The Errant Flock Read online

  The Errant Flock

  Jana Petken

  ©2015 by Jana Petken. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieved system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  The Errant Flock is a work of fiction and bears no factual resemblance to the characters or events in the story.

  Cover design by Novel Design Studios

  Also available from Jana Petken:

  Award Winning, The Guardian of Secrets

  The Mercy Carver Series:

  Dark Shadows, Book 1

  Blood Moon, Book 2

  A Five Star, Readers’ Favorite Review.

  The Errant Flock was a fantastic book. Absolutely fantastic. I am a fan of historical fiction in general, but this book stands out even among my very favourites. Author Jana Petken is an extremely talented author who has done an amazing job at describing scenes so clearly that the reader will absolutely feel in the moment, even if the moment occurred more that 500 years ago.

  Any reader who enjoys historical fiction, action or just a good book will love The Errant Flock. In fact, the only piece of advice I have for any potential reader is to be sure that you have time set aside to read this book, because you absolutely will not want to set it down once you start it, it's just that good.

  Acknowledgements

  To my mother, Rena, you are always in my heart.

  Also, my thanks to:

  Nick Wale, my publicist;

  Bob Martin, my proof reader;

  Editor, Shellie Hurrle

  To all those who continue to believe in me, thank you for your unwavering support.

  CHAPTER one

  December 1491

  The duke of Sagrat, Luis Henrique Peráto, strode through his castle’s hallways with his head bowed in sorrow. Tears slipped from his red-rimmed eyes and down his cheeks. So profound was his rage and grief that he boorishly pushed aside servants and soldiers and subjected those within earshot to mumbled profanities.

  His stride lengthened further as he neared the castle’s heavy iron-studded doors. At least outside he had some respite from the prying eyes that stalked him every time he left his chambers. There was no privacy within these godforsaken walls.

  Tears continued to gather in his eyes. He exhaled a guttural grunt, billowing from deep within his throat, and thought, I must stop crying. A duke’s tears would be seen as weakness of spirit and a pitiful self-indulgence unbecoming of nobility. No one must know why his heart was breaking. Only God would bear witness to his grief this night. Only He would know of his suffering, and He would be merciful.

  A thick gold chain at his neck, which jangled against his chain mail vest, secured the long black and gold cloak wrapped around his broad shoulders. The mantle’s ermine fur trim swept the ground behind him. It was heavy and cumbersome, but it was a vital item of clothing to combat the coldest winter months, when a perpetual wind seemed to blow through the ancient castle’s passageways. This night, there was a luminous sky filled with stars, but it was so cold that breath lingered in the air like a fog.

  The duke had a handsome countenance. His long noble nose was perhaps too sharp to be called perfect, but it was as straight as an arrow and was framed by light brown eyes surrounded by thick lashes and arched brows which were unusually feminine. Like most Spanish men, he sported a small bearded peak which dangled off the edge of his chin, and as he neared the castle’s doors, he twirled its wiry coils around his finger, as was his habit whenever darkness of mood came upon him.

  A group of guards huddled on the ground just in front of the heavy ten-foot wooden doors were flicking smooth stone marbles and laughing at each others’ jokes as though they had not a care in the world. But upon seeing their nobleman approaching, they jumped to their feet, clearly surprised and ashamed to be caught neglecting their duties.

  Luis, sweeping by them with a contemptuous sneer, halted suddenly and barked an order which left his militiamen with no doubt that he was displeased.” Get up off your arses and open the doors for me! Should marauders come to do mischief, they’ll find my castle an easy catch with such a slothful, useless bunch guarding it!”

  Outside, the paved courtyard was coated with a light frost. Luis lifted his face to the air and exhaled a long steamy breath that lingered in the stillness. Hugging his cloak tighter across his chest, he walked doggedly along the stone path towards one of the wall’s watchtowers, cursing God under his breath as he went.

