The Lords of Time Read online

  “Is that the brown powder the soldiers use in brothels when their manhood fails them?”

  I smiled.

  “For a novice, you know a great deal. From your brothers, no doubt?” I asked, avoiding the mystery of her three-cornered headdress and its implications for now.

  “Yes, my brothers. May I avoid pretending at least in front of you that talking about these things makes me blush? Being a good Christian woman can be exhausting.”

  “There’s no need to pretend; not many things scandalize me. Did the old count live with a woman?”

  “It’s said that since his wife’s death, he shed tears on her tomb and preferred to pray at a cold altar than to share a warm bed.”

  “So he had no need for powders.”

  “In all truth, I can’t imagine a man less interested in carnal desires.”

  “Then we need to find someone who knows about poisons,” I muttered as I put the viscera back into the count’s body and rearranged his tunic. “Could you clean away the blood, dispose of the rabbit, and keep quiet about what you’ve seen here?”

  No sooner had I asked her than it was done. Although her response to my requests was rapid, Alix did not give the impression of being docile. In fact, she seemed rebellious, much like my indomitable sister, Lyra.

  * * *

  —

  Speaking of poisons. I found another venomous being in the small workshop next to the family forge. Nagorno could have been Victoria’s most reputable goldsmith if he hadn’t been born into a high position.

  He was using a delicate hammer to make a gold-and-enamel brooch, depicting an eagle twisting to fend off a serpent wrapped around its neck.

  “Is that jewel for your bride? In recent years, the Church has begun to oppose ostentation,” I said.

  “Come in without asking, Brother,” he replied evenly, his voice the same snakelike hiss I remembered. “The door is always open to you. Pope Celestine the Third just banned prosperous merchants from wearing furs, precious stones, or elaborate buckles. Since my wife isn’t one of the newly rich, she won’t need to conceal my gifts. I’m pleased you are alive, my dear Diago.”

  “You seemed happier yesterday, when you thought I was dead,” I said, sitting on the workbench.

  Nagorno sighed and stopped fashioning the jewel.

  “Are you bitter? I did it for our family, Diago. Somebody had to rescue us from the anarchy you left behind two years ago.”

  “By marrying the woman promised to me?”

  “You vanished with no explanation, saying only ‘I will return.’ As the months went by, your promise seemed less likely. Are you going to tell me why you left?”

  “I cannot do so, Nagorno. Suffice it to say that King Sancho the Wise employed veiled threats to entrust me with a mission that I could not refuse. My journey became much more complicated than intended. In fact, I have not been to the court at Tudela for fear he might send me on another dangerous errand. Perhaps in a few years’ time, I’ll be able to tell you what happened, but not now,” I lied. I needed to find out just how much he knew.

  “As you wish,” Nagorno replied. He knew when not to insist. “Are you so upset that I married Onneca? It was quite a sacrifice for me. You know I can’t bear to be a married man. How often have I found myself a widower?”

  “Too often,” I murmured.

  “If I’d known you were alive, if I had been sure of it, I would never have married her. But she had rejected two marriage proposals, and you know that, in keeping with the laws of Navarre, she was obliged to accept the third.”

  “Who made those two proposals?”

  “The Lord of Ibida, Bermúdez de Gobeo, and Vidal, the Lord de Funes’s son.”

  “An old man and a dimwitted babe in arms. No wonder the count rejected them.”

  “Onneca rejected them. Don’t underestimate her.”

  “I never have. But their lands wouldn’t have brought her father much. Lowborn relatives, petty gentry—”

  “Can you see now that I’ve done you a favor, Brother?”

  “You seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Every sacrifice deserves a reward. I’m impatient to discover how our lady behaves in private, when there are no witnesses….But you can tell me about that, can’t you?”

  “As you said, that’s none of my concern now,” I said with a smile. I would need to get used to this pretense.

  “No….It’s not that. You saw that my lady cares for me, and it is gnawing away at you. I know you. You’ve never doubted your prowess, but now…I can spot all the shades of your anger, and it’s lurking there…the doubt, after what you saw yesterday.”

  I ignored the jab. Nagorno was probing for my weaknesses, like a blunt broadsword striking the shoulder, the thigh, the back, searching for the spot where the open wound was concealed.

  My sleepless night had healed that wound.

  The blow Onneca’s betrayal had dealt me was no more. If the world knew how it had affected me, that would undermine my position—and I could not show my enemies that sort of weakness.

  Yes, there were enemies, but how close were they?

  “You know you’ll have to give her an heir.” Now I was the one probing old wounds.

  Nagorno didn’t react, a sure sign I had hurt him more than I dared hope.

  “Yes, of course, that is expected of me.”

  “And how do you propose to do that, Brother?” I challenged him.

  “All in good time, Brother.”

  “Fine. I don’t doubt your ability to deceive; you’ll find a way around it. But I must speak of a different matter. What do you know about the letter containing news of my death?”

  “The messenger was a phantom. The guards told contradictory stories about him. I asked who he was, but nobody could say what he looked like. Two of the guards swore they had seen him at dusk near the South Gate. I had them follow his trail, but they lost it after crossing Cauce de los Molinos.”

