T heBESTBESTof MENMENMEN

C L A I R E L E T E M E N D I A

EMBLEM

McClelland & Stewart

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PROLOGUECadiz, Spain, July 1642

At a sharp bend on the road to Cadiz, Laurence heard a strangled

cry pierce the air, as of a man being choked.

“God damn,” he muttered, reining in his horse. If there was trouble

up ahead, he could not circumvent it. To his left, sheer cliff descended

to the sea miles below, and to his right, the barren, rocky hillside rose

up too steeply for his horse to negotiate a path. Yet what did he care,

anyway, he thought; he had no fear for himself.

Urging his mount forward again, he rounded the bend. Some

twenty yards from him, a couple of men were assaulting an elderly

fellow: one held a knife to his throat while the other searched him

roughly. Both thieves were barefoot and scrawny, dressed in rags. They

were jeering at their victim, doubtless pleased to have hit upon such

easy prey, and so intent on their work that they did not notice

Laurence. Nearby, indifferent to the spectacle, a pack mule stood

nosing at the dusty earth.

Heaving a sigh, Laurence drew out his pistols. Empty as they were,

he levelled them at the thieves. “Déjale,” he yelled resignedly.

They turned, clearly taken by surprise. One bolted off immediately

and scrambled up the hill, agile as a mountain goat.

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Laurence watched him disappear before addressing his accomplice,

who still had his blade tight to the old man’s neck. “I said, leave him

alone! And get lost before I shoot you.”

“Get lost yourself, you son of a whore,” the thief retorted with

impressive bravado. “I was here first.”

Laurence could not help smiling. “I’m not in your trade, and I have

money. I’ll give it to you, if you release him.” He tossed the pistols some

distance from his horse, catching as he did so an anguished flicker in

the old man’s eyes. Wary but curious, the thief squinted at Laurence as

he dismounted and reached into his saddlebag. He withdrew his purse

and poured from it a few coins, letting them slide through his fingers.

Next he shook the purse, which emitted an unmistakable clinking

sound, and threw it on the ground. “You can have the horse as well. In

fact, you can have everything.” The thief ’s confusion was so obvious

that Laurence nearly laughed; no sane person would freely surrender his

horse and weapons in such desolate countryside. “So, what are you

waiting for?” he demanded, becoming impatient.

The thief stepped away from his victim to approach the purse,

staring at it greedily. As he was about to snatch it, Laurence moved

faster, kicking him in the shoulder. He howled, though he did not drop

his knife. Grabbing Laurence by the knees, he brought him down, and

they wrestled together in the dirt, rolling dangerously close to the edge

of the precipice. The thief was all muscle, his grip on the weapon like

a vice. He fought harder than Laurence, who only wished to allow the

old man time to escape, and then let it all end quickly.

At length Laurence stopped struggling altogether. The thief was on

top of him, aiming the steel point at his heart. Laurence gazed straight

into his eyes and knew: the thief was afraid. “What’s wrong with you,

never killed a man before?” he taunted him contemptuously.

The thief scowled and bore down with the knife. But as the tip of the

blade pricked Laurence’s flesh, he smelt the thief ’s rotten breath full in

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his face and the stink of it roused his disgust: he was not prepared to die

like this. He struck at the knife, which flew from the man’s hand, and they

began to wrestle again. He was unconscious of his actions, relying on

instinct honed by long practice, the blood pounding in his ears and

seething in his veins as if he were in the midst of battle. Suddenly he

heard the thief shriek, and felt him grow limp and heavy. He thrust aside

the body and lay back, panting; he must have managed to fish out the

slim dagger that he always kept in his doublet, for it was driven to the hilt

into the thief ’s chest, and his left hand was wet and sticky with gore.

He looked over at the old man, who was still beside the mule,

his expression a mixture of puzzlement and awe. “You’re safe,” said

Laurence. “You can be on your way.”

“Bless you, sir.” The man’s face, brown and wrinkled like a cured

olive, broke into a wide grin. He picked up the purse, the scattered

coins, and the pistols and set them down neatly beside Laurence. Then

he went over to the corpse and, without a hint of distaste, pulled out the

dagger and cleaned it on the thief ’s rags. “You took a wild risk, in letting

him have the advantage. To bluff with one’s life is true courage.” He

frowned at Laurence thoughtfully. “Or else madness.”

