Hart, Mallory Dorn Read online

  "E verro, My Lord, but can one call that jumble a road? And at the mad pace we took it? The human body, even so hardy a one as mine"—he worked a silk-clad shoulder around to relieve the muscles—"is not meant to take such grueling punishment."

  "Fie, maestro, I have seen you do three times fifteen leagues and remain as fresh as the mountain air—when you had your heart in it."

  "Ah, there is the crux," the Italian scholar agreed. "I am disappointed to have left the delights of Cordoba to go north at this moment. With the winter scarce here yet, with the Moslem crowing over our defeat at Loja and gathering forces for another attack, with my war chronicles in a state of chaos and incompleteness..."

  Tendilla took up the litany "...and with Louis of France poised with an army to the north in Navarre, the Court preparing to move to Madrid in a month, and your patron's estates and revenues calling for attention, I assure you life will not be dull, my friend, just because the Moor has been left behind."

  Di Lido's lips pursed as if he had just eaten a lemon. "Bah! Madrid, a rural little village. Why not, at least, Valladolid, or Burgos?"

  "In time, in time, maestro. Methinks the pain in your leg has made you liverish," Tendilla remarked dryly.

  "Might I say, Excellence, that in view of the fact that the Marquis of Cadiz has heretofore coveted your position next the throne, and that an... Diavolo!"

  A brown streak had detached itself from a side doorway, slamming into the Count and knocking him off his balance and into his astonished companion. Flailing to recover himself before they both went tumbling down the steps, Tendilla had the impression of a flash of steel, a swift tug, a muffled clink. Securing his footing he whirled about, but the thief was off, having bolted under his arm and down the steps like a panicked hare, faster than the men-at-arms could react.

  The shrill voice of the little Italian seemed to pierce Francho's back as he leaped the steps three at a time: "Al ladro, al ladro! Rubatore!" A pike whizzed past his shoulder to clatter on the stones, just missing a group of open-mouthed citizens arriving early for evening mass, who stood arrested between one step and another as he fled past them. "There he goes," voices cried behind him to the scattered people in the square. "Catch him, catch him!"

  Francho streaked for the escape he had mapped out, dodging a grabbing hand, jumping a jutting leg, his head down, legs pumping, showing the pursuing men-at-arms a clean pair of heels. Instinct warned him to weave away as a city guard who'd been behind the cart with the broken axle jumped into his path, but the man managed to catch his arm and swing him around. His frantic kick to the man's groin broke the insecure grip and he wrenched away, bolting toward a narrow alley with the Count's men no more than ten sword lengths behind him and the Hermandad guards behind them. The pound of their boots was so close he was sure he felt their breath on the back of his neck as they furiously cursed and yelled at him to halt.

  Zigzagging through clefts between houses he purposely chose the narrowest and most rubble-strewn to eliminate anyone on horseback or zealous citizens who might try to help the guards. He ran around the corner of a building and used the seconds when they couldn't see him to evaporate into another narrow alley going back the way he had come, a point at which he usually lost the Hermandad, who figured him to have gone forward into a twisting passage showing across the street. But the Count's men were swifter and not so easily shaken off, one somehow saw him and hollered, and then they were behind him again. He emerged briefly into a square and, hurtling aside some startled residents who happened to be in his path, reached the opposite side to dart once more into a dank alley. Lying heavily within his tunic was the purse embroidered with the Mendoza coat-of-arms. He'd be broiled in Hell if he gave up such a prize.

  His chest was tight and his breath came in rasps, sweat was pouring into his eyes; he whipped off his cap to dash it away. It was getting hard to see, a point in his favor, for he knew this warren of tight passages and they didn't. He dashed from a side street, lungs straining, praying to San Bismas between gasps of breath, and heard a sword slide from its scabbard behind him as his pursuers pounded in his wake. They were gaining. He didn't dare a backward glance. Leaping a small pile of bricks left by builders he fought down panic and scuttled into an odiferous little slit between two uncompleted buildings, slipping on something disgusting but recovering himself. A sharp pain stabbed through his chest as he realized he'd mistaken the buildings, he didn't know this passage. He stumbled suddenly over a half-buried rock and fell forward on one knee, his outstretched palm landing on something sharp, but he frantically scrambled up and lurched on, barely escaping the point of the leading guard's sword.

