Hart, Mallory Dorn Read online

  He struggled to a half-sitting position and fumbled about in the bundle of possessions, then fell back grimacing and moaning, but in his hairy hand he grasped a small dagger in a wrought silver sheath. He shoved it through the rope belt holding Francho's jerkin close and then dropped his hand heavily, closing his eyes.

  "Take it," he muttered weakly. "I have nothing else. Sword was stolen from me by whoreson thieves in camp. This little blade has a clean and deadly thrust. Found it on a battlefield... in Brittany... belonged to a noble... you are my little friend... friend... the resurrection and the light... ora pro nobis..." Rodrigo's mind had wandered away. He breathed in short, shallow grunts.

  Francho pulled the slim weapon from its sheath and leaned to the flickering candle to scrutinize it closer. The blade was long, narrow, and razor sharp; the tempered steel shone blue. The silver handle, above the wings of the guard, was twisted into the shape of a serpent's head, with tiny, glittering rubies for eyes. It was surprisingly light, even with the sheath, which had a hooded, coiled snake hammered into it of a type totally different from the few Francho had ever encountered in the fields. The whole weapon was only about twice the length of his small hand.

  "Oh." Francho breathed to himself, thrilled, turning the gift over and over and examining it for long moments before finally slipping it back into its close-fitting sheath. He raised a face lit with rapture to find Rodrigo staring at him with eyes briefly aware.

  "With that little sticker you go for the heart, lad, just slip it in above the top rib and you're done. 'Twill scarce make a slit. A slit... no wider than a maiden's..." The agonized eyes squeezed closed again.

  Francho wanted to tell 'Drigo how he would cherish this munificent gift, that he would never part with it, that it would accompany him on all his forays against the Moslems, but he was so overwhelmed the words would hardly come.

  "'Drigo...?"

  Rodrigo groaned and didn't open his eyes. The flames of Hell were slowly roasting his body and licking at his heart. But his pride forbade him company even in dying. He wanted this last acquaintance's memory of him to be otherwise than this fearful pain.

  "Leave me, boy, I am weary," he ordered. "Go, now, and leave me be."

  "But 'Drigo, I want to stay with you."

  "No... God, tell you, I wish it. Francisco... Francisco... good lad, call the dispenser to me... tell him to bring his poppy tincture... right away... pray for me, young soldier, pray for me." The groaning breath again came in short gasps.

  Grateful to reach the fresh night air again, Francho gulped in deep breaths. He ran quickly to tell the dispensary monk the dying man needed medicine to ease his pain.

  Later on, slipping around a corner of the courtyard and momentarily hidden from any eyes, Francho fished under his tunic and pulled the dagger from where he had stuck it in his loincloth. As he slipped it from its sheath a sliver of moonlight leaped down the blade and spilled off the sharp tip, and the snake's ruby eyes sparkled darkly in his open hand. A delicious shiver ran down his spine as the light blade balanced perfectly on one finger. "This is mine... this is mine," he whispered to himself and to the shadows of the night, which whispered back. "It is a sign. It is an omen."

  He put the blade back in its sheath and ran lightly across the silent yard, for most of the monks were already snoring away their few hours of sleep between vespers and compline. He reached the second-story window of the small cell he shared with Jorge by means of an overturned tun and a strong vine. That night he slept under his threadbare blanket with the hard joy of the silver sheath pressing against his side.

  A few days later, hearing again the rattle of drums and flourish of trumpets as another armed column announced their approach to the town of Tijuna, Francho scooted to his vantage point in the heavily leafed tree, this time, thanks to the silver stiletto he had carefully hidden, feeling almost like a member of the exalted company going past.

  The gentlemen were gorgeously dressed, with polished steel breastplates gleaming over silk doublets wrought in every color of the peacock's tail, and with short, jaunty velvet capes flung over their shoulders. Their hands flashed with rings, and gold and silver threads ran through their hosen. Their steel helmets, though, and greaves and sollerets were all packed away on baggage mules because the weather was too warm for such martial display and the enemy too far off, something of a disappointment to the little boy who gazed down on the warriors with such rapture. But the elegance of their plumed toques and hats like folded, velvet turbans, the embroidered and tasseled trappings of their great horses, and the brilliance of the heraldic and church banners fluttering proudly over their heads was more than enough to set a child's heart hammering with excitement.

