Grudging (27 page)

He dropped his hands. “There
is
no back gate. No other gate but the west gate.”

“Not a very smart way to build.”

“No, probably not.” He sighed. “But it always worked to our advantage before. The only other enemies we ever had were smaller
ciudades-­estado
. One gate to guard allowed for better distribution of forces. We could assign fewer men to the rest of the wall.” Why was he defending his city's strategy to her?

“Well, if these Northerners are all focused on the gate, couldn't we climb over in the back somewhere? With a ladder or something?”

“We have no ladder, and the wall is twenty feet high.”

“Oh,” she said. “So we give up?”

“No,” he said, then louder, “No. Not me anyway. I'm getting closer. Try to see what's going on.” Guilt prodded at him. “Perhaps you should go home. As you said, your voice can't carry to an army. You're not going to be much use.”

The moonlight allowed him to see her flinch like he had struck her, then her eyes narrowed. “You're trying to protect me again, aren't you?” she huffed, then touched his arm. “I might have misled you on what the Song can do. Honestly, I'm not sure myself of its limits. I'm coming, too.”

“You'll get fleas.”

“I'll risk it.”

 

CHAPTER 29

A
ll through the long night, the candles burned down into puddles of wax and tallow on the cobblestones. Julian felt that it all happened a million miles away—­to another man. It was not himself kneeling next to his dead son with his inconsolable wife.

Women had come and spent much of the vigil with Beatriz, bringing a cushion for her knees, wrapping woolen shawls around her, holding her hand in silence as she cried. A priest had visited with holy water, speaking blessing and absolution over the dead. He could console, but not comfort. And through it all, messengers had come and gone, bringing Julian details of the progress of the preparations for the morning. The morning when the evacuation must go forward whether he cared any longer or not.

Soon, before the hours of daylight, they would come for Salvador and take his son away for burial, without a wake, without a mass. A quick slide into the family tomb without even his parents present, since Beatriz had to evacuate with the others, and he had to face his fate.

­People came and went in the busy courtyard around them: for meetings of strategy, preparing weapons for the morning, going to shifts of guard duty. Fronilde had appeared and mingled her sobs with Beatriz's until the heartbroken girl was taken away by her parents. Members of his son's command and other friends and family members had materialized and sat with him for a time. Relatives of Gomez and Alvito had come with questions for which they had no answers, and through it all Julian had knelt by Salvador, numb to everything else.

Gradually, over the long hours of agony, his mind had taken refuge in memories of happier times, back when his sons were young, before he became mayor. When life was simple and good. Before he'd destroyed everything.

“Do you remember,” he asked Beatriz, “when Ramiro went missing after mass? How frantic we were.” Ramiro had been three and Salvador a sturdy eight-­year-­old. How silly that day's worry seemed now. How small.

“And it was Salvador who found him, playing in a puddle just up the road,” she answered with trembling voice. “I remember. Salvador had the gift from my grandmother. The Sight led him to his brother.”

“A fiction.” he said gruffly. If his son had the Sight, it had not served him well. “Wishful thinking from childhood stories, fanciful histories of our ­people.” He'd heard them, too. Stories of the
ciudades-­estado
­people a thousand years before they had cities, back when they'd been nomadic tribes of the desert, herding their sheep and goats. Even then they had been fiercely independent, each group sticking to their own, traveling to oases, sharing the same beliefs and culture but not the same leadership, sometimes warring over water or territory.

“No,” Beatriz insisted. “Not just stories. A gift—­from the Lord, before we knew his grace. The Sight has always been an important part of us, our only means of warning before we became lazy behind safe walls. Before the saints performed their miracles and established cities. But that doesn't mean it was lost. Doesn't mean that stone has blocked it out. It's still there, and someone from my family has always had it.”

“Stuff and nonsense.” Julian hardly knew why they discussed this now. In the days before saints, ­people clung to superstition and the belief in small magic. Those days were over, no longer needed. And to dwell on it . . .

Even if Salvador
had
had it, it had not served him. And looking at his son's body, it ended with him, too.

“My grandmother had it.” Beatriz sighed. “Of this I am sure. It skipped me. She told me I did not have the nature. Always in my life, I would see what is before me and not what is beyond. She predicted I would lose myself in home and family, and there my hopes and worries would lie.”

