The Inquisitor (Thomas Berrington Historical Mystery Book 5) Read online

  The Inquisitor

  David Penny

  Contents

  Place Names

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Historical Note

  References

  Also by David Penny

  About the Author

  For Lucy

  Place Names

  After a number of requests from readers, I am now adding a short glossary of place names at the start of each book for those who would like to know where I am writing about. All locations can be found in modern day Andalucia, Spain.

  Gharnatah: Granada

  Ixbilya: Sevilla

  Malaka: Malaga

  Qurtuba: Cordoba

  Chapter One

  Thomas Berrington’s horse reared as a cart came too fast from an alley and almost spilled him from its back. He was only saved the indignity when Martin de Alarcón grabbed his reins and brought the animal under control. Then the stink hit him like a physical blow and Thomas wrapped his long tagelmust across his mouth and nose.

  “What is this?” He stared into a cart where bodies lay tangled together. Mottled dark buboes showed at neck and armpit on some, but not all. Thomas leaned forward, cursing a curiosity he did not welcome but was unable to resist. He had seen the marks often enough before, the first time in Lemster when he knew nothing of the world beyond England.

  “This is not for you,” said Martin, drawing his robe across his face in copy of Thomas, though the stench from the cart could pass through a stone wall. It was one more grain of chaos in an already chaotic approach to the great city of Ixbilya.

  The journey from Gharnatah should have taken ten days, but they had covered the distance in three, a chain of replacement horses allowing them to ride fast and hard. Now, as they approached the sprawling city Thomas’s body was sore, his eyes harsh with grit, and he knew he should not be here but had been offered no choice. No realistic choice.

  Thomas jerked his reins free of Martin’s grip and used his knees to steer the horse toward, not away from, the cart.

  “Who are they?” He spoke not to Martin but the man who led the cart. He had fallen, as surprised by the encounter as Thomas, and leaned on the cart as he regained his feet. A tall hat that rose to a point had tipped from his head and he picked it up but did not replace it. A skeletal face with dark hair and shaved cheeks, he looked as if he belonged in the cart almost as much as his charges.

  “What’s it look like? Dead bodies. Or don’t you recognise them?” A voice more cultured than the man’s look suggested, but he had clearly fallen on hard times.

  “Where are they going?”

  “Some to heaven, but most to hell.” The man smiled, a glint of insanity in dark eyes. Stained robes covered him to the neck. Thomas couldn’t blame him for not replacing the tall pointed hat worn by plague carriers for the heat was fearsome.

  He stared at the pile of bodies. The black swellings on most were familiar, but he had no fear of the disease, in the same way as this man showed none. Thomas had suffered a bout in childhood and somehow survived, and was now sure it could not lodge in him a second time. Perhaps this man was the same, or too witless to care, but Thomas sensed an intelligence he would not expect in one performing such a task.

  “Where are the bodies to be buried? You know they should–”

  “There are pits prepared.” The man pulled at the donkey strapped to the cart.

  Thomas leaned close, eyes narrowing. “This man did not die of the plague.”

  “I don’t pick them, I only transport,” said the man, still walking.

  “Come away, Thomas.” Martin de Alarcón remained at a distance, reluctant to approach the tainted bodies. Thomas knew Martin meant well but ignored him.

  “Stop the cart.”

  “Who are you to disrupt the business of the city?” said the man.

  “I am sent for by the Queen,” Thomas said. “She is a friend. And you are?”

  The man finally stopped tugging at the donkey. He looked up at Thomas, trying to decide whether to believe him or not. A tall man on a tall horse. At least the horse appeared to confirm his words, a sleek Arabian no doubt stolen during battle, but the man was obviously not impressed and tugged at the donkey again, which twisted its head in defiance but started to trudge on. Thomas pushed his horse ahead of the cart, making him stop once more. He dismounted and climbed on a wheel to see better, leaned across to examine what had first sparked his curiosity. The shirt of one of the dead had been torn, either before he died or as a result of being tossed on the cart with the others. The gash revealed damage to the left side of his chest. A deep incision which had bled profusely, indicating he had been alive when it was inflicted. Thomas pulled at the flesh and pushed a finger inside. The cut was not deep enough to kill, not caused by a knife or sword but something smaller, something with which Thomas was familiar. He had instruments in his own bag which were capable of inflicting such a wound.

  “Where did this one come from?” Thomas lifted the head of the man by his dark hair. Brown eyes stared up at him, sightless.

