The Last Mayan (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “I’m not listening to this crap.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  But he didn’t move.

  “April told me why. She saw things in you she’d seen in her father.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “She saw the way tension built up in you and how you had to make trips into Chetumal, and how you came back relaxed. It reminded her of the way her father was before he hit on her.”

  His face was a mask of rage now and his hands had doubled into fists.

  “There was a girl working for Geraldo, a maid. She wasn’t but twelve years old. April saw you talking to her, saw your expression, your body language. She saw you with her in your cabaña one night while Pepper and I were walking on the beach and she didn’t know what to do. Her first reaction was to run away. Then she tried to make sure she was in camp at the same time you were. It was the only way she could think of to protect that girl or any of the others, because she knew you’d think twice if you thought she was close enough to see or hear what was going on. It’s the same reason she went to that house during the Chhachaac. She got up from her hammock, didn’t see you, and was afraid you were doing something to your godson’s older sister, María. But you weren’t there and María, or Xmari, as they call her, got April to go next door, to help the sick woman who had the baby. April didn’t always think clearly, and her life is pretty messed up, but she has the right instincts.”

  “That’s a goddamned lie!” He moved away from the wall and squared off, a vein throbbing in his temple.

  “I wish it was,” I said. “But I talked to the other help and they told me where the girl lived. That’s why I went to Xul earlier. I talked to her and her parents.”

  “Oh, shit.” His face reddened and he turned back toward the lake. “Alan, for Christ’s sake, you don’t believe …” He turned to face me again. “Look, I was nice to the girl, that’s all. I joked with her a little. There wasn’t anything …”

  His words played out when I didn’t reply.

  “It’s her word against mine,” he said finally.

  “Yeah. But how many were there before?”

  “Before?”

  “An old man told me that some people carry an evil wind with them. Usually they’re the only ones it destroys, but sometimes, when the wind is especially strong, it pulls in people nearby. I thought he was talking about me.” I tried to laugh, but my voice was trembling. “Actually, I think it was all just a dream, and I was trying to make sense of what I’d seen. But I didn’t have April’s experience.”

  “You’re totally frigging crazy, you know that?”

  “What I’m saying, Eric, is I don’t think this is the kind of thing that just happened down here. I think it’s been going on for a while. Is that why you’re divorced, by the way? Why you don’t see your own daughter these days?”

  He took a step toward me and my hand tightened on the cane.

  “I ought to knock your damned head in,” he growled.

  “But you won’t. Any more than you knocked Paul’s head in. Your way is more underhanded. A man who preys on young girls isn’t about to face a man, even an old man in poor health.” I sighed. “What was it, Eric? Blackmail? Did Paul find out your secret? Maybe bail you out of a problem at some other university? I figure it was something like that and all I’d have to do is make a few phone calls to find out.”

  “Damn you to hell, if you so much as—”

  “So you had to tolerate him and his crazy ideas. Not that I see Paul as a blackmailer. I think it was just that he let you know you owed him. And it was too dangerous not to repay the debt. But then what did he do? Up the ante? That’s how I figure it. Paul told me just before he died that you were going to publish his work in the journal you edit. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, because I knew that if you published his theories about pre-Columbian contacts with the Old World, the whole academic world would come down on you both. You could probably kiss your hope for any more grant money good-bye.”

  He didn’t say anything, just glared death at me.

  “So you tried to talk him out of it. And you burgled his house, didn’t you?”

  His eyes narrowed and I knew my guess had scored.

  “What happened? When Paul told you about the little stone tablet you pretended not to be interested, but you knew if you got your hands on it he wouldn’t have any hard evidence for his theory.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You were scared to death of him. He was old and in bad health and knew he didn’t have that much time left. He let you know you’d better comply.” I took a deep breath because at this point I was on a tightrope.

  “What did you do, Eric? Sabotage the brakes on the Rover? Or loosen the steering? You told me you’d been a mechanic, so you’d know how to do those things.”

