But even then, she hadn’t said anything. After that, the chaos of their lives swept her up again and she’d all but forgotten it. Except for having to clean his shoes. He’d gotten some kind of strange yellow powder on the souls that smelled awful, and it had been quite a job cleaning it off. She had briefly pictured the powder coming from the floor of some House of Mancebía somewhere. But why would a prostitute need a powder that smelled so bad?
Elvira would soon find out. She had passed through the River Gate and was now standing at the entrance to the old Roman Bridge. The headless verracos stood at the entrance, their solemn, stony shapes now outlined against a bright orange sky that announced the sun was about to set. There was a lot of merchant traffic at the moment, most of it leaving the city and heading south, toward Santiago and the suburbs beyond, where most of the merchants lived.
Elvira peered down at the arches below the bridge. It was hard to see them from the top and she would have to make her way into the riverbed to reach them. So, she walked to a small staircase that led down to the wet sand of the riverbed.
Down here, little of the traffic noise from up top could reach. There was only the sound of the various screeching birds and gulls that circled about over the tops of the heaping masses of shrubs and bushes that lined the sandy bank. The Tormes was not a well-travelled river, and as such, much of it had been allowed to grow wild and natural without the usual pruning and dredging of other rivers. Nature was allowed to flourish here, and Elvira wondered why, in her entire life in Salamanca, she had never thought to climb down here. Or anyone else, for that matter, as she was all alone.
Elvira turned her attention now to the stone arches that supported the underside of the bridge. There were twenty or so of them, but only the first two could be accessed without wading into the river itself. Each archway was ringed on the bottom with ledges just above the surface, designed for the workmen who built and maintained this bridge.
The mud was deep and Elvira realised she had worn the wrong shoes, but she didn’t let that deter her. She stomped her way through the mud until she reached the first, and easiest, arch. She pulled herself on to the ledge and shook off as much of the mud as she could get by tapping her soft leather sandals against the stones.
Elvira looked around as the scratching sound of her shoes echoed all about, frightening off some sparrows that had been looking for grubs nearby. There was no sign of anyone. And given how hard it was to reach, she wondered how any prostitute could ply their trade here. There was certainly no sign of anybody now.
The next arch along was the only other one that could be reached without swimming, so Elvira hopped down into the mud and moved a little further into the riverbed. The mud was deeper and wetter, which meant the bottom of her dress would need laundering tomorrow.
Elvira pulled herself up on the next ledge and, once again, found herself completely alone. There were no men here looking for prostitutes. Nor were there prostitutes. There was only Elvira and the birds, some of which were nervous at how close she was to their nests in the crooks of the ledge on the far side.
Elvira was relieved, but also disappointed. Whomever had told Arturo what went on down here must have been making it up. She couldn’t see how it would be possible for this place to conduct such business. Which meant she’d been right: Gregorio hadn’t come here for women. And Elvira should have been happy with that.
But she couldn’t help wondering—what had he come for, then?
Elvira looked about but saw nothing. Perhaps to meet someone in a boat? But under this arch, the water wasn’t deep enough for most vessels. It didn’t seem likely. In fact, nothing did. Perhaps Gregorio had lied and hadn’t come here at all. It was all so confusing.
A gale of wind blew through the arch, filling the air with sand from the riverbed. Elvira found she had to cover her face to breathe.
That’s when she smelled it. That smell. That rotten-eggs smell. The same one she’d smelled on the soles of Gregorio’s boots that night. It was the only time she’d ever smelled anything like it.
And it was here, under this arch somewhere. Which meant Gregorio had been here that day. But why?
Elvira looked down at the ledge. It was the only place to step under this arch. She moved along the wall, examining every bit until she saw it. There, just in the middle. More of the bad-smelling yellow powder. Elvira knelt down and picked up a bit of the powder with her hand, holding it to her nose just to be sure.
It was definitely the same stuff.
Elvira went to stand again, using a jutting stone as balance, but felt it come loose under her weight. Elvira yelped and nearly fell over into the mud below, but managed to hold her balance.
Upon closer inspection, she found the stone she held was just one of an entire section of the arch where the stones were not mortared very well. They were all loose. And going by the echo, there was a chamber just behind.
Elvira attempted to peer into the chamber through the hole the stone had left, but she only saw total darkness beyond. The odour that emanated from it, however, was unmistakable. It was the same foul smell, but much more intense.
Elvira was tempted to remove more stones to get a better look at her husband’s little chamber of secrets, but she became aware of another odour. It was very different from the yellow powder. It was heavier, more sour. It was a rotting smell, like the one from the stalls of meat sellers eager to sell their last few carcasses before the end of a long day in the sun.
But this was no meat seller’s stall. Something about it sent chills down the back of her neck. This was the smell of death. Of something rotten and decaying, something forgotten. And it was so overpowering she was about to be ill.
Elvira quickly shoved the stone back in the wall and found her heart racing. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to know anything related to that odour. She just wanted it to stay behind the loose stones of that arch and never come out. She regretted ever marrying her husband, or having kids with him, or meeting him. She wanted nothing more to do with his secrets.