“It wasn’t courage,” Laurence said, sitting up to accept the knife

from him.

“Whichever the case, you saved my life.” The man produced a flask

from a pocket in his travelling cloak and offered it to Laurence; it con-

tained cool water, more reviving to Laurence’s parched mouth than any

spirits. “Are you bound for Cadiz, as I am?” Laurence nodded, drink-

ing. “In return for what you have done, you must come to my house

there, as my guest. I insist!”

Laurence hesitated. He would have preferred to refuse, but more

thieves might be lurking about, and he did not want to leave the fellow

unprotected. “Very well,” he said, as he rose, wiping his hands on his

already stained breeches.

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“God is great,” the man exclaimed, patting him on the shoulder.

“God is great.”

As they proceeded together on foot, walking their beasts, the man

explained that he was a merchant returning from Tarifa. “I had to

collect a bolt of silk, and while I was waiting to receive it, my two ser-

vants fell ill. They could not escort me back, but I was in a hurry to get

home, so I set out alone. What a fool – and I could have been a dead

fool had you not chanced by and rescued me. My name is José Moreno,

sir. What is yours, and where are you from?” When Laurence told him,

he seemed bemused. “An Englishman, are you? You don’t look like

a foreigner – and you speak with no accent. Indeed, at first I confess

I thought the same as the thief – that you were another brigand,” he

remarked, surveying Laurence’s garments. “Yet with this handsome

black stallion – not to mention your gold, and your expensive arms –

you are more of a target for robbery than I.”

Dusk had fallen by the time they arrived at Cadiz. José guided him

through winding streets to a passageway between high, forbidding

walls. They reached a door upon which José knocked several times, in

a distinct pattern. A servant as brown- skinned as he admitted them

into a large torch- lit courtyard where fruit trees and flowers bloomed;

the house was constructed in a square around it, with covered galleries

on all sides.

While Laurence peered around, amazed that such beauty and lux-

uriant growth could be so perfectly concealed from the street beyond,

the servant bowed to him, handed him down his saddlebags, and led

away his horse and the mule. Then José took him beneath one of the

galleries, saying, “We should not eat until we have cleansed ourselves.”

He paused a moment before calling out, “Khadija!”

A most extraordinary woman emerged from the shadows: she was

an African, her skin not black but a ruddy copper hue. She wore indigo

robes, with a cloth of the same colour wound about her temples, and

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her ears were pierced with gold rings from the top to the bottom of

both lobes. Her hair was dressed in tiny plaits, sticking out from

beneath the cloth like so many spiders’ legs. At the corner of each eye

there were three short scars, as though to simulate the lines of a

smiling person, and her nose was long and fine, like José’s. Her age

could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty years old. José

addressed her in what Laurence recognised as Arabic, and she went

away, head held high as if she were a princess rather than the slave

that he presumed she was.

“Khadija will bring us fresh linen and make food while we perform

our ablutions,” José told him.

In a separate room off the courtyard was the bath, wide and deep,

like a rectangular pond, filled with scented water. José paused once

more, regarding Laurence intently as if to gauge his reaction, and then

began to undress. Laurence held back, embarrassed by the layers of

grime beneath his clothes; he had not been able to wash properly more

than once or twice in the past few months.

“What is it, sir?” José inquired, as he sank into the water. “Are you

not accustomed to bathing? Or is it that you have never seen a cir-

cumcised man?” he added, in a low voice.

“But I have. I knew a Jew in The Hague.”

José considered this carefully. “Could he practise his faith, where

he was?”

“I believe so. I hope so, at any rate.”

Again, José appeared surprised. “But you are a Christian, no?”

“I am . . . nothing,” Laurence said, as he bent to rinse the thief ’s

blood from his hands.

“You are not nothing in the eyes of God. Remember that. I shall

be frank with you, sir,” José continued. “My birth name is not José. It

is Yusuf.”

“Were you a Muslim?”

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“I still am.” There was a silence. “Do you regret now that you saved

me?” asked Yusuf.

“Not at all – though isn’t it forbidden for you to worship?”

