A Column of Fire (17 page)

On balance, it would probably be best to take her into his confidence before he spoke to Carlos. At least then he would know which way she was going to jump when the decision was made.

When should he tell her? After making love one night? It might be smarter to raise the subject
before
lovemaking, when her heart was full of desire. He nodded to himself, and at that moment the attack began.

There were six men, and they all carried clubs and hammers. They did not speak, but immediately began to beat Ebrima and Carlos with clubs. ‘What’s happening?’ Ebrima yelled. ‘Why are you doing this?’ They did not speak. Ebrima put up an arm to protect himself and suffered an agonizing blow to his hand, then another to his head, and he fell down.

His assailant then went after Carlos, who was retreating across the yard. Ebrima watched, trying to recover from the daze induced by the blow to his head. Carlos seized a shovel, dipped it in the molten metal coming out of the furnace, and threw a shower of droplets at the attackers. Two of them screamed in pain.

For a moment Ebrima thought perhaps he and Carlos might prevail, despite the odds; but, before Carlos could scoop up more metal, two others got to him and knocked him down.

They then attacked the new furnace, smashing its brickwork with iron-headed sledgehammers. Ebrima saw his creation being destroyed, and found the strength to get to his feet. He rushed at the attackers, screaming: ‘No – you can’t do this!’ He shoved one so that he fell to the ground, and pulled the other away from the precious furnace. He used only his right hand, because he could no longer grip with the left, but he was strong. Then he was forced to scurry backwards out of the way of a lethally swinging sledgehammer.

Desperate to save the furnace, he picked up a wooden shovel and went at them again. He hit one over the head, then he was hit from behind, a blow that landed on his right shoulder and caused him to drop the shovel. He turned to face his assailant and dodged the next blow.

As he backed away, desperately leaping out of the way of a down-swinging club, he could see from the corner of his eye that the furnace was being demolished. The contents poured out, burning coal and red-hot minerals spilling over the ground. The ox began to grunt raucously in panic, a pitiful noise.

Elisa came running out of the house, screaming at the men: ‘Leave them alone! Get out of here!’ The attackers laughed at the old woman, and one of the men Ebrima had knocked down got up, seized her from behind, and lifted her off her feet. He was big – they all were – and he easily restrained her writhing struggles.

Two men were sitting on Carlos, one was holding Elisa, and one was keeping Ebrima cornered. The remaining two went to work with their sledgehammers. They smashed the bellows mechanism that Ebrima and Carlos and Barney had puzzled over for so long. Ebrima could have wept.

When the furnace and the bellows mechanism were flattened, one of them pulled a long dagger and tried to cut the throat of the ox. It was not easy: the beast’s neck was thickly muscled, and he had to saw through the flesh with his knife, while the ox tried to kick free of the wreckage. At last he severed the jugular. The bellowing stopped abruptly. Blood came like a fountain from the wound. The ox sank to the ground.

And then, as quickly as they had come, the six men left.

*

J
ERÓNIMA HAD BECOME
a calculating shrew, Barney thought as he left the Ruiz house in a daze. Perhaps she had always had a hard streak, and he had never noticed it; or perhaps people could be transformed by a terrible ordeal – he did not know. He felt he knew nothing. Anything could happen: the river might rise up and drown the city.

His feet took him automatically to Carlos’s house, and there he suffered another shock: Carlos and Ebrima had been beaten up.

Carlos was sitting on a chair in the courtyard while Aunt Betsy tended to his wounds. One eye was closed, his lips were swollen and bloody, and he sat half bent over as if his belly hurt. Ebrima lay on the ground, clutching one hand under the opposite armpit, a bloodstained bandage around his head.

Behind them was the wreckage of the new furnace. It had been ruined, and was now a pile of bricks. The bellows mechanism was a tangle of ropes and firewood. The ox lay dead in a pool of blood. There was a lot of blood in an ox, Barney thought disjointedly.

Betsy had been bathing Carlos’s face with a scrap of linen soaked in wine. Now she stood upright and tossed the rag on the ground in a gesture of disgust. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, and Barney realized she had been waiting only for his return before making a speech.

All the same he forestalled her. ‘What happened here?’

‘Don’t ask stupid questions,’ she said impatiently. ‘You can see what happened here.’

