The grandfather could not allow that creature to grow up in the bosom of his theoretically honorable family and thought for many days what to do, but he could not think of anything sensible, so that the inhuman idea of his daughter seemed to him, in principle frightening, but also the only solution. Sir Higinio hoped that some vermin would end the child, quickly, in the face of the inability to kill him or send someone to do it, which would surely make uncomfortable questions.
He was getting old. For many reprehensible actions that he had carried out in his life, he had never killed a child, but as a young man, if it had been precise, he would have done it. He missed Sabine and Severus, who never finished returning to the town. The two of them would have entrusted the work without major problems and they would have executed it with the greatest peace of mind. However, they were not there and he did not trust so much in anyone else, being the issue as delicate as it was.
On the other hand, he was so scared of Irene's cruel and ruthless ideas and behavior that he decided he would have to take her away from the house before she contaminated her inseparable and still good and noble sister Laura. The man, despite all his youth crimes and that he was very similar to Irene at that time —with the important difference that Sir Higinio had a battalion of sheriffs guards to subdue and share in their cruelties—, he must have been softening and becoming more human at the same time, because he still believed in the goodness and innocence of his youngest daughter; and he wanted to preserve those virtues that he never had and rarely consented to any of his soldiers. In a way, she reminded him of his beloved Scholastic Eugenie. His youngest daughter had gone out to be her and Irene clearly to him.
Laura cried and was in constant discouragement for several weeks. The plan that her sister proposed was a very hard blow for her. When she saw or listened to the child, she seemed to die of grief. Irene, on the other hand, did not flinch, nor she changed her mind, even though her younger sister insisted on a daily basis that only the thought of leaving the child was an atrocity unworthy of people and typical of wild animals or crazed demons; but Irene deeply hated that baby, for all the suffering he had caused her to go through, because it almost took her to the grave and because her body, although very beautiful, would never be the same again. After regaining health, she never approached her son at any time; not even to see if he had any resemblance to her or to anyone in the family. She practically knew that it was a boy to hear her sister refer to him, and the truth is that she did not kill him with her own hands because she thought the forest would be an even more cruel option.
Finally, Sir Higinio dared one night to go into the Burnt Willow forest and leave the child in the middle of its thicket. It was not necessary to delay this procedure longer because it would be much worse the more the baby grew; so the old military man almost without thinking took his grandson, wrapped him in a blanket and left the mansion in the direction of the forest.
5
It was not easy for Sir Higinio to leave his grandson. Although the night was calm, without a hint of rain or wind, the movement of the lamp flame that transported made him see people, spirits and invented animals, supposedly hidden among the trees and bushes. He believed to be observed by thousands of eyes, beings, souls... Observed, in short, by God. He never believed himself observed in this way when he committed his military injustices, but now it was different. He was no longer that implacable and rogue high command that only gave accounts to the King, and not to God. Now he saw the Almighty very close. He knew it would have to do with death in fifteen or twenty years and after this last haul nobody knew for sure what was happening. He did not either... and what he was about to do felt that it was not going to benefit the day when his soul left his old body.
He did not search for a long time and in the first place he found he abandoned his grandson. To get out of that forest as soon as possible, he ran like a madman, assuming he was being chased by everything he had previously observed.
The boy stared at him as he walked away, pointing to him with a finger of only a few centimeters and showing a single tooth in his half-open mouth. He must not understand what the old man was doing. It must have been the first time they had left him alone and a person seen and not seen was disappearing from his side, as if by enchantment. Then he began to cry.
In the middle of the road, Sir Higinio felt the earth tremble and stopped his career. Suddenly he experienced an atrocious cold and he wrapped his cloak around the cape. Then he could hear the footsteps of the hooves of a huge animal. It came straight to him. A terrible chill ran down his spine. He extinguished the lantern and immediately reigned full silence. The old soldier sharpened his eyes and saw behind him, about ten meters away, the clarity of a pair of eyes injected with blood. He could not avoid emitting a nervous shriek and the animal advanced a couple of meters. Then it was when he observed the totality of its volume. His legs landed and he fell to the ground. The beast advanced another couple of meters. The animal's eyes shone with sinister red tones. Sir Higinio threw the lantern as far as he could and went to crash into a tree. The animal ran in the direction of the noise, giving a strong blow against the trunk of the tree that had turned to scrap the retired military man’s lantern. Sir Higinio took advantage of this moment to get up and run as if he were a young man of twenty, guided by the dim light of the full moon.
In the village, Sir Higinio tried to recover his breath and sat on the ground waiting for his heart to return to normal rhythm. Then he went —with a certain laziness of legs— towards the mansion. On a lonely street he met a neighbor. The individual had come to spend the last hours of the day in the inn of the Eternal Rest of the Happy Boar, which at certain moments close to the deepest night was only frequented by the hardest or most deranged men of that contour. The villager saluted with respect and fear the former bailiff guard, as all the neighbors would have done in his case, despite being so drunk as to lose his sanity. The retired soldier did not return the greeting and continued his way staring straight ahead, covered with his cape to his mouth, and with an aspect and expression in his eyes so pitiful that the villager — even being so full of morapio to not distinguish anything— he watched as he walked away with a ghost step. Two minutes later he began to sing a pitiful port song that was being invented on the fly.
