"Please," he added.
She seemed about to smile but didn't. "All right," she said at last. They both turned to the altarpiece. "The sculptor Pedro Duque Corncjo completed it in 1711. He was paid two thousand silver escudos. And as you say, it's magnificent. All the energy and imagination of the Sevillian baroque are there."
The Virgin was a beautiful polychrome sculpture in wood, almost a metre tall. She wore a blue mantle and held her hands open, palms out. The pedestal was shaped like a crescent moon, and her right foot rested on a serpent.
"She's very lovely," said Quart.
"Sculpted by Juan Martinez Montanes almost a century before the altarpiece It belonged to the dukes of El Nuevo Extreme One of the dukes helped to construct the church, and his son donated the sculpture. The tears gave the church its name."
Quart looked more closely. From below he could see tears glistening on the face, crown and mantle.
"They are rather exaggerated."
"Originally they were smaller and made of glass. But now they're pearls. Twenty perfect pearls, brought from America at the end of the last century. The rest of the story lies in the crypt."
"There's a crypt?"
"Yes. There's a concealed entrance over there, to the right of the high altar. It's a kind of private chapel. Several generations of the dukes of El Nuevo Extremo
are buried inside. In 1687, one of the them, Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija, ceded land from his estate for the church, on condition that a Mass would be said for his soul once a week." She pointed to a niche to the right of the Virgin, containing a figure of a knight kneeling in prayer. "There he is: carved by Duque Cornejo, as was the figure on the left, of the duke's wife He commissioned his favourite architect, Pedro* Romero, also the duke of Medina-Sidonia's favourite architect, to design the building. That's the origin of the family's link with this church. Gaspar Bruner's son Guzman had figures of his parents added, which completed the altar-piece, and the image of the Virgin brought here in 1711. The family still has links with the church today, although they're diminished. And this has a great deal to do with the conflict." "What conflict?"
Gris Marsala gazed at the altarpiece as if she hadn't heard the question. Then she rubbed the back of her neck and sighed. "Well, call it what you like." She was trying to sound light-hearted. "The stalemate, you might say. With Macarena Bruner, her mother the old duchess, and all the rest of them."
"I haven't yet met the Bruners, mother and daughter."
When Gris Marsala turned to look at Quart, there was a malevolent gleam in her eyes. "Haven't you? Well, you certainly will."
Quart heard her laugh as she switched off the light. The altarpiece was once again in shadow.
"What's really going on here?" he asked.
"In Seville?"
"In this church."
She took a few moments to answer. "It's up to you to decide," she said at last. "That's why you were sent."
"But you work here. You must have some ideas on the subject."
"Of course I have, but I'm keeping them to myself. All I know is that more people would like to have this church pulled down than to keep it standing."
"Why?"
"That I don't know." Her friendliness disappeared. Now it was her turn to become closed off and distant. "Maybe because a square metre of land in this part of Seville is worth a fortune" She shook her head as if to rid it of unpleasant thoughts. "You'll find plenty of people to tell you all about it."
"You said you had some ideas."
"I did?" Her smile looked forced. "Maybe. Anyway, it's none of my business. My job is to save as much as I can of the building as long as there's money for the work. Which there isn't."
"So why are you staying on alone?"
"I'm putting in some overtime. Anyway, since I began working on the church, I haven't found anything else to do, so I have a lot of spare time."
"A lot of spare time," repeated Quart.
"That's right." She sounded bitter again. "And I have nowhere eke to go."
Intrigued, he was about to ask more when the sound of footsteps made him turn. A small, motionless figure dressed in black stood in the doorway. It cast its compact shadow on the flagstones.
Gris Marsala, who had also turned, smiled strangely at Quart. "It's time for you to meet the parish priest, don't you think? Father Priamo Ferro."
As soon as Celestino Peregil left the Casa Cuesta Bar, Don Ibrahim began discreetly counting the banknotes that Pencho Gavira's assistant had left them to cover initial expenses.
"A hundred thousand," he said when he'd finished.
El Potro del Mantelete and La Nina Punales nodded in silence. Don Ibrahim made three bundles of thirty-three thousand, put one bundle in the inside pocket of his jacket, and passed the others to his companions. He placed the remaining thousand-peseta note on the table.
"What do you think?" he asked.
Frowning, El Potro del Mantelete smoothed the banknote and peered at the figure of Hernan Cortes on the front. "Looks real to me," he ventured.