Chapter 1 VILLA SUSO PALACE UNAI September 2019 I could begin this story with the shocking discovery of a body in Villa Suso Palace: one of the richest men in the country, the owner of a ready-to-wear fashion empire, poisoned with la mosca española, or Spanish fly--the legendary medieval equivalent of Viagra. But I'm not going to do that. Instead I'll write about what happened the evening we went to the book launch for The Lords of Time, the novel everyone in Vitoria was talking about. We were all fascinated by this work of historical fiction, especially me. It was one of those books that completely transported you; from the opening paragraph, it was as though an invisible hand grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and drew you into this ferocious medieval world. It was magnetic. You couldn't resist, even if you wanted to. It wasn't so much a book as a trap made of paper, an ambush of words . . . ​and there was no escape. My brother, Germán; my alter ego, Estíbaliz; my entire cuadrilla . . . ​No one was talking about anything else. Many people had polished off the four hundred and seventy pages in only three nights. Some of us, however, preferred to enjoy it in small doses, as if it were a poison or a bewitching drug, prolonging the experience of being transported to the year of our Lord 1192. I was so immersed that sometimes when Alba and I were enjoying our early-morning rendezvous between the sheets, I called her "my lady." But there was an added attraction to the experience--a mystery: Who was the elusive author? A week and a half after the novel was released, it was flying off bookstore shelves, but there was not a single photograph of the author anywhere, not on the novel's cover, not in any of the newspapers. He hadn't given any interviews, and there was no sign of him on social media. He didn't even have a website. He was either a pariah or an anachronism. Some people thought that Diego Veilaz, the author's name, was a pseudonym, a nod to the novel's protagonist, Count Diago Vela. It was impossible to know anything back then. The truth had not yet spread its capricious wings over the cobbled streets of Vitoria's Medieval Quarter. The evening was sepia colored as I crossed the Plaza de Matxete carrying Deba on my shoulders. I was sure my two-year-old daughter (who already considered herself grown-up) would not be a nuisance at the book launch, but Grandfather had come along to help out just in case, even though it was the night before La Fiesta de San Andrés, and he would be celebrating the patronal holiday in Villaverde. Alba and I were delighted when he'd appeared at our apartment. We were desperate for a chance to relax. The previous two weeks we'd been working overtime on a case involving two young sisters, aged seventeen and twelve, who had disappeared in very strange circumstances--and we needed sleep. We were hoping for a few hours' respite after fourteen fruitless days of investigation, time to collapse under the duvet and recharge our batteries. Saturday was already shaping up to be just as frustrating as the past couple of weeks had been. All the routine work was done. We'd organized searches with volunteers and dogs, and we'd gotten the judge's authorization to seize family's and friends' cell phones. Our team had examined all the CCTV footage in the province, and the forensics team had painstakingly gone through the family's vehicles with a fine-tooth comb. We had interviewed anyone who had come into contact with the girls over the course of their brief lives. And we had found nothing. They had vanished into thin air. There were two of them, which meant the drama was twice as intense, as was the pressure Superintendent Medina was putting on Alba, his deputy. People had lined up for a mile under the warm streetlights in the Plaza del Matxete, waiting for the book launch to begin. The event coincided with the traditional September medieval market. The paved square was filled with the smell of corn on the cob and chinchorta cake. Furious violins played the theme from Game of Thrones. A performer dressed in green velvet juggled three red balls, while a bullnecked man stuffed the head of an albino boa into his mouth. The square that had once been the city market was busier than ever. The line of readers disappeared under the arches of the Arquillos del Juicio, where vendors were selling pottery and lavender essential oil. I suddenly caught sight of Estíbaliz, my partner in the Criminal Investigation Unit. She was with Alba's mother, who had adopted her as one of her own after their first meeting and had included her in all our family traditions ever since. My mother-in-law, Nieves Díaz de Salvatierra, was a retired actress who had been a child prodigy in 1950s Spanish cinema. She had now found the peace and quiet she so longed for as the manager of a hotel in Laguardia. The fortress-like space was set between vineyards and the