“It is forbidden these days even to have infidel ancestry. As you

may know, more than thirty years ago the conversos were almost all

expelled, and amongst those of us left, few are brave enough to cling to

our true religion. I could bring the Inquisition down upon me just for

taking this bath.”

So Yusuf had risked his own life, Laurence realised, in inviting

him here.

After they had dried themselves, Yusuf gave Laurence a clean shirt.

“My son’s,” he said. “He is away doing business on the Guinea Coast,

where I bought my Khadija. She is now the lady of the house. My first

wife died when I was still captain of a ship. I have five sons who are

grown and gone to sea – they inherited my passion for it.”

At table they were served by Khadija. Yusuf took no wine himself

but filled Laurence’s cup generously. When the plates were cleared, he

brought out a pipe and lit it. After inhaling, he passed it to Laurence,

who was familiar with the smell: he had smoked hashish as a youth

with his tutor Seward in Venice, and on a few occasions since. Relaxed

by the drug, he listened more than he talked, yet he began to suspect,

from something in Yusuf ’s manner, that his host was deliberating over

an unspoken question.

Finally Yusuf put down the pipe. “I must ask – why do you claim

to be an Englishman? I am sure that you have Barbary blood. I should

call you a Moor like myself, if it would not insult you.”

“Oh no, I’m used to being called many things,” said Laurence,

amused. “I’m only half English, though. My mother is a Spaniard.”

“Ah, that explains your facility with the language. Is she in Cadiz?”

“She’s in England. I haven’t seen her in six years.”

“You have been away a while. As a soldier?”

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“For most of the time.”

“So what brings you to my city?”

Laurence laughed shortly. “No good reason.”

“Are you by yourself ?”

“Yes.”

“Where will you go next?” Laurence shrugged. “You are welcome

to stay with me however long you wish,” Yusuf said, “or I could find you

passage to Africa, or to the Indies, should that strike your fancy. There

is also a ship in harbour bound for the English coast. She leaves within

the week. Or would you prefer to travel by land?” Laurence shrugged

again; he had absolutely no answer. “Khadija!” cried Yusuf. “Our guest

is in need of advice.”

Khadija came bearing a small woven basket. She tipped it on to

the table and about a dozen small, shiny, oval- shaped shells fell out,

smooth on one side and etched with what resembled little teeth on the

other. “Pick them up and put them in my hands,” she told Laurence, in

accented Spanish. “Then I shall let them fall where they will, and read

them for you. They will speak of your future.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe they can,” Laurence said, forcing

a smile.

“Then what have you to worry about?” asked Yusuf.

It would be churlish to decline, so Laurence did as she bade. He

must pretend interest, he reminded himself, as she surveyed the shells,

her broad lips parted in concentration.

“You tried to kill yourself today,” she began, her tone clear

and certain.

Laurence betrayed no reaction. Privately, he was unsettled. Even if

his host had described to her what had happened on the road to Cadiz,

there was an earlier event about which Yusuf could not be aware.

“A woman has poisoned you,” she went on, sending a shiver down

his spine. “Now you are in hiding, from the world and from yourself. Yet

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soon you will cross paths with another woman, who will deserve your

love. She has the name of a great queen and she will give birth to

your child, if you are ready for her. But if you do not spit out the

poison, you will lose her.”

His scepticism returned: it was the sort of vague, trite prophecy

that Juana might have invented, assuming that everyone wanted to hear

about love and fertility. In his case, this could not be further from the

truth. The strange apprehension that he had just felt was probably

the hashish working on his troubled mind.

“Again,” Khadija ordered. Obediently he gathered up the shells.

This time when she released them they jumped apart and scattered as

though possessed of their own force. She absorbed their arrangement

and said with the same certainty, “You alone can prevent a tragedy in

your land, and what you have that was stolen holds the key.”

“What is it that I have?” Laurence demanded, his pulse quicken-

ing. “Can you tell me?”

Khadija made no sign that she had heard, putting the shells back

in their basket one by one. She was too astute to spoil the impact of her

guesswork by elaborating on it, he thought wryly. Remarkable, however,

that she should have been quite so fortunate.

