"What? You only borrowed twenty Ducats at first?! What? He's been chasing you for the debt all this time, and if you don't pay, you die?... You ran to this land of heretics, seeking the queen's support and protection, just to hide from your creditor? Mm... You could ask the queen to issue an order and have your debt wiped out directly. It's only a word from the queen..."
"Huh? He isn't some low-class moneylender? He also collects debts for the Church and the nobles, and has quite a few Slavic guards?... What?! He's actually a Jew who sold out Jesus?!"
Sparse pines towered by the river, like lances of the Lord piercing the sky. The long river bridge swayed with the shadows of the trees, and within those shadows were the shapes of men. Only by raising one's head and looking carefully could one discover that three hanged skeletons dangled from the pines. Those three skeletons, two large and one small, had very clearly been killed by judgment of the cross—a family of Moorish heretics.
From 1482 to this day, this brutal Crusade had already lasted a full ten years! The one or two million Moors of Andalusia had either been killed in these ten years of blood and fire by Crusader Army like locusts, or would, in the decades to come, be thoroughly buried in the dungeons of the Inquisition. In the Kingdom of Castile, founded on devout faith and fanatical holy war, even the merciful promises made by Queen Isabella could only protect a small number of Moors, and protect them for a mere twenty years.
Of course, when such a scene of judgment fell into the eyes of the people by the river, it stirred no feeling or emotion at all. The mercenaries of the Holy