  “I draw the cart and people bring out their dead. Who they are isn’t my concern. I don’t keep records.” Even so he glanced at the man’s face before shaking his head. “He’s on top of the others so he’ll be recent. Where from I couldn’t say. Dead and Godless is what he is.” He turned away, forcing Thomas to jump clear, losing his footing as the cart started up once more. He landed awkwardly and almost stumbled before righting himself. When he looked up Martin was staring at him with an expression of distaste.

  “You know you’re going to have to wash before going anywhere near the Queen.”

  “I was planning just that after the journey we have suffered.” Thomas remounted his horse and twisted in the saddle to watch the cart disappear around a turn. He tried to forget what he had seen. “How long has the plague been in the city?”

  “A month, a little more. It came early in the year then disappeared to wherever it goes. It’s worse this time, though. Summer heat, they say.”

  Thomas wasn’t sure if the plague cared much about heat or cold. He didn’t know that it cared much about anything other than killing men, women, and children in agonies. He had lost his mother and brother to the disease and almost died himself. The plague was the reason he had left England, the reason he had come to Spain. He could thank
it for that, at least.

  “Why do you do it?” asked Martin.

  “Do what?” They approached an area of flat ground bounded on one side by the city wall, on the other by the river Guadalquivir. A line of charred wooden stakes was set in the ground, cold ashes gathered beneath. Three monks raked at the coals, drawing them into piles. A wooden bridge spanned the river. On the far bank lay two substantial buildings. To the left was a low stone edifice that ran almost two hundred paces. On the right, a towered castle faced the river bank as if to repel invaders. On the near shore ships were drawn up along a stone dock, flying a cascade of flags from a dozen lands. Here and there men worked at loading or unloading cargo, the men too were from many lands, some as dark as the pitch that caulked the hulls, others pale skinned and blond-haired like Olaf Torvaldsson. The thought of the Sultan’s general made Thomas think of the man’s daughter. Not the blonde one he had once lain beside, but the dark haired one who now shared his bed and would have been his wife by now if Martin hadn’t arrived to disrupt everything.

  “Why do you always get involved in things that are none of your business?” said Martin de Alarcón.

  “How do I know whether it’s my business or not if I don’t get involved? What are the stakes for?”

  Martin frowned, puzzled, and Thomas pointed.

  “Oh, those – for the burning of heretics.” As if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “What heretics?”

  “What heretics is none of your business,” said Martin. “Again.”

  “What do they do with the dead? The ones we saw back there. If they bury them they know to use lime, don’t they?”

  Martin sighed. “Don’t you ever stop?”

  “No. Which means it’s easier to answer me than not, then perhaps I will stop.”

  “I’ve seen little evidence of it so far.” But it seemed he was willing to humour Thomas. “They are taken a mile beyond the walls and tossed into a long pit. And yes, as far as I know they use plenty of lime.”

  They had passed a quarry as they crossed the flat plain leading to Ixbilya, a sudden thrust of the hillside with a sharp wound dug in its side. The city walls were made of stone cut from there. It would be a good source of lime as well.

  “The Queen should not be in the city if there is disease,” Thomas said.

  “If she was not in need of your services she would already be gone. But she cannot travel as she is.”

  “Then we had best go see her,” Thomas said, and saw Martin shake his head.

  Chapter Two

  Martin de Alarcón led the way toward a small gate set in the city wall. Thomas followed, knowing Martin was aware he would rather not be here. He should instead be lying beside Lubna. Beside his wife Lubna. It had been so very close, their marriage, and he tried not to think what Jorge’s reaction must have been after the weeks he had spent planning the event.

  The cloying heat of the day was beginning to fade as a breeze picked up from the south. Thomas turned in his saddle and stared at the charred stakes, troubled. The wind plucked at cold ashes, lifting them to twist in the air like shadowed wraiths. He opened his mouth to speak then closed it again, for once restraining himself. He didn’t consider Martin a friend, not quite, but he knew him better now after the three day journey. It should have taken a week at least for them to travel from Gharnatah, but no more than six days had passed since Martin first left Ixbilya to now return at his side. On the journey, the long journey even if Martin considered it short, they had spoken more than ever before. Unlike many at the Spanish court Martin was no sycophant. He had earned his place through intelligence and cunning. Both a soldier and statesman, he was close to those in power without losing touch with the common man. Thomas had grown to like and trust him even more than he had, yet remained aware he fought for Spain. Which begged the other question – exactly why was Thomas here at his side? But he had no answer, other than a surfeit of loyalty to a woman he had grown to consider a friend despite the difference in their stations.

