Two put-upon-looking kitchen slaves swooped in past la señora, both laden with trays that wafted rich scents and steam.
Basilio couldn’t count how many times someone had seen him nude or without a shirt, then sworn later that Basilio was the pinnacle of manhood. La señora might think his breast wrap was related to a rib injury. She might assume the light was tricky in this dark room.
But no. She was standing stock-still by the door and looking at his mustache, trying to understand.
Basilio remained at Alejo’s side, turned away from la señora, as she and the other two slaves set the table for dinner. Turkish tableware. Pretty red napkins—from Lisbon, he guessed—and orange-tree blossoms in moist pitchers of ice. Watching them covertly over his shoulder, Basilio felt the nobleman in him melt with desire, after two days of desert clay, dust, and horse sweat.
“Please sit where you will, good caballero,” la señora said to Basilio.
He stood and smiled his most winning smile at her, but la señora’s face was stony. He sat, and while Alejo slept in the beautiful chair before the hearth, Basilio ate a plate of stewy, steaming pork. Then la señora opened a bottle of wine for him, her face grim and her jaw set. He wasn’t going to be able to seduce her, he figured. He’d done it many times before, but this one was too angry at his insult, perhaps, or too confused by what she’d seen. He might have to seize the upper hand and have Don Porfirio flog her for some reason.
At that moment, there was a knock. Paracelsus was standing in the receiving room doorway holding a sturdy leather bag, a dour look upon his face as he stared at la señora.
“Allow me to enter. I must attend to that fellow there.”
With the shudder of a hawk preparing her feathers for a pounce, la señora said, “This one told you not to come in here again, Doctor Paracelsus. Your room is upstairs.”
“But that man there needs—”
“What this man needs is food, rest, and quiet,” la señora pronounced, “and this one means to acquire it for him.”
“What he needs is me.” Paracelsus hoisted his leather bag.
“Oh?” la señora said, continuing to pour the wine. “A mountebank?”
“Good lord, why would you call me a mountebank?”
“Because you are an alchemist, and you have money,” la señora said, finishing the pour. “Clearly, a crime has been committed.”
Basilio looked at her slyly but she would not look back at him.
“Go, Doctor,” la señora said. “This one has already sent for a barber.”
Paracelsus’s ire filled the room. “Woman! I delivered coin of the Spanish realm to your master for a common room usable for four literate men. Now let me enter!”
La señora set the Rioja on the table and faced him. “This is not a Flemish tavern, where you can lay down money and treat others like mules.” She did not look at Basilio, but he could feel her attention upon him like a furnace wind. “You are in Spain, sir. In this very Spanish house, a servant like this one is responsible for maintaining cortesía and nobility.” She pivoted slightly at the waist and adjusted a plate upon the table. “Rephrase, or repair to your room.”
Bloodshot eyes shifting side to side in humiliation, Paracelsus growled, “Please forgive me and allow me to enter.”
Basilio inhaled proudly. He felt a surge of triumph for la señora, for Carlos the Fifth, and for Spain. He stood and belted his espada.
La señora waited a good long moment and then she strode from the room, saying, “This one shall tell the barber he may stay at home tonight.”
Paracelsus crossed the room, shouldering past Basilio without so much as a nod of hello, and came to stand before the red chair. “I see your boot is still bleeding, eh, Alejo?”
Alejo opened his eyes and grinned a groggy grin at Paracelsus. “Yes, my boot is still terribly hurt.”
Paracelsus sat on the hearth bench and took hold of Alejo’s leg. Basilio was about to stop him, but Paracelsus handled the leg with such ease that it filled Basilio with confidence. “Is this painful?”
Alejo gripped the arms of the fine red chair and said, “Just don’t touch my knee, and I’ll be all right.”
“Oh, I won’t.” Without warning, Paracelsus yanked the boot off of his foot.
Alejo howled. Blood gushed over the floor and hearthstones like beer from a stein, and Paracelsus shook the boot upside down to empty it, as Alejo collapsed back into the chair, panting, his robe clinging to him with sweat. To Basilio’s surprise, Paracelsus barely blinked at the blood but instead smelled the boot, set it down and then rolled up Alejo’s monk robe from the bottom.
Basilio stepped over the puddle of blood and came to stand next to Paracelsus. He whispered, “How did you dispose of the bodies?”
