Ferrol dreamed he heard someone shouting his name from somewhere far, far away. He dreamed that a herd of wild horses was running across the roof. He dreamed someone was choking him.
Then his eyes snapped open and all he could see was a terrible, rippling orange light where his windows should have been.
One of the estate workers in a cottage on the grounds heard agonizing screams and when he investigated, found someone rolling on the frosty grass, his face blackened by fire, his hair singed to the scalp. That’s when he saw the flames licking out the windows of the castle and raised the alarm with the corps of firefighters.
When the firemen arrived, the deputy head of the brigade who was driving behind the ladder and pumper trucks, slowed at the sight of a solitary figure walking down the private road. He recognized the boy who was dressed only in boxer shorts. He bundled him into the car and he threw his jacket over him.
“Young sir, are you all right? Are you hurt?”
Ferrol coughed and stared glassy-eyed into the darkness.
“The fire,” he said. “The fire.”
*
Juan Prieto, Señor Gaytan’s personal lawyer, sat with Ferrol and his grandmother in her tower apartment. It was a week after the fire. All of Ferrol’s clothes had been lost to smoke or flames and he was wearing some rough togs donated by an estate worker. Lawyer Prieto was an efficient man who got down to business after a bare-bones display of condolence and commiseration.
“In the event that your father and mother died at the same time, his will stipulated that you, his only child, would be the sole heir to his estate. I will be receiving a full report from your father’s accountancy firm in the next several days, but my understanding is that you will inherit a considerable sum, no, a very considerable sum. Even after inheritance taxes, you will be one of the wealthiest men in Segovia.”
Ferrol had no more tears. Dry-eyed, he said, “What about grandmother?”
“You don’t have to worry about me, dear boy,” she said.
“Señora Gaytan is correct. She has been provided for—for life—by her late husband’s estate. Fortunately, while the main residence areas of the castle are renovated, this wing is entirely inhabitable. I assume you will return to your boarding school after the funerals.”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“Of course you will,” his grandmother said. “I will supervise that which must be done here.”
Ferrol got up and looked through one of the narrow tower windows. In the harsh sunlight, he had a direct view over the courtyard of soot-blackened masonry.
“I want to see him,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s advisable,” Prieto said.
“I didn’t ask your opinion. Please make the arrangements.”
The lawyer nodded and gave the boy a look of approval, as if to say, you’ll be all right—like father, like son. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
*
There was a Segovia policeman sitting in a chair outside the hospital room. When he asked the boy his name, the policeman nodded and said he was expected, but that he needed to check with the nurses before entering. At the nursing station, one of the nurses told him what to expect and set him a limit of five minutes.
Hugo’s face was wrapped in gauze stained with weeping serum from the third-degree burns. There was a patch over the eye that had sustained cornea damage. A breathing tube through his nose bypassed the thermal injury to his trachea, and delivered oxygen to his lungs.
He saw his visitor and tried to look away, but Ferrol got so close he couldn’t avoid him.
“Why did you do it?” Ferrol demanded.
Hugo stared back at him with that one eye.
“Was it because you got kicked out of school?”
Hugo stared and nodded.
“Was it because your father lost his job?”
He nodded again.
“Did you want to kill me too?”
Tears formed in the good eye. He nodded to that too.
“You got what you deserved, didn’t you? Blown up by your own bomb, you fucking idiot.”
The bellows of the breathing machine whooshed away. A radio on the windowsill was on low, tuned to a pop music station.
“But I don’t think you got enough. My lawyer told me that after you recover, you’ll probably be sent away to some kind of hospital for crazy kids for a few years and then you’ll be released. My parents are dead. If it wasn’t for my grandmother, I’d be an orphan. You know what I think? I don’t think you got nearly enough.”
Ferrol turned up the radio and reached for one of Hugo’s hands. The boy must have misinterpreted the gesture because he gently squeezed back, but Ferrol had other ideas. There were leather restraints and straps attached to the bed that were used at night to prevent him from pulling out the tube while he slept. He slid the restraint around his wrist and tightened it. Hugo fought back when Ferrol tried to restrain his other wrist, but Ferrol was strong and determined.
Ferrol spoke directly into one of Hugo’s ears. “I, Ferrol Luis Gaytan, hidalgo de sangre, do hereby sentence you to death.”
With a twist, he separated the breathing tube from the connecting hose and covered the end with his palm.
Hugo began to thrash and pull at his restraints, but the music drowned out the rattling bed and the beeping alarm of the breathing machine.
When his body was still, Ferrol reattached the hose and turned down the radio.
He exited the room and coolly told the policeman, “I think you should get the nurse. My
