Tears of the Jaguar (30 page)

He blinked, listening, and then he heard a faint squeak like turning metal. A sense of foreboding filled him, but he felt rooted to the spot. Two seconds passed, three, then it came again. And again. He felt cold, stricken with dread, and then glimpsed something gliding beyond the stacks, visible only through the gaps above and below the books: a shape like a haggard woman, her head down. She was sitting but somehow kept moving, drifting along the floor like she was on wheels.

Jane Scott.

She had come for him at last.

James sat on the end of the bed under the mosquito nets and watched her read. He had known he would eventually show the letter to Alice despite all his protestations to the contrary, but he should have held out longer. They had made love properly at least, but she hadn’t bothered to conceal how much that had been an unspoken deal.

You show me yours...

Something like that. It left him feeling weak and dirty, but it had done two good things. It had given him someone he could confide in about his predicament, which made him feel less lonely, and it had taken some of the shine off Alice. He had known, of course, that she was hard and selfish and manipulative, but he hadn’t had the power to walk away from her. He was captivated. Now, oddly, in the moment where they were closest through sex and the shared knowledge of their secret, he felt more distant from her. This was, he thought as he watched her
read the scrawled sheets of folded parchment, a good thing. He knew he could not trust her.

When he had opened the canvas bag she had whooped with delight and triumph, and her eyes had been full of a wild light that was more than just exhilaration. It was, what? Rapture? A joy beyond anything she had shown when they’d made love, certainly. But it wasn’t surprise, and that bothered him, because there was something hidden in her face that made him think she had already known what he would be bringing back from Coba.

But how?

He sat up and read the letter again over her shoulder, peering at the rough and uneven writing.

My honoured mother,

Much has happened since I last wrote and the consequences of my small doings have caught up with me at last. This will be, I fear, my last letter, nor do I think it will ever reach you. The Spanish priest who bore my former correspondence is no longer here, nor are any of his compatriots. The circumstances of their departure is the bulk of my story, but it is also its end, and though leaving this life grieves me little, it pains me that I will not see you again and that my words will lie with my poor remains forever. Or rather, a part of them.

I have, I think, learned impetuousness from thee, though I did not suck it from thy breast, and defiance wherein the cause is just. You schooled me in much but nothing of greater import did I learn at your kind tutelage than that the world can be a most wicked place and that it is right and proper to sometimes stand against it.

I have been here amongst the Indians of that region of New Spain called Mexico some dozen years, and in that time I have seen much not dreamt of in the land of my birth, things of great beauty, and skill, and
things which are too terrible to report, even to one such as you who are made of sterner stuff than most. Some of those terrible things were done among the Indians themselves, but many more were visited upon them by our European cousins the Spanish, who have made it their purpose to conquer this land and strip it of its resources. The Yucatan has been spared some of the most appalling aspects of the conquest, because it lacks the precious metals and other minerals which the Spanish seek to send back to their homeland, but they have brought great hardship nonetheless, even in spite of their own priests who have—in my sight—urged patience from the soldiers. But the army, though it has some good, God-fearing men, has many in it which are no more than a disordered rabble of drunkards who are here for profit, and are quick to use the sword and the noose. I have heard of whole villages strung up by ropes from the trees, the very babes lashed by the throat to their desperate mothers’ heels. Perchance the forest breeds a wildness in the Indians, but barbarism lives not in what we know or believe, but in our actions, and in this I have seen the Europeans stoop to acts our country’s worst villains and hangmen would balk at. The Indians are but poorly armed and of a desperate poverty wherein they live and die by the meager crops they raise, so that a drought produces famine. It has been easier here for the invaders than in places dominated by the so-called Aztecs. Here there is little unity between villages, and the old civilizations which boasted mighty armies have long since passed. The worst years were a century agone, but the Indians still live under a great burden, and sometimes that burden becomes more than usually weighty.

The latest dispute arose when a captain from Valladolid moved his troops through the forest near the village. It was said he had once seen most bloody action, an uprising by Indians far south of here in which they had executed several Spanish and some Indians who worked with them in horrible and unnatural ways. The captain’s wife was among
the murdered. He took to heart then a most vile hatred for the Indians, and revenged himself with his troops upon a neighboring village, killing many in battle and executing those he captured in ways which—save the removal of the hearts, which the Indians had done as a sacrifice to their gods—was the copy of the brutal acts he was avenging. When word reached Spain of his response he was—it is said—told to desist from future reprisals, but either the order never reached him, or he ignored it. He brought his troops north, raping and destroying all he found, till he came to Ek Balam.

We had word of their coming, and I was able to use what able-bodied men we had to arrange archers on the pyramids in the ancient town where the villagers still live as I once stood upon the walls in Skipton to fire down upon the roundheads. Our numbers were few, some twenty-six men and a few women and children strong enough to fight, but the enemy had expected little resistance, none organized. When they rode into town we met them with several volleys of arrows and though we killed none right away—they being well armored against bows—several were injured or lost their horses and caused great confusion and disorder among the troops. The Spanish fired their harquebuses but hit none of our men, and as they sought cover, were two of their soldiers killed with arrows. As the Spaniards split up, some seeking to regroup and some fleeing outright, we leapt down onto them and tore them from their horses. In the struggle which followed I did meet the enemy captain and cut off his arm with the sword I wore when holding Skipton for the King.

