Could it be he has concealed a code within Arellano’s messages, woven from all that Núñez knows of me? He does not ask me outright so as not to give me the opportunity to lie; rather I can only break his code if I have the very information he needs to know if I possess. He has trapped himself—four months of getting no answer from me, four months without the reassurance he seeks. It is not merely a question of what Núñez knows, thinks he knows or pretends to, but of what he doesn’t know, thinks I may know, fears I do. There is more here, more than a threat, there is weakness, and not merely mine. Wandering, world’s end, prince, sceptre …
In the legend, an old Jew taunts Christ at the foot of Golgotha. Why does the mighty King of the Jews drag a humble cross up so slowly? I go on, Christ answers, and long shall ye wait for my return. For his jeer the old Jew is condemned to wander without rest until the day of Judgement. And yet the story mentions no war—no golden sceptre.
Núñez has sent messages through Arellano because it is dangerous to come himself. For if there is danger, the messages Arellano carries must not appear to be in code but instead seem what they have seemed even to me—mortifications of my soul. What sort of code is this—with a clue that seems to be about my letter but is not. His is a code with a missing key—it must be, for if any message or even all of them together were to carry all the necessary elements, Núñez could never be sure it would not be decoded by someone else, someone other than … me—I alone hold the key. No, I am the lock. Núñez has inserted his code into my memory.
There is another children’s story Núñez would recall. One that contains every element of Arellano’s messages. Wandering, war, world’s end, prophecy, divination, service, a chosen race, a king’s favour. Escape. Resistance. The time of sea and fire.
The Conquest. One night holds the key.
The moon was rising, late, high above the mountains…. He had asked for my help, to look out for Amanda and Xochitl. Yes, we would watch over them together.
“You remember I once told you that Ocelotl had a twin. And that together, from here in these mountains, they launched an uprising against us—do you know it started right around here? Maybe from a campfire exactly here, on a night just such as this….”
Though the fire had burned down to red embers the night was no longer dark. The snowfields glowed faintly violet.
“Ocelotl’s second summons to the capital had gone quite as disastrously as the other—first with Lord Moctezuma, now with the Lord Bishop Inquisitor Zumárraga. So it goes for one who would serve the Sovereigns of Two Worlds, eh Angelina? At least this time things had begun better. This new lord had offered him his friendship and protection. But then after a few months came the request that should have sent Ocelotl running. Before long he was arrested on the charge of divination. He found himself in prison again, this one too the nightmare of a race….”
Tracking the sorcerer Martín Ocelotl through a countryside Grandfather had travelled so far to call his own, this was the last great passion of his life. Ocelotl might have been the one man to have escaped both from Moctezuma’s prisons and from those of the Inquisition—twice, and Abuelo’s fascination with those escapes was perhaps more personal than I had ever realized. In the months before the Conquest, Ocelotl had gone to the archives of the Triple Alliance, in the city of Texcoco, for it was a time of strange events such as had been related in the old histories. Ocelotl was next summoned to Tenochtitlan to give advice to the Speaker, and was imprisoned there with the other seers and sages. Abuelo was never able to determine how Ocelotl escaped, but some said he had been released by none other than Cortés. The sorcerer returned for a time to Texcoco and worked with the Franciscans there who were recording the things of the past while there remained time. The archives had been put to the torch shortly after the fall of the city on the lake, and FastingCoyote’s temple to the Unknown God razed. The memory of an entire race survived now only in the minds of a few elders.
Ocelotl’s reputation among the Franciscan brothers led to his invitation to meet Bishop Zumárraga, which led in turn to their friendship and to his second imprisonment. It was the patterns of likeness and contrast that had fascinated my grandfather, on that night and other nights. Texcoco of the Unknown God, Tenochtitlan of two thousand gods. The warnings from Texcoco to Tenochtitlan, of one emperor to another, father to father, then son to son. FastingCoyote to Moctezuma I, FastingPrince to Moctezuma II—then the three warnings and the three escapes of Ocelotl. Twins, doubles …
“The same and yet not the same,” Abuelo shrugged. “Almost the reverse, verdad? It reminds me of a company of knights I once watched riding along the banks of the Guadalquivir. So many ensigns and banners, differently patterned, and yet all part of a deeper emblem of—what would you say, Angel? Honour …?”
