The Inquisitor speared him with a glance.
“What do you think we ought to do?” Friar Salas countered.
“Tell Sakmo that we will study his case this very day, and we will decide whether or not we are going to send a delegation to preach in his village.” Esteban de Perea glared at him. “Above all, make sure that he explains to you very clearly in what direction we must travel and how many days stand between Isleta and his settlement. And then call the community together in the refectory. Have you understood me?”
“Certainly, Father.” The old friar smiled enigmatically at his guest. “Did you notice the cross he was wearing around his neck?”
THIRTY
VENICE BEACH
If Carlos had known what was taking place on the West Coast of the United States while he was seated at the bar in Paparazzi’s with José Luis Martín, his Cartesian vision of the world would have been forever shattered. It was noon in Los Angeles, but in Jennifer Narody’s small beach house the venetian blinds were still drawn. The sunlight that was blistering Venice Beach could not penetrate her bedroom.
It had taken Jennifer a long time to get to sleep the night before. She had a great deal on her mind after her last session with Dr. Meyers. “This kind of fantasy,” the doctor had told her, “is sometimes due to physical causes. A small clot in the temporal lobe of the brain, or a tumor, can impair the mind and alter its perception of reality. We should have an MRI taken, to see if there’s anything there.”
Jennifer was claustrophobic, and the mere idea of spending half an hour inside a cold metal tube terrified her. For that reason, she put off coming to grips with her dream and decided instead to read, turning to the Bible. She had a Gideon in the house, a small, manageable volume she could not remember ever having looked at, and opened it randomly to the Gospel of Matthew. She began reading the story of Joseph’s dream, in which he learned of his betrothed’s pregnancy from an angel of the Lord. It was strange. All the peoples of the ancient world believed that dreams were a means through which the divinities communicated with men, that through them the gods revealed hidden things.
But what were these things? And what divinity would be interested in sending a tormented young woman a dream like the one that began to sketch itself in her mind?
THIRTY-ONE
SAN ANTONIO MISSION
JULY 22, 1629
Friar Esteban de Perea’s voice reverberated off the walls of the mission. The urgency in his summons, that all gather to hear the Indian’s petition, was a complete mystery to the other friars at first. But it quickly became clear. The haste was due to Sakmo’s allusion to the mysterious woman who commanded them to cross the desert. Friar Esteban had a look of shock on his face, as if the ghosts themselves, the ones who forced the Archbishop of Mexico to put him in charge of the investigation into “supernatural activity” in the region, had all landed on his conscience.
“Is anything the matter, Friar?” Friar Bartolomé Romero, one of the brothers in the caravan, delicately asked the Inquisitor.
“No . . . nothing,” Esteban answered as he took off his chasuble and folded it. “But think about it: if the Jumanos left their village in Gran Quivira four or five days ago, then the Lady in Blue sent them on their journey before I made the decision to stay here at the mission. Do you understand now, Friar Bartolemé?
“And what is so strange about that?” A third voice sounded from the back of the sacristy. “Are you saying that the future would not be known by God or the Virgin?”
The words stunned everyone within hearing range. Standing in the threshold of the sacristy with a bemused smile on his lips, Friar Juan de Salas glanced around the room. And if it was true, as everything seemed to indicate, that a mysterious woman had reached the Jumano territory before they did, it must not have been a woman of flesh and blood. Not only had she traveled into an inhospitable region but she also possessed the extraordinary ability to persuade the Indians to adopt a new faith and set off in search of white men.
“A Herculean task!” he added. “Your worships may think what you like, but it would not strike me as strange if the woman were Our Lady herself.”
No one responded to the elderly friar, who spun around on his heels and soon disappeared outside. He still needed to speak with Sakmo to reassure him that his petition had been heard, and that a small band of friars would soon be traveling with him to Cueloce.
“He’s an odd sort, wouldn’t you say?” Friar Bartolomé muttered in Friar Esteban’s ear while their host was taking his leave.
“The desert does strange things to people, Brother.”
When Juan de Salas finished explaining to Sakmo what the newly arrived friars planned to do, the young warrior fell to his knees. Then, without a word of farewell, he set off to meet his men at their encampment outside the mission, at the foot of the adobe houses. They, too, were overjoyed at the news. And yet even Friar Juan did not realize that the source of Sakmo’s happiness was not his diplomatic success. Rather, it was because the friars’ decision confirmed what the Lady in Blue had told them days before, and thus reaffirmed their belief that they had encountered an authentic “woman of power.” Just as she had predicted, he had arrived to find new friars at the Mission of San Antonio de Padua, and it looked as if some of the friars would be returning to the Kingdom of Gran Quivira with them.
Keeping to their strict schedule, the Franciscans met in an improvised refectory shortly after their noon prayers. The Tiwas had taken great care in clearing some space in a back room of the mission.
The large meal was to be traditional: peas steamed and seasoned with salt, ears of corn, and nuts for dessert. To accompany it, there was water to drink and a half dozen large loaves of rye bread just out of the oven.
Two minutes after the benediction was pronounced, the Inquisitor stood up to speak.
“As all the friars know, a band of Jumano, or painted Indians, arrived at the mission this morning. They have asked our help in bringing the Gospel to their village.”
Friar Esteban coughed lightly.
“It is up to us to decide what to do. We can either stay here until our return to Santa Fe, or else we can begin to assign missionaries to other parts, such as that of the Jumanos.” He added, “Our decision depends, of course, upon how interested we are in starting to preach the Gospel.”
The friars stared at each other. The idea of splitting up the members of their expedition surprised them. And even though they knew that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later, they never thought it would happen so quickly.
“And so?” Esteban de Perea exhorted them.