  “How many?”

  “How many what?” Martin’s voice was hoarse, and he sounded as tired as Thomas felt.

  “How many have been burned?”

  “It’s none of your business.” The same words as before.

  “What if I want to make it my business?”

  Martin coughed a laugh. “Make it what you want and see how far it gets you. It will still be none of your business.”

  A cry sounded and Thomas lifted from the saddle to look ahead as men, women and children streamed through a gate in the city wall. They spread across the field, making their way toward the killing ground. As the crowd thickened it made progress difficult and Thomas saw it would be impossible to use the gate Martin had planned.

  “Is there another way?”

  “Of course there is, but it will take longer.” Martin looked around, dismounted. “It will be quicker to walk.” Without waiting for Thomas he strode away, abandoning his horse where it stood.

  Thomas stayed in the saddle, urging his mount forward. Shoulders pressed against his legs. Someone punched his thigh as the crowd grew ever denser, until he had no alternative but to follow Martin’s example. He could not abandon his steed as Martin had, at least not abandon what was carried in the two saddle bags hanging across its back. Thomas reached up and pulled them free, laid the bags across his own shoulders and settled the weight of them. They contained his instruments, medicines, herbs and lotions. He had brought only what he considered essential, hoping he could find whatever else he might need when he arrived. He recalled the packing of them, and the unexpected visit that had led to him doing so. Three days was all that had passed, but it seemed like half a lifetime.

  “She’s bleeding,” Martin had said as he stood in the doorway to Thomas’s courtyard as though he had every right to be there. “She fears she will lose another child.”

  Which was why Thomas had been sent for. Birthing was something he was familiar with. Birth and death, the bookends of life. He knew that Isabel, Queen of Castile, had lost children before. It was not unusual. Carrying a child to full term could be difficult, and some women were more prone to losing them than others. Isabel, it seemed, was one such. Which is why Thomas had been sent for. A vote of trust, he supposed, even if it was one he would rather not have been cast.

  “I am to tell you it is a matter of urgency,” Martin had said. “A matter of great urgency.” Morning light outlined the al-Hamra atop the hill across from the Albayzin where Thomas’s extended house sat. Lubna would be over there with her sisters and her sister’s friends, Jorge fussing over the proceedings like a mother hen. A tall mother hen. The planning of the wedding had been taken from Thomas – for which he was grateful – but he was beginning to believe Jorge wanted to steal control of his life as well.

  The day before Lubna had been called for by half a dozen giggling women, her sister Helena among them, and taken across the Hadarro river to be bathed, oiled and shaved, to have her skin marked with henna in twisting, ornate patterns. The night of henna was tradition, and Jorge had all of a sudden become a great believer in tradition.

  “I’m getting married,” Thomas had said, remaining seated. He nodded at another bench, but Martin stayed on his feet. “I’m getting married today.”

  Martin continued to stare at him. “Do you have water?”

  “In the kitchen.” When Martin entered the house Thomas returned his gaze to the palace, knowing what needed to be done but trying to put off the decision.

  Martin returned with water dripping from his beard, his mouth outlined where the dust had been washed away.

  Thomas stood. “I will need an hour.”

  “I was told to find and fetch you without delay.”

  “I expect you were, but I still need an hour.” Thomas stared at Martin. He wondered, if it came to a fight, which of them would be the victor. Martin, he suspected, but he also knew the man could not be completely sure. Not that it would come to that. The Que
en needed Thomas, which gave him some small, some very small, leeway.

  “Try to make it less,” said Martin at last, perhaps seeing a stalemate would do nothing but waste more time. “I have something I want to do in any case. Where does Boabdil’s mother live?”

  “He won’t be there,” Thomas said. “Gharnatah, even this side of it, is not safe for him. Last I heard he was somewhere in the east. Making trouble, no doubt.”

  “Then it won’t take me as long as it might, so you had best hurry.”

  Now, surrounded by the throng of the city, Martin disappeared among the bodies ahead of him. Thomas tried to settle the saddle bags but failed to find any comfort. From within came the rattle of metal instruments. Instruments he had taken another half hour to select and pack while Martin climbed the steep slope of the Albayzin on some quest he had refused to explain. When they left the house four horses waited outside, two saddled, another tied behind each to be used when the first grew weary. The sound of their leaving had been loud through the cobbled alleys of the Albayzin but they drew little attention. Two more men on horseback, and if anyone recognised Thomas and wondered where he was headed they didn’t say.

  “How did you sneak into Gharnatah?” Thomas had asked, curious.