  “You don’t have any proof.”

  “No.”

  “So you can just get your ass out of here, now.”

  “I don’t think so. Because if I leave now, people will want to know why. I’ll go when Pepper’s ready. It shouldn’t be more than a day or two more.”

  “You son-of-a-bitch. If you go back and spread this around …”

  “I don’t have to. April said she’s going to do it all by herself.”

  “No!”

  The waiters turned to stare at him.

  “That little bitch. Do you know what that’ll do?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said and walked away.

  “But the project!” he yelled after me. “Are you willing to lose everything?”

  I got into the Neon and drove to Chetumal.

  Maybe Eric Blackburn had lost everything, but I knew I hadn’t.

  EPILOGUE

  It was a month later. Pepper and I had flown down for a couple of days to visit José at the site of Lubaanah. The real Lubaanah, not the site where Eric Blackburn had worked for two years. A road had been cut along the trail Minnie and I had walked, and José’s crew, which included Minnie O’Toole, was busy documenting the structures that had been hidden for so many generations. Only later, with the infusion of money from the central government, would excavation occur, and then, for better or worse, restoration for the sake of tourist dollars.

  Santos met us as we drove into the site. He was thinner and wincing a bit, but still game. We followed him, Minnie, and José to the various small temple groups, linked now by neat jungle trails, coming at last to the small plaza group where Pepper and I had taken refuge. The air was hot and redolent with the smell of greenery, and birds called overhead. The scene was strangely peaceful, considering what had happened here just weeks ago.

  “Have you heard anything from Blackburn?” I asked.

  Jose shook his head. “He called a couple of times to say he’d be coming back. He wanted my help with the permit extension. He said he was sending some documents. But he never did.”

  “I thought that package you got was from him,” Minnie piped up, but the Mexican just frowned.

  “I think you’re mistaken. If he ever sent anything, it was lost.”

  “He’s called Pepper a couple of times,” I said. “I don’t know what they talked about.”

  “Yes, you do,” Pepper shot back. “He was trying to convince me all the rumors were untrue. He threatened to sue Alan for spreading them.”

  “And were you?” José asked.

  “No. I think April did enough without my help. That’s why his funding fell through. Her father heard about them.”

  “Too bad,” José said.

  “Yes,” I said, thinking of the many archaeological projects that never get written up and wondering if Blackburn’s last two years would be among them.

  I stared down at the place where Pepper and I had huddled when I was sure we were going to die, and then I looked out over the plaza at the temple.

  Three of the masks could be seen, Mayan kings looking back at us from their places alongside the doorway. A fourth had been badly damaged, but half the head was intact. A
nd the other two, including the one over the doorway, were missing, destroyed by the explosion.

  “It’s a pity,” José said, reading all our thoughts. “There was a mural inside, too, but it’s been destroyed, as well.”

  “Yes,” I said and didn’t say anything about what I’d seen in the brief, blinding flash before the sky went black.

  But I knew I’d seen it and it hadn’t been an illusion or the product of a brain under pressure: I’d seen the seventh mask, a man with an aquiline nose and beard, staring out with a faint smile curling his lips.

  Santos coughed. “I brought the book,” he said.

  We walked with him back to the Land Cruiser with the INAH logo on the side. We drove back the half kilometer to the village, where we found the house of Santos’s sister. There, on the little wooden altar table, beside a wooden cross wearing a huipil, was a square object covered in plastic wrapping. The sister smiled and scurried away and Santos went to the package and began to unwrap it. I saw what appeared to be a nineteenth-century ledger book, the cover worn and the pages yellowed.

  We walked out the rear door, through the kitchen shelter, and into the backyard, where turkeys and chickens pecked at the ground. At the rear of the bare space, where the house garden began, Santos stopped, opened the volume, and reverently handed it to me.

  “It was my grandfather’s,” he said, “and his uncle’s before.”

