THE HOUSE WAS roofless.
Wind blew through the open beams and goats trotted off at my approach. A figure came from the stable block. Even though it was only a few months since I’d seen him, I almost didn’t recognize Garci, my father’s farm manager. He was a changed man, his dark hair now almost white, his brow furrowed.
He looked at me in my garb of convent grey with the close-fitting coif and wimple. ‘Zarita,’ he said sadly, ‘they have cut off your beautiful hair.’
I recalled what Sister Maddalena had told me regarding a woman’s hair, and I thought how much time it saved me not having to comb or dress long hair every day. Also . . . there were few mirrors in a convent.
I replied truthfully, ‘I did mind very much to begin with, but now I hardly think of it at all.’
Serafina and Ardelia, both looking wretched, stood at the door of the servants’ quarters. Behind them I caught sight of Bartolomé in a corner, mumbling to himself and rocking backwards and forwards. My heart contracted. This once perpetually happy boy had not smiled since the day of his arrest by the Inquisition.
Garci watched me as my gaze travelled around the compound. I frowned as I looked at the tree growing before our front door. Its bark had split apart and there was some kind of rot forming upon it. It would be dead before springtime. Garci looked from me to the tree and back again. We were both remembering the day my father hanged the beggar. The day my beloved mama died. I gazed at the tree with its mutilated trunk and I shivered.
I turned to look at the house. ‘Do we know who did this?’ I asked Garci.
He shrugged. ‘Who can say? There’s so much strife nowadays between Christians, Jews and Moors that criminals take advantage of the conflict and form outlaw bands who thieve and murder with no allegiance to any cause.’
‘Have other farmhouses or estates been attacked recently?’
‘Not that we’ve heard.’
‘Then they picked my father in particular.’
Garci was not a stupid man. ‘I wondered about that,’ he said. ‘For it would make better sense to choose a more remote estate to rob. This house is close to the town. There are other, richer pickings located further away from where help might come.’
‘Was it perhaps an act of vengeance?’
‘Anyone that your father sentenced might bear a grudge,’ Garci replied. ‘Although I don’t think they intended to blow up the barn. In case orders ever came from the government instructing him to raise a militia, your father kept gunpowder and some arms stored in an old cellar under the barn. But apart from your father and myself, no one knew of that. The heat from the fire must have caused it to ignite. The explosion rocked the town – people came with buckets of water. We managed to douse the flames in the house, but not before a great deal of damage was done.’
I went towards the house. ‘Show me,’ I said, ‘where you found my papa’s body.’
As Garci took me inside the building, an overwhelming sadness came over me. So many happy days of my youth had been spent here. And now my mama and papa and our beautiful house were all gone.
Garci pointed to the foot of the staircase. ‘Your father lay there.’
Through my tears I asked Garci how he thought Papa had died.
‘It would have been very quick,’ he assured me. ‘He’d not been beaten, nor stabbed, nor run through with a sword. The doctor examined him and concluded that he’d had a heart attack. Your papa told no one, but I knew he’d been having chest pains off and on for over a year.’ Garci paused, and then added, ‘Since your mama died.’
So Papa had suffered grief just as I had. His death seemed to bring me closer to him. Yet he had married again so quickly. As that thought came to me, I asked Garci, ‘There was only one body found?’
‘Yes.’
‘So . . . what of Lorena?’
‘We think she got out of the house and went towards the barn. Ardelia is sure she heard someone running past her window, screaming, just before the barn blew up. Lorena must have been caught in the explosion, and such was the intensity, nothing of her would remain.’
I cringed inside when I thought of Lorena’s end. She’d died horribly, in absolute terror. Though I’d disliked her, I wouldn’t have wished such a fate upon her, nor upon the innocent child who would have died as she perished.
‘Was her baby not due to be born soon?’
‘Within weeks, yes.’
She must be dead. What other alternative was there? A gang of robbers wouldn’t kidnap a heavily pregnant woman.
‘Tell me the circumstances in the house before these men arrived.’
‘Your stepmother, Lorena, had retired for the night. She was increasingly tired. These last few days she’d been unwell and restless. Although the birthing date is weeks away, Ardelia said that she thought the baby was stirring, getting ready to be born. Lorena had gone to bed. Your father was sitting in his study reading through some papers. Recently he’d been spending a lot of time sorting out financial documents. The lamps and candles were lit. I brought him a glass of wine and bade him goodnight, leaving him to lock up the house from the inside as he always did. I walked the perimeter as usual. All was quiet, nothing amiss. I let the dogs into the yard, ate my own meal with Serafina, and we went to bed. Most everyone else was sleeping. Ardelia and Lorena’s maid, who share a room, were awake, gossiping together, but then they too fell asleep. The first noise we heard was the explosion, although Ardelia thinks she awoke moments earlier when she heard Lorena screaming.’
I walked through the hall and what remained of the kitchen and dining room. This was not the work of some random band of marauders. None of the paintings or silk hangings had been taken; neither had the plate or any household valuables been touched.
In the study I stood by the charred remains of the desk and I thought of my papa. I imagined him confronted by these men. He would not have submitted easily to their demands or threats.
Proud and disdainful, Papa would have done everything he could to protect Lorena and his unborn child. I glanced upward. Had she heard the disturbance and come down to see what was happening? Had Papa managed to shout a warning to her? He was an honourable man. He would have done that. Even if he’d died in the attempt.
I walked slowly back to the foot of the stairs. This was where he had fallen. He must have run here and died trying to protect his family. And Lorena, hearing him call out, would have come to the top landing. I imagined her looking down at these robbers. My father shouting to her, ordering her to barricade herself in her room.
I made to mount the stairs.
Behind me Garci said, ‘The steps are unsafe.’
‘I want to reach the upper floor,’ I told him.
He fetched a ladder and helped me clamber up. The floorboards cracked under our feet.
‘You must not go to the upstairs sitting room,’ he advised me.
That room had been my mother’s sitting room, the one that Lorena had taken over to entertain her guests at those foolish little parties she’d hosted.
The main bedroom was to the right and the floorboards were more sound there. The fire hadn’t reached here: the only damage had been done by smoke. The door was ajar, the bedclothes in disarray. Lorena hadn’t shut herself in. I examined the door panelling. There was no axe mark, no dent in the wood. On the dressing table lay an open box of jewellery. I ran my fingers through the soot-blackened beads.
Set against human life, how trivial and worthless these things were.
I gazed around me, thinking. If she hadn’t hidden in here, had Lorena tried to escape via the window? The casement was shut and locked. I sighed and leaned against the glass. Garci was right: she must have run out in the direction of the barn and perished in the explosion.
I looked outside. The view from this room was towards the paddock, the barn and the forest. Behind the road that lay beyond our back gate were the trees, both deciduous and evergreen. I recalled the walks Mama and I had taken there; the stories she’d told me of wolves and goblins. She’d warned me not to wander across the road to play on my own and never to go there at night. But Lorena hadn’t heard those tales. If my father had called out to warn her that they were under attack, perhaps she’d contrived to evade these men. If she’d managed to escape the house, then the forest wouldn’t appear a place of dread, it would be a place of refuge.
I turned and walked quickly from the room. ‘Saddle me a horse, Garci,’ I said. ‘I am going into the forest.’