Without consciously thinking about it she was conducting an abbreviated case briefing; bringing the others up to speed in a crashing hurry because, self-evidently, time was short.
Tomorrow, there would be a new case, new priorities for the detectives she was leading today…
A wry half-smile quirked at her lips.
“What is it?” Henrietta asked.
“Nothing, I just had a really weird moment,” Melody shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, I must be getting a little light-headed.”
Hunger was cramping her stomach.
Melody touched her head.
“Hen and I look like supplicants who have had their heads shaved in penitence, that works well on two counts. One, women on pilgrimage frequently put themselves through that sort of thing as a sign of humility. Two, if anybody ever gets photographs of the two missing British-New England women the authorities want to speak to that might be circulated out here in the back of nowhere, or even in any of the towns and cities we will need to go through, neither of us will look remotely like the women in the pictures.”
The other man and woman nodded.
“Santiago de Compostela,” Albert Stanton murmured. “Why there?”
“Because the line between here and there, so far as I can remember, goes within a few miles of the north-eastern corner of Portugal,” Melody retorted. “Well, when we get past Salamanca, anyway, which has to be our first aim. Hopefully, once we get to the city we can rest up, be anonymous for a few days. We might even be able to catch up with what’s going on in the rest of the World. I think we need to try to do that.”
“Salamanca?” Henrietta chimed in, softly. “Won’t that be dangerous?”
Melody contemplated complete frankness.
No, there is a time and a place for that and this is not it.
So, she told a white lie.
“I don’t think so,” she replied, eying Pedro, “we have a long way to go, and we have to think about that young man, now.”
Melody could sense that Albert Stanton was itching to be practical, to suggest that the best thing for Pedro was perhaps, for him to be handed over to somebody, someone better able to take care of him.
“Look,” he began, horribly uncomfortable. “About Pedro…”
Melody could feel Henrietta starting to bristle with outrage.
“No,” she said, forestalling a scene that they could not afford to have, now or at any time in the days to come if they were to have any chance of surviving. “Pedro’s not going anywhere. That’s final. Besides,” she went on, mostly to mollify the Manhattan Globe man’s somewhat guilty unease, “the Policia and the Inquisition are going to be looking for two women, not two women, a man and a young boy.”
Sensing that they needed to be doing something before still more questions prompted delay and likely, inertia, Melody made a show of clapping her hands together.
“Let’s go into the town.”
The others hesitated.
“Come on! We’re pilgrims, we’re cold, we’re hungry, we’re good Catholics in need, on a blessed holy journey. If that doesn’t work, we’re going to have to beg. Remember what I said; you and Hen have taken a vow of silence, I am your sister, I lost my husband a couple of years back, and together, we are all walking the way of St James to atone for our sins and to pray for redemption. Our lives have become grief-stricken thus, we are prepared to bear the unbearable a little longer to seek remission from purgatory. You two have sworn silence, I have foresworn to devote my life to God, to enter a Holy house for the rest of my days. Okay, are we clear about all that?”
The others nodded mutely.
“What’s so special about Santiago de Compostela?” Albert Stanton inquired, very nearly under his breath as they set off, ever the curious journalist.
Melody was sorely tempted to tell him that: “It just is!”
However, she contained her impatience; she needed to start getting into character.
I plan to be a nun, after all.
She realised that she had forgotten something very important.
“In public, or anywhere that anybody might possibly catch sight of us, do not speak to me. Just nod or shake your heads if I talk to you. Vow of silence, remember?”
“Yes…” Henrietta blushed and lowered her eyes.
Albert Stanton nodded mutely.
“Good,” Melody declared. “Follow me, there has to be a track or something that follows the river into the village.”
She set off up the bank. Downstream the riverside was even rockier, more precipitous than the two boys had warned, as the Rio Tormes narrowed and began to run faster.
“Santiago de Compostela is all about the alleged burial place of Saint James, aka ‘son of Zebedee and Salome’, one of the earlier Apostles. He was one of the fellows standing on the shore when Jesus gave the pep talk about being a fisher of men, and invited him to follow him. Sorry, I was never religious, so if I sound a bit trite about all this, I apologise in advance.”
The others had trailed after her.
She halted and they caught up with her.
“James is a fairly important Apostle. He was one of the three picked to witness Christ’s transfiguration, I think. Anyway, famously, he was one of, if not the first of the Apostles to be martyred, sometime between AD forty-two and forty-four when he was so ill-advised as to return to Palestine. Herod, not the one who killed all the first born, this Herod was a son or grandson, although I might be wrong about that, and anyway there is a lot of historical debate about him, Herod Agrippa, I mean, had James executed ‘by the sword’, which is generally taken to mean he was beheaded. Legend has it that the poor fellow’s remains were brought back to Galicia and buried on a mountainside pretty much where Santiago de Compostela, as a result, now stands. Are you both still with me?”
Melody was satisfied when her companions contented themselves with acknowledging nods.
“Okay, so, all that happened, supposedly, in the First Century. Subsequently, everybody forgot all about it for the next seven hundred years until a hermit called Pelayo had a vision. He saw a shining light, which he described as a ‘Campus Stellae’. The Latin was later abbreviated to ‘Compostela’; hence we get ‘Santiago’ the Spanish for ‘Saint James’ and the name of the village, then town, then city which developed in the vicinity. I know we get terribly intellectual and sniffy about these things; but back in the Eighth Century in a world lit only by fire, hundreds of years before the Renaissance, people needed their superstitions and their faith to get by. Which was probably why the King of that part of Christian Spain, Alphonse II, hearing about Pelayo’s vision, promptly made Saint James the patron of his kingdom and started building several chapels, to James, Saint Peter and of course, to the Christ. For good measure he persuaded the Augustinians to found a monastery in the area. Hence, Santiago de Compostela was born. Within a very few years the place was well-known throughout the entire Catholic communion, basically most of the known, so-called ‘civilised’ world in those days, stretching from the Byzantine Levant to the Atlantic coast of Ireland.”
Melody saw what looked like a path through the trees ahead of her. Taking a breath, she had been gabbling and very nearly turning blue with oxygen starvation, she ploughed on.
“We’re currently in Santiago de Compostela’s second great age of pilgrimage. The first went on for six or seven hundred years before it petered out somewhat in the fourteenth and fifteenth century and more or less came to a complete halt in the nineteenth century. Part of this was to do with Roman politics, part of it was because by the early middle ages there were alternative attractions. By the eleventh century Santiago de Compostela possessed one of the great cathedrals of Christendom but the coming of the Black Death, and the great churches of Rome itself, Jerusalem and Constantinople, and elsewhere, were all contributory factors in the decline. It was not until about a century ago that a modern Pope, I forget which one, re-affirmed his infallible belief in the ‘miracle of Pelayo’s vision’ that the pilgrim trail to Galicia began again to emulate its former glory.”