Paracelsus grinned that peculiar smile of his. Disarming. Disturbing. “I arranged them like drunkards in that alley. All lying and leaning against one another.”
“You handled the dead bodies?” Like most educated men of his era, Basilio understood the horrors that cadavers could transmit.
“Indeed,” Paracelsus said. “And then to complete the drama, I drenched them with a bottle of brandy that I stole from the ruins of the Sow’s Purse.”
“That won’t fool people for long.” Basilio sat upon the hearth bench beside Paracelsus. “Not in this heat.”
“I have studied decay and rot more than any scholar alive,” Paracelsus intoned. “I can tell you that by the time they are found, no one will want to study the bodies very closely. There will be too much rot!” He let out a horsey peal of laughter. “Come. Look.” Paracelsus brought the oil lamp close to Alejo’s leg, which was mangled and marbled with bruises. “You can smell it? The rot, Basilio? The rot from these wounds, particularly from this terribleness up here on the hip?”
Basilio winced. “Yes. I see and smell it.”
Paracelsus continued. “Well, what I say is this: you would surely die if it was not for me, Alejo. I will save your leg and your life.” He immediately began rummaging through the leather bag of his, the sound of glass and ceramic clinking within. When Paracelsus turned back, he had two green bottles, one small and one large. “Here we are. Both of these concoctions are inventions of mine,” Paracelsus said. The large glass vial he uncapped. “This, I call zincum or zinc, and I will anoint the wound with it. But, first”—he tapped out several pellets the size and color of mouse droppings—“my precious laudanum. This is why the English swordsmen are here. King Henry sent them after me, for I alone hold its secret.”
“It’s a drug?” Basilio did not like strange medicines. He distrusted anyone who made and sold them. “What the devil is in it?”
“I said it is a secret, Basilio.”
Basilio stood and set his right hand casually upon his hilt. “Alejo is my blood-brother. I will kill the man who kills him, even accidentally.”
Paracelsus’s mouth opened, but he quickly hardened his face and again attempted to wither Basilio with his hot stare. “I was hearing stories of your exploits in New Spain as I crossed the Mediterranean from Rhodes, Basilio. But Paracelsus is not afraid of you.”
Basilio looked at Paracelsus anew, impressed. The ancient city of Rhodes had fallen last winter, taken from the Hospitallers and crusaders by the Turk in a bloody battle that cost thousands of lives on both sides, he had heard. Nonetheless, he thrust his hip forward, sticking his hilt in the alchemist’s face. “Tell me what you mean to give Alejo.”
The alchemist refused to look at the sword hilt.
“Paracelsus?”
“Henbane,” he spat after a long pause.
Basilio knew henbane was safe. “Yes? What else?”
Paracelsus smiled a tart, condescending smile that suggested he was about to lie in Basilio’s face. “Crushed pearls. Musk. Ambergris, derivatives from the heart of a stag, and pâdzahr stones of a unicorn.”
“Belly stones of a unicorn, you say?”
Paracelsus frowned. “How in the name of Santa Sofia do yo
u know what pâdzahr stones are?”
“A mad apothecary got the better of me. Once.” Basilio crossed his arms. “If mi hermano de sangre doesn’t recover from your unicorn pills, I will oil my sword with your blood, you boasting, posturing bag of German ass-wind.”
Paracelsus sniffed. “My ass-wind happens to be Swiss.”
Basilio smirked. He liked that. “Fine. Give him your damnable pills.”
“Listen, you, I raised the dead on Rhodes.” Paracelsus’s bricklike forehead wrinkled in consternation. “I saved many a good crusader and St. John’s knight in that doomed city, thanks to my laudanum, from this very jar,” he said, giving Alejo the grains to swallow and the glass of the Rioja with which to wash them down.
Alejo held on to the glass of wine stubbornly when Paracelsus tried to take it.
“How does it taste, Alejo?” Basilio asked.
Alejo blinked his eyes like a child who was trying to stay awake past his bedtime. “Like unicorn.”
Paracelsus then uncapped the other jar and, with a small stained cloth from the bag, removed a dab of thick, whitish cream. He leaned over Alejo’s hip and thigh and spread the ointment along the gaping, nasty wound with firm, precise movements.
“And what is that?” Basilio asked.
“It is zincum, I said. Another medical invention of mine; poison to the poison of poisonous old wounds like this one.”