  He windmilled forward only a short way in the gloom before only his sixth sense and an outstretched arm saved him from ramming into a blank wall barring his way.

  The closest pursuer pounced on him, spinning him around and flinging him against the wall where he was held by muscle and the point of a sword until the man could catch his heaving breath. Francho gulped air, struggling unsuccessfully against the brawny grip, cursing with what wind he had.

  "Give it over, gutter spawn," the furious soldier wheezed, laboring to speak. "Hand over that purse before I slit your filthy gizzard."

  Two other of Tendilla's guards panted up, pikes lowered. Stubbornly Francho shook his head. A lump rose in his throat with the bitterness of his defeat, with the fear that his luck had run out. Momentarily he glared at them, but his eyes darted to either side and he noticed a crevice between the houses to his right, narrow, cramped, short enough so just at that moment he glimpsed a muleteer, waggling his whip, pass before the far opening on the street. His heart leaped—

  The exhausted soldier made a grab for the tell-tale bulge of the purse under Francho's tunic, his sword point lowering as he did so, and with a sudden downward plunge Francho ducked under the man's arm, swiveled past the other two, who thought their prey had been cornered, and slid into the God-sent passage like a bug into a crack, passing through it sideways and emerging onto the narrow street just in time to skitter in front of the lead mules of a caravan.

  The outraged guards followed, scraping their broader forms through the narrow slit only to find themselves bottled up in the crack by a long line of doubly hitched mules plodding stolidly past in spite of the crack of an impatient whip over their heads. The frustrated men started to hack wildly through the traces to get to the other side of the flare-lit street, cursing the slow-moving animals, cursing the muleteer, who, astonished at this sudden attack, yelled and tried to drive them off with cracks of his long whip. Frightened by the attempts of flailing men to climb over their huge burdens, the animals backed up and knocked over one of the guards, who had to be rescued from the tangle of reins by his mates. The leader, roaring with fury, attempted to climb over the animals' lumpily packed backs but was pulled off by the red-faced muleteer, who had squeezed his way up to them.

  By the time they reached the alley down which their prey had fled, Francho was nowhere to be seen, and the few onlookers shrugged their shoulders. The bulky guard with the sword sheathed his weapon with a clang and swore a disgusted oath.

  Lying prone to peer over the edge of a flat tile roof not far away, Francho gripped his arms about himself tightly to hold in his laughter over the ridiculous scene he had just witnessed and watched as the guards glumly pulled themselves together and turned to go back to the plaza major. Actually he was weak with relief, and as soon as they left he lay on his back on the still-warm red tiles and breathed deeply, trying to relax the tension in his muscles. He'd never had so close a call. He could still feel the prick of the sword point aimed at his gullet, the squeeze of fright in his gut when he thought it was all over. He scrubbed at the dust in his eyes with his sleeve. The cut on his palm was bleeding and stung, and his imagination produced the dank stink of the Alcalde's dungeons—or was that only his shoes, where he'd raced through the litter of rubbish and excrement.

  Closing weary eyes, he smiled. He had come a hair'
s breadth from grief but he had his purse. He rested for a while before feeling his way down the gnarled vine which had helped him to the roof of the building—part of a ceramics works it would seem from the smell of clay and paint. His chest puffed out. The contents of the purse he had snatched would buy him more than a painted plate.

  ***

  The evening was still early as he slipped back through the little door in the scullery yard, filled a bucket at the well, and avoided the stair from the common room and various eyes by scrambling up the rear ladder to the hostel's top floor.

  In his tiny cubicle he unbuckled his belt, and the heavy purse fell to the floor with a loud, metallic jangle. Aching to open it, he forced himself to wait, savoring the anticipation while he first kicked off his malodorous shoes, then cleaned the small cut on his palm, which had stopped bleeding. He pulled off his clothes, wrung out a rag in the water to wash his face and then the sweat and grime from his body, giving himself a going-over befitting the new owner of such a splendid purse. He splashed some water to smooth down the unruly dark hair curling into his eyes, donned his other tunic and hosen, and shoved his feet into worn straw slippers. Taking the bucket from his cubicle to a small window overlooking a back alley he yelled, " 'Way, below!" and slung the dirty water out

  Only then, back in his lair, did he finally give himself the pleasure of slipping two fingers into the satin-lined purse and pulling open the drawstring.

