The Cortés Enigma

by John Paul Davis

“What was their significance to the islands?”

  “Apparently all of the islands are owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. In the 1500s, they leased control to a governor, initially the Godolphins. They stayed there till the 1700s.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “When the male line died out, it passed to a daughter and her husband. He was an Osborne.”

  Ben nodded. At least that made sense of the Osborne name on the mausoleum. “How long did they last?”

  “1830s,” Chris replied. “Then for some reason, they decided not to renew.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Absolutely none. Only that the last Osborne was replaced by a guy called Augustus Smith who took on the lease for £20,000. Apparently he was very different to his predecessors. Tried to change the way of life.”

  “In what way?”

  “Expelled people who didn’t work…”

  “I get the picture,” Ben said. “How about a connection to Cortés?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Although the book did have a facsimile of the Godolphin coat of arms. The knight and double-headed eagle are identical to those of Cortés.”

  Ben nodded, still disappointed. He sought to reply, but refrained. Valeria had returned, carrying two plates.

  “One chicken and chips,” she said, placing the plate down in front of Ben. “And one lasagne and garlic bread.”

  Chris inhaled the aroma as he placed his napkin on his lap. “Um, hmmm. That smells terrific.”

  Valeria smiled. “Enjoy your meals.”

  Ben picked up his knife and fork and cut through the first chip. “What?”

  Chris was grinning. “I was just thinking how handsome you were looking.”

  Ben was confused. He looked at Chris, who was looking at his cheek. He put his hand to his cheek and looked at his hand.

  The cut from his fall at the cemetery had reopened.

  “Son of a bitch.” He removed a tissue from his pocket and held it against the blood.

  Chris’s grin widened as he sampled his lasagne. “Melts in the mouth.”

  Ben was frustrated. “Tell me about the coat of arms.”

  “Nothing to tell,” Chris said, chewing. “It just confirmed what you thought from the mausoleum…speaking of which, how was the cemetery?”

  Ben removed the tissue from his face, pleased to see the bleeding had stopped. “As a matter of fact, surprisingly worthwhile.” He started on his chicken.

  “You found it?”

  “I found something,” he said, adding salt, vinegar and ketchup from the containers on the table. “The church was a mess. All the windows had vanished, including the ones TF had drawn.”

  “How about the angel statues?”

  “Also gone. There was only one there, a ruin, and it wasn’t like the one of Malinche.”

  “And the graves?”

  “I saw five, but not six. Have a guess which one was missing.”

  Chris cut up his lasagne and took another gigantic mouthful of the cheese and mince. “Any clues?”

  “No. That said, the one missing was almost certainly the one Kernow found. I took another look at it earlier. The front was silted over. You couldn’t read it with an X-ray.”

  “What about the five you did see?”

  “Not much to tell, really. All were the same colour, but the faces were badly worn.”

  “Including the inscriptions?”

  “Yes, at least on four of them. Fortunately one was still intact.”

  “That the one you stole?”

  Ben looked up, unimpressed.

  Chris grinned back. “What did it say?”

  “I couldn’t read the lettering. Though the symbol could be Hapsburg.”

  “Like the one on the Godolphin coat of arms?”

  “Not identical, but pretty close.”

  “How about the one that was missing?”

  Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. The silt had covered whatever was there.”

  “You think TF was accurate?”

  Ben chewed and swallowed before answering. “The man was a genius. Why go to all this trouble over nothing?”

  Chris wiped his mouth with his napkin and took a first bite of his garlic bread. “So what does it mean?”

  “If the diagrams are accurate, the symbols are Aztec: the main one being Quetzalcoatl. It stands to reason, the grave has some connection with Cortés.”

  “Could it be his?”

  “No,” Ben said adamantly. “Hernán Cortés was buried in Mexico – at least eventually.” He hesitated slightly. “Besides, the name, according to TF, was Pizarro.”

  Chris nodded. “I forgot that. But weren’t Cortés and Pizarro related?”

  Ben swallowed his food. “Distantly. I can’t help wonder whether the connection is with his daughter.”

  “Which daughter?”

  “Cortés had many wives and children, including with Montezuma’s daughter. When he returned from the New World, he married his second wife, Juana Ramirez de Arellano de Zúñiga, daughter of Don Carlos Ramirez de Arellano, the second Count of Aguilar.

  “Now, according to the diary, TF saw a stained-glass window at the back of the church, behind the second storey where the choir stood. I saw the area myself; the window was no longer there. If the diagram is correct, there was a woman in it.”

  To Chris the names meant nothing. “Who was she?”

