by Scott O'Dell
I went down the long dark aisle to a chapel where I had often prayed before. I knelt in a corner, away from the light of votive candles. The marble floor was cold. I clasped my hands and gazed up at the Virgin above the altar in her white robes. Around her neck were coils of gold, and on her fingers sparkling rings that must have come from the New World, for I had never seen them before.
But as I gazed, slowly her face disappeared. Instead, I saw the great gold image in the Temple of the Sun. Then Chima’s face—all innocence and beauty. Then this changed and the priestess was looking down at me, as her raven locks took on the shape of writhing serpents.
In panic I sought a chapel where no candles burned. It be longed to wise St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo. I got to my knees and gazed up at his painting. In the darkness it, too, slowly changed and showed no longer St. Augustine but a portrait of Bishop Pedroza as he lay on the sacrificial stone, the obsidian knife poised above his breast.
I hurried away. At the cathedral door I stopped suddenly, as if an iron fist had grasped me.
Beside the curtained door that shut out the church from the sounds of revelry was an alms box and an old woman on guard, sitting behind it asleep. In one painful moment, I wrenched the amethyst ring from my finger and pushed it through the slot. I heard a small tinkling sound as it struck copper coins on the bottom of the box. The old woman opened her eyes and blessed me.
I stood in the darkness looking down at her. You do not understand, old woman, I said to myself. I had the power to save Pedroza, but I let him die. He died because I could not live in peace knowing that he held power over me and something that I coveted. I was like Pizarro, the pig boy, who coveted the power of Atahualpa. No, giving this amethyst ring to the poor does not absolve me of the crime. Nor does the gift of gold I have made. I must seek it in some other way, old woman. But how? In some other place, old woman who blesses me. But where?
I went out into the April sun and chose the road toward Arroyo. Near the top of the first hill, the stagecoach overtook me. It was the old one I had ridden in before, many times, only now it was painted blue and yellow and red for the fiesta and had a young driver I hadn’t seen before. He cracked his whip and drove on when he learned that I was penniless.
Don Alfredo Luz, the alcalde of Arroyo, riding a sleek gray horse with his wife on a pillion behind him, came up the far side of the hill. In my present condition, having no desire to talk, I glanced about for a place to hide. The hill was without tree or bush. I stood in the middle of the road and greeted them with a stiff bow.
“Welcome, señor,’’ Don Alfredo said. “You have been away a very long time. Welcome, welcome! We’ve heard so many things, we scarcely know what to believe. We heard you were with Hernán Cortés. Then it was Francisco Pizarro.”
Doña Elena, his wife, said, “Then Magellan and you sailed around the world. Is that true? Is the world really round?” She paused. “Your mother died of pains in her chest, did you know?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said without emotion. Now at least my mother wouldn’t be disappointed because I was not yet a bishop, let alone a priest—that I had come home from the golden cities empty-handed.
“Your sister is married and has two children,” Doña Elena said. “The boy looks like you.”
“I guess it doesn’t make much difference about the world,” the alcalde said, “whether it’s round or flat.”
“Other things,” I said, “are more important.”
“You’ve seen so many sights in your wanderings,” Doña Elena said from her soft perch behind her husband, “do tell us about them sometime.”
“Round or flat, the world’s far bigger these days,” Don Alfredo said, “since Magellan and Pizarro and Cortés have been nosing about.”
“And so full of wonders,” his wife said.
“It’s not only the world that’s full of wonders,” I said. “Life is full of wonders, too, monstrous wonders!”
My words were lost on Doña Elena.
“Yes,” she said. “When Captain Pizarro came asking for money—three years ago, was it not, Don Alfredo?” The al calde thought it was three. “Anyway, he brought a band of Indians with him to show everyone. You should have seen them. All decked out in feathers and swirly tattoos and big round rings in their ears. The men, that is. The women had hair they covered with some kind of purple grease, and it hung down below their waists. And they wore bells on their bare ankles.”
“And millions of them out there in Spain’s new world,” Don Alfredo said. “Little wonder that Pizarro has such a time try ing to save souls.”
“Honestly, Julián, do you think that these heathens have souls?” Doña Elena asked me.
“Yes, souls,” I said. “Also, the men bleed when wounded and the women weep in sorrow.”
Don Alfredo was suddenly uncomfortable, as the sailor on the banks of the Guadalquivir had been uncomfortable. He turned his horse in a circle and Doña Elena raised her pink parasol.
“Are you returning to your studies?” she said.
I shook my head. “I have come to doubt that I’ve been called to speak for Christ.”
“What a shame, Julián. You would make such an excellent priest—so sympathetic and kind and thoughtful of other people. Oh, my!”
“If I can be of help to you,” Don Alfredo said.
“Yes, if we can,” Doña Elena said.
I thanked the alcalde and his wife, and they did not detain me further. Waving their gloved hands, they rode down the sunny trail toward the fair.
At the bottom of the next hill stood the gray stone dwelling that housed the Brothers of the Poor. It was off the trail in a meadow beside a stream. I had never talked to any of the brothers, though I had seen them working in their scanty fields in black gowns and cowls. They were a clannish lot, having little to do with anyone who wasn’t poor.
I went down a path overgrown with weeds that led to the door of their dwelling. Carved above the door, in the stone lintel, was a legend. I tried to make out the letters, but all that I could see was “Anno MCCCLX” and the words “Know ye this…” Time and weather had erased the rest. It did not mat ter. What words could ever encompass or even hint at the marvels of this world of pain and beauty?
I rang the bell that hung beside the door on a rusting chain.
About the Author
Scott O’Dell is the author of many timeless children’s tales including Island of the Blue Dolphins, Zia, The 290, The Dark Canoe, The King’s Fifth, The Black Pearl, and Black Star, Bright Dawn. He has won the Newbery Medal and has been a three-time Newbery Honor Book Winner. He was the first American to ever be awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Children’s Literature. The Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction was created in his honor.