  ***

  Famished, he pounded down the ladder again to the kitchen room where an old hag squatted at a hearth basting and turning braces of sizzling fowl. She greeted him with a cackle. "Where is everyone?" he asked her, meaning the family, meanwhile grabbing a piece of bread and a hunk of hard cheese from a littered board up on wooden horses. The ancient, enjoying the warmth of the fire, wagged her head toward the common room. "Hee, hee, hee... full house tonight."

  Francho wolfed his snack with a couple of swallows of leftover wine from a used cup, then went to peer from behind the tied-back leather curtain at the kitchen entry, a vantage spot where he could see the patrons without being seen. The common room was the same noisy mixture of babble, guffaws, and coarse people as it had been when he first viewed it six years ago, a long, airless chamber with a low, whitewashed ceiling supported by rough-cut beams, and a worn plank floor. Delicious smells emanated from a smoke-blackened hearth, where Tía Esperanza alternated her attention between a sleepy Pepi, who was turning the spit, and the task of basting the fat-dripping pig impaled over the fire. A ragged minstrel sat on a three-legged stool plinking the strings of a Moorish guembri. Snatches of song were hurled at him from all over the room, and Papa el Mono and several barmaids made their smiling way among the noisy throng, the full pitchers of wine in their hands held high to avoid being spilled.

  There was a blind beggar back of the stack of wine barrels munching on a bone and grinning into his black world, and loud gamblers in a corner, rattling big dice over a pile of copper coins. Wet-lipped women sat on laps and giggled and drank as much as the men; already one lolled boneless across a long table, croaking nonsense. A table of merchants was slightly separated from the rest, around which the hungry diners stuffed their mouths and wiped their greasy fingers on their good tunics. A blowsy creature with bouncing breasts purposely loosed the strings on her bodice and made a lewd suggestion as she flounced past them.

  Francho's spirits were slightly dampened. Tía and Papa were busy serving, Pepi turned the spit, Dolores seemed nowhere around, and Carlos, he knew, was with Esteban in a cart, delivering to the nobleman's encampment a barrel of cheap wine, which they would pass off as a welcoming gift from the Alcalde, and which they hoped would help the company sleep soundly that night. He pressed his elbow against the purse, once more hidden under his tunic, which was bagged out over his belt. He frowned his annoyance. Here he was eager to show off his treasure and tell the tale of his hair's breadth escape and there was no one to hear it.

  He mooched across the entry court aimlessly, kicked at a rusty nail, got out of the way of some patrons leading their mounts through the gate, and was considering going back for more to eat when his frown cleared as he spied Dolores just coming from the stable.

  His shrill, short whistle stopped Dolores in her tracks, and she waited for him under a lantern hung from an iron arm on the side of the building. She tapped her foot with fake impatience for she was actually glad to see him, bored with the evening's run-of-the-mill patrons and curious to know where he'd been. She could almost see the gleam in his bold, blue eyes as he loped toward her, a big grin splitting his face. He was now taller than she, but that had happened only recently and not by much—although Tía said his legs were long and when his full height came he'd be useless as a cutpurse. Dolores wished he wouldn't outgrow her, she didn't care to look up at him when for so long they had been equals. She framed a scathing reply in her mind in case he had come to tease her.

  "Well, what is it, picaro? Can't you see I am busy?" she demanded, her peevish tone reflecting the morning's contretemps.

  "Not as busy as I've been, I'll wager. I want to show you something."

  Dolores indicated her armload of straw. "That stupid Lina spilled a pan of hot grease all over the floor and broiled her arm besides. Tía put an herb poultice on her burn, and I'm bringing this to spread fresh on the floor."