  “You should have pursued him! You wouldn’t have lost his trail!” I shouted, my patience at an end.

  “It was meant for Count de Maestu. You know I have a good eye for forgeries—”

  “Because you’re a master in the art.”

  He smiled. He was tempted more by some sins than others, and pride had never troubled him.

  “My point is that I managed to get a good look at the royal seal, Diago.”

  “Everything can be forged.”

  “Everything can be forged,” he agreed. “I taught you that. But it was a letter from King Sancho the Wise himself, and counterfeiting a letter from the king is high treason and punishable by hanging. You have to admit, it’s not likely anybody would do that. So what was I to do, Brother, if not weep for you and then assume responsibility for everything our family has achieved?”

  I seized him by the neck, tired of his playacting. I wanted a real conversation with my brother.

  “Don’t for a minute imagine I’m willing to believe you thought I was dead. You and I have been in enough tight scrapes to know it’s not easy to get rid of us,” I said, and he finally let his mask slip so we could speak the truth. “I have to find out who sent that letter.”

  “You really don’t believe it was the king?”

  “I can’t see any reason why he would do that.”

  “I know you don’t believe me, but I did not do it.”

  No, I don’t believe you, Nagorno. You’re the lord of lies. How can I believe you when I’ve known you all your life? I thought this but said nothing. There was no point. I changed the course of our conversation again.

  “There’s something else. You brought our beloved Gunnarr here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “The usual reason. There’s a demand for unicorn horn at the Tudela court.”
/>   According to many reliable sources, unicorn horn was the best love potion for men unable to sustain an erection, and it was impossible to find. From his voyages in the northern seas, Gunnarr had found a convenient substitute, and nobody could tell the difference.

  “Is narwhal tusk the only aphrodisiac requested at court?”

  “It’s more expensive, and the only one worth bringing here.”

  I did not offer my suspicions about the blister beetle. It wasn’t an insect found in Navarre. The beetle had to be brought from its home in faraway warmer lands. But Victoria was a town of merchants: Could Nagorno, and perhaps Gunnarr, have anything to do with its trade?

  A nearby church tolled the bell that marked the passing of a townsperson.

  “You’ll have learned of my father-in-law’s death?” asked Nagorno.

  “It’s impossible not to in this town. How is Onneca?”

  Nagorno looked aslant at me. “She’s suffering,” he muttered, as if he, too, was grieving.

  Surprised, I looked away. So Onneca was important to him?

  “The count’s funeral will start at the hour of the Angelus,” he went on icily. “I’ve paid for a chorus of mourners. I imagine the entire town will visit the count’s mansion for the traditional nod of the head….It would be good for us to be seen together there.”

  “You’ve hired mourners?”

  “And a keener to compose a lament. The count deserves all the homages I can afford. He was a man of honor. Onneca is keeping vigil over his body. We must all be seen together there. The bailiff, the mayor, the constable, the lieutenant, and the clergy from Santa María Cathedral will be present. I’ve arranged for him to be buried in our cemetery. He is part of our family and will rest consoled by our blood, among the other Velas.”

  I nodded. For once, I agreed with Nagorno.

  As we left the small workshop, I couldn’t help but notice that he put the brooch for Onneca in a concealed pocket of his surcoat.

  We headed for the Armería district. The streets were crowded with market stalls and scavenging pigs, and we had to avoid water-sellers and vendors. A few houses farther on, a crowd of neighbors had come to pay their respects to the count’s family. Everybody was there, from Nova Victoria, from Villa de Suso, and even from outside the walls, where the cutlers lived.

  The nod of the head was an ancient tradition, in which the family of the deceased waited alongside the body of their loved one for the locals to arrive and offer their condolences. The family then nodded in acceptance of the tribute. It was a lengthy, wearisome custom, but it had been established in Victoria centuries ago, and it was impossible to abandon.

  “Won’t the count’s other children be present at the funeral?”

  “I doubt it. His good-for-nothing eldest son is in Edessa slaughtering infidels. And the two little girls have been immured.”

  “Both of them?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

  Nagorno did not even deign to reply. He was too busy thinking about the funeral ceremony he had to preside over. He stood at the entrance to the count’s mansion, watching the people who were going in.

  I knew the family tradition of walling up young girls. When they had too many daughters, the Counts de Maestu sent their daughters to be bricked up alive in some nearby parish. A partition was constructed, and the girls devoted their lives to prayer, immured in a tiny space. Some went willingly, others not.

  I was about to enter the doorway when Nagorno took me discreetly by the arm and whispered, “You haven’t asked me yet. Does that mean we have a truce?”

  “No, I haven’t asked if you were the one who did away with the good count, even though you have the motive and the means, and you’ve never lacked imagination.”

  “So it’s a truce?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you haven’t asked me about it, either,” I replied.

  We entered the mansion in silence. Those who had come to pay their respects were gathered at the foot of the narrow wooden staircase; some were going up, others were coming down.

  This was going to take all morning.

  I pictured Onneca sitting next to her father’s body, a body I had desecrated. I felt a pang of guilt.