  As he watched, words kept running through his mind, what he had said to poor 'Drigo and what the man had said to him; he knew that the solemn, dedicated life at Santo Domingo had crept entirely away from his heart; that he was sick of polishing candlesticks and saying prayers and reading Latin and scrubbing the abbot's floors. Why not run away now, tonight, he thought. Why not? There are the doers and the thinkers. Why not—

  Suddenly he heard a twig on the ground crackle and realized the cortege had already passed by. Twisting his head around he saw Frey Ignacio standing below, purple with indignation.

  "Francisco! Come down from there! Come down instantly, you scapegrace! May God forgive you for your impunities. Villain, descend, I say!"

  Slowly Francho disentangled himself from the branches, sighing sadly. The tree had been a good hiding place in summer. Its leaves provided cover and the brothers usually walked with eyes downcast anyhow. It would be the first place Frey Ignacio would look for him now. He glanced once more at the beautiful, secular world over the wall to strengthen his resolve, then shinned down the trunk to land lightly at the friar's feet, head hanging, guiltily awaiting the storm.

  Sitting on his pallet at Papa el Mono's, the daydreaming Francho shifted his weight as if he could still feel the sting of that beating on his buttocks, a punishment he must have surely deserved, he thought wryly from a more mature viewpoint, if the kindly old man had been driven to such anger. Absently, with an experienced thumb, he tested the curved-tip knife he was honing, then laid it aside and took up Pepi's to sharpen.

  Francho felt he was lucky to have fainted on Papa el Mono's doorsill a few weeks after he had run away, for the family had taken him in and trained him for a trade—not as distinguished or honest as soldiering, but just as exciting. He had become so fascinated with the kaleidoscope of patrons and travelers and the constant commotion at the inn that all thought of continuing his lonely quest to find the war was forgotten.

  Coached by Papa's cohort, the huge and ugly Alfredo, he had soon become quite dexterous with the little curved knife they gave him. As a pickpocket and cutpurse he grew to be a great success, wringing tears of happiness from Tía Esperanza's eyes and even grudging nods of approval from Papa. He was allowed to keep a few maravedis in each haul, and sometimes he held back from turning over a trinket or so that he particularly liked. Soon he was amazed at his own wealth.

  By his last count it was the sum of six silver reales, a gold buckle, a small ivory cross—particularly valuable and rare —his silver stiletto with the snake's head hilt, and his lute, all hidden cunningly, except for the lute, under a plank in the floor.

  The sin of stealing—a great evil, according to Frey Ignacio—he had rationalized out of existence with the fact that Tía Esperanza was a very pious woman and she said that stealing was merely a forced charity to the poor, earning blessings for both thief and victim alike. He stubbornly resisted looking any further into it because he liked his life, because he knew if he listened too hard the Latin student inside would begin to wag a mental finger at him and to whisper stern moral lectures learned from a cloistered monk in a rich order who knew nothing of having to earn one's bread.

  He was proud of the loot he had accumulated, although he kept it well hidden away, especially from Dolores, who would
steal the eyes from a blind man. He was shruggingly aware of the danger in his trade, but his contempt for the Hermandad, the city guards, had grown as he tricked and evaded them time and again.

  His luck lay in the fact that he was clever and slippery as an eel. Pepi too, moving up from pickpocket to cutpurse, was able to strike and melt away before the victim knew what had befallen him. Dolores delighted in preying upon women, but they discovered lately she also made a fine stall. She'd get in front of a male mark and accidentally—so the mark thought—press her backside into his groin, swaying away and then doing it again as the crush of bodies presumably pushed her, keeping the startled, flattered, and interested mark nailed in place for the few seconds it took for the hook's light-fingered skill to clip the man's purse, even if it were chained, and move away undetected. The fools who grabbed at her buttocks got their feet stomped on or her sharp elbow wanged into their gut, to the laughter of those around who saw the crude byplay. The first and only time Dolores was nabbed, when she was about ten, he'd seen her battle and kick her way out of the embrace of a grunting guard like a spitting cat.