mountains of Toloño. The range was named Tulonio, the Celtic god I prayed to when the universe turned dark. "Unai!" shouted Estíbaliz, waving an arm. "Over here!" Alba, Grandfather, and I headed in their direction. Deba gave her aunt Estí a sloppy kiss on the cheek, and we were finally able to enter the Villa Suso, a stone Renaissance building that had stood proudly for five centuries on the hilltop where the city was first built. "I think the family's all here," I said, extending my phone to a sky that was already turning a deep indigo. "Look here, everyone." Four generations of the Díaz de Salvatierra and López de Ayala families smiled for our selfie. "I think the launch is in the Martín de Salinas room on the second floor," said Alba, cheerfully leading the way. "Such an innocent mystery, isn't it?" "What do you mean?" I asked. "The author. This evening we're finally going to discover his identity," she replied, intertwining her fingers with mine. "If only the mysteries at work were so innocuous--" "Speaking of mysteries," Estíbaliz broke in, pushing Alba as we entered the room. "Don't walk on the woman trapped in the walls, Alba. The security guards say she appears at night in the hallways near the restrooms, and her moans are terrifying." Alba jumped to one side. Swept along by the crowd, she had accidentally stepped on the glass panel that covered the skeleton of a medieval woman, according to a plaque on the wall. "Don't mention ghosts or skeletons in front of Deba," she said with a wink, lowering her voice. "I don't want her to have any trouble going to bed tonight. I need her to sleep like a hibernating bear. Her mother desperately needs rest." Grandfather smiled, the half smile of a centenarian who had many more years of assessing people than we did. "You're not going to scare the chiguita with a few piles of bones." I could have sworn there was a touch of pride in his gruff voice. He seemed to really understand Deba. They shared a simple, effective telepathy that excluded the rest of us. Deba and her great-grandfather communicated through looks and shrugs, and, to our bewilderment, he understood better than anyone what made her cry, the reasons she refused to wear her rubber boots even when it was pouring, and what the scribbles meant that she drew on every surface she came across. We finally managed to get into the room, although we had to settle for seats in the next-to-last row. Grandfather sat Deba on his lap and let her wear his beret, which accentuated how similar they looked, turning her into his tiny clone. As he entertained my daughter, I tried to forget my worries from work for a moment. I looked around the narrow, stone-walled chamber with its thick wooden beams across the ceiling. Behind the long table with the three empty chairs and three unopened bottles of water, a faded tapestry of the Trojan Horse dominated the back wall. I glanced at my cell phone. The book launch was almost forty-five minutes behind schedule. The gentleman to my right, who had a copy of the novel on his lap, was fidgeting, and he wasn't the only one. None of the speakers had appeared yet. Alba shot me a look that said, If they take much longer, we're going to have to take Deba home. I nodded, stroking the back of her hand and silently promising that we would enjoy our night together no matter what. How good it felt not to have to hide in public. How good it felt to be a family of three. How good life could be. For two years now, from the day Deba was born, my life had been marked by the pleasant accumulation of family routines. And I really enjoyed those innocent days with my ladies. Just then a stout, sweaty man walked past me. I recognized him immediately: the owner of the publishing house Malatrama. We had met a few years earlier during the Water Rituals case. He published the graphic novels of the killer's first victim, Annabel Lee, who was, among other things, the first love of my entire cuadrilla. I was pleased to see him again. He was followed by a man with a thick goatee. Could he be the elusive author? An expectant murmur grew around the room, a murmur that seemed to forgive what was now almost an hour's delay. "Finally," whispered Estíbaliz, who was sitting on my other side, "another five minutes and we would've had to call the riot police." "Don't joke about that, we've had enough to handle over the last two weeks with those girls disappearing." Her flame-red hair brushed my face as she leaned over and whispered in my ear. "I've told you a thousand times, they'll be home with their mom and dad soon." "May the good fairies hear you so we can get some sleep for once," I replied, stifling a yawn. I had almost completely recovered my ability to speak after the Broca's aphasia I had suffered in 2016 as the result of a gunshot wound. Three years of intensive speech therapy had made me a loquacious investigator once again. Other than temporary lapses due to