Beatriz shifted as if her knees ached. “I'm old now, old, though not yet at the great age of my grandmother. I remembered the disappointment of that day even now. I could not see beyond, like her.” She patted Julian's hand. “But discontent faded with the arrival of husband and children and many happy years.”

He stiffened. Many happy years, but not enough. Never enough.

“Now we suffer the setback to so many years of joy as parents and partners,” Beatriz continued. “No one escapes this world unscratched. Our time of misery has arrived. As the priests say, there is a time for joy and a time for sorrow. Truly, they comprehended how the Lord works.” A tear made its way down her face. “It was the witches who did this.”

Julian stirred and drew her into his arms again. How could he argue with her fatalist attitude when his own spirit was crushed? The fault was all his. Him and his risks. He'd destroyed those children with his pride and now his firstborn son. “We cannot know that. We were not there.” His voice hitched, but the words would come. “Ramiro, too, could be . . . could be . . .” He choked.

Beatriz pulled away, sitting tall to stare at the wall of the courtyard. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused as if she'd had gone from him. Heartbeats later, she settled against Julian as a whisper, soft as a butterfly wing, her eyes calm. “He lives. He sent Salvador to us.”

He stroked her hair, hoping to soothe her addled mind. “We can hope.”

“I don't have to hope. I know. I may not have the Sight, but I know in my heart of hearts that my other son lives.”

Julian gave her a long stare. She was too calm. He expected her to be out of her mind with grief, for reason to have failed her, but to invent such daydreams? Finding relief in fantasy? It was almost too much to listen to, as if he denied him his own grief with this nonsense.

And yet who was he to take what comfort she could find?

He hated to leave her like this, but time moved forward. It ripped what remained of his heart to go to his death and give her yet more sorrow. One day, she'd understand he did it for her. So she and their ­people could survive.

He glanced to the lightening sky, where already most of the stars had vanished. “After they take our son away, Carlos will take you home. Your maid and ­people of the household are waiting to go out of the city with you. I have seen to it, so you won't be alone on the trek. They will support you safely until I get there. My duty is here, to start the battle, then . . . away.”

“To leave our son?” She grasped the blanket covering Salvador. “To abandon him with strangers in order to save myself? I cannot.”

“You must,” he said. “I cannot survive unless I know you are safe. I cannot do what has to be done thinking of you inside the city.”

“Then you will meet me at the evacuation route?”

“Certainly,” he said, the first time he had to so blatantly lie to her about the plan. It hurt more knowing how easily the words came off his lips. “I will be there soon. Before you can miss me.”

She nodded. “That is good. Colina Hermosa cannot survive without your leadership,” she said. “You are the
only
thing that keeps us going, my husband.”

He took her hand and almost dropped it. “You are warm,
mi amor
.” Where before her flesh had been cold as ice, now her hands were warmer than his own. His face remained impassive, but his shoulders twitched in shock. Her words had been perfectly truthful, but he sensed something behind them. “Another could manage just as well . . . if I should fall. Which I will not, as I only direct the start of the battle, then away.”

“Away,” she repeated hollowly. “Very well. I will see you in the hills.” She kissed him tenderly. “After all, any washerwoman could take the rejection of the terms to the Northerners. A washerwoman is needed for nothing else.”

He looked at her suspiciously. Did she suspect? She could not. Beatriz would never stay silent about his intended sacrifice. Before he could respond further, a handcart creaked over to them drawn by two elderly men. The priest returned with them. They had come for Salvador. A great rising tide of misery rose in his chest, his throat. He clung to Beatriz as if he could never let her go.

He kissed her face, her eyes. “
Mi amor
, we must send our son away,” he said. “We will return to him in better days. Together now and forever.”

“Together,” she mumbled. “Let God's will be done. It is our time of sorrow. The test of our belief. You must lead this city.” Stiffly, she released Julian so he could go speak to the priest, laying her head on Salvador's chest.

The rough wool of the blanket scratched at Julian's hand as he touched his son's forehead, heart, liver, and spleen. “Be at peace, my son.” Soon, he would be with Salvador, then Julian could petition the saints in person to speed his son into heaven. Julian gave the lifeless shell a last caress and touched Beatriz's shoulder, then laboriously climbed to his feet, old bones complaining.

“Father.” Julian walked to the priest with hand outstretched, eager to get through this and meet his end. He would arrange the burial, then summon Carlos to take Beatriz to safety. He fought to heed the priest, mind trying to roam once more to happier days. Trying not to think ahead. The man rattled on and on with useless tired expressions that gave no comfort.

