Hunger's Brides (142 page)

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.

Divination of the past leads in unintended directions. It were better not to deride certain things, stir certain memories. Even Magda I am indebted to, as one held long under water is grateful to find the bottom of the swamp.
Thus far and no farther—Ne Plus Ultra
.

Whatever may come, whatever stratagems and half-truths may yet be
revealed
, our position is better than it was three days ago. An exchange of prisoners is better than an abject surrender. I have been fed on lies and am fat with ignorance. I am not sure I have understood. I cannot know what to expect today, cannot divine all the possible alliances.

But if the game be to pursue the secret Jew, then I invoke the great King Alfonso!—and stand with the Emperor of the Two Faiths.
³⁶

And if the game be to teach me more of chess, I invoke the great tacticians Ruy López and López de Ayala—and together we shall serve the Lord Instructor of the World. For though there are stronger players, even the Inca Atahualpa honed his game in prison—and let them remember who once inspired Santa Cruz in the sacrifice of queens.

And if it be a hunt of those who would wander in the open without cringing or cover, then I invoke the great falconers, Frederick II and again López de Ayala and an unnamed Moor on the banks of the Guadalquivir—and together we shall fly the colours of the Lord of the Two Horizons. For who does not fear threat from above?

And if it be simply to give honest service, I invoke the last sorcerer, Ocelotl, and don Pedro Ramírez de Santillana, my grandfather. And together shall we serve the Sovereign of the Two Worlds. This is whom I would have served, and would still. Heart
and
head, soul
and
heart,
body and soul. On the banks of the river Guadalquivir we ride under the banners of the Eagle and the Jaguar, under the Ensign of the Trout and on our shields the Salamander. On the south bank there is a village where we shall stop the night, and a little parish church where a yellow
sambenito
shall
not
be hoisted into the light. For there are colours we will never consent to put on, and a chapter in our family chronicle I will not live to read.