exhaustion or stress, my oratorical skills were triumphant. "One, two, one, two . . ." the publisher squawked into the microphone. "Can you all hear me?" Everybody in the audience nodded. "I'm sorry for the delay, but I'm afraid the author cannot be with us tonight." He nervously stroked his bushy, curly beard. The reaction was immediate. Quite a few people left the room. The publisher watched them go disconsolately. "Believe me, I understand your disappointment. This certainly was not the plan. I don't want to waste everyone's evening, so let me introduce Andrés Madariaga. He is a history professor and was part of the team of archaeologists from the Santa María Cathedral Foundation who excavated an area only a few yards away, on the Villa de Suso hill and in the Old Cathedral's catacombs. He was hoping to speak with our author tonight and explain the incredible parallels between the Medieval Quarter as we know it today and twelfth-century Victoria as it appears in the novel." "That's right," said the archaeologist, clearing his throat. "The book is astonishingly accurate, as though almost a thousand years ago the author strolled the streets we live on today. Right here, next to the former entrance to the palace, on the stairs we know as San Bartolomé, was the medieval site of the South Gate, one of the entrances to the walled town. . . ." "He doesn't know who the author is," Alba whispered in my ear, which warmed at the touch of her lips. "What's that?" I murmured. "The publisher doesn't know who the author is, either. He hasn't said his name once, and he hasn't referred to him by his pseudonym. He has no idea who he is." "Or he wants to keep us in suspense for the next event." Unconvinced, Alba looked at me as though I were a child. "I'd swear that's not true. He's as lost as the rest of us." The archaeologist continued, "I don't know if you're aware, but we're next to what would have been the palace's original defensive wall, built well before the foundation of the city. Can you see it? It's this one," he said, pointing to the stone wall to his right. "Thanks to carbon dating, we know it was already in place by the end of the eleventh century, one hundred years earlier than we had previously thought. That means that we're seated exactly where the novel takes place. In fact, one of the characters in the book dies nearby along the line of the wall. Many of you are probably wondering about Spanish fly--la mosca española, or cantharis. In the novel, the substance appears as a brown powder that is administered to this unfortunate character. And that's true. Or rather," he said, correcting himself, "it's feasible." He raised his head. "Spanish fly is an aphrodisiac, the medieval version of Viagra," he went on impishly. "It's a powder made from the crushed shell of the blister beetle, which is common to Africa. It was the only aphrodisiac proven to sustain an erection, because it contains cantharidin, a chemical compound and stimulant. Although it dilates blood vessels very effectively, it fell out of use because, as Paracelsus tells us, 'the dose makes the poison.' Two grams of Spanish fly would kill the healthiest man in this room. It stopped being used in the seventeenth century, after the so-called Richelieu caramels caused the death of half the French court during their orgies. Not to mention the fact that the Marquis de Sade was accused of murder when two women died after he administered the substance to them without their knowledge." I looked around. Those who had remained for the archaeologist's improvised talk were listening closely to his medieval tales. Deba was asleep beneath her grandfather's beret, held securely in his giant paws. Nieves was following the speaker attentively, Alba was stroking my thigh, and Estí was staring at the roof beams. In short, everything was fine. Forty minutes later, the Malatrama publisher placed a pair of battered half-moon glasses on the end of his enormous nose and announced: "I would like to end this event by reading the opening paragraphs of The Lords of Time: "My name is Diago Vela. I am known as Count Don Diago Vela, to be more precise. I began to set down the events described in this chronicle on the day I returned, after two years' absence, to the ancient village of Gasteiz, or, as the pagans call it, Gaztel Haitz, or Castle Rock. "I was traveling back through Aquitaine, and after crossing lower Navarre--" Suddenly the door behind me was flung open. Curious, I turned around and saw a white-haired man who looked to be around fifty hobbling in on a crutch. "Is there a doctor? The palace is empty, and we need a doctor!" he shouted. Estí, Alba, and I shot to our feet in unison and went over to the man. "Are you all right?" asked Alba, ever the leader. "We'll call an ambulance, but you have to tell us what's wrong." Excerpted from The Lords of Time by Eva Garcia Sáenz All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.