“Sí Abuelito, and truth—and valour.”
“Eso. Honour, truth and valour. But in the histories here, though I have tried I can never quite name the deeper emblem. Do you know they stopped for the night in our village, those knights? Of course, even in my boyhood they no longer wore much armour. It was only a hunting party, and yet how proudly and how high the pages had borne the old standards and ensigns—but I have never told you of the great knight companies of the Mexica! Truly, have I? The Eagle Knights and—”
“The Jaguars.”
“Ah, so I have. Companies as great as our Order of Santiago, reduced now to two men. And they had one last battle to fight, those two, under the old banners.”
The uprising began not long after Ocelotl had quit the capital, having escaped his fate a second time. “The jailers claimed he had help, but it was what their kind always said.” Ocelotl and his twin Mixcoatl—even knowing it to be hopeless, with so few men of fighting age left—invoked the ancient prophecies and launched a series of attacks leading toward the capital.
“The Indians Martín Jaguar and his brother Andrés CloudSerpent were arrested and convicted by the Holy Office of falsely claiming to be gods, or the doubles of false gods. The Inquisition could not even decide on the charges! As in the ancient prophecies, CloudSerpent went to the burning ground but, that morning, Martín Jaguar’s cell had been found empty—ha, for a third time. Ocelotl had vanished in the night.”
Why has Núñez used one children’s tale to refer to another—why not refer to the second directly? What is the deeper pattern he would have me read? So long as his code is not broken, even if I myself were, I could give no other answer even under torture, and he would be in no more danger than before. But with each fresh message, each new hint, he brings me closer to guessing what he would have me reveal unwittingly, and the danger to him increases.
It is a code that points to one thing to point to a second to a third to what the messages never quite say … from Persia to the courts of Europe, to the Jews of Africa and Asia, to Golgotha and Mount Carmel, the hills of the Holy Land … but the land that he never directly mentions is this one, these hills, this continent, these old palaces, this New Eden.
Scrolls … the burning of the painted books, Sahagún, the Franciscans, an honest man.
Not nostalgia, not cruelty—there is one last window in the palace of my memory Father Núñez needs to look through, into a room whose contents he very much needs to inventory. Though I do not yet know what it is, the basis of Núñez’s code and the source of his fear are the manuscripts Carlos has left with me. And if he comes now, it is because after four months he is becoming desperate—and if he is desperate he cannot afford to come to me empty-handed. There is hope here, but I cannot delude myself. Even he does not have the power to offer me my freedom. He cannot raise the siege himself—at best he offers a trade, an exchange of prisoners. The manuscript and my silence for … and now I see. In the darkness after the last prayers one sees most clearly, as on a blinding page.
Somewhere on the south bank of the Guadalquivir is a village, and in it the parish has its church. Within that church, the sacred canons stipulate that a yellow sambenito be hoisted into
the vault, such that the light that filters past it through the high windows and over the parishioners casts shame in hues of sulphur. And thereafter shall begin proceedings against all those related to the family Ramírez de Santillana by blood or association, who, if convicted of following the law of Moses shall be condemned, and if dead, burned in effigy….
He trades with this. But I do not yet see how—no one controls the Inquisition—and if his offer is to suppress the evidence, how? if Magda began giving testimony in 1663? I did not even know Núñez until … 1666. Three years. Who gathered that testimony? Dorantes is my age. He would have been a boy. Gutiérrez was in Spain, also a boy. Santa Cruz, also in Spain.
It could have been anyone, it could have been Núñez.
But he does not control the files. Gutiérrez has seen them—but seen exactly what? And yet even if Núñez has somehow held back parts of Magda’s testimony, and comes here to offer them in trade, there is still Magda now….
She did not come from the Archbishop. That was a transparent lie. Even she did not pretend he’d agreed to see her. Magda does not care about Faith. Magda’s love is the Inquisition. Núñez does not control the files, he does not control the Inquisition, Núñez controls Magda. Magda the scholar. A father to a fatherless child. He is good at that, a man of books. There is a chance….