  Three more guards on the uppermost part of the battlements, which sat just beneath the watchtower, tossed down their dice and stood to attention with the same surprised and guilty expressions as displayed previously by the guards inside. Feeling his resentment rising further, Luis shouted at them to leave the wall. He rarely ventured outside at night to check on what his militia were doing. Why should he? he thought. That was Captain Tur’s job. The lazy whoreson was probably sleeping like a dormouse.

  After pushing aside the last man to reach the bottom of the wall’s steps, Luis questioned his generosity. The militiamen were rewarded handsomely for serving him. In his opinion, they shouldn’t be paid any more money than the other fifty or so castle servants, from swine herder to cook. He had often suggested that to his late father, but the old duke had always maintained that until Spain formed a regular army, privately paid soldiers would continue to be crucial. “There are plenty of good men in this town ready and willing to take your jobs from you!” he blurted his thoughts aloud without thinking.

  Climbing the stairs to the top of the wall where the tower stood, he leaned his body against the cold stones and then gripped a merlon block by its outer edge. Scraping his fingernails along its width until they bled, he prayed that this physical pain would ease the terrible ache in his heart. His faith had been tested many times, he thought, but this night God was the cruel hand that had once again deprived him of a living child. If only he could blaspheme aloud or blame someone for his misfortune …

  Why did the Almighty treat him thus? Luis asked silently. What deeds of his had been so vile that his bloodline be stolen from him repeatedly? Was it God’s will that saw his wife’s womb a cursed grave for each of the three infants she had tried and failed to deliver safely into the world? He exhaled, shook his head, and choked back a sob. No, he could not hold the Almighty responsible for this calamity, for that would be heresy. But fault must be laid at someone’s door, he then thought, for if no one were guilty, this tragedy would not make sense.

  “Bring me the physician!” he shouted down to the guards standing at ease in the courtyard. “Bring him to me now!”

  Looking over the top of the wall, he stared into the darkness, grunting bitterly and despising what he saw. Beneath him, a long procession of townspeople were snaking their way up the hill’s zigzagged path towards the south-east gate, where the grotto of Madonna was situated. After they laid offerings at her feet, the people would walk back down to the base of the hill and celebrate Mass in the church of San Agustin.

  Focusing his eyes, he now saw hundreds of lit fire torches guiding route of the processional. Buildings, trees, and rocks sitting at the edge of the path were lit up, and even from where he stood, he could make out frosty specks on white granite stone.

  The alabaster effigy of the Immaculate Conception, sitting atop a wooden pallet with four tree trunk arms and being carried by six men, was accompanied by priests and Dominican monks singing in prayer. For the moment, their voices were faint, but when they reached the castle walls, their chanting would soar and echo throughout the town below. He was in no mood to listen to their wailing prayers.

  A hazy orange cloud sat above the town like a halo, yet eastwards across the plain towards the sea, there was only a
mysterious darkness. Luis breathed deeply and inhaled the pungent aroma of smoking wild boar and kid meat being cooked on this auspicious night of sacrifice and prayer. After Mass, those lucky enough to have meat would devour it like a pack of hungry wolves. They would drink the wine vats dry, until their legs no longer held them upright and their tongues slurred with senseless mutterings.

  Below him, townspeople sang God’s praises whilst he suffered in silence. He knew what they were asking Him for. They prayed for rain to end the drought and to replenish the earth. They also prayed for strong olive trees and vineyards to produce oil and wine. They were asking for healthy vegetable crops after a bad harvest. “Give us a return to prosperity,” they’d be crying like sullen children.

  He had spent hours this night pleading for the life of his newborn son, which was infinitely more important than their greed and need for self-gratification. God would doubtless answer their prayers … but those of Sagrat’s duke? No, God cared not a fig for him or his sorrow.

  He spat over the wall, symbolically showering his people with his saliva, and his impatience grew. “Where is the physician? Find him!” he shouted angrily. “Drag him here, if you have to!” He wiped a dribble of spit from his bearded chin and stared again at the crowds below. They were ignorant peasants. They contributed nothing to the world, yet God blessed them with children and grandchildren to carry their names and their bloodlines into the future.

