“Quite a document. Yes, indeed,” Carlos said quietly to himself.
The journalist also discovered something he did not expect: the name María Jesús de Ágreda failed to appear on a single page, nor did she receive credit for a single conversion; the term “bilocation” appeared nowhere in the text. What is more, only the Virgin was spoken of for the assistance she had lent in the conversions, and how “Our Lady’s favors” had driven the unstoppable advance of Christianity in New Mexico.
How was it possible? Had the nuns in Ágreda pointed him in the wrong direction? Or were they simply confused about the true nature of Benavides’s text?
He was tempted to set the Memorial aside. Only the librarian’s face, so like that of a guard dog, kept him from doing so. The face of someone from whom one could expect few concessions, it begged him to stretch out his time in the reading room and give the book a second, more attentive, reading. His “destiny”—the same force that had guided him through the Sierra de Cameros days before—led him directly to page 83 this time.
He sat there glued to the desk.
And with reason: right in front of him, beneath the suggestive subtitle, “Miraculous Conversion of the Jumano Nation,” he read an uncanny story. It mentioned one Friar Juan de Salas who, finding himself in the land of the Tiwas at the head of the group of missionaries, was visited by members of the Jumano tribe, also known as the tribe from the salt mines. They fervently petitioned him to send a missionary to preach in their village. It seemed that this request had been made years before, with nothing having been done about it, owing to the lack of missionaries in New Mexico. All of this changed with the arrival of a new Guardian, a sort of “ad hoc bishop” for the unexplored territories, a man by the name of Esteban de Perea. This man, on orders from Benavides himself, arrived at de Salas’s mission with a small retinue of friars, ready to preach the Gospel to those Indians so disposed.
“And before they left for the village,” Carlos read, “they asked the Indians why it was they so fervently asked us to baptize them and have the friars teach them the doctrine. The Indians responded that a woman like the one whose portrait we carried (which was, in fact, a painting of Mother Luisa de Carrión) preached to everyone in their own language. She told them that they should call on the friars to instruct them and baptize them, and not to be slow about it.”
A complete revelation.
Carlos scribbled the story into his notebook. This was the only passage in the “Benavides report” that could be attributed to a bilocated nun (although, in fact, it mentioned one unfamiliar to Carlos: Madre María Luisa de Carrión), but it left open a whole array of unanswered questions. Without going any further, how could he be sure that the Memorial referred to the presumed apparitions of Madre Ágreda? The nuns in the monastery in Soria had been absolutely vehement in attributing such prodigious feats to their founder, had they not?
But even if one admitted that Sister María Jesús de Ágreda had split herself in two, appearing “more than 2,600 leagues from Spain,” where would that good lady have learned to communicate with the Indians in their own language? Was this yet another prodigy, known as xenoglossy or “the gift of foreign tongues” by those experts in Catholic miracles, in addition to that of bilocation? On the other hand, didn’t Benavides’s descriptions appear to be closer to a manifestation of the Virgin than something as unusual as a bilocation?
The subject, no doubt about it, became much more compelling to him that afternoon. What a shame it was that the ferocious librarian threw Carlos out three minutes before the room’s antediluvian clock struck nine.
“You can return tomorrow, if you like,” the librarian muttered. “I will set the book aside for you.”
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”
THIRTY-THREE
SAN ANTONIO MISSION
Friar Esteban gave the Indian a long, hard look, as if he were a prisoner about to climb the scaffold. It was a defiant stare, one that could turn an accused man to stone. But Sakmo, who had never seen an auto-da-fé, brazenly returned the Inquisitor’s stony expression.
“And you never saw a friar before?” the latter asked, his tone more serious.
“No.”
