Meet Jesus Contreras, the beta leader of the guerrillas in Key for Spies

Jesus Contreras, Miri's right-hand with the guerrillas, is the third protagonist in my recent release The Key for Spies.  Here's his introduction (this is from the drafted version;  the final has only a few changes) ~

Black night, Jesus thought as he did on every moonless night.  Black as evil.  Black as charred bones.  Black as blood.

Raucous laughter flooded from the taverna, muffled by the wooden walls.  He imagined his cousin Angelo scooping up more coins, French soldiers downing more wine, sweaty men gathered around the table, vultures wishing they could feed on the French coins the way that Angelo did.  Sour wine and overcooked beans and thick smoke still pricked his nostrils.  The smells countered the chill washing over him from the cold night.

He shivered.  First April meant spring, but the winter had released its grip on the night.  The   The cold night was wiser for him than the overheated tavern.  A soldier had given Angelo a black-browed look, and Jesus had reached for his knife only to remember he couldn’t kill the man.  The soldiers were five too many.  One would be no trouble, two difficult, a third he could take.  Angelo could take the fourth.  But the fifth man?  He would run and fetch the French officers who ruled Britessca.  And his fellow Spaniards gathered round the table?  They were laborers and servants used to the town.  They thought knives only cut meat and bread.

walk home would warm him, but he waited on his cousin.

Jesus had nudged Angelo and pointed to the door.  “Three more,” his cousin said then threw the dice.  And Jesus escaped for any fight started.

The next roar from the taverna was laughter, not the anger he expected.  Maybe this game would end without argument.  Only the black-browed soldier had guessed that the simple paisano was not so simple.

   A month ago in Vittoria, Angelo hadn’t been so lucky.  The men he cheated had beaten him then taken back their hard-won reals and columnarios.  A week later, he appeared at Jesus’ door.  Bruised, his cut lip still swollen and sore, he asked for a room.  He hadn’t complained when Jesus pointed at the estable.  He helped around the farm and worked the estate, and gradually his story came out.

Yet when his bruises faded, he resumed his old tricks, going from taverna to taverna in Britessca, losing and winning, getting a name for his card play and for the todas tablas which sucked in the French soldiers who thought the game simple even as they lost.

Once again, tonight was todas tablas.  His cousin never seemed to have a strategy, but he lost when he bet low and won when it mattered.  He didn’t know how Angelo kept ahead on his bets.

And he was better out here.  If his cousin ran foul of the French officers, his job was to ensure they didn’t kill Angelo.  He kept his eyes on the darkness and his back to the taverna.  He rubbed a thumb over the smooth pommel of his knife.  He could take all five soldiers, one by one, picking them off as they returned to their garrison.  In an alley, in the concealing black against a wall, at the well in the central square.  But one soldier might go upstairs with one of the prostitutas.  One soldier missed meant eyes that had seen Angelo, and tracking Angelo would lead straight to Jesus.

And the priest had reminded him, as he confessed before the Dominica de Passione, that Easter was coming quickly.  The sins he’d committed when he avenged his parents and his little brother and his sister, those were purified by the Crucifixion.  Every confession, the cura reminded Jesus of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, whether Jesus had bloodied his knife on a blue-coat or not.  “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord,” the priest repeated through the confessional screen.

But the cura had not seen the black-charred bones.  He had not seen the blood smeared on Joska when Jesus found her in the stable.  He had not heard her scream and scream when her own brother carried her to the convent.  The cura did not see the French soldiers winning in taverns and winning time with Spanish woman eager for the Napoleon coins.  He did not see his Spanish countrymen bowing to French masters.  Jesus did, and his stomach revolted, spewing his guts as it had when he uncovered the blackened corpses of his parents huddled with his little brother behind the chimney.

The knife was in his hand.

Cold air filled his mouth.  Jesus deliberately re-sheathed the gleaming blade.  Then he lifted his gaze from the pitch-black street to the sky.  Over the rooftops, a gleam of light caught his eye.  The gilded dome of the Brittesca church caught a stray human light and cast it to the heavens.  He watched the light glint around the dome, tracking someone’s passage across the square, his way lighted by a lantern.