‘I mean, who did this?’

‘They were men we’ve never seen before, and almost certainly they’re not from Seville. The real question is who hired them, and the answer is Sancho Sanchez. He’s the one who’s been whipping up resentment of Carlos’s success, and he’s the one who wants to buy the business. I’ve no doubt it was he who told Alonso that Ebrima is a Muslim and works on Sundays.’

‘What are we going to do?’

Carlos answered Barney’s question. Standing up, he said: ‘We’re going to give in.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We could fight Sancho, or we could fight Alonso, but we can’t fight both.’ He went over to where Ebrima lay, grasped his right hand – the left was evidently injured – and pulled him to his feet. ‘I’m going to sell the business.’

Betsy said: ‘That may not be enough, now.’

Carlos was startled. ‘Why?’

‘Sancho will be satisfied with the business, but Alonso will not. He needs a human sacrifice. He can’t admit to having made a mistake. Now that he’s accused you, he has to punish you.’

Barney said: ‘I’ve just seen Jerónima. She thinks they will put her father to the water torture. We’ll all confess to heresy if that happens to us.’

Betsy said: ‘Barney is right.’

Carlos said: ‘What can we do?’

Betsy sighed. ‘Leave Seville. Leave Spain. Today.’

Barney was shocked, but he knew she was right. Alonso’s men might come for them any time, and when that happened, it would be too late to flee. He looked apprehensively at the archway entrance to the courtyard, fearing that they might already be there; but there was no one, not yet.

Was it even possible to go today? Perhaps – if there was a ship leaving on the afternoon tide, and if that ship needed crew. They would probably have no choice about where they went. Barney glanced up at the sun. It was after midday. ‘If we’re really going to do this, we need to hurry,’ he said.

Despite the danger he was in, his spirits lifted at the prospect of going to sea.

Ebrima spoke for the first time. ‘If we don’t go, we’re dead men,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be the first.’

Barney said: ‘What about you, Aunt Betsy?’

‘I’m too old to go far. Besides, they don’t really care about me – I’m a woman.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I have a sister-in-law in Carmona.’ Barney recalled Betsy going there for a few weeks in the summer. ‘I can walk to Carmona in a morning. Even if Alonso finds out where I am, I doubt that he’ll bother with me.’

Carlos made up his mind. ‘Barney, Ebrima, get whatever you want from the house and be back by a count of a hundred.’

None of them had many possessions. Barney tucked a small purse of money into his waist under his shirt. He put on his best boots and his heavy cloak. He did not own a sword: the heavy longsword was made for the battlefield, designed to be thrust into the vulnerable spots in the enemy’s suit of armour, but unwieldy at close quarters. Barney sheathed a two-foot-long Spanish dagger with a disc-shaped hilt and a double-edged steel blade. In a street brawl, a big knife such as this was more lethal than a sword.

Back in the courtyard, Carlos was wearing a sword under his new coat with the fur collar. He hugged his grandmother, who was weeping. Barney kissed her on the cheek.

Then Aunt Betsy said to Ebrima: ‘Kiss me one more time, my love.’

Ebrima took her in his arms.

Barney frowned, and Carlos said: ‘Hey—’

Aunt Betsy kissed Ebrima passionately, her hand buried in his dark hair, while Carlos and Barney stared in astonishment. When they broke the kiss, she said: ‘I love you, Ebrima. I don’t want you to go. But I can’t let you stay here to die in the torture chamber of the inquisition.’

‘Thank you, Elisa, for being kind to me,’ said Ebrima.

They kissed again, then Betsy turned away and ran into the house.

Barney thought:
What the hell . . . ?

Carlos looked amazed, but there was no time for questions. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

‘One second,’ said Barney. He showed them his dagger. ‘If we meet Alonso’s men on the way, I won’t be taken alive.’

‘Nor will I,’ said Carlos, touching the hilt of his sword.

Ebrima pulled aside his cloak to reveal an iron-headed hammer thrust into his belt.

The three men left, heading for the waterfront.

They were alert for Alonso’s men, but as they moved farther from the house the danger receded. All the same, people stared at them, and Barney realized that they looked scary, with both Carlos and Ebrima bruised and still bleeding from the fight.

After a few minutes, Carlos said to Ebrima: ‘Grandma?’