When Sir Higinio arrived at the mansion, after performing the most cruel and miserable act of his entire life, he went to bed quickly and did not sleep all night. He got chills and he could not stop moving from one side of the bed to the other. He had done many terrible acts when he was a military man, but none was comparable to that night, and the worst thing was that he knew it. Furthermore, he could not remove from his mind a something identified as God, that had seen everything, and that perhaps this very night, represented by a monstrous animal, he had wanted to give an account with him.
6
It had been at least six months since he had stuck his head through Irene Lopezosa contracted’s uterus. Now he lay under a willow and had been there longer than he remembered ever being alone. He wept with tears from the cold and hunger, and at that moment, naked on the somewhat damp grass, was the perfect definition of the word helplessness.
From time to time in their weeping a "ma-ma" could be heard, which evidently did not receive an answer. The baby called Laura, not knowing that his real mother was an unspeakable, worthy successor to his grandfather, with Irene Lopezosa Quesada’s name.
A small legionary ant, which carried a cocoon, began to ascend the belly of the baby, while moving its unstoppable antennae. It must have been clueless from a row of her companions who walked very close. The baby noticed and stopped crying, swatted it away, throwing the poor ant several paces away. Then he smiled a little and immediately felt hungry and cold again and cried insistently. After a while his crying stopped because from his tiny penis began to flow a yellowish liquid, without him having previously controlled this circumstance. When he noticed that the thing was hot and burned his legs, he resumed his wail
ing and crying.
The truth is when the little ants left, the baby did not stay completely alone. Something or someone was very close, watching him. Their breathing looked like a buffalo and lifted the leaves from the ground in their action. From time to time, you could hear a dull growl, as the one produced by a demonized or out of control animal. It did not take long, whatever it was, much to leave behind the bush, which almost did not cover them in all their volume.
It had decided to attack.
Chapter 9
The dying man’s barrel
1
S
everus and Sabine came to Guardamar del Delta, one of the many Gurracameses ports that will take to the Mediterranean, in a few days of travel. The last stages passed in a quiet way, without any setback, despite the fact that, due to the speed in which they moved from one town to another —hardly stopping to give the horses a drink and to feed and sleep themselves—, they seemed pursued by justice or fled the black plague.
They were carrying Mario Toulon in a big bag and he was beginning to smell bad. The sack had been used originally to store onions and now this plant root smell was mixed with the apparent thief’s death. The two men wondered, at every moment, if he was already dead; although they sensed he must be. They did not bother to check him even once, even though there were moments when their curiosity stung and they were about to stop their crazy gallop towards the sea to open the stinking sack and see Mario Toulon’s state.
In one of the stalls in the Guardamar del Delta port they bought a grimy, heavy and unbalanced second-hand barrel from a master cooper. The merchant, who was fat, bald and big-handed, did not ask questions, although he was clear that Sabine and Severus were not winemakers, nor had they ever been in the wine business in their lives. If they had known, even if only very little, the world of aging and fermentation of grape juice, they would not have acquired a barrel in such bad use and with so few aging properties.
Without any doubt, the cooper was glad to get rid of that merchandise that he never managed to sell. He had tried in the villages with more uneducated people and easy to deceive; and he had done it all over the territory occupied by Gurracam; but it was useless. If he had not sold it this season, he thought of turning it into a thousand splinters next winter, destined for the chimney of his house on the outskirts of San Josafar. This was the only way he could think of giving it a practical ending and thus stop carrying it from town to town for nothing.
“You take my best barrel, gentlemen, although it does not seem like it. It is old, but it is still raising good wine," he said as the two men walked away carrying the barrel, still incredulous that they were taking that garbage out of his hands. It was clear that the buyers were looking for the cheapest thing, even if it was useless, God knows why.
The two murderers took refuge in a narrow alley half hidden from the tumult of the port, which stank of urine and showed recent and old shit of all kinds of rodents. A dying rat wandered around the place. When Severus and Sabine entered, it hid in the dirt of a dark corner, leaving only its flattened pointed snout exposed. It was the silent witness of everything.
Severus and Sabine tried to take out one of the barrel heads with a lever, but it was impossible. They chose to release part of the external straps. Then, helping themselves with the same lever, they loosened the staves, which seemed stuck as if they had been united for centuries. In this way, they were able to remove the upper part of the barrel without any effort. While they let the pestilence flow to corrupt wine from the interior, Severus went to get his horse for the sack, to put it finally in the barrel. The sack was immediately impregnated with the almost black purple of the mother of the walls of the barrel. Then they introduced the upper head inside the barrel, carrying it, from the inside out, until it was perfectly placed in its place of adjustment. They straightened the straps again and tightened the two quarter axles more tightly. The staves returned to their original position with a click.