Alejo flinched and drank the Rioja with each daub, and he had to have his glass filled several times before Paracelsus was done. Finally, the doctor put away the zincum and the cloth and said, “I’d like to get this done and get rid of this ruined chair before the master of the house—”
“Before the master what?” a male voice resounded from the hall.
“Aha! Before Don Porfirio returns home,” Paracelsus said, looking up from a spool and needle that he had produced from his bag. “Señor, please join us in your receiving room!”
An older gentleman in resplendent velvet black robes entered, his trimmed white beard shining in the dark chamber. “Well, our guests have arrived.” The man grasped Basilio by the upper arms and pulled him up and into an embrace, laughing. “You are none other than the Great Basilio, our ascendant star of Spanish manhood.”
Don Porfirio hadn’t spoken with la señora, Basilio surmised. “You honor me. But you have me at a disadvantage.”
The fellow released him. “I am Don Porfirio, lucky to call myself an old friend of your maestro Don Manuel. He and I are mutual admirers from afar, yes. We financed a raid of Sicily together. Where is your master, Basilio?”
“I should like to know too. May I please present my traveling companion and blood-brother Alejo Lope. He is wounded, but your houseguest, Doctor Paracelsus, is attending to his injury.”
“Here? In this very room?” Don Porfirio pursed his lips with interest as he looked down at the patient.
“I apologize,” Paracelsus said distractedly as he produced a largish needle, “for what has happened to this fine chair, my lord.”
Don Porfirio seemed lost in a thought. “Alejo,” he said, “I helped finance your rescue. Did you know that? Eight years ago, I donated twenty thousand maravedís to Don Manuel so that he could purchase the Swan, go get a Spanish hero, and bring him home from the wild Berbers in Algeria. I will treasure that chair, Alejo, and your heroic blood upon it.”
“Quiet now, as I prepare to sew,” Paracelsus pronounced.
“Basilio?” Don Porfirio whispered. He was watching the needle as Paracelsus threaded it.
“Yes, señor?”
“Has Don Manuel ever before been so late to meet you?”
The sinking truth seemed to blanket the room. “No. Never.”
“I am very concerned, since I have had many inquiries after him recently,” Don Porfirio said.
“El Caballero con Mil Enemigos,” Basilio said. “Who has inquired?”
Don Porfirio said, “Today was a priest asking, not about him, but the two of you.”
“Was he named Zacarías?”
“How did you know?”
Basilio said, “I believe a man named Zacarías put out a bounty for the Book of the Seven Hands. Who else has inquired, señor?”
“A Red Spur knight named Don César. Tall. Sanctimonious. Do you know him?”
“What?” Basilio shouted. It was impossible. They had left Don César in the Desert of the Palms three days ago. He couldn’t have beaten them to Vacanana. “When did he speak with you?”
“Oh, more than a week ago now, I believe.”
Basilio clenched his hand upon his sword hilt. He was here asking about us, days and days before he found us in Don Manuel’s farmhouse. He knew we were coming to Vacanana? How?
“All right. Very good. I am ready to begin,” Paracelsus said.
Alejo was smiling vaguely at Paracelsus’s raised needle.
Basilio ripped his attention from thoughts of being hunted by Red Spur knights and knelt next to Alejo. “Take a big drink.”
Alejo said thickly to Paracelsus, “You know what your face suggests to me? Amethyst. A pretty little amethyst garden.”
Paracelsus said kindly, “You, my friend, are experiencing another extraordinary gift of my laudanum, I see.”
Basilio raised an eyebrow at Alejo. “An amethyst garden?”
“The walls of this house are not still. They echo from creation,” Alejo whispered. “Old, old house.”
“Alchemists have searched millennia for a wonder called the Philosopher’s Stone,” Paracelsus said, “and I believe one path to it is the vision that Alejo is having.” As Paracelsus spoke, the little needle worked back and forth, and stitch by stitch it hid the gleaming muscle beneath the open smile of Alejo’s wound. “Generations of alchemists have died without seeing what Alejo is seeing right now: the divine truth of God.”
“You’ve done this? You have eaten your laudanum and seen Our Lord Jesus Christ?” Don Porfirio said.
Paracelsus bit off his thread with an angry, toothy grimace at the don. “Hardly,” he said. “What I see when I take the laudanum,” he said, beginning to stitch again, “is a truth to understand, a way of thinking that takes us to the Philosopher’s Stone, not a beggarly carpenter in the Levant.”