Elvira scrambled her way out from under the arch and fell down to the soft, sandy bank of the river. Giving little heed to her dress, she raced her way through the mud, back to the little staircase and back to the top of the bridge, where the merchant traffic was still flowing and many pedestrians innocently crossed the bridge, having no idea of the evil that was just below their feet.
Evil that her husband, Gregorio Cordoba—whomever he was—had put there.
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning, Armada squeezed the reins, trying to get used to them in his hands again. They were rough and badly frayed from years of rotting in the open sun, except for in the two spots where his hands naturally held them. There, they had been worn smooth and greasy, having long ago turned black from hours of being gripped tightly in Lucas’s hands while riding on countless hot afternoons. Armada hadn’t remembered them being so smooth. Perhaps it was because Lucas’s hands were younger, stronger, and could grip them much tighter. His stroppy mule sometimes needed a lot of coaxing to go in the direction they needed. Armada wondered if he still had the energy for it.
It was before sunrise and the air was stiff and cold, but it would be warm soon. The breeze still carried a hint of what had been a particularly cold winter, one still refusing to completely let go of its icy grip in the dark of the night. Armada knew he would have been warm enough, had he been able to stay dressed in his usual green shirt and leather waistcoat, which seemed to keep him warm on the coldest of nights. But those marked him as Brotherhood. And where he was going, such markings would mean his death.
So, the trademark shirt and waistcoat were left behind, replaced by a scratchy wool tunic and hat, hastily bought the evening before from a shop on the outskirts of the city. It was a look much closer to that of Lucas’s, the model he’d used. For he needed to look convincingly like a poor farmer, on a long journey home through the empty countryside, eager to get back to his
wife and children.
Armada smiled to himself as Salamanca’s church spire, the tallest structure in the city, slipped from view behind the ridge behind him. The sun was threatening to peek over the crest of a hill to his left, granting him the gift of warmth and light. From that point, Armada knew it should be an easy ride. As long as he kept travelling to the northwest, he would be fine. And the sun’s position would help him get there.
The thought of a family made his chuckle. It was so hard to picture himself having such a normal life. He was about as likely to have a wife, child, and a working farm as he was to be crowned king of France. Both roles would be equally as strange. It was a joke, really. And one he had to laugh at, even though no one was around.
The thought amused him for much of the early morning and midday as the cart bounced in and out of the deep ruts, precipitated by a braying of protest from the mule. They were going slowly. Armada couldn’t risk the mule hurting himself, but he was frustrated. He was stuck listening to his own thoughts, as he couldn’t indulge his usual habit of distracting himself with a bit of reading along the way. He wondered how on earth Lucas had done so many long journeys with the reins without going mad. What did the boy think about for all these hours?
Or Teo, for that matter. For not only did Teo make this journey frequently by himself, but almost always in the dark and many times carrying several barrels of high-grade gunpowder. There were bandits and outlaws all over this country, most of whom would be happy to take his powder and bury him somewhere he would never be found. Even Armada was a little nervous, and couldn’t help scanning the horizon for any sign of approaching men on horseback. Once they spotted him there, would be no outrunning them, not with Armada’s stroppy mule. And not with this cart, loaded down as it was with the prisoner cage on the back.
The Head of Diego Gomez. That was his destination. One strange pueblo name amongst many that Armada had come across in his travels. He had once stopped in a town near Almeria called Matagorda, which meant ‘Kill the Fat Woman’. He had also met a vagrant who claimed to be from a town in Galicia called Villapene, roughly translating to ‘Penisville’. But his particular favourite was the pueblo of Malcocinado outside Badajoz, a town that had essentially named itself ‘Undercooked’. He had stayed there for a few days to interrogate a witness and was struck how none of the residents there found the name odd, nor did anyone know the story behind it. It was just what their town had always been called.
But Cabeza de Diego Gomez had a sinister ring to it. Possibly the name of a bandit, caught nearby and hung outside their church, and a terrorised town renaming themselves to ward off any others who may be thinking of taking Señor Gomez’s place.
Armada could already picture it. A tiny, forgotten pueblo whose population had never gotten much above thirty or forty people, with just a handful of farmers scratching out a living from the parched soil that surrounded it. As it was well off any well-travelled route and had no inn, it rarely saw visitors, making it ideal for Portuguese independence fighters looking to hide out while they stockpiled serpentine and weapons for their war effort. They also provided a needed income source to the locals, who would probably have abandoned the village long ago had it not been for the welcome support of their sworn enemies.
Armada’s thoughts drifted to Lucas. He worried about the boy for the next few hours, until the outskirts of Cabeza de Diego Gomez could be seen. By then he was exhausted, as he’d either been vividly picturing all the ways the boys could harm Lucas, or trying twice as hard to keep from thinking of it. The prospect of something new on which to focus his mind awakened Armada as he finally entered the town.
Armada’s first impression was that it had already been abandoned. Large stone-built sheds with crumbling wood-beam roofs were the first buildings he passed, all of which looked empty. He passed an old horse paddock, dry and dusty, its walled-in area devoid of a single blade of grass, the doors to the stables blocked with planks of rotted wood and locked. No horse had lived there in a long time.