  The book with the old prophesies. The book John Dance Williams had seen and that Paul Hayes had only heard about.

  I slowly opened it, turning the pages carefully. The writing was in a slanting, nineteenth-century script, almost all Mayan, though here and there I glimpsed Spanish words. I saw an incantation that seemed to be aimed at convincing the colel cab, the now almost vanished Native American bees, to give up their honey. There was a list of questions and answers, couched as riddles, which leaders had taught to their sons as a part of the initiation into the responsibilities of their office. There were nostrums, featuring herbs and leaves, useful for parturition and fevers.

  And there were the chronicles.

  My heart started to pound and my hand trembled as my eyes made out the ancient words:

  Ti u Yaax Ahau katun cu likil kaax. Eztabalob u cahal, Ek Chhen u kaba tumen ek u ha.

  “ ‘In Katun 1 Ahau,’ ” I read haltingly, “ ‘they left the forest. They founded their town, Black Well was its name because the waters were black.’ ”

  Santos nodded approvingly. I read through the other calendar chronicles.

  And halted at Katun 10 Ahau.

  Ti Katun lahun Ahau cu tal u dzul, u yax dzul cu tal uaye ti u luum Maya uinicoob.

  “ ‘In Katun 10 Ahau the stranger came, the first stranger to come here to the land of the Mayan men.’ ” I looked over at Pepper. “It’s here, just like Williams said.”

  Zac u yich, helaan u than, u yaax dzul cu tal uaye, u yaaxil.

  “ ‘He had a pale face and spoke a strange language, the first stranger to come here, the first or great one.’ ”

  “But who can say what that means historically?” Jose said. “It could be something that happened in historical times. Each katun lasted almost twenty years and occurred every two hundred fifty-six years, so, during fifteen hundred years of Mayan history, we could be talking about any of five or six twenty year periods. But we’re more likely talking about a katun that fell after the Spanish conquest, maybe even something as late as the nineteenth century.”

  “But wasn’t there something about a great king who ruled the land where this stranger came from?” Pepper asked.

  I scanned the faded letters and my finger stopped above a single word.

  “There it is.”

  Jose craned his neck to see. “Are you sure?”

  “Yep.”

  Ti u tepal u Yaax Ahau, cu tal u yaax dzul.

  “ ‘The first stranger came from the realm of the great king,’ ” I continued to translate. “ ‘Six were the kings of the forest men then, six they were. He was the seventh and then there were no more.’ ” I looked up. “It uses the word chibal, lineage. So the Williams letter was probably right—the stranger was adopted as the seventh ruler of the lineage, probably because there were no sons.”

  I continued to read. “ ‘He ruled for many years, many were the years of his reign. Then he died ich paa. Within the walls.’ ”

  “Does it say which walls?” José asked. “Does it specify the walls of this city in particular, like the Williams letter claimed?”

  “No,” I said. “Williams must’ve just assumed it was this city. Why?”

  “Ich paa?” José said. “That’s an old way of saying Mayapán.”

  Mayapan, the capital city of Yucatán in the fifteen century, now a jumble of ruins just southeast of Mérida ….

  “You’re right,” I said, hand shaking with excitement. “The League of Mayapán ruled most of Yucatan until the middle of the fifteenth century and then there was a falling-out among the different factions. It collapsed into warfare and there was complete disunity when the Spanish arrived seventy-odd years later. But the natives still remembered the glory of Mayapán.”

  “So this foreign king died in the fighting at Mayapán,” Pepper said. “Fantastic.”

  “And presumably was brought back here for burial,” Jose said. “But who was the great king in his own country?”

  “I have an idea,” Minnie blurted. “Joao, or John I, the king of Portugal from, let’s see …”

  “From 1385 to 1433,” I said. “He was the king who began Portugal’s great period of exploration. He was the father of the man they call Prince Henry the Navigator.”