Satisfied with their work, they left by rolling the barrel and leaving the rat with something else to tell in the other world of these rodents.
2
They chose the worst looking boat they found. They went to one of the sailors who were busy loading materials on one of the catwalks and told him that they wanted to talk to the person in charge of the ship. The man, with an unmistakable and serious expression, went to look for his captain reluctantly and after a while, he appeared with his superior, who looked like a merchant pirate or a peddler sacks boats.
“You just have to take this barrel out of Gurracam. After all, you are going to Africa, aren’t you?" Severus commented.
“Yes, I am going there.” The captain paused. "How do you know?"
"That merchant told me," Severus explained, pointing to a stand where vases and earthen pots were sold, used and new.
“It's okay. Go on," the captain said; who did not seem to like that his next destination was so easily known. His intention was to collect at the height of Agadir a shipment of newly trapped Indians who, crowded and chained conveniently in the cellar, would transport to the Azores. There another ship would take charge of the merchandise, after payment. This was not the occupation that he liked the most, but it allowed him to move without prejudice to his other boarding and assault activities and get an extra benefit. In any case, what he did or where his ship set course were not subjects that should be known, much less comment on the first one to ask. So later, he would send some of his crew to see that the cheap pottery seller would stop talking so much, if he wanted to keep himself and his merchandise in one piece.
“Once you are in Africa, leave the barrel in any corner of the port where you arrive and forget it and us.”
“If you accept the order, we will give you twenty-five Alexandrians of silver. What do you think? It is a lot of money for such an easy job," Sabine said, offering the exact amount of coins he had agreed on days before with his partner.
The captain rubbed his dirty goatee and then, very slowly, looked at the man who had spoken.
“Tell me first, what's in the barrel?”
"A man," Sabine replied as casually as the weather speaker.
“I already imagined that it would not contain the best wine of this earth. Is he dead?” Asked the captain, who was not surprised by anything. It seemed as if at any moment he had imagined that this was going to be the content.
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?”
“Well. He must be. Otherwise, he will be soon. He was a bandit, a murderer and a bad guy. He deserved to die. Do not doubt it. This world has been rid of an undesirable more.”
Any good person would see the situation as strange: Three men talking about the benefits of removing undesirables from the middle, when they themselves were criminals of the worst kind. In fact, the captain had been part of the pirate Jack “The Looter” Gillian’s crew and had sold him to the Spanish navy, which, using ten gunships, ended with him and his ship one winter morning. His name was Alexander Cliff Withers, but he was known by “The Hands-Cutter” because he had the habit of amputating this part of the body of anyone who betrayed him, then leaving it at sea. Despite his innumerable misdeeds, he was not well known in Gurracam and to a certain extent, in that port of Guardamar del Delta, he always felt safe.
“Was he a rich man? Powerful?” the Captain Alexander Cliff Withers wanted to know.
“He wasn´t. Of course not.” Sabine made a short pause as if it bothered him to have to explain something that his interlocutor should already know. “repeat that he was a thief.”
"He stole, mistreated and raped our employer's daughter. That's the whole story," Severus concluded, telling more lies than truths.
“I see.” The Hands-Cutter returned to messing his beard, looking as if he had discovered something that Sabine or Severus would hide him. “So the powerful is your boss. Who sends you?”
“That is not of your concern.”
“I like to know who I work for.”
�
�If you accept the order, you will be working for us.”
“My good friend, you and that one that accompanies you are not more than a pair of assassins who receive order from someone even worse. That someone could be dangerous to me. Don’t you think what I say is reasonable?” Explained the captain, demonstrating his ease of speech.
“Do not worry.”
The Hands-Cutter, again, began to shave the pensive beard, in an act that knew enough that it bothered most people.
"I hope you know how to give me a more convincing answer," he said, hardening his face.
Severus had no choice but to speak:
“Sir Higinio Lopezosa Quesada. He is the one who is going to pay for your work.”
"I have not heard that name in my life," he said thoughtfully. “Do any of you know who he is?”
The sailors around him did not know the retired soldier either.
“Where do you both come from?” The captain asked.
“From La Alpurria de...” Sabine elbowed Severus, indicating in this way that he began to talk too much.
“What does it matter to you where we come from? There is a man inside the barrel. It does not matter who he is or if he deserved to die...” Sabine said trying to continue the conversation on the other hand.
“I really do not care who the dead man was, as if he is his Serene Majesty the King of Gurracam,” the captain said letting out a laugh that was accompanied by the rest of his henchmen. “Well, I do not know any Sir Higinio. He must be a vulgar rich man from an inland village, with a head and belly well filled with fat. Am I wrong?”
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