Ebrima spoke calmly. ‘Slaves are always used for sex. You must know that.’

Barney said: ‘I didn’t know it.’

‘We talk to one another in the marketplace. Just about every one of us is somebody’s whore. Not the old ones, but slaves don’t often live to be old.’ He looked at Barney. ‘Pedro Ruiz, your girlfriend’s father, fucks Farah, though she has to get on top.’

‘Is that why she was crying? Because she’s lost him?’

‘She was crying because now she will be sold, and a stranger will fuck her.’ Ebrima turned to Carlos. ‘Francisco Villaverde, who is too proud to be your father-in-law, always buys slaves as small boys, and buggers them until they grow up. Then he sells them to a farmer.’

Carlos was still incredulous. ‘So every night, when I’m asleep, you’ve been going to Grandma’s bedroom?’

‘Not every night. Just when she asked me.’

Barney said: ‘Did you mind?’

‘Elisa is an old woman, but she’s warm and loving. And I was glad it wasn’t a man.’

Barney felt as if he had been a child until today. He had known that priests could put a man in prison and torture him to death, but not that they could also take all his possessions and make his family destitute. He had not imagined that an archdeacon would take a girl into his house and make her his mistress. And he had had no idea what men and women did with their slaves. It was as if he had been living in a house with rooms he had never entered, sharing it with strange people he had never previously set eyes on. He was disoriented by the discovery of his own ignorance. It threw him off balance. And now his life was in danger and he was trying to leave Seville, leave Spain, all in a headlong rush.

They arrived at the waterfront. The beach was busy, as always, with stevedores and carts. At first glance, Barney reckoned there were about forty ships moored. The morning tide was preferred for departure, for then the ship had a whole day of sailing ahead; but usually one or two would leave in the afternoon. However, the tide was already on the turn: they would soon be away.

The three men hurried to the water’s edge and scanned the vessels, looking for signs of imminent departure: hatches closed, captain on deck, crew in the rigging. A ship called
Ciervo
was already moving out of its berth, the crew using long poles to keep it away from the barks on either side. There was still time to get aboard, just. Carlos cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: ‘Skipper! Do you want three strong deck hands?’

‘No!’ came the answer. ‘I’ve got a complete crew.’

‘How about three passengers? We can pay.’

‘No room!’

He was probably planning something illegal, Barney speculated, and did not want it to be witnessed by people he did not know or trust. The commonest crime, in these waters, was offshore dealing in American silver, to evade the king’s taxes in Seville. But straightforward piracy was not unusual.

They hurried along the river bank, but their luck was out. No one else seemed to be leaving. Barney felt desperate. Now what would they do?

They reached the downstream limit of the harbour. It was marked by a fortress called the Golden Tower. At this point an iron chain could be stretched from one bank to the other, so that raiders coming upstream from the sea could not attack the ships at anchor.

Outside the fortress, a recruiter was at work, standing on a barrel, calling on young men to join the army. ‘There’s a hot meal and a bottle of wine for every man who enlists now,’ he shouted to a crowd of onlookers. ‘Over there is a ship called
José y María
, and the two blessed saints watch over her and guard all who sail in her.’ He pointed, and Barney saw that he had an iron hand, presumably the artificial replacement for a real one lost in battle.

Barney looked in the direction indicated and saw a big three-masted galleon bristling with cannons, its deck already crowded with young men.

The recruiter went on: ‘We’re sailing this afternoon to a place where there are wicked heathens to be killed, and where the girls are as willing as they are pretty, as I can tell you, my lads, from personal experience, if you know what I mean.’

There was a knowing laugh from the crowd.

‘I don’t want you if you’re weak,’ he said scornfully. ‘I don’t want you if you’re timid. I don’t want you if you’re a girlie-boy, and you know what I mean by that. This is only for the strong, the brave and the tough. This is for real men.’

On the deck of the
José y María
someone shouted: ‘All aboard!’

‘Last chance, lads,’ the recruiter called. ‘What is it to be? Stay at home with your Mama, eating bread-and-milk and doing as you’re told? Or come with me, Captain Ironhand Gómez, for a man’s life, travel and adventure, fame and fortune. All you have to do is walk up that gangway, and the world is yours.’