  “Catalina Cortés de Zúñiga was born in 1531 and apparently died within a few months of her birth, at least that’s what every book on Cortés says.”

  “You think she didn’t?”

  “TF clearly questioned it – claimed she might even have married and had a daughter of the same name. But if so, it raises the question, if she didn’t die, why was her entire life not recorded in any official records?”

  Chris frowned, his face flushed.

  Ben looked at him, concerned. “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  Chris rose quickly to his feet and sprinted through the dining room, into the lobby and up the stairs.

  Valeria was hovering around the corner of the room. She looked at Ben, confused.

  Ben rose to his feet and leaned over Chris’s lasagne. He smelt it, then the garlic bread.

  Mystery solved.

  “Oh, Mr Malone, I’m so sorry,” she said, picking up Chris’s plates. “I must tell the chef immediately.”

  Ben’s initial concern was replaced with a smile, his smile with a laugh. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, not failing to miss the irony. They’d been talking about Cortés and lost treasure.

  Now Chris had Montezuma’s revenge.

  Ben finished his chicken and chips without mishap, and Valeria came to clean away his empty plate. He ordered a banana bread pudding when offered dessert, and it arrived moments later.

  “So what’s your name?” Ben asked as she delivered the dessert, knowing the question was somewhat overdue.

  “Valeria,” she said, running her long delicate fingers through her strong wavy hair. Despite continuing with her duties, setting a table two along from his, her eyes remained focused on Ben.

  “Forgive me for asking, but what’s a pretty Spanish girl like you doing in a debatably English dump like this?”

  “I like it here. It upsets me you should think of it in such a way.”

  A wry smile. “I said it was debatable.”

  “Debatably English or debatably a dump?” The question sounded all the cuter when asked in her soft Latino twang.

  “Both! I’m guessing this island does count as British.”

  She folded a napkin and set it down neatly on the next table. Despite the lack of customers, the girl clearly took pride in her work. “Only in name.”

  Ben laughed, this time softly. “Anyway, you still haven’t answered my question. What on earth brought you here from…”

  “Extremadura.”

  “Beautiful part of Spain.”

  “You’ve
seen it?”

  “I’ve seen Mérida.”

  She smiled, this time giving Ben a glimpse of her perfect white teeth. “I was born there.”

  He raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised. “Forgive my misjudgement. I’d have put you down more as a rural village kind of girl.”

  She looked at him, either insulted or intrigued. “Why you say that?”

  “The way you handle yourself. The way you seem to be able to take care of anything that comes your way.” He recalled the day before seeing her tending to an overflowing pump in the garden. “The way Mr Nicholl seems to save money by employing his waitress as his handyman.”

  She laughed, a giggle. “What can I say? I am truly indispensible.”

  He looked at her, enthralled by every aspect of her appearance. He noticed things he hadn’t seen before: her eyes, deep and brown, with an inner fire like a smouldering volcano on the verge of erupting; her skin, smooth olive, sultry, a never changing hue even after so long out of the Iberian sunlight. Tonight she wore two small earrings dangling softly from both ear lobes, occasionally hidden beneath the flow of her wavy hair. A beautiful, but, he guessed, lonely girl, trapped in a run-down time warp.

  What possible reason did she have for staying here?

  “My cousin tells me he saw you getting on a boat yesterday evening, heading toward that big lighthouse. I understand you live there.”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “You live there alone?”

  “No. With my grandmother.”

  Ben nodded, assuming she was going to continue, but she didn’t. “Who came first?”

  “She did,” Valeria replied, smiling. “Without her, my mother could not have been born.”

  He grinned, as did she. For several seconds they held eye contact, Ben finally winning the stare out. As she looked away, she picked up some empty wine glasses from a nearby table.

  “Forgive me, Señor Ben. I must be moving on.”

  “What time do you finish?”

  She shrugged. “About seven.”

  “Then what say we have a drink in the bar?”

  19

  6:30pm

  The Queen’s Castle on St Lide’s was unlike the other tourist sites on the Isles of Scilly. There were no employees, no cafés or gift shops – no watchful eyes to observe their activities. The site manager checked in every so often, perhaps once a week, usually a Thursday. It was a routine that had lasted over fifteen years, one of little change.

  Pizarro trusted the information.

  The breakthrough had come at 6:23 that evening. Despite the noise, Cortés knew there was no chance of them being seen or overheard. Being the only people on the island there was no one on hand to witness the four men of west European features knock through the wall and enter the long abandoned chamber on the other side.

