The Devils of Cardona - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Matthew Carr is a writer, a journalist, a blogger, and the author of several books of nonfiction, including Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain. He has written for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Observer, The Guardian, and others. He lives in the United Kingdom with his family. The Devils of Cardona is Carr’s first novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Carr

CHAPTER ONE

The priest rolled over and squeezed his eyes shut in a vain attempt to ignore his parched tongue and throbbing temples. Finally he abandoned the effort and hoisted his heavy body upright. He sat on the edge of the bed in his nightshirt with his large feet resting on the cold tiled floor and grimaced at the acrid smell of sex, wine and stale beer and the sight of the sagging purse on the bedside table. He could not remember how much he had lost, or whether he had lost it on cards or dice, but he knew that it had been a bad night.

He told himself that there would be other games and better nights as he went out into the privy to piss and curse the shriveled cock that had led him again to stray from the path of virtue. He rinsed it clean and sponged his face and body before eating the bread, egg and ham that Inés had left him. After washing the food down with a glass of brandy, he changed into his vestments, first the white alb, then the amice draped over his shoulders, followed by the long black cape. Even when he had acquired at least the appearance of piety, the voice of his conscience told him that he was not fit to serve God or administer the holiest of sacraments. But in all his years in these mountains, he had never failed to celebrate the Eucharist no matter what he had done the night before.

Outside, the first red slats of light were spreading above the high peaks and the towering massif that separated God’s chosen people from their enemies. He heard the stream flowing down into the side of the ravine, louder than usual as a result of the melting snows, and the first morning birds that he neither could name nor cared to name. Even though it was late March, his panting breath still gave off a cloud of steam as he stepped out into the courtyard adjoining the church, his sandals squeaking on the hard, stony ground with a heavy tread that anyone in the village could have recognized and which many of them had reason to fear and detest.

Father Panalles knew that his parishioners did not love him, but he had long since ceased to feel any remorse for the fact that a man of the cloth should be the object of fear and loathing. In another place he might have felt different, but not here, in Belamar de la Sierra. Its inhabitants were people from another world and time, savages and heretics who showed more affection for the black-faced performer dressed up as a bear that they dragged through the streets on the same day every year than they would ever feel for the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Even now, in the penultimate decade of the sixteenth century, they continued to believe that this pagan superstition could expunge all the year’s accumulated evil from the town. But as he had told them often enough, the evil was inside them. It was something they carried in their blood, that was passed down through their mothers’ milk and handed down from one generation to the next.

Such people could never be saved, not even by the holy apostles themselves, and since they could never willingly embrace the faith, then even the fact that they feared him was a kind of achievement. On this particular morning, however, he took no satisfaction from the power he held over them, but only bitterness, resentment and self-pity at the seven years he had wasted in these mountains when so many others who were just like him, and certainly no better, had obtained high positions in cathedral chapters in Segovia and Salamanca, or rich parishes and fat benefices in Castile, Valencia, and Andalusia and other places where those who served God and his Church could receive their just reward on earth as it is in heaven.

After all the years he had spent in these dismal mountains, he deserved similar reward, and yet there was no prospect of any change in his situation despite the many letters he had written to the bishop and the archbishop, pleading for a transfer to another parish and reminding them of his selfless and unrelenting attempts to plant the seeds of the one true faith in such barren soil. No one understood or cared, and as he glanced up at the white bell tower with its horseshoe arches, the possibility of escape seemed more remote than ever, and as he stared at the dark, silent houses all around him, he began to run through the names of the congregants from whom he might extract something to compensate for his losses when the service was over. He thought he heard a noise nearby and paused to look around him, but the village was dark and silent and the population was still recovering from the previous day’s revelries. The church door was unlocked, as it usually was, because the doors to God’s house were always open, and whatever else you could say about these heretics, they did not steal from churches.

He pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped inside. In the same moment, he saw the dark shape sitting on the first row of benches, wearing a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped. “I’m not ready yet.”

The man did not answer or even turn around, and it was only then that he realized that there were others standing in the shadows behind him, and he felt afraid. He took a step away, but one of the men now shut the heavy door, and a gloved hand grasped him over the mouth and jerked his head back. Before he was able to make a sound, the blade cut into his throat and slid across it with a swift, effortless movement, penetrating deep into his flesh and cutting the trachea just below the Adam’s apple.

All this was accomplished so quickly that the priest felt no pain, but only boundless shock as the grip released him and he stumbled forward, one hand clutching at his perforated throat in a vain attempt to stem the f low of the warm blood that sluiced irresistibly through his fingers. Directly in front of him, he saw the pallid shoulders of the Prince of Peace hovering in the darkness just above the altar with his arms outstretched, his dear crowned head illuminated by shafts of light coming through the stained-glass window at the beginning of a day that the priest knew he would not see. For the first time in many years, he sincerely wanted to kiss those nailed feet and beg forgiveness, because he knew now that his soul would not be saved and that there would be no resurrection for him.

The priest reached one hand out toward the altar and was still desperately trying to suck in air when one of the dark shapes stabbed him in the lower back with a sword, driving it so deep that the point protruded through his stomach. Even then he remained standing, shuffling his feet like a heavy dancer and trying to remain upright. Now the seated man finally stood up and came toward him, and disbelief and incomprehension compounded the terror as Father Panalles saw the silver mace hanging by the man’s side, with its spiked ball and the handle with the leather grip. Beyond him the Black Virgin of Belamar was looking down on him with an expression of infinite compassion, and he wished that he had done more to live up to her expectations. In te, Domine, speravi, he thought as the...