Esteban de Perea knew the Indian was not lying. The first Franciscans had set foot in New Mexico in 1598, thirty-one years earlier, and none of the friars had gone to live in Gran Quivira. Perea knew the history well. The conquistador Don Juan de Oñate concluded that it wasn’t worth his time and effort to stay in lands so barren and unprofitable as those on either side of the Rio Grande. Furthermore, from what Perea could observe of this Indian, he had been born after Oñate’s incursions. It was therefore impossible for him to have seen any of the eight friars who accompanied Oñate, nor his eighty-three wagons, nor even the stupefying train of Mexican Indians and half-breeds who followed behind. Friar Esteban himself remembered the figure of Friar Juan Claros, the brave man who had founded the settlement of San Antonio of Padua, where the mission was now located, and who had yet to convert a single Indian by the time he was relieved by Friar Juan de Salas.
It was only later, with the arrival of the “blue miracle,” that the situation had changed.
While Sakmo awaited a new battery of questions, Friar García de San Francisco, a young man from Zamora who had just taken vows, cautiously approached the Inquisitor. The timid Franciscan with a sickly air seized the opportunity, amid the general confusion, to whisper something in Friar Esteban’s ear. De Perea smiled.
“Good idea. Tell him, Friar. We have nothing to lose.”
García, a slip of a friar who seemed to shrink in size next to the well-built Sakmo, crossed the space between himself and the Indian with four large steps. He pulled out of his habit a small scapular with a tiny image on it.
“This is Mother María Luisa,” he said in a strident voice, so that everyone could hear. “I carry her with me at all times. She protects me from evil. In Palencia, many of us believe she is one of the few living saints among us.”
Brother García dangled the tiny portrait in front of Sakmo’s face. And the Inquisitor, who continued to pace as if making his final decision, boomed out from the other end of the refectory, “Tell us, Sakmo, is this the woman you saw?”
The Jumano stared at the miniature curiously, without saying a word.
“Speak. Is it she?” de Perea repeated impatiently.
“No.”
“You are certain?”
Sakmo explained to Juan de Salas.
“Absolutely, Friar. The woman of the desert has a younger face. The clothes are similar, but hers”—he pointed to the scapular—“are the color of wood, not of the sky.”
Friar Esteban took a deep breath.
Sakmo would never dispel his doubts, nor those of Friar Benavides, when he, Perea, submitted his explanations. Who could this resplendent young woman be? What virtuous woman would let an Indian such as this touch her clothes, as if she were a physical entity, tangible and real, and then teach him the Pater Noster? What young woman in her right mind would visit such remote regions on her own? And what species of woman, save the Virgin, was capable of descending from the heavens on a luminous pathway?
Hurrying through his last questions, Father Esteban dismissed Sakmo, ordering him to wait until he had made a decision in his case. Then he asked the friars to tell him what they thought. Only Friar Bartolomé Romero, the most erudite of the group, dared to put forth an opinion. He spoke briefly.
“I do not believe we ought to regard this episode as proof that the Indians have had a mystical experience.”
“What are you insinuating, Friar Romero?”
The Inquisitor watched as Romero anxiously clasped and unclasped his hands.
“From my point of view, Friar, we are not faced here with a manifestation of Our Lady, as you have intimated in certain of your questions.”
“And why are you so certain?”
“Because, as Your Excellency knows, the manifestations of
the Virgin are ineffable experiences, which are impossible to recount. If it is difficult for a good Christian to describe this sort of divine suffering, how much more must it be for an untutored pagan.”
“Then you are saying that—”
“What I am saying is, this Indian saw something earthly, not at all divine,” Friar Bartolomé concluded.
Esteban de Perea crossed himself, to the amazement of the other friars. He feared offending God with his lack of confidence. But that is how he was. He had to look at a question from all sides before rendering judgment.
“That is, I think, enough for now,” he said at last. “I must meditate on my decision.”
He ended the meeting, but before leaving the room he asked Friar Salas to accompany him. There was something important on his mind.
As soon as the two Franciscans were alone, the elderly friar approached Esteban de Perea with an expression of deep concern.