It would have been easy to assume these buildings had long ago left to ruin, but Armada suspected every one of them was being used. Behind those locked doors and rotting wood, there no doubt lay stockpiles of munitions. Gunpowder, arms, provisions, everything an army would need to keep a war effort going. Especially a war like this, which had consisted mostly of small border skirmishes for decades, as neither Spain nor Portugal had the resources to stage any kind of large-scale encounter yet. But from the looks of this town and who knew how many others, that would soon be changing.
Oddly, there was no sign of people. No one milling about in the square, no farmers working their fields, not even any livestock. It made the town far too quiet for Armada’s taste. He pushed deeper into the pueblo, past abandoned houses and toward a central plaza overlooked by the local church. The Iglesia Parroquial de Nuestra Señora del Rosario was a modest block of stone, with a stone façade leaning awkwardly off of one side, its bricks blackened by mould that had come with the spring rains, its sun-damaged shutters locked tight, and broken clay tiles littering the ground where they’d fallen from the roof.
Beyond the church were a few ramshackle houses squeezed in between more of the ominous sheds along with the shattered ruins of what had once been a sprawling farmhouse that had degraded into piles of stones that bore signs of being pillaged to use for other things. Just to the south lay a view of the green fields beyond, where a small herd of sheep were calmly grazing.
But the moment he’d entered, Armada sensed he was being watched. He could hear the echoes of footsteps scurrying about just behind buildings and around corners. What few residents lived here were hiding, not wanting to get involved in case things turned ugly.
He arrived at the remains of a stone and brick plinth, too far degraded to tell what it had originally been built for. It was here Armada finally stopped the cart. He was tired of the scurrying about and the suspense of wondering when they would make contact. It was obvious they knew he’d arrived. Why drag it out?
Then, suddenly, the sound of footsteps and yelling. Three men surrounded him, all holding harquebuses, loaded and cocked and ready to fire. They wore no uniforms, just tattered clothing of their own making, and quite badly soiled.
Armada held his hands up to show he had no weapon.
“Who are you?”
“I am Domingo. I am just a farmer. Please, don’t shoot!”
“What are you doing here?” the soldier demanded. “You are not from this pueblo.”
“I’ve come with a message from Salamanca. A very important one.”
“What message?”
“No. I must tell your commander directly.”
The use of the word commander made the soldiers suddenly aware that Armada knew who they were. The tension was rising, making Armada nervous, given there were three loaded harquebuses trained on him at the moment.
“How did you know to come here? Who told you?”
“Teo. I am a friend of Teo’s. He told me I could find you here.”
“Teo?” one of the soldiers said to his compatriot. “I told you we couldn’t trust him….”
The soldier was told to keep his mouth shut.
“Why did he not accompany you? Where is he?”
“He is being watched very closely by the authorities in Salamanca. It would have given away your presence here if he’d tried. Which is why he sent me to give the message instead. I’m not being followed.”
“What happened in Salamanca?” the soldier asked with a grave tone.
“Gregorio Cordoba is dead.”
This got the soldier’s attention, and their iron grips on their weapons slackened. They looked at each other, unsure of what to do.
“Turn around, farmer. You’ve delivered your message. Never come back here again. And tell that rat Teo not to come back, either.”
“That’s not the message I came to deliver. Please, I must speak to your commander.”
Armada moved his hands but it
only made the soldiers nervous. They stiffened, holding their weapons higher.
“Go home, farmer. Now.”
“What is going on here?” a man asked, approaching the cart with none of the other soldiers’ apprehension. This man wore a much nicer uniform and a matching hat, and he strode right up to Armada, looking him dead in the eyes. “What happened to Gregorio?”
“Are you the commander here?”
“I’ll ask the questions. Who are you?”
“Who I am is irrelevant. What matters is Gregorio Cordoba was murdered last week and the city officials are looking very deeply into the case. It won’t take them long to discover the truth about what he was making…and who he was selling to.”
“Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?”
“No, sir. I’ve actually come here on business. I think you’ll be very interested in what I have to offer.”
The man, whose name was Carasco, thought about it for a moment, then waved the soldiers aside. Armada hopped down from the cart and was escorted in to a dilapidated house at the far end of the plaza. It had long ago been abandoned and taken by these men to use as an officer’s quarters. Whatever had been left behind by the previous family had been taken out, and now all that remained was a large table, whose one missing leg had been propped up by a pile of cement blocks, and a bed in the corner for sleeping, over which hung a small wood crucifix against the crumbling cream plaster.
Carasco gracefully seated himself behind the desk and picked up a cup of something he’d been drinking earlier. It was a broken cup, and quite dirty, but inside was the unmistakable brown globs of melted chocolate. A valuable commodity on a war front, so sought after that had seen it used as currency amongst the men of his garrison. Carasco cringed at it, then took a bit into his mouth and let it swirl around a bit, undeterred by the long silence he let hang in the air. Armada was amazed that he’d been able to leave it unattended for so long without one of the other men at least giving it a nibble. It showed just how much Carasco commanded his men here.
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