  Even the Jews in the Jewry, on the northern slope, were more contented with their lot than he was. Why should he suffer his people’s mockery and cruel whisperings? He would kill anyone who displayed the slightest disrespect or mentioned his failure to father a healthy child.

  Turning sharply at the sound of approaching footsteps, he scowled and silently studied Saul Cabrera, the Peráto family’s physician. His stocky frame, trembling with fear, was hunched forwards, heavy shoulders drooping with shame. Glaring at him, Luis thought that he should feel shame. He deserved to drown in a sea of it.

  Cabrera cowered before Luis’s intense stare, gripping his black cloak so tightly across his chest that his knuckles whitened. “Your Grace?” he muttered sheepishly.

  “Hold your tongue!” Luis wondered why his father had held the physician in such high esteem right up until the day he died. The Jew was a bungling idiot and far too old to treat anyone, let alone the Peráto family. He was finished … He’d never be allowed near the duchess again.

  “Leave us!” Luis growled at the guards in the courtyard. “Wait for me inside. And close the doors behind you.” When they had left, he shouted, “Cabrera, get up here!”

  Luis watched Cabrera wearily climb the stairs. He’s like an old hound fit only for the stock pot, he thought. His rage rose like a wave. Guilt sat in the Jew’s beady eyes and on his trembling lips. It was as clear as the light of day. The decrepit old fool knew he was at fault. His manner only confirmed what was startlingly true; his carelessness had killed the infant. Too angry to speak at that moment, Luis turned his back on Cabrera and stared again beyond the wall. He had to think and to come to a decision.

  Jews … What was he to do with them? he wondered. He was a patient and lenient man. He’d fought hard to continue a legacy of easy coexistence with Sagrat’s Jewish population; such had been the strength of his word to his dear departed father. Recalling Ricardo Peráto’s words, he sneered. The Jews were important to Spain. They were the backbone of the community. Because of them, the kingdom of Aragon enjoyed culture, art, and science. Jews had fought for Their Majesties against the Moors. They helped fund the war, which was more than most of the Valencia nobles had done. His father had never tired of advocating for his Jews.

  Ricardo Peráto would be remembered as being a good man, Luis thought, but he’d also been a foolish dreamer, incapable of seeing that having the king’s love and a Jewish population did not go hand in hand. He should have set more store in pleasing Rome and the Spanish crown. They saw the Jews as a threat to Christian Spain and wanted them gone, whereas his father had stubbornly argued against that notion, albeit in private.

  The kingdom of Aragon had four regions: Barcelona, Zaragoza, Valencia, and Mallorca. Less than one thousand Jews remained in Valencia, and most of them lived in Sagrat. Under his father’s rule, they had been allowed freedoms long since denied Jews in other districts. Luis admitted that there was a time when he had agreed with his father’s decision to overlook the monarchs’ demands for tighter control over the Jews and their monetary possessions. And when some dukedoms and provinces expelled their Jews, he and his father had held fast against the idea, preferring to wait until they were eventually forced to get rid of them. Why throw something away when it was still of use? Ricardo Peráto had questioned.

  The time was coming, Luis thought, when Sagrat’s Jewry would be nothing but a derelict reminder of what was once a thriving business community. In his opinion, the king and queen were not trying to expel a race but rather a religion. Their obsession with the Jews dismayed him, at times, as did their lack of common sense.

  Luis recalled his father receiving numerous correspondences regarding the Jews. The letters had been sent to the realm’s principle nobles a few years ago. According to Ferdinand and Isabella, it was their solemn duty to support the Holy Office of the Inquisition, mainly because, in their opinion, Christian lives were being endangered by contact with the Jews. The Holy Office asserted their power by providing that the Jews be expelled, and the King and Queen agreed and further stated that there should be no Jews remaining in any of their realms and territories. They were doing this because of their debts and obligations to the Holy Office, they’d added, despite great harm to themselves.

  How noble their words had sounded. And what a righteous declaration they’d made in the last paragraph, which had stuck in his mind: We are seeking and preferring the salvation of souls above our own profit and that of individuals.