At this the remaining Spaniards fled, though the Captain still breathed, and—under my guidance—did one of the village women tend his wound. For two days I thought he would die, but he began to gain some strength. At first he would not speak, and showed great hatred for myself and the Indians, even those who nursed him back to health, but I visited him every day, and at last we did pray together with some of the
Maya who had been called to Christ by Spanish missionaries, albeit to a version of the old faith marked still by their own superstitious practices. Yet should I not call them superstitions though I countenance them not, as I have grown wary of discounting the Catholic view, though I hold fast to my own. It seems to me now that we see the world from the slim angle of the place where we were born, altered only slightly by our slender experience of others.

The Captain stayed with us a month, but then his troops arrived with a new commander, one Gomez, and emissaries from Valladolid who came with plans to execute all who remained. As you can well believe, they were much surprised to find the Captain still alive, and marvelled more so when he did speak on our behalf. But yet Commander Gomez was implacable: his troops would visit upon the village, he said, the same number and manner of deaths and mutilations that the Captain and his men had suffered. It was to be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I spoke then for the village, urging patience, and the Captain too did remind Gomez that the attack upon us had been quite unwarranted. The man shed tears for those who would be killed, though he himself had been poised to kill them but two months earlier.

It took hard debate, but we at last prevailed upon the commander to spare the Indians, yet on one thing he would not be moved. I had assaulted a captain of the Spanish nation, and that could not be excused. It was determined that the blow I struck be returned upon me, and the following day at first light the commander struck off my right hand just below the elbow in imitation of the blow I had given the captain. At my request, he used my own sword because I would not be defeated by an enemy blade.

This is the reason for my poor penmanship for I have had to use my left hand for all things since and I have little skill at it. A further penalty I must endure was to leave the people with whom I had lived, banished
to another part of the peninsula never to return. The remains of my right hand will lie here, at their request, in an ancient tomb, but the rest of me, and all I brought with me from England—yea, even that for which I first did flee—will travel west to places where I am known to neither Spaniard nor Indian. One of the Indians (properly called Maya) will go with me, for my health is poor, and I fear that the loss of blood allowed some other infection in and that leaves me weak and sweating. When I first came here I might have survived both hurt and illness, but now I fear they will o’ercome me.

I have spoken to my Mayan friend about my past, what I carry, its great value and significance, and he has agreed to lay a small part of it here in Ek Balam with the hand I gave for the village. The rest will come with me to a great, forgotten place he has named to me called Uxmal where, he says, it is fitting for me live out what time remains to me, and there or thereabouts to die. From what he says I see a tale which smacks of heavenly purposes, for there I may measure out my poor length upon the earth like an old hero returning—though in another land—to his birthplace. It is strange and fitting that my life should come to this almost circle, where that which made me once despised now makes me most admired and binds me once again to kings.

And so farewell, Mother. I fear I will not write to you again, nor do I expect you will ever read these words. The precious stones and metal I once hoped to bring triumphant back to the land of my birth will lie with me here, but that, methinks, is not so bad a thing. Man is man, it seems to me now, despite of race, creed, or nationality. I have lived with those who had all and those who had nothing, indeed, I end where I began. The skin and language of those who will lay me in the earth is different from she who took me first to church, but their poverty is the same. I have found as much good grace, kindness, and dignity in the poor as I have in nobles, princes, and kings. I loved the King for what he did for
me and mine, but it no longer seems a treason to imagine a world where none wears a crown. As such it will lie with me in tribute to she who bore me and who lived most despised and dejected even of the poor who knew her. My last letter will be to her though we both know she is long past reading it.

Do not blame me for this, dear Mother. I have a little changed is all, as experience will make a man change. Pray for me still and know that I die.

Your ever-loving and most grateful son,

Edward

Alice turned to him and her eyes were wide with such excitement that James almost forgot his newly discovered wariness.

“James,” she exclaimed, “this is amazing! It sounds like we have only part of the treasure!” Her eyes flickered from the duffel bag back to the letter. “See! ‘Only a small part’ was left in Ek Balam. The rest has to be in Uxmal. It can’t have been found during excavation or we’d know about it, so it’s still there, waiting to be found!”

“Uxmal is a big place,” said James. “And he doesn’t even say he’ll die there exactly. Look,” he said, stabbing a finger at the relevant paragraph. “‘There or thereabouts.’ Not much to go on, is it?”

“Sure it is,” said Alice. “We just have to find which parts of the city haven’t been excavated. Maybe we could take a metal detector.”

“Dream on,” he said. “A metal detector would never have found the small amounts of gold under the massive stone pyramid in Ek Balam,” he said. “We need more information.”

“Maybe there’s something in a Spanish codex or something,” she said, refusing to let go of her enthusiasm. “Colonial records of this guy Edward. Maybe the Spanish army knew where he went. Or maybe his death is recorded in a parish registry over there. It may even give his grave site. He was a Christian, right? It sounds like he got kinda eclectic in his religion, so maybe he was buried in a Spanish cemetery in some mission church. It might be as easy as finding a headstone and opening the grave.”

She looked thrilled by the idea.