  The interior of the chamber was difficult to make out with the light fading. While the rooms on the ground floor were nearly always dark, even in the daylight, at this hour the area within the strong grey stone walls was consumed in almost total blackness.

  Pizarro was the first to enter, followed immediately by Cortés. As they made their way over the pile of rubble, the four intruders spread out across the previously hidden inner chamber. Features were difficult to make out, the illumination of the dim yellow glow from the torches doing little to help, their light flickering like a burning lantern. In the dark, shadows moved in strange directions, giving the impression there were two people instead of one, a human cloaked by a sinister doppelganger lurking in the shadows.

  Juan Cortés entered the new chamber through the now dismantled wall and pointed his torch in front of him. They had entered a tunnel, a well-preserved subterranean passage lined by thick walls, similar to those in the castle. The tunnel continued, left then right like the start of a clockwise circle. Logic told him it followed the coast; perhaps it would open up on reaching the sea. The castle was not the same as centuries ago, erosion on this side was worse than the others thanks largely to its proximity to Hell’s Bay.

  Cortés knew that was another place they could end up.

  The tunnel walls disappeared after about two hundred metres, replaced by solid earth supported by wooden struts and beams. In some areas the wood had cracked, leaving it susceptible to caving in. Pizarro grimaced as he examined the wood in the torchlight, concerned by the clear evidence the ancient pine had become rotten years ago.

  He was surprised it was still in place.

  Further on, the area became wider. There were holes in the ground everywhere, not random, but purposely cut. Scattered along the tunnel were ancient tools, buckets, ladders, pickaxes, spades…

  The remnants of an ancient tin mining operation.

  Pizarro was becoming nervous; Cortés, on the other hand, remained calm and silent. Pizarro knew from experience that meant either one of two things. Either he was equally nervous or he was just plain focused.

  The mine ended, following which they came to an open room. Incredibly there were barrels inside, firkins and something much larger. Cortés looked inside and immediately coughed.

  Pizarro looked as well. “Gunpowder.” He looked at the nearby barrels. “Worthless now.”

  Cortés rubbed his face, removing sweat. “What of the map?”

  Pizarro studied the ancient text, struggling to make it out in the torchlight. “Further, I think.”

  The entrance to the next room had been difficult to see at first, so dark was the surrounding area and so great was the quantity of barrels and firewood.

  “It seems incredible the soldiers could operate so close and not know,” Pizarro mused.

  Cortés was less surprised. “Perhaps that was their plan.”

  A second chamber was located along the passage, less than fifty metres on from where the gunpowder had been kept. The second room was a lot like the first, crowded, dark and slightly cramped. A large wooden partition wall had been put up on one side, and it was soon clear why. Behind it was a deep hole, a perfect square, surrounded by equipment, unmistakeably of the Civil War era. A large bucket was attached to a thick white rope dangling freely into the hole below.

  Cortés felt his heart sink on seeing it.

  “Someone has beaten us to it.”

  20

  8:50pm

  The bar was deserted apart from them. A cosy log fire burned in the original fireplace, the wood crackling when the logs split under the heat of the continuous flame. The glow matched the colour of the wall lights, whose yellow light shone dimly through thick orange shades. To Ben the features were in character with the building, simple and quaint, as if it existed in a time before electricity.

  In reality, he guessed little had changed since his ancestor’s visit.

  Ben was sitting alone at a table, his attention on the door to the ladies’ room. Moments later, he saw it open, followed by the return of Valeria. As before, she looked beautiful, somehow even more so. Did he miss her in her three and a half minute absence? Was it a trick of the light? A new layer of lipstick and foundation makeup she had recently added to her already lovely face?

  He smiled at her as she sat down. “So what really made you want to come and live here?”

  “My grandmother moved here when I was very young.” Valeria played with her hair as she spoke; Ben noticed she had been doing so regularly. “My grandfather worked as a property developer. They visited here back in the 1970s, and my grandmother fell in love with the place. When they were here, they saw the old lighthouse – by then it had fallen into disrepair. My grandmother asked my grandfather to buy it, and he refused.”

  “He refused?”

  “My grandfather died in the 1980s, leaving my grandmother alone in a village she no longer loved. It was her decision to leave.”

  A ghost of a smile had formed across Ben’s face. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard of someone emigrating from Spain to England.”

  Valeria laughed for the first time in a while. “My grandpar
ents always loved to travel. My mother was the same – and my father. When she was young, my mother and four of her friends went out one day into the mountains near our village. There was a church on the hill; it had once been part of a monastery. The site was dilapidated and had a reputation of being haunted. People in our village respected the rumours, particularly of dead monks.