  Francho was happy enough. He had a bed, friends, some coins in his pocket, and a daring life, perhaps escalating one day to horsethief, like Carlos. Six years for the transformation from altar acolyte to petty thief, from innocent scholar to wily rascal! He tested Pepi's knife on an old piece of stiff leather as voices below, laughter, the clack of wooden trenchers being stacked impinged on his train of thought. I wonder, he mused, if I have changed so much so fast, might I not change again? And to what, next time? Why does it even come into my mind that I shall leave here someday?

  For a moment he listened to a whispery interior voice that rustled, "Who am I?" And his mind brushed against all the unanswered questions of his birth and the mysterious, unaccountable, sometimes guilty-feeling person who tramped around in his head once in a while. But immediately he slapped the thoughts away like annoying, buzzing insects. They made him angry because he had no answers, and so he dismissed them.

  Chapter 3

  The sun was close to dipping behind the walls of the inn as Francho reached the ladder serving as staircase into a back passageway. He drew back as he saw, standing below, Dolores and Carlos, who had returned from his original mission and seemed to be leaving again.

  Dolores had a blue cloth wrapped around her head which fastened behind and under the single thick braid of reddish hair falling down her back. The usual stray strands which often wisped into her eyes were now caught back under the headcloth so that her sooty-lashed gray eyes, wide and tilted, stood out clearly. She wore a clean homespun bodice with a skirt which reached her ankles. She grasped at Carlos's arm, her bare feet planted solidly on the floor, her manner openly suspicious.

  "Where do you go, Carlos?" she challenged him. "You flaunt such high and mighty airs today, as if you know something I don't. Why are you in such a hurry?"

  "Leave hold, Dolo. When do I have to account to you for my actions?"

  With lifted chin and one hand on her narrow hip she complained, "I thought we all worked together, but I can see, now you are such a gentleman with a silver buckle to your belt, that we are not good enough for you anymore."

  "Perhaps, and perhaps it is because I do things my way, sister, and we only work together when I say we do." He twitched his arm from her grasp. "Take yourself into the kitchen, girl. Tía probably needs you. And stop following me like a sniffing hound on the trail...."

  The choice of words was unfortunate. A deeper color suffused Dolores's sun-browned cheeks. "Hound?" she erupted. "It's you who are the beast. Going behind the stable with the fat Philita, aren't you? Don't think I haven't seen you squeezing her. Bah! Qué bobería!" To Dolores, who both admired and feared her brother, his interest in females, which meant the scullions and barmaids in the area, was silliness she couldn't understand. She thought a successful horsethief should be above bothering with giggling women.

  Carlos's lean face darkened. "Mind your own business, perrita," he warned, his low voice threatening. "If you don't learn how I'll give you a lesson. Remember the last time, you couldn't sit for a week. Now get back to your chores, pronto." He seized her arm in a grip forestalling argument and propelled her in the direction of the kitchen.

  Dolores went, with a defiant jerk of her arm from his grip and a flip of her shoulder, cursing under her breath. But she went.

  Watching from above Francho shook his head in admiration for Carlos's ability to squelch Dolores. The brother sometimes slapped her around when she transgressed but in no way that would really hurt her, for there was a bond of real affection among the innkeep's wife's three children. Still, when Carlos fixed Dolores or Pepi with his hard stare, they obeyed him. Hailing Carlos to wait up, Francho quickly clambered down the ladder.