Then greater light poured from the taverna as the door opened.  Jesus didn’t look around.  His shoulders twitched as he waited.  Laughter, talk, someone singing without a tune.  The door shut.  Only then did he turn.

Angelo, night-blind, stood at the door.  A fool’s mistake.  He should have moved to one side or taken a few quick steps ahead.

“Jesus?”

Another fool’s mistake, to ask a name into the darkness, with wine-drunk soldiers soured by gaming as they boiled up stupid ideas.  “Here, you tonto.”

Angelo stumbled a few steps, but his night-sight came quickly.  “Glad you left.  You give me more black looks than you should.  It makes the Frenchies cautious.”

“Your winnings make them cautious.”  Jesus started walking.  Starlight and the occasional torchlight revealed any obstacles.  Once they passed Brittesca’s walls, only the stars would light the way.  Jesus liked the enveloping dark, but Angelo didn’t.  He covered his blindness with chatter, a word for each step.

“A few of your coins from last week are here.”  He jiggled the leather pouch, silver and copper clinking, a lure for any greedy or starving man.  “Do you want them back?”

“You won them.  You keep them.”

“Call them payment for my room and board.  You won’t lose coins to me in future.  You won’t be playing.”

“I play and see you shift the stones or palm one, and you won’t be playing with all your fingers.  Those Frenchies catch you, and they won’t just beat you.”

“Que?  You think this?  I do not.  The world has fools aplenty.”

And Jesus walked beside one of them.

“Your meeting go well?”

“I got what I needed.”

“And what was that?”

Did the fool think he would talk of the information he’d gotten for the guerrillas?  “What I needed.”

Angelo snorted.  “You share less than nothing.  I am blood-kin, Chuy, but you treat me like a stranger.  Doñabella accepted me as one of her guerrillas, but you don’t trust me.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“What did I say?”  When Jesus didn’t answer, Angelo grabbed his arm.  He dropped it and flinched back when light glinted on the sharp blade at his nose.  “You’ll cut me?”

Jesus lowered the knife.  He didn’t remember drawing it.  He stared at the starlit blade.  Then he backed a step before sliding it back into the leather sheath.

Angelo jerked open his pouch and spilled coins into one hand.  A few fell to the ground, clinking on the paving stones.  “Take your back.  I didn’t know they would come between us.  Six coppers and two silvers, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t want them back.”

“I don’t want them either, if you’re hating me for them.”  He picked out the coins then flung them against the wall with more clinking on stone.  “You don’t want them.  I don’t want them.”

“Only a fool throws money away.”

“Then I’m a fool.”  He poured the coins back into the pouch then dropped it into his coat pocket.  “You think I am, anyway.”

“You gamble too much.”

“I win too much,” he chuckled.  “Keeps me warm and fed but makes me no friends.  Not even my cousin.”

“Forget it.  We both will.”

“And you’ll tell me about your meeting?”

“I will only tell Doñabella.”

Angelo snorted.  “I would almost think she had your heart, but I have seen you watching Elixane when you think she is distracted with her little brothers and sisters.  She has a pretty smile.”

Jesus’ hands clenched.  “Never mention her.”

“You will see her Elixane on Sunday.  This Sunday is Dominica de Passione.  She is certain to be there and not tending her sick amona.  Is that how you say ‘grandmother’ here?  Amona?”

“That is the Basque,” he agreed, but he wouldn’t be in Brittesca this Sunday.

The first Sunday of every month, he presented himself at the convent.  Mother Abbess would let him visit Joska on that day, if she would see him.  She had, two months ago, rocking in a chair as Jesus sat awkwardly across from her.  Last month, she had screamed when she saw the tall man standing by the table.  The nun had enfolded her in strong arms and pulled her from the room.  He could hear his sister’s cries for a long time, long after they ended.  The Mother Abbess merely shook her head when he pleaded to see her later in the month.  “You know our rules, Jesus.  Come again.”

“She will weep again,” he muttered bitterly.

But he would go this Sunday.  He might not see her, but he would go every first Sunday in the hope.  Joska needed to know that her brother still loved her.  She needed to know that not all men intended to hurt her.  And she needed to know that he was getting vengeance for her.