No, there was a chance, there would have been hope, had I the manuscript he needs. But I have recopied them. There is nothing there that Núñez should particularly fear, nothing with which I could trade. But think—he cannot not know this either—because of course there are other manuscripts. It only makes sense that Carlos would not bring them all to me.
It is not yet dawn—I have a few hours at least. What is in the manuscript that Núñez fears enough to come now with the danger to him greater than ever? Even to guess the general contents might be enough to convince him I have what he seeks, to induce him to speak of it more openly….
Prisons, gallows, pyres. Archives, libraries, burnings. Books: The Ascent, the Confessions, Ecclesiastes, Esther, the Scrolls. Kings: Ahasuerus, Hermenegild, Moctezuma II, Philip II, Carlos II. Poets, scribes, chroniclers: Homer, Augustine, FastingCoyote, Manrique, John of the Cross, Manuel de Cuadros. Noble servants: Mordecai, Sarpedon, Glaucus, Spinola, Velázquez, Ocelotl, Manuel de Cuadros.
Doubles, descendants of gods: Sarpedon, Jesus, Moctezuma, Ocelotl Mixcoatl. Presumed heretics: Hermenegild, Bruno, Galileo, Manuel de Cuadros. Sentenced, imprisoned: Mordecai, Jesus, John of the Cross, Moctezuma, Ocelotl, Manuel de Cuadros. Escaped: Mordecai, John of the Cross, Ocelotl.
Did not escape: Hermenegild, Mixcoatl, Moctezuma … Manuel de Cuadros.
Judges, Inquisitors: the Vizier Haman, the Bishop Inquisitor Zumárraga, Father Antonio Núñez, Jesuit….
It is only a theory, the slimmest of possibilities. What if the missing manuscripts were not an assortment but a collection, with a theme, the raw materials for a book … a book of conversations, say, between prisoners and their captors: Ocelotl with Moctezuma, Moctezuma with Cortés, Ocelotl with his Inquisitors …
Fray Manuel de Cuadros with Father Antonio Núñez.
On the day Cuadros died, Núñez came here well after Vespers. The day had been clear. Then a fine rain had begun to fall. The pyre was slow to catch fire. He arrived well past his appointed hour. He came in like a basilisk—stooped, heavy lidded, the small head, the jutting chin—ordered everyone to leave, spoke as a superior even to the Dean of the Cathedral. Always so grimly deliberate, so controlled … that day the sight of him—exalted, enervated, the light of Truth burning in his eyes. I could smell the leña, and something else. He told me he’d just come from the Plaza de San Diego. I would never again smell smoke without thinking of Padre Antonio Núñez de Miranda on this day, or see him without smelling smoke. I recall the rasp of deep feeling in Núñez’s voice. At the last possible instant, Cuadros gave some sign. They took his confession. They gave him absolution. His confessors embraced him. Such a great shedding of tears up there on the scaffold. In the emotion of the moment even the executioner embraced him and apologized for some slight—then strangled him, quickly, leaving the Adversary no time to snatch the lamb back from the fold. A great shout from the crowd … the leña was lit.
I rose to leave the locutory—where was I going? He had told me now—what more was there to be said? I asked if he had come to confess with me, I asked if he had been the one to give the executioner the signal. It came out before I could stop myself. Yet had I stayed—to hear what, I did not know—how he felt?—he would hate me today, I am sure of it, with an all-consuming hatred.
But now I wonder what he might have come to say.
How often before that day had Núñez gone to see Cuadros in his cell?—how many subtle attempts had he made to bring his charge to contrition? Might Fray de Cuadros have made a record of some kind and had it smuggled out? He would have needed help but had many friends in the Church. His trial was a bitter controversy for years, even after he was taken to the stake. It was why his contrition was such cause for relief. It would be this record that Dorantes has been after for so long—he would like to add a chapter, or two, possibly, to the collection: the conversations of Master Examiner Dorantes with Antonio Núñez, certainly. And, if the hunting was very good, with me.
An hour to Lauds. So frail a shield it seems to protect Abuelo now, and so many ways—even if I have guessed correctly—in which this becomes more dangerous. For if I convince Núñez I have what he seeks, or know its location, and he falls first into their hands, they will have it out of him, with all the conviction of a man under torture, and then will come for me.