  Shortly after, a still sulky Dolores, poised in the door of the scullery ready to slop out a bucket of greasy water, lowered it instead as she spied Francho making his way around an untidy trash heap to a little door in the back wall half hidden by heaped up kindling wood. She was almost certain they were cutting her out of a fair gull, although she couldn't imagine what since today was no special day when a big crowd might gather. Watching Francho she unconsciously put up one hand to smooth down her hair, then remembered she had braided it and covered it with her next-to-best kerchief. But maybe she had meant to smooth her tangled thoughts, she considered, for lately she was always so anxious to be somewhere around Francho, in spite of his teasing, and when he was near there was that giddy—that excited—sort of feeling that left her confused, anxious to cling to the more familiar emotions that had so far ruled her young life—and yet greedy to feel more of the pleasant shivers that she felt when he turned his startlingly blue eyes on her.

  Irritated at how even this small glimpse of him caused an accelerated beating of her heart, she stuck her tongue out at the spot where her aunt's foster son had been and heaved away the water in her bucket with enough vehemence to drown the entire world.

  She turned back to the kitchen, where she would help Tía shell almonds, suddenly not even caring anymore to follow her sneaky cohorts. She advised herself to think about the silver coin she had acquired that morning and not about how those lice had tried to humiliate her in her bath as if she were a dragtail child. She was certainly not going to think about how handsome Francho had grown; could it be because his height had suddenly outdistanced hers? The Devil with him. It was more satisfying and less upsetting to think of the silver coin as it lay gleaming in her hand. She had special plans for all the coins she could safely separate from her duty as honest daughter to Papa.

  ***

  On the north end of the plaza major rose the impressive new church, rendered in high Gothic style and set upon a base of broad but shallow steps facing in three directions. Forming the other side of the large plaza, from which radiated five main streets, were three-story buildings providing roofed arcades which sheltered shops, letter writers' booths, moneylenders, food vendors, harness makers, apothecaries, beggars, idlers, and assorted townspeople.

  It was a universal custom for travelers upon first entering a town for the night to visit the church to give thanks for a safe journey. Banking on the Count's party making this stop, Francho lurked in a deep recess of one of the church's elaborately carved and ribbed Gothic doorways, a felt cap pulled low over his ears and eyes to partially hide his face. He had finally decided that his best chance—perhaps only chance—of success would be at the church, where the travelers would have to dismount, for if they returned to pray tomorrow they would be too rested and alert.

  There was still activity about in the early twilight. Vendors banged closed their shutters, tired apprentices and journeymen headed toward their homes, a group of black-robed religious trod the cobbles slowly toward the church, some ragged peasants strained to move a heavy cart with a splintered axle. And at the far end, opposite the church, four or five helmeted city guards with pikes made ready to start on their nightly round
s. Francho sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. The setting wasn't exactly ideal; close-packed, distracted crowds such as on execution days were better, but since seldom would he find the opportunity to separate a grandee from his purse, the prize seemed worth the extra risk of an exposed position. The gathering darkness helped. He sent up a short prayer to San Bismas.

  From one of the feeder streets a small retinue of horsemen clopped smartly into the plaza, the jingling of bells on the horses' emblazoned furnishings causing heads in the immediate vicinity to turn. The party proceeded to the church steps and dismounted. Peering from behind his embrasure's heavy stone piers, Francho gratefully saw that most of the Count's retainers had been left outside of town to make camp, leaving only five men-at-arms, wearing crested tabards over chain mail shirts, to contend with. He would have been disappointed—Pepi's information was exaggerated obviously since only two noblemen swung off their horses—but both of these were richly dressed and had purses suspended from their belts. Either one would do, but something told him the taller one was the illustrious Count. The smallness of the party made him curse the stupidity of not taking Dolores along. They could have gotten both purses....

  Two guards led the horses away to water them at the trough; the other three followed the Count and his companion up the steps at a respectful distance.

  "...and not only that, but the pain in my right thigh has become worse, so that I sit crooked in the saddle. God's mercy, but this has been a bone-rattling trip."

  The Count of Tendilla, smoothing the rumpled maroon velvet of his fur-trimmed tunic, glanced with reserved amusement at the small, finely attired man glumly limping up the steps beside him. "It would seem from the account of your various aches and pains, my poor Pietro, that you are rapidly falling to pieces. We came but fifteen leagues today."