  They both leaped aside as a couple of inebriated horsemen clopped up to the stable halooing for the one harried hostler to take their mounts. "Wait until you see the loot I just hooked, you'll have trouble keeping your eyes in your head," he crowed. "I'd be kicking on a rope for this one, and almost was, too. But not here, it's too busy."

  She could feel the excitement he could scarcely bottle up and her eyes widened. There were dire punishments for thievery, but hanging was reserved for the worst offenses. "What? What is it? Francho, show me."

  "Hold a minute and I'll show you. Where? Here, this way, in here." Pulling her along by the wrist he ducked into the stables and kept going past the few animals tethered near the door and down to the rear of the long, dark, and dusty structure. He shoved her into an empty stall where a stream of light from the hanging lantern outside came through a rent in the boards forming the upper wall. They could see motes of dust dancing where the flickering rays pushed a path through the gloom and spread onto the scattered straw underfoot.

  Francho knelt on the dirty straw and pulled the velvet purse from his tunic, pushing it into the light where the silver- and gold-embroidered noble emblem gleamed dully. He looked up and his eyebrows arched with rascal pleasure at the look of awe on her face.

  Dolores's mouth hung open in wonder. "Ay, mi madre! It has a blazon on it!" she breathed. She reached two tentative fingers to touch the coat of arms and then drew them back quickly. "It's—it's the coronet of a count, I think," she added, casting back in her memory to a long ago day when 'Fredo, who had once been a mercenary to an Aragonese nobleman, amused himself by teaching her what he knew of heraldry. "The blessed saints save us, if they had caught you, Francho, you'd have been beaten to death. But where did you get it? Oh, what a chance you took...."

  He was enjoying the mingled admiration and fright on her face. "But they didn't catch me, did they, or I wouldn't be here, goose. And when I tell you how I got away, you'll see it wasn't so simple." A short snort of laughter escaped him at the memory of the guards slashing at the mules' traces and cursing. "Those idiotic men-at-arms. Stupid, like cats watching at the wrong mousehole."

  "But whose purse is it?"

  His broad shoulders squared back. "The Count of Tendilla. The Queen's man on her right hand. He is laying over at the Alcalde's house tonight, on his way north with his household."

  Dolores sat back on her heels, hands on hips, totally exasperated. "Aha! I knew something was offering. That miserable Carlos. Worse than he considers he is my master, he thinks that I don't know what I'm about, the sloptail. The putrid—" Francho broke her rising ire by wiggling the bag till it jingled, riveting her a
ttention again on the well-filled reticule lying in the stream of light. "How much is there in it?" she asked breathlessly. Forgetting her indignation, she stared as if she expected the purse to get up on two legs and dance. The tip of her pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips.

  Moving to sit cross-legged across from her, Francho shot his bolt with an expansive gesture. "How much, hermanita? A small fortune, that's how much. Enough to buy this whole hostelry and the Alcalde's house besides. Fifteen excellentes, five reales, six gold Italian ducats, and some coppers. I'll give Papa the excellentes, that should please his itching palm, but the rest is all mine, I'm keeping it, and if you spill a word I'll pull your thumbs from their sockets and jam them into your ears."

  Dolores had wiggled herself closer to the purse. Francho could see her clearly now in her blue headcloth, her tipped gray eyes wide and lit with worshipful admiration. "Oh, I would never tell, Francho. Did we not take oath, the four of us, never to blab on each other? Dios mío, a ricos hombre has many guards, you have to tell me how you hooked this. Sometimes I think you're as smart as Carlos. And brave too. To get away without a scratch. With half the city after you..." She edged closer to the purse.

  Unaccustomed to such flattery from Dolores, Francho basked in the praise and tried to put some modesty in his shrug. He was willing to tell her all about it, but she was still giving all her attention to the purse. Her eyes shone as she put forward her hand.

  "Let me just touch it, Francho. Never have I touched anything belonging to a grandee."

  That tickled him. "And had you, it would not have belonged to the grandee for very long." He chuckled. But his guard was down. He picked up the clinking purse and held it out to her.

  As quick as a striking snake she snatched the purse from his hand, jumped up, and hid it behind her, stepping back slowly and giggling, and now the sparkle in her eyes meant mischief.