There would be Moorish blood too, for the warriors of Islam would have come this way as they conquered in the name of Allah, an incursion from Africa that took them all the way, before they were checked, to the middle of modern France. They were passing through the same landscape as eleventh-century knights like El Cid, advancing to throw the Moors back under a papal banner in that great crusade called the Reconquista, an event that still seemed to define Spain as much as their American empire and the horrors of the Inquisition.
In the beginning they were in territory that was friendly and untouched by conflict, cheered and showered with flowers by the peasants in the hamlets they passed through as much for being Catalan as being Republican supporters of the government, which made the shock of their first encounter with the presence of an enemy all the greater, signalled at a distance by a column of smoke, slowly rising into a clear blue sky, the whole image distorted by waves of hot air.
The small town, not much more really than an extended village, sat in a fertile plain. Beyond that the road they had travelled split in two, one wide and the main road to Saragossa, the other nearer to a track. All around, though distant, lay higher ground, the source of the water that fed their trees and crops, though in late July it was beginning to show signs of baking from the relentless summer heat, while not far off a high and deep pine-forested mound overlooked the place, a huddle of buildings bisected by the road, with a small square dominated in normal times by the church; not now.
First they had seen the burning buildings; what took the eye now was the row of bodies, some shot, some strung up to trees, the latter having been tortured as well, the naked flesh already black from being exposed to the unrelenting sun. There were, too, in a couple of the untorched houses, young women, lying in positions and a state of undress which left no doubt about what they had suffered before they had been killed, while over it all there was the smell of smoke, burnt and rotting flesh; many of the youths they led could not avoid the need to vomit, which led to them being laughed at by their less squeamish Spanish companions.
Not everyone was dead or mutilated; as in most scenes like this there were those who had survived, either by hiding or not being a target of the killers, soon identified as members of the Falange, well-heeled youths who had been aided by the local Civil Guard in ridding the nation of people they saw as their class enemies. Those who came upon this did not at the time know this to be a scene being replicated all over the Peninsula, and it was not confined to one side or the other, especially given the desire for revenge for years of oppression or bloody peasant and worker uprisings.
Although he had watched these boys train for their various events, Cal hardly knew them, even Vince’s boxers, something which he would have to redress if he was to lead them properly. There was a downside to that, of course: faces became names and names became personalities, and when they were wounded or killed, which was unavoidable once the bullets stared flying, it made it that much harder to be indifferent. Now both he and Vince were busy, reassuring those throwing up, telling them to ignore the Spanish taunts, insisting, not without a degree of despondency, that they would get used to it.
‘Takes you back, guv,’ Vince said, once they were out of earshot.
Both had seen too many scenes like this, as serving soldiers in what had been Mesopotamia and was now Iraq, a part of the world more soaked in blood over time than even this. Vince had many times reflected that you could not walk a yard in that benighted part of the world without treading on the bones of the dead — Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, and even Turks, and it was made no better by the presence of Europeans — the killing just became industrial.
‘The mayor, a left socialist, was the first to die,’ said Florencia, who had been part of the questioning of the survivors, that carried out as the bodies were cut down and laid out with those shot or bayoneted. ‘Followed by anyone who had served on the local committees.’
She pointed to the other ubiquitous feature found in a Spanish village square, the taberna. ‘Once they had strung up the owner they drank his wine, every drop, and then the spirits.’
There was no need to say that fired up by that, the men who had done this would then have gone on the rampage — that was how it went, first the settling of perceived scores, followed by a celebration and inebriation, leading to outright sack, the fate of captured towns and villages since time immemorial; knowledge did not, however, make it acceptable.
‘They came from Barcelona, the pigs,’ she spat, ‘running away like the dogs they are.’
Cal was used to such mixed metaphors from Florencia, but he was tempted to say you could not fault them for that, and the evidence was on that wall they had passed this very morning; the anarchists were likewise shooting the Falangists out of hand, and not just them, if they were rooted out in Barcelona.
Cal asked instead, ‘Do they know where they went?’
‘West, towards Lerida.’
Cal nodded and they went over to Vince. ‘It’ll be dark soon and I expect we will bivvy here for the night.’ He looked at the sky, now clouding over, with an even darker mass coming in from the east, promising rain; warm as it was, the boys would need to be under cover. ‘I’m going to talk to Juan Luis.’
‘Burial party, guv?’
Cal pulled a face, coupled with a sharp indrawn breath. ‘Best leave that to their own, Vince.’
‘They don’t seem in much of a hurry.’
‘We have sent for a priest from one of the villages we passed through,’ Florencia replied, in a manner that implied such an action was obvious. ‘The relatives have requested it.’
‘There must have been a priest here, girl,’ Vince growled, pointing to the church.
‘There was,’ she replied sadly, ‘but it was he who first identified those to be killed.’
‘It’s dirty this, Vince,’ Cal said, ‘and I would think it’s about to get dirtier.’
His friend looked at the bodies, now in a line and covered over, his voice sad. ‘Can’t see how.’
Cal tapped him on the back. ‘Get the lads settled and fed if you can. Florencia, has Juan Luis asked about the strength of the people who did this?’ She shrugged, which left the possibility that such a basic set of questions had not been posed. ‘We need to question the survivors about more than victims. How many men came here, how were they armed, and more important, if the local Civil Guard joined them, what are their numbers and weapon strength now?’
The information that came back to him, an hour later, pointed to a potential total strength of eighty men, the majority blueshirts in the kind of cars the middle-class youths who made up the bulk of the Falange would own — fast and open-topped — their weapons rifles and pistols. The Civil Guard was more worrying, being more a military than a police force. They had both trucks and he knew from Barcelona they possessed automatic weapons including light machine guns.
The real question for the column was simple. Where were they now?
‘Don’t like that hilly forest,’ Vince said, when Cal discussed it with him.
‘Nor do I.’
‘It is not necessary,’ Laporta insisted, waving a hand at a sun that, in dying, rendered black and even more menacing the east side of the hill Vince had alluded to. ‘The swine are cowards who have run away. They could be in Lerida by now.’
Upset by the suggestion they needed to protect themselves, Laporta had been even more dismissive of the notion of digging a foxhole by the side of the road west and manning it with the sole machine gun he possessed, while covering the other exits with rifles and sentries. Also, they had explosives, wire and the ability to make charges; they could cover the areas of dead ground with booby traps, and tripwires that would set them off and alert the defence.