At the sound of a door booming shut, Julian spun around. Salvador's body lay alone. Beatriz was gone. A guard straightened from setting the metal bar back in place across the wicket.

“Beatriz!” he wailed in a voice that surely carried beyond the wall to the Northern camp. He ran to the gate. “What has happened?” he demanded of the two guards. “Did the First Wife go out?”

“Yes, sir.” the elder said, a grizzled veteran with a thick and tangled beard. “The First Wife said she was the envoy to the Northerners.”

“Envoy? That is insane! Open the door.”

The younger guard blanched white, but the older planted his spear in front of the door. “She said you would ask this. You are to stay here and lead the city . . . sir.”

“Open it or I will.” Julian demanded, trying to brush past them. He reached for the bar, and the guard blocked him, his face set.

“She said to tell you, you must live. That she is the washerwoman today. That she did it for Colina Hermosa, sir. The city needs you.”

Julian struggled to get past them. “Beatriz!” Hands grabbed him and pulled him away. He looked up into the concerned faces of
Concejales
Antonio and Pedro and his bodyguards. He continued to thrash uselessly.

The big butcher held him firm. “It is too late, my friend.”

“It is done,” Pedro agreed. “Your wife has fooled us all. She intends to play the hero and spare you.”

Julian dropped to his knees, grappling at his chest. A knife of pain stabbed at his heart. He couldn't breathe. That it should come to this. His love deceiving him, taking matters into her own hands . . . her hands . . . he should have known. The warmth.

He should have seen it sooner. Stopped her. God squeezed at his chest, pain crippling, taking everything. Lances of agony shot down his left arm. It tingled, feeling numb in spots.

“Julian! Julian!” Pedro called, holding him upright.

“The wall,” Antonio was saying, head tilted up to look at the parapets. “We can watch what happens from there.”

Despite the pain, Julian staggered to his feet. The wall. There he could see what became of Beatriz, just as days before he'd watched Father Telo. The priest had never returned. With Pedro's support, he stumbled to the steps and up, following Antonio's back. Soldiers helped hold him upright, got him a place in the front. A large crowd formed around them, all craning anxiously for a glimpse of the First Wife.

“There,
Alcalde
!” a sergeant called, pointing toward a group of Northerners in the road. “The First Wife!”

Julian shook off the hands holding him and rose to his toes. The tall, black-­lace mantilla perched on the back of Beatriz's head stood well above the enemy. As he watched, she settled the heavy wool shawl around her shoulders. The black and yellow of their uniforms circled her.

Only his need to know what happened kept him from throwing himself off the wall to be closer to her.
Mi amor.

She argued with the Northerners surrounding her. He would recognize that set to his wife's shoulders anywhere. One of the Northerners made a chopping motion across his wrist, then the group was leading her away toward the heart of their camp.

Julian cradled his left arm to his chest as the pain subsided, leaving only a dull ache. He watched until the last bit of Beatriz vanished into the mass of the Northerners. The stars were cold and hard above them, with only a hint of light on the eastern horizon.

“She's done it,” Pedro said in his ear. “She's been accepted.”

“Then there's no need to wait longer for our attack,” Antonio urged. “They have our response. In honor, we can start our resistance now. Perhaps save the First Wife in the process.”

Julian stared to hear the wish of his heart repeated. He'd wanted to propose such a thing, but thought it too selfish—­to sacrifice the city for his wife. Beatriz would not want that. But Antonio spoke truth. The Northerners had their reply. Why wait? Surely the ­people were assembled and ready, unwilling to wait until the last moment.

“Yes,” Pedro said. “I agree. We should begin the attack now.” He shouldered his way through the men to reach a group of messenger boys. “Run to the wall. Tell them to bring it down now. Now. Not at dawn. Get the ­people out.”

Julian spun to find the commanders. “Ready the men. Mass in the courtyard. The gates open for our charge as soon as we have a big enough complement.”

“Fetch the
Alcalde
a horse,” Antonio shouted. The large butcher flourished his cleaver. “Get him armor. We go to kill Northerners and bring back the First Wife.”

Julian took a sword someone put in his hands. Purpose returned, taking the pain away, though his left hand refused to grip strongly. It was a worry for another time. For now he would go to find Beatriz and destroy the Northerners. To give his city a chance to live. Even if all else he loved died.