“Have you decided what you are going to do, Father?” Friar Juan cautiously inquired.
“As you might guess, I am not certain what is the correct decision in this case. It is not the same as documenting one of Our Lady’s interventions, or investigating a fraud, a mirage, or some sort of trick.”
“I do not understand.”
“If the person who has appeared to these Indians is Our Lady, we have nothing to fear. The heavens then sent us a great benediction, and will protect us when we visit Gran Quivira. If, on the other hand, as Friar Bartolomé says, such a prodigy does not exist, we would be walking right into an ambush. Our expedition would be divided up, we would lose contact with one another, and we would fail in our task of baptizing the peoples of New Mexico.”
“And why do you so heavily emphasize this second possibility?”
“Well, Sakmo himself told us, did he not? The woman was wearing a rope tied around her waist like ours. It may perhaps be a question of a soul initiated into the Order of Saint Francis. Or a woman with no sense of judgment, or someone in disguise. Or simply a trap.”
“Or perhaps none of that. Does not a descent from the heavens and a glowing face seem to you more in keeping with the way the Virgin appears?”
“I am certain you are right, Friar. But in that respect the Lady in Blue lacks one of the characteristics of Marian visions. Our Lady generally appears before isolated individuals, not to entire tribes like the Jumanos. Remember the apostle James the Greater, who saw the Virgin while living alone in Zaragoza, or Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe? No matter how much he might have wanted to, the Archbishop of Mexico, then the Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga, was never able to accompany Juan Diego and see the Virgin with his own eyes.”
“But Friar Esteban!” the old man protested. “Is that sufficient grounds to consider the Lady in Blue a mere mundane creation?”
“I have a good reason, believe me. But if I share it with you, you must keep the secret.”
“You may count on it,” Juan de Salas said, nodding his head.
“You see, in addition to telling me everything they knew about these supernatural conversions, Archbishop Manso and Friar Benavides showed me an extraordinary letter, written in Spain by a Franciscan brother, Sebastián Marcilla, who resides in Soria.”
“Sebastián Marcilla? Do you know him?”
“No.” Esteban de Perea shook his head. “In this letter he advised the Archbishop of Mexico, who was very knowledgeable about evidence of our faith among the Indians in the Gran Quivira region—”
“I do not understand. How could a friar in Spain—”
“I will get to that, Friar.”
“In that letter,” the Inquisitor went on, “Friar Marcilla pleaded with the Archbishop to make all possible effort to find the origin of these appearances, to determine if behind them there could be the manifestations of a Spanish nun famous for being a miracle worker . . .”
Friar Salas was perplexed.
“A Spanish nun?”
“Of course, the correct term would be projections, given that Marcilla deduced that this nun, who most certainly lived in a Franciscan monastery, enjoyed the gift of bilocation. That is to say, she let herself be seen here without leaving Spain.”
“And who is this? Is it the Mother María Luisa in the portrait?”
“No. This whole story concerns a young nun in a monastery in Soria. Her name is María Jesús de Ágreda.”
“So what are you waiting for?” Friar Salas leaped to his feet with enthusiasm. “If you already have these indications, why have you not sent a small commission to the Quivira in search of proof? Two friars would be enough . . .”
“Who?” Friar Esteban brusquely interrupted the old Franciscan.
“If you consider it opportune, I offer myself as a volunteer. I could take one of the initiates with me, Friar Diego for example. He’s young and strong, and would make a fine companion for the trip. Together we would complete our mission in little more than a month.”
“Let me consider it.”
“I don’t think you have a better option, Father,” the elderly man said, burning with confidence. “I speak the Tanoan language, they have known me for years, and I know how to survive in the desert better than any of your men. For me it is no hardship to travel with them to their village and then return alone, sidestepping the routes most closely guarded by the Apaches.”
The Inquisitor took a seat.
“I suppose there is no greater force than that of enthusiasm, is there?”
“And that of faith,” Salas said.