Basilio had heard of the Philosopher’s Stone. He knew it from adventure stories when he was a child. Sorcerers were always on a great journey to discover a way to change iron into gold or water into wine.
The needle stopped stitching Alejo’s wounds together, and Alejo looked up at Basilio. “I think it’s you.”
“You think it’s me what, hermano?” Basilio said.
“Aha. Is Alejo revealing what I’ve suspected?” Paracelsus said, still stitching.
Confused, Basilio glanced at Don Porfirio, who was biting his lip in curiosity, white beard bobbing. “And that is?”
“That I am truly here for you, Basilio,” Paracelsus said. “You are part of my quest for the Philosopher’s Stone.” There was a long, sober moment as Paracelsus’s fingers and needle worked on the skin of Alejo’s thigh, drawing the wound into a tight line.
“You,” Alejo drawled, breaking the silence. He nodded in Basilio’s direction, his eyes dark and heavy. “It is you.”
“Enough of this,” Don Porfirio said hastily. “Basilio, there is something more that I must straighten out with you.”
Basilio stood. He braced himself. Had he spoken to la señora after all? “Yes?”
“This Don César said something very strange to me,” Don Porfirio said. “He said he was working on behalf of the Archbishop of the Barcelona Inquisición.”
Basilio grabbed the back of the expensive red chair as the room seemed to spin for a moment. He had once leaped from the crow’s nest of a sinking galleon, flaming sails flapping around him as he dived headfirst into the flotsam and jetsam scattered from a Mediterranean sea-fight. He and Alejo had once run headlong at a French cannon line to stop them from destroying Don Manuel’s supply caravan outside Florence. But the A
rchbishop of Barcelona…seeking for him in Vacanana? “Good God,” he whispered, “Don César and the archbishop are working together again?”
“What?” Alejo said, rising out of his laudanum fog. “The archbishop? But how? Why?”
Sewing skin, Paracelsus whispered, “La Inquisición Española wants your master’s book.”
“But why would they want it?” Basilio asked.
“I’ve no clue. But it cannot be a coincidence that you two, I, the book, these knights, and La Inquisición Española have all arrived in Vacanana within the same week,” Paracelsus said. “I will translate the Book of the Seven Hands. It will take seven or eight days I believe, but perhaps then we’ll understand why all these forces have converged upon it.”
“Seven or eight days?” Alejo groaned from beneath his elbow.
“Maybe longer,” Paracelsus said judiciously.
Basilio tried to control his panic. “We must sit here for a week and wait as the don’s one thousands enemies descend upon us?”
“What else can you do?” Paracelsus asked as he finished the final stitch and tied it off. He gestured at Alejo. “He must be still and rest. Otherwise, my work will be undone. What choice do you have?”
Basilio didn’t answer. He wondered what la señora de la cocina would decide to do in that time.
“Where is this Book of the Seven Hands, Basilio?” Paracelsus asked.
Basilio turned to the iron Bible cask, and suddenly he was in another cozy, dark hall, long ago in León. A little girl with a fireplace poker was slaying evil knights alongside Roland and King Charlemagne. Girls did not fight. Girls do not fight. But that one did, Basilio thought. Did the book have something to do with the archbishop’s promise made long ago to discover and expose Basilio’s true identity?
Dazed, he handed the iron Bible cask containing the Book of the Seven Hands to Paracelsus. All the while, his thoughts were wrestling with the difficult path before him.
Sit still.
Lie quiet.
Do nothing overt.
For seven long days.
JULY 26, 1524
VACANANA, CATALUÑA
The haggard knight felt the world of transgression and sin slip away from him as he stepped into the little Chapel of the Holy Week. He swept his leather cape from his shoulders in a flurry of loathing for the world outside, willing himself to shed his violent passion and become the bent, good, and ever-penitent César, the shining paladino of his boyhood dreams. César removed his broad-brimmed hat. His rusted, dented breastplate glinted dull as blood in the dark church. He looked with sad longing at the figure of the Messiah—who, like himself, was so beaten, virtuous, and completely misunderstood—and crossed himself before entering the confessional. He hoped that today was the day he would receive forgiveness for his many sins, and his loud red spurs chimed as he tucked his boots beneath the wooden seat. He felt as expectant as a child in church again, seeking absolution from the very same priest who’d heard his confessions as a boy.
The Book of Seven Hands: A Foreworld SideQuest (The Foreworld Saga) Page 7