  “Yes,” Jose protested. “But—”

  “Katun 10 Ahau didn’t just cover A.D. 140 to 160: It fell again every two hundred fifty-six years, and one of those periods was from 1421 to 1441.”

  “During the rein of King—well, I’m just going to call him John,” Minnie said. “That can’t be coincidence.”

  Jose shook his head. “Alan, my friend, I think the heat has gotten to you. Do you have any idea how difficult it would have been for a Portuguese ship—or any other European ship—to have made it to the New World in that period?”

  “But Columbus did,” Minnie protested. “He wasn’t that much later.”

  “He started from the Canary Islands,” José explained. “They’re quite a bit farther south than the Azores Islands and the winds in that latitude can help a ship get to the New World. Before Columbus, all the other explorers who headed west left from the Azores and ended up in the Sargasso Sea.”

  “Then there were others,” Minnie said.

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “Everyone knew the world was round and that it was theoretically possible to reach China and India by sailing west. The problem was that they believed there was no land between Europe and the Orient, so the ships would perish during the long voyage. Unless there was some island out there.”

  “Antilla,” José said, arching his brows.

  “Exactly. There were tales of a mythical island with seven cities, founded by seven bishops who’d supposedly fled from the Moorish invasion many years before. If they could find this island, it might be a way station to the Orient.”

  “But that’s the point,” Jose said. “Nobody did find it, because it doesn’t exist. The king of Portugal sent a Dutchman named Dulmo looking for it and he was never heard from again.”

  “Dulmo left from the Azores, where the winds were against him,” I said. “But if there was some other captain, who left from the Canaries, or who drifted west from the coast of Africa …”

  José put a hand on my shoulder. “Show me this intrepid explorer’s bones and we’ll talk again.”

  I looked over at the demolished facade, where the seventh mask had once been.

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  On the way back, crossing the vast, rocky field, I pulled the Land Cruiser over near the grove of poplar trees with their sinkhole.

  I got o
ut and, with Pepper beside me, walked over to the brink and looked down at the well below.

  “Do you really think it was a Portuguese captain?” Pepper asked.

  I shrugged. My fingers delved into my pocket and came out with the stone tablet given me by Paul. It had saved me from worse injury by deflecting the bullet and now there was an ugly gash on its surface.

  “Well,” I said, “it makes more sense than that these chicken stratchings are Hebrew.”

  “But there’ll never be any way to prove it unless Jose finds something when he excavates, like this man’s bones surrounded by Portuguese artifacts.”

  I nodded. “And he’d have to look in the right place. He might not be buried at the site we found. The country may have been in an uproar after Mayapán fell. His own city might have fallen. He could have been buried nearby, hidden …”

  Her eyes followed my own.

  “Do you think it’s possible …?”

  “They blocked off the cave for some reason,” I said.

  “How will we ever know?”

  “Maybe,” I said sighing, “somebody will dig here someday.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The literature on supposed pre-Columbian contacts with the New World is voluminous. Much nonsense has been written, invoking everything from lost continents to wandering tribes of Israelites. Nevertheless, there are respected scholars, such as David H. Kelley, Cyrus Gordon, and Betty Meggars, who point to similarities between different New World traits, artifacts, and/or technologies and those of different parts of the Old World and Asia.

  Basically, the issue is whether human beings tend to develop similar cultural manifestations in similar environments (psychic unity of man), or whether certain ideas, inventions, and practices are unique, so that if they are found in two places, they must have been transmitted from one group of people to the other (diffusionism). Because a heterogeneous assortment of “evidence” has been marshaled to support diffusion, including specific cultigens, similar mythic elements, supposedly similar artistic styles, and lexical similarities, it has not been possible to develop an adequate methodology or model for explaining just how diffusion occurs. In addition, evaluation is hampered by the inability of the diffusionists to adequately explain the method of transport/transmission and why some things were diffused and others were not.