The Immortal Conquistador (Kitty Norville 15)

Like the chapel, this room had no windows. There was a table with a lit candle on it, several chairs, and a small, dirty portrait of the Blessed Virgin. There was a trapdoor in the floor, with a big iron ring to lift it. Ricardo wondered what was in the cellar.

“Take a seat. I have some wine,” the friar said, going to a cabinet in the corner. “Would you like some?”

“Yes, please.” Ricardo sat in the chair closest to the door.

The friar put one pewter cup on the table, poured from an earthenware jug, and indicated that Ricardo should take it. He took a sip; it was weak, sour. But his mouth was dry, and the liquid helped.

The friar didn’t pour a drink for himself. Sitting on the opposite side of the table, he regarded Ricardo as if they were two men in a plaza tavern, not two dusty, weary colonials in a dark room lit by a candle. The man was pale, as if he spent all his time indoors. His hands, resting on the table, were thin, bony. Under his robes, his entire body might have been a skeleton. He had dark hair trimmed in a tonsure and a thin beard. He was a stereotype of a friar who had been relegated to the outer edges of the colony for too long.

“I am Fray Juan,” the man said, spreading his hands. “And this is my village.”

Ricardo couldn’t hide his confusion. ?

?Forgive me, Fray Juan, but Señor Ruiz told me this was a rich village. I expected to see farmers and shepherds at work. Women in the courtyard, weaving and grinding corn.”

“Oh, but this is a prosperous village. You must take my word that appearances here aren’t everything.” His lips turned in a smile.

“Then what is going on here?” He had started to make guesses: Fray Juan was smuggling something through the village; he’d failed utterly at converting the natives and putting them to useful work and refused to admit it; or everyone had died of disease. But even then there ought to be some evidence. Bodies, graves, something.

Juan studied him with cold eyes, blue and hard as stones. Ricardo wanted to hold the stare, but something made him glance away. His heart was pounding. He wanted to flee.

The friar said, “You rode with Coronado, didn’t you? The expedition to find Cíbola?”

Surviving that trip at all gave one a certain reputation. “Yes, I did. Along with Ruiz.”

“Even if he hadn’t told me I would have guessed. You have that look. A weariness, like nothing will ever surprise you again.”

Ricardo chuckled. “Is that what it is? Something different than the usual cynicism?”

“I see that you are not a youth, but you are also not an old man. Not old enough to have the usual cynicism. Therefore, you’ve lived through something difficult. You’re the right age for it.”

A restless caballero wandering the northern provinces? He supposed there were a few of that kind. “You’ve changed the subject. Where is Ruiz?”

“He will be here,” Fray Juan said, soothingly. “Captain, look at me for a moment.” Ricardo did. Those eyes gleamed in the candlelight until they seemed to fill the room. The man was all eyes, shining organs in a face of shadows. “Stay here tonight. It’s almost dusk, far too late to start back for Zacatecas. There are no other settlements within an hour’s ride of here. Take the clean bed in the house next door, sleep tonight, and in the morning you’ll see that all here is well.”

They regarded one another, and Ricardo could never recall what passed through his mind during those moments. The Franciscan wouldn’t lie to him, surely. So all must be well, despite his misgivings.

And Fray Juan was right; Ricardo must stay the night in any case. “When will Ruiz return?”

“Rest, Captain. He’ll be at your side when you wake.”

Ricardo found himself lulled by the friar’s voice. The look in his eyes was very calming.

A moment later, he was sitting at the edge of a rope cot in a house so poorly made that he could see through the cracks in the walls. He didn’t remember coming here. Had he been sleepwalking? Was he so weary that a trance had taken him? For all his miles of travel, that had never happened before. He hadn’t eaten supper. He wondered how much of the night had passed.

His horse—he didn’t remember caring for his horse; he’d left the animal tacked up near the trough. That jolted him to awareness. It was the first lesson of this vast country: Take care of your horse before yourself, because you’d need the animal if you hoped to survive the great distances between settlements.

Rushing outside, he found his bay mare grazing peacefully, chewing grass around its bit while dragging the reins. He caught the reins, removed the saddle and bridle, rubbed the animal down, and picketed it to a sturdy tree that had access to good grazing, since no cut hay or grain seemed available. He had found water in a small pond in the meadow.

Now that he was fully awake, studying the valley under the light of a three-quarters moon, Ricardo’s suspicions renewed. This village was dead. He should have questioned the friar more forcefully about what had happened here. Nothing about this place felt right, and Fray Juan’s calm assurances meant nothing.

Ricardo had reason to doubt the word of a man of God. It was a friar, another man of God, who had brought back the story of Cíbola, of a land covered in lush pastures and rich fields, of cities with wealth that made the Aztec Empire seem as dust. Coronado had believed those stories. They all had, until they had reached the edge of that vast and rocky wasteland to the north. They had whispered to each other, “Is this it?”

Ricardo de Avila would find Diego Ruiz and learn what had happened here.

The wind spoke strangely here, crackling through cottonwoods, skittering sand across the mud-patched walls of the buildings. In the first hut, where he’d been directed to stay, he found a lantern and lit it using his own flint. With the light, he examined the abandoned village.

If disease had struck, he’d have expected to see graves. If there had been an attack, a raid by some of the untamed native tribes in the mountains, he would have seen signs of violence: shattered pottery, interrupted chores. He’d have found bodies and carrion animals. But there was not so much as a drop of shed blood.