  Jolting himself from his thoughts, he turned to face Cabrera. He felt sick. His heart was breaking, and the Jew standing in front of him was to blame and had to be dealt with. Luis struggled to steady his breathing, but the image of his son’s limp body lying in his arms and the physician’s guilt-ridden face looking on in the chamber’s shadowy corner caused his heart to thump hard against his chest.

  Maybe the king and queen were right after all? Perhaps Jews were a stain on this town. Still staring at Cabrera, his eyes widened with an even more sinister notion. Did Cabrera purposely harm the infant? It was a possibility. He and his Jewish cohorts had been snubbed. The physician and his friend Rabbi Rabinovitch had held positions on the town council for years, until Christian voters recently dismissed them. Cabrera was wealthy and lived in one of the grandest houses in Sagrat, but his home and the Jewry’s very existence were under threat. Yes, he was capable of killing a helpless baby to avenge his humiliations.

  Luis’s lips pursed in anger. The muscles in his cheeks twitched, and his eyes narrowed to mere slits. Thanks to the dukes of Sagrat, Cabrera had lived a self-indulgent, pampered life, yet three Peráto heirs were dead because of him. The man had the gall to look forward to a rich retirement, but he wouldn’t get one. He didn’t deserve to live until he was a feeble but contented old man, dying as he squatted over his chamber pot.

  “I’ve been blind, but I now accept the error of my ways,” Luis said calmly after the long silence. “I’ve been a sentimental fool. At my father’s behest, I accepted you, honoured you, and allowed you to keep your position even after he died. I’ve shown you nothing but kindness. I put aside my own grief after your last two failures and gave you another opportunity to prove yourself to me … and you have failed miserably!”

  “Your Grace, I...”

  “Keep your mouth still. Your godless religion and your wretched, misguided soul have infected the duchess’s womb. I forgave you your ineptness after the death of my infant daughter and for the loss of the babe that dissolved to blood inside my wife’s womb. I was a fool to think you loved my family. You wit
h your heretic rituals …”

  “No, don’t say that. You will not call me a heretic,” Cabrera retorted, waving a bony index finger in Luis’s face. “I love God, as well you know. I am faithful to him and to his teachings. I am not a Christian, and I do not adhere to Rome’s laws or their definition of heresy. Your own good father understood my faith and accepted it as my right. The death of your child is a tragedy, but—”

  “A tragedy … A tragedy, you call it? My son is dead because of you! Both he and the daughter my wife bore before him drew breath for just a few short moments and then died in my arms. They were delivered by your hand, yours alone … You have cursed my family, Cabrera. You seek to destroy my line. You hate Christians. Don’t deny it!” Luis nodded. He was surprised at just how much he agreed with the conclusion he had just reached. “Come closer.”

  Watching the physician shuffle hesitantly towards him, he grunted with disgust at the downcast cowardly eyes refusing to look up at him. “Face me, you treacherous bastard. Look at me.” With a tight grip on Cabrera’s jaw, Luis forced the physician to look him in the eye. “What words of comfort can you give me? How will you defend the indefensible?”

  Cabrera’s reddened eyes stared unwaveringly. “Your Grace, I tried to save the infant. I used every medical method known to me. I would gladly have given it my own breath. Sadly, I have concluded that your wife’s womb may be hostile. It appears to me that it was not able to give proper nourishment to the child. She may never give birth to a healthy infant.” He swallowed painfully and then added, “In both cases, the babes were not strong enough to breathe on their own.”

  “Are you saying that my wife is at fault?”

  “Not at fault, Your Grace. No blame should be laid at any door. I believe the duchess lacks strength. She eats like a small bird, pecking at slivers of bread. She told me herself that most food is sinful to the world and that she would rather abstain than eat it. She has an ailment of the mind that must be dealt with, and unless she takes better care, I fear we will see the same result every time she falls with child. Next time will be different. I will confine her to bed, and you must encourage her to eat.”