bridge again. Mendoza had expected to spend the night in a field, and he was pleasantly surprised when Segura knocked on the door of a private house. The Christian householder, Monsieur Marcel, cheerfully greeted the mayor like a long-lost brother and offered the dust-covered and disheveled travelers an attic room.

One of his sons took their horses to a stable while they carried their weapons and saddlebags upstairs, and a servant girl brought them a bowl of warm water to wash in. Afterward they went downstairs, where Monsieur Marcel's wife served them a supper of warmed-up mutton stew and a jug of
red wine, which only Mendoza and Daniel drank. The two of them retired to the narrow single bed that they were obliged to share, while Segura left to speak to Péris. Within minutes the militiaman's snoring merged with the cacophony of horns, drums, shouting and laughter from the ongoing bacchanal outside, and it was not long before Mendoza was asleep himself.

•   •   •

H
E
WOKE
to find Daniel's feet next to his face and felt immediately agitated. The room was dark, apart from a small square of wan gray light coming through the little skylight, and there was no sign of Segura.

“Wake up,” he said urgently.

Before Daniel could get out of bed, Mendoza was already getting dressed, and the two of them went downstairs. The house was silent, and Mendoza had a sudden overwhelming suspicion that Segura had betrayed him, until he saw the mane of white hair protruding from under a blanket on the drawing-room sofa.

“Let's go,” he said.

Segura sat up and looked around the darkened room. “It's a little early, isn't it?” he asked. “He said he'd talk to you. He's not going anywhere.”

“I want to speak to him now.”

Segura shrugged and got dressed. Monsieur Marcel had heard them and came down to offer them breakfast, but Mendoza politely declined the invitation. Outside, the crowds had gone and the streets were littered with bodies that might have been dead, drunk or sleeping. The stallholders were already busy packing away awnings and tables while beggars and municipal carts picked their way through the streets, sweeping up the mess of broken glass and clay pots or combing through the rubbish in search of something edible or salable.

Mendoza hurried grimly past them, like a blackbird of ill omen, his cloak flapping and his head hunched forward, tapping the ground with his stick and walking with such speed that Daniel and Segura struggled to
keep up with him. As soon as they turned in to the street and saw the small crowd gathered around the entrance to the old man's house, he knew that his urgency had been justified. He pushed his way through them and into the darkened room, where he saw the old man lying barefoot in his nightshirt in a pool of blood with a candle by his outstretched left hand. On the stairwell an old woman was half sitting, half lying, with her nightdress pulled up above her knees and a dark stain across her chest and stomach from the wound in her throat. In the back room, Péris lay on his stomach in a shirt and leggings, facedown on the bed, with one arm dangling over the bloodstained mattress.

Mendoza looked at the bloodied hair on the base of his skull and the stab wounds in his back as he stepped carefully into the room, taking pains to avoid the blood, and stared down at the body of the man who would no longer tell anyone anything.

“Let me take a look at him,” Segura said.

“A little late for that, isn't it?” Mendoza replied angrily. “Or maybe you knew that already?”

“You don't think I did this?” asked Segura.

Mendoza did not reply. On the floorboard next to Péris's outstretched finger, he noticed an unusual shape, and kneeling down he saw the distinct outline of an
S
that appeared to have been written in his own blood.

“Have you seen this?” he asked. “It looks like he was trying to tell us something.
S
for ‘Segura' maybe?”

“No, Licenciado,” Segura replied. “It's not me. It's Sánchez.”

“The bailiff?” Mendoza looked at him in astonishment. “What are you talking about, man?”

Before Segura had a chance to answer, there was a sudden commotion from the next room, and a Frenchman in a wide-brimmed felt hat appeared in the doorway and began shouting at them and gesturing toward the front door. Everything about him exuded officialdom, from his gleaming leather belt and boots to the blue badge in the shape of a shield stitched onto his
chest. Mendoza did not need to be told that they were being ordered out of the house, and as they went outside, Segura informed him that the man was the chief constable of Pau.

They found Daniel standing against a wall guarded by four armed constables wearing identical red tunics, helmets and breastplates and carrying pikes and halberds. The chief constable told them to line up alongside him and stood frowning as an old woman pointed angrily toward Mendoza and began to speak to the chief constable in urgent, agitated French.

“This is bad,” Segura muttered. “She's telling him that we were here yesterday evening. She says that you're Spanish and that she saw you point a pistol at the old man.”

The crowd was getting larger now and becoming turbulent and aggressive as the words
espagnols
and
assassins catholiques
were passed back and forth. The chief constable waved his arm at the three of them and barked out another order.

“He's arresting us on suspicion of murder,” Segura said. “He wants your sword and pistol.”

“This is ridiculous,” Mendoza protested. “Tell him who I am. Tell him the people who did this are getting away even as he speaks!”

Segura's remonstrations had no effect. For the first time in his life, Mendoza was obliged to hand over his sword and pistol to an arresting officer, though the chief constable allowed him to keep his stick.

•   •   •

T
HE
THREE
OF
THEM
were marched through the streets to a large, two-story stone building with barred windows bearing the Béarn coat of arms of two bulls and a shield. A bored-looking clerk took their names, and Mendoza asked Segura to explain to the chief constable who he was. Once again the man showed no interest, and the three of them were ushered into a large cell packed with semiconscious revelers and assorted lowlifes, some of whom were still bloodied from fights.