She gestured to him to give her his hands; hers were soft, her

fingers slender and pliable as those of a girl. Was he meant to thank

her, he wondered, or was she offering him some kind of blessing? Her

expression at once tender and severe, she inspected his palms, cal-

loused from riding, and his nails, broken from months of living rough;

and she rolled up his sleeves to the elbow, palpating the lean flesh of

his forearms with her fingertips. “You earn your way with your hands,”

she commented.

“He is a soldier, Khadija,” Yusuf informed her.

“Not any more. He makes his living through games of chance.”

Laurence blinked at her, astonished. “And the night this was done to

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you,” she said, touching the scar on his left wrist, “you played a game

that changed your fate.” He gasped, shuddering as she caressed it.

“Khadija, now you are scaring him,” said Yusuf. “He’ll think you are

a witch.”

She dropped Laurence’s hands and leant forward to murmur in his

ear. “You must go home.”

“Why?” he whispered, his voice as tremulous as the rest of him.

“That is for you to learn.” She slipped from her arm a thin leather

bracelet, which seemed to contain something stitched inside. “Here –

it will protect you on the journey, and remove the worst of the poison,”

she said, looping it about his scarred wrist. “Wear it until it falls off of

its own accord.” As she fastened it, uttering words in another, incom-

prehensible language, he felt every nerve in his body tense and he could

not avert his gaze from hers. Then she ran her hands over his face, as

if to release him from her spell, and smiled sadly.

He bowed his head, trying to comprehend what had passed

through him, and when he looked up, he was half relieved to see that

she had vanished.

Yusuf was refilling the pipe. Apparently oblivious to his guest’s

unease, he started to talk about the many ports he had visited, and the

many occasions that he had braved death when his ships had been

overrun by pirates, or swept into storms or wrecked on hostile shores;

and he spoke of his love for the ocean, as whimsical a mistress as the

goddess Fortune herself. “There is no life without her,” he concluded,

“and maybe one day I shall set sail for a last time.” He fell silent, regard-

ing Laurence with his dark, hooded eyes, before asking, “Which course

will you choose tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Laurence said. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Not so,” Yusuf told him quietly. “In your heart, you have already

decided.”

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Copyright © 2009 by Claire Letemendia

Cloth edition published 2009Emblem edition published 2010

Emblem is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart Ltd. Emblem and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior writtenconsent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographiccopying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Letemendia, Claire, 1960-The best of men / Claire Letemendia.

isbn 978-0-7710-5271-2

I. Title.

ps8623.e899b48 2010 c813'.6 c2009-906992-x

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through theBook Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government ofOntario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario BookInitiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Artsand the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

Typeset in Caslon by M&S, TorontoPrinted and bound in the United States of America

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.75 Sherbourne StreetToronto, Ontariom5a 2p9www.mcclelland.com

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The Best of Men

By Claire Letemendia

It is 1642, and Laurence Beaumont has just returned to England after six long years fighting — and avoiding fighting — in the European Wars. Having fled his home to escape the responsibilities of his noble birthright, he has been a lowly infantryman in Spain, a spy for the Germans, and a cardsharp in a Dutch brothel. He has seen horrors visited upon men, women, and children by enemy and ally alike, and he no longer has faith in God, in causes, or even in humankind itself.

As the clashes between King Charles I and his mutinous Parliament come to a crisis and England is thrown into civil war, a reluctant Beaumont is drawn back into the world of warfare and intrigue when he discovers coded letters outlining a plot to assassinate the king. Soon the conspirators — one of whom is among the most powerful men in the kingdom — are in hot pursuit, and Beaumont must find proof of their identities before they overtake him. Pressed into service by the secretary of state’s ruthless spymaster, Beaumont finds himself threatened on all sides, facing imprisonment, torture, and worse if he makes a single wrong step. The ravishing Isabella Savage, a practiced seducer, wants to help, but may only lead him deeper into the conspiracies within the king’s camp. And all the while Beaumont is haunted by a prophecy and by the memory of a devastating betrayal. The Best of Men brings to vibrant, realistic, and bawdy life the battlefields, taverns, and aristocratic bedrooms of the 17th century. Laurence Beaumont is an unforgettable character, and Claire Letemendia is a dazzling storyteller.

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