Abuelo, I would repay your gift of fifty pesos now, and Uncle Juan’s. I have been mistaken about so many things; I could be wrong about this.
But of one small thing I am certain now. There were fireflies. Or no, only one…. I was almost asleep. It had been circling lazily about us. Abuelo noticed it after a while. Lifting the tip of his traveller’s staff from the flames, with a smile he traced its green track with an ember….
Why these stories, why that night? Why did I find the Iliad so quickly, on his desk, and the Manrique poem beneath it the next morning, among the few books he was reading at the time? Why two books he had read so often, why the two he had perhaps most loved? And on top of these, in the morning, though not that night, an envelope. A mi hijita Isabel. Did you hear death coming, Abuelo, while I slept? Through the courtyard … did you know her step?
And I am certain he had started to tell me these stories for a reason that night. But then the last of his stories had ended—of Bishop Zumárraga and the sorcerer—and he had not told me. Perhaps he had raised details in the telling that he had not fully considered beforehand. Allegations of theft against the Indian servants in the Bishop’s household, the betrayal of a friend, questions of honesty and forthrightness. One twin escaping his fate while the other did not. Or if it had not been about Amanda, I cannot help but wonder if that night at the fire he had been trying—knowing I was soon to leave for Mexico—to warn me of the dangers ahead, in my appetite for secret knowledge, in my childish passion for visions and natural magic, and to speak to me of a threat he had felt hanging over our family for his entire life, and which, just perhaps, he sensed hovering also over my uncle’s house.
Or else, as I listened to the rumble of his voice, and watched his big hands grappling with the traveller’s staff as he poked at the night’s last embers, I had only fallen asleep. So many possibilities come to me, in things said and only now remembered. Perhaps he told me as I slept.
Dawn. The bells of Lauds. I may have hours, or only minutes. It could be anything: a record of their conversations, a list of certain monographs Núñez might have failed to report to the Inquisition—or Cuadros’s monographs themselves if they have somehow since gone missing. The most dangerous would be something on the Eucharist that Dorantes might link to a sermon or paper Núñez has delivered. The best I can do is lead him to think that I may
know but, also, may not, and in this way he will be hampered in his questioning lest he reveal more to me than he learns.
Yet if it is divination Núñez would have me practise, then what I divine is a weakness in his position, an uncertainty in his design. It rings hollow, like a boast. The strong do not boast or threaten, or prepare the ground with books or messages, and if it is the science of uncertainty Núñez would still practise upon me, perhaps the alchemist has too long handled the mercury and quicksilver poisons the messenger. One sees its tremors in Father Arellano. So is it also with the Superintendent of Works. Having intercepted one letter, Núñez would have me believe he has seen them all, when it is clear from the message itself that he has not.
Miscalculation, impatience—weakness, this smell I know. This natural science as they practise it begins to seem inexact, its illusions not yet perfected, for in Núñez, they have given me an adversary of flesh and blood, however formidable. It were better to leave me to myself, turning in upon myself, my worst enemy. They think to deprive me of my collection, but return to me my memory. Now Núñez comes too soon—yet already they have left me too long in the darkness. In the hour after the last prayer, in the last watch of the night, there is a crossroads. And at that crossroads something waits. It is a jaguar.
I fear it, but if Núñez in his blindness thinks I fear it more than he does, I am no longer convinced of this.
Threats, weakness, boasts … to their science of uncertainty, I answer with a faith built on disbelief. All interests do not converge in me, not everyone betrays everything, not all the sources can be controlled or collected, time exists—if not for the Holy Office then for its officers. Gutiérrez is a liar: Gutiérrez ran out of time. And I discount on principle everything a liar says. Neither will I believe Carlos knew of Bishop Zumárraga by way of a betrayed confidence, but instead came to his own knowledge of the story, and thinking I might know it, used it to warn me. And whatever Santa Cruz may have learned of my early life, he did not hear it at my mother’s side. She did not like churchmen, she would not have liked that one. She would have told him nothing, even at the last. And as for fear, it is human to fear the worst, but our strongest reason for expecting the worst imaginable is fear itself. I will fear the worst but without proof I will not believe—howsoever Núñez might imply that the other prisoner in the code is the less fortunate twin. Of this unbelief I make a fortress until it be proved otherwise.
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