Iacobus by Matilde Asensi

told me: ‘I will go to hell, cousin, I will go to hell if you don’t find François, the innkeeper in Roquemaure, and get him to tell you the truth. The Virgin said that if we didn’t break the oath we made that day before we die, both François and I would burn in hell. Tell him this, cousin, tell him to save his soul.’ And then he died … A few days later,” I continued, “I found a letter addressed to me amongst my cousin’s papers. Since my boat had still not arrived and his end was nearing, Henry had left me a few lines in a sealed envelope, in which he asked me to find you, innkeeper, ‘the man in whose house the Holy Father Clement died.’ Can you explain yourself?”
    “Everything happened so fast!” François whimpered in fear. “Neither your cousin nor I were to blame for anything!”
    “Can you tell me, man of God, what the hell you are talking about?” I said, shocked.
    “Your servant cannot hear what I am about to say! Who is he to know secrets that only four people … three now, in the whole world know?”
    “Actually, François, this young man is not only my servant and my squire, he is also my son, my only son, and unfortunately, he is illegitimate, a bastard … which is why I have brought him with me as my footman, so you can see now that you can speak freely. He will say nothing.”
    “Are you sure that he will not speak, sire?”
    “Swear, Jonas!” I ordered my surprised apprentice, who had never been in such a crazy situation before.
    “I, Jonas …,” he murmured, giddily, “swear that I will never say a word.”
    “Begin, François.”
    François cleaned his tears and nose on the folds of his sticky apron and, more calmly, began his story.
    “If the Virgin wants me to break my oath, then so be it! I am breaking it today for the good of my soul,” and he crossed himself three times to ward of the devil’s presence. “The truth is that Our Lady is right, because you must know, good knight, that your cousin and I made an oath out of fear, for fear that we would be blamed for the death of the Holy Father.”
    “And why would you be blamed for that? Did you kill him?”
    “No!” he shouted in desperation. “We only wanted to save him!”
    “I think it would be best, my friend François, if you start at the beginning.”
    “Yes, yes, you’re right. Well you see, sire, that day the papal retinue stopped in front of my establishment and several servants helped the Holy Father down from the main carriage. I recognized him by his red tunic and the hat. He was about fifty years old, with a thick beard and looked ill of health. A soldier screamed at me to throw out all of my customers I had at that time and your cousin, who came in next, asked me to prepare a bed so that the Holy Father could rest for a while before continuing on his journey.
    My wife and children made an effort to tidy up the best room we have, the last one on the top floor, where they took Clement, who was pale and sweaty.”
    “Tell me,” I interrupted, “Did you notice the color of his lips? Were they gray or blue?”
    “Now that I think of it, I remember that I did look but it was their dark red color that caught my attention, as if they were painted.”
    “Aha, please continue.”
    “Hours passed and there was no news. The soldiers drank in silence at the same tables you can see now, as if they were frightened, and in that corner, at the big table, a group of cardinals from the Chamber and the Chancellery were talking quietly. Some I had known for a long time, customers of mine who entered by the stairs in the barn so as not to be seen. Anyway, I fed them all and then took some food up for the Pope and your cousin, who was taking care of him with the help of a young priest who had come downstairs earlier to have a drink. Clement was sitting up in bed, leaning against some pillows and breathing laboriously, you know, very quickly and very deeply, as if he were suffocating. In fact, it looked like he