  But at that very moment, an inferno of wood collapsed around our heads. The ancient staircase had given way under the weight of so many bodies. There was a deafening crash as the planks splintered, and we were buried under a pile of bloody arms and legs, crushed beneath the weight of the dead.

  5

  LA CALLE PINTORERÍA

  UNAI

  September 2019

  Needless to say, that night neither Alba nor I got any sleep.

  The initial autopsy report didn’t take long; it had been given top priority to make sure it came in before the weekend.

  But the victim…the victim made headlines throughout Spain. The privacy he had worked so hard to maintain during his lifetime swirled down the mortuary sink.

  It was Antón Lasaga, the owner and founder of a clothing empire started three decades earlier with a small store on Cercas Bajas.

  Scarves.

  It had all started with wool scarves.

  Tired of depending on his suppliers, Lasaga had set up a drab-looking factory in the Ali-Gobeo industrial park. At the time, the Vitoria City Council had more than enough land for expansion and was trying to attract industry to the city. After scarves came jackets and coats made of quality cloth. Within a few years, Lasaga was established nationally. The public knew nothing about him and little about his family. Some said he lived in Madrid and took a private jet every morning to be at the factory in time for breakfast. He and his family were shielded from the press. The photograph that had appeared in the newspapers was the only one that existed, and it was twenty years old. No one would have recognized Lasaga on Calle Dato if he had stopped for a coffee.

  We had spent the few hours since his death investigating his wealth. He was a born accumulator, like the Jay Gatsby of northern Spain. He owned land in Álava, Viscaya, Cantabria, Guipúzcoa, and Burgos. He had vineyards in the Rioja Alavesa and Navarre. Although he was sixty-seven at the time of his death, Antón Lasaga showed no intention of giving up control of his business.

  The pathologist had promised she would send us the test results by midafternoon, but Estíbaliz, with characteristic impatience, dialed Doctor Guevara’s number from Alba’s office well before then. Estí put the call on speaker.

  Outside the office window, the sun tinted the leaves a golden brown, and a slight breeze stirred the banners on the avenue.

  “Doctor Guevara, thanks again for handling this so quickly,” said Alba. She gathered her long black hair in a tight knot, a gesture she repeated twenty times a day. “What do you have for us?”

  “Good afternoon, deputy superintendent. I knew the victim: I was a lifelong friend of his wife’s. She died less than six months ago. This is such a shame. He was very cultured and devoted to his family.”

  “Have you been able to determine the cause of death? Inspector López de Ayala and I thought we noticed a rotten, artificial odor in the restrooms where his body was found,” said Estíbaliz. “Did you discover anything unusual in the course of the autopsy?”

  “Indeed, we did: his esophagus was severely blistered, as was his bladder. He must have felt quite ill in the hours prior to his death. He would have experienced difficulty urinating and dizzy spells, and he probably vomited at least once during that last day.”

  “And yet he went to the event,” I broke in.

  “Because of his condition, he would have been in a lot of pain throughout his life. He must have thought it was only indigestion and possibly a urinary tract infection and decided to go about his activities as normal.”

  “What was the exact cause of death?” I asked.

  �
��Rupture of the aorta. His heart gave out.”

  “Based on what you’ve said, it sounds as if he swallowed something that corroded his internal organs.”

  “That’s my suspicion, but I’m still waiting for the lab to send the toxicology report,” the pathologist said. “It shouldn’t take too much longer—in fact, I was expecting to hear from them an hour ago. I’ve never seen such catastrophic damage to organs before. It must have been a very corrosive substance. I didn’t want to risk telling you my hypothesis before I had all the information, but Inspector López de Ayala called me yesterday and asked me to compare the results with one particular substance. If he’s right, it could save us hours of work.”

  “What substance, Unai? Care to share your thoughts?” asked Estíbaliz.

  “Of course. I wanted to tell you earlier, before we got to the office, but there was so much going on that I got sidetracked.”

  I said the name of the substance out loud, but I have to admit, it didn’t sound as convincing as it had inside my head. Estíbaliz looked at me as if I were hopeless. Alba shrugged. I ignored their doubts. I was used to it. They never believed in my initial theories, but that didn’t stop me. It was part of my process to cast my lines widely until I got a bite, then I hauled it in.

  “Even if Unai is right about what caused his death, if toxicology confirms that he was poisoned, we’ll have to determine what his last few meals were. We need to know where he had breakfast, lunch—even a snack—on the day he died and the preceding twenty-four hours,” said Alba.

  “And we need to know who he ate with,” added Estíbaliz.

  “I’d like to confirm something with you,” I said to Doctor Guevera. “The victim was born with Marfan syndrome, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right. Long, slender limbs, concave chest, scoliosis, flat feet, small jaw, coloboma of the iris—that is, a hole or a defect in the iris—and a weakened aorta. I don’t know what he swallowed or was forced to swallow, but he couldn’t tolerate the resulting dilation of his heart. People with Marfan syndrome are usually kept under close medical observation. The victim would have known about his condition. I’ll wager we find traces of medication in his blood.”