“So be it. You will leave on the next full moon, in August. Inside of ten days. Go over the mission thoroughly with Friar Diego, and bring me news of this Lady in Blue as quickly as you can.”
THIRTY-FOUR
MADRID
The streets were quiet in the immediate vicinity of the National Library. It was 4:40 AM, and none of the buses from Plaza de Colón to the airport were running yet. There were a few taxis making the rounds, their green lights on and their backseats empty.
A silver Ford Transit turned off from Serrano onto the narrow Calle de Villanueva, heading downhill along the metal railings that surround the National Museum of Archaeology and the National Library. A few hundred feet from the end of the street, where it flows into the Paseo de Recoletos, the driver turned off the engine and lights and let the car roll until it reached the Recoletos Apartments, where he parked.
No one noticed his presence.
A minute and a half later, two dark silhouettes got out of the car.
“Quickly! Right here!”
The two figures climbed the high gates smoothly. Their running jumps carried them up and their catlike movements adapted easily to the iron fence. Both were wearing tiny black knapsacks, and both had on shortwave earphones. The third person sat inside the van, where he had just intercepted the last message sent over the walkietalkies by security at the library’s main entrance, which confirmed that the zone was clear.
Inside the open space in front of the library the two shadows quickly moved into place behind the statues of San Isidro and Alfonso the Wise. Both statues’ subjects were seated fifteen steps above street level, and seemed to have been observing the intruders’ movements.
“Run for it!” the shadow in front ordered. In ten seconds, the two clandestine visitors were standing next to the outside wall to the left of the stairs, and five seconds later, one of the two dark silhouettes, the “locksmith,” opened one of the building’s glass doors.
“Pizza to base, do you hear me?”
The voice of the locksmith came through loud and clear in the silver van.
“Copy, Pizza Two.”
“Do you see the guard near the entrance?”
“Negative. All clear. Walk right in.”
Once they had gained entrance into the building, they stood under the vaulted ceiling in the main lobby. No one was around, and in the corners, the red lights of the volumetric sensors were disconnected.
“He must have gone to piss . . . ,”
the lead shadow whispered when he saw the way was clear.
“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” the locksmith replied.
“Right on schedule. Let’s get going!”
They skillfully ascended the thirty-five steps of the marble stairway leading to the entrance of the main reading room. The dozen newly installed computers that gave readers access to the library’s database sat in their places. After doubling around to their right and crossing the darkened wing where the file cabinets were located, they approached the glass door in the back of the room.
“Hand me the diamond blade.”
Tracing with surgical precision, the locksmith carved a perfect circle out of the corner of the window farthest to the right, Attaching two small suction cups to the surface, he lifted the glass out without a sound.
“Lean it against the wall for now,” the other shadow said.
“Right.”
“Three minutes, forty seconds.”
“Let’s go.”
The window with the hole had separated the area of the card catalogs from the manuscript reading room. Only the feeble light on the emergency power boxes illuminated the room.
“Hold on!” The locksmith came to a quick stop. “Base, can you hear me?”
“Pizza Two, I hear you.”
“I want you to tell me if the eyes in the oven’s anteroom see anything.”
“Give me a second.”
The man in the Ford typed instructions into the computer connected to a tiny rotating antenna situated on the van’s roof. With a slight buzzing noise, it faced the library as it sought a particular electronic signal. The liquid crystal lit up quickly and a floor plan for the main floor of the library appeared on the monitor.
“Fantastic!” the third man blurted out. “I’ll know in a few seconds, Pizza Two.”
“Keep it coming, Base.”
The mouse diligently flew over the map of the manuscript room, which leaped out of the flat plane into a three-dimensional diagram. With the same arrow sliding over the surface, he clicked on one of the cameras over the door on the far right. An icon, with the word “scanning” on its lower half, indicated that the system was connected to the library’s main security system and with the central transmitter that kept it in contact with the security company’s main office.
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