Friar Francisco de Letrado, a rotund priest from Talavera de la Reina, was the first who asked to speak. He raised his voice solemnly and delivered an apocalyptic speech. All of these “Indian tales,” as he put it, were nothing more than the work of the Devil, whose goal was to disperse the various preachers to remote regions where they had little hope of success, and even fewer chances of returning alive. “Divide and conquer,” he bellowed.
Friar Bartolomé Romero, Esteban’s faithful helper, and Friar Juan Ramirez, a level-headed monk from Valencia, were, for their part, more tolerant of the Jumanos’ intentions and argued for a rapid evangelization of their lands. These two believed that Sakmo’s allusions to a light from heaven lent his story authenticity, and that it was similar to other manifestations of Our Lady, which frequently were accompanied by extraordinary displays of unearthly light.
A mere handful, namely, Friars Roque de Figueredo, Agustín de Cuéllar, and Francisco de la Madre de Dios, did not even trouble to enter the debate. Theirs was an abstention of the easiest sort: they would do whatever the group decided.
“Very well then, Brothers,” Esteban de Perea again took charge. “Seeing as such diversity of opinion exists, we would do well if all of us interrogated the Indian who claims to have seen the Lady. Perhaps that will help us clear up our doubts.”
With soft-voiced assents and nodd
ed heads, agreement made its way around the table.
“Friar Juan de Salas will be our translator, yes?”
“Naturally,” he agreed, and stood up from the table to go in search of Sakmo.
A few minutes later, the youngest son of the great Walpi knelt down to kiss the fringe of Friar Esteban’s robes.
“Pater,” he intoned the Latin word in a deep voice.
His gesture stunned everyone present. Where had the savage learned such language?
“Is this the evidence we were looking for?” a voice boomed from the back of the refectory.
Sakmo lowered his head as if answering the question posed by that strong, ponderous voice. Friar Esteban stood up from the head of the table, looked the Indian over carefully, and from where he was standing began his interrogation in a loud voice, so that everyone could hear.
“What is your name?”
“Sakmo. The man of the green field,” Friar Salas translated for him.
“Where are you from?”
“Gran Quivira, a land of open spaces—a quarter-moon of travel from here.”
“Do you know why we have asked to speak to you?”
“I think so,” he said, lowering his voice.
“They have told us that you saw the woman who sent you to us. Is all that correct?”
Sakmo looked at the Inquisitor as if he was seeking permission to speak. The old man nodded in his direction.
“Yes, it is true. I have seen her many times in the mouth of what we call the Canyon of the Serpent. She always spoke to us in a friendly manner.”
“Always? When did these visitations begin?”
“They have been going on for many moons. I was only a child when I first heard stories about the warriors whom she had visited.”
“In what language did she speak to you?”
“In Tanoan. But if I had to explain to you how, I would never be able. She never moved her mouth. It was always closed, while I and other members of our tribe listened, understanding perfectly what she was saying.”
“In what way did she appear?”
“It was always the same: at nightfall, strange flashes of light would enter the canyon. Then we would hear a rustling in the air like the sound the rattlesnake makes or the fast, curving wind along the river. Then we saw a trail of light fall from the sky . . . and then, it was silent.”
“A trail of light?”
“As if a path had opened in the darkness. The woman, who was neither a priestess nor a Mother of the Corn, lowered herself through the light. None of us knew her name.”
“How did she look?”
“She was young and beautiful. She had white skin, as if she had never been in the sun.”
“Did she bring anything with her?”
“Yes. In her right hand she sometimes carried a cross, but not like the ones that the fathers here wear around their necks. It was more beautiful than theirs, it was completely black and radiant. Sometimes she wore an amulet around her neck. It wasn’t turquoise, bone, or wood, but the color of moonlight.”
Friar Esteban was taking note of what Sakmo was saying. After the Indian had finished speaking, he proceeded with his questions.
“Tell me, my son: do you remember what she told you the first time you saw her?”
The Indian fixed the Franciscan in his gaze.
“She said she came from far away and that she brought good news. She told us of the arrival of a new time when our old gods would give way to one, a greater god, as great as the sun.”
“She never said her name?”
“No.”
“Nor that of the new god?”
“No.”
“Did she say where she came from?”
“No.”
“One thing more. Regarding this new god, did this woman tell you that he was her son, that he came from her womb?”
Sakmo’s eyes opened in astonishment when he heard Friar Juan de Salas translate the Inquisitor’s question.
“No.”
A few of the friars shifted in their seats.
“Did you notice anything else about this woman?” Esteban continued.
“Yes. Around her waist she wore a cord like yours.”
This greatly moved the friars. “A cord like the Franciscans wear! What kind of prodigy is this?”
Esteban de Perea called for silence.
“Did you go so far as to touch this woman?”
“Yes.”
Friar Esteban looked astonished.
“And?”
“Her clothes gave off warmth, like our clothes do when our women take them out of the dyeing vats. But they were dry. She even let me touch her black crucifix and taught me a handful of magic words.”
“Magic words? Would you be able to repeat them?”
“I think so,” he said hesitatingly.
“Please.”
Sakmo went back onto his knees, his hands together as the woman had taught him. He then began to intone a litany familiar in Latin. It sounded strange coming from the mouth of a pagan.
“Pater noster qui es in caelis . . . sanctificetur nomen tuum . . . adveniat regnum tuum . . . fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo . . .”
“That is enough,” Juan de Salas said as he broke into Sakmo’s chant. “Explain to Father Perea where you learned this. Who taught you these words?”
“I told you before: it was the Lady in Blue.”
THIRTY-TWO
MADRID
Carlos Albert would meet with his friend José Luis again in less than three days, under circumstances that neither one of them could have imagined as they sat in the restaurant. In the meantime, Carlos dedicated himself to searching for more information on María Jesús de Ágreda. His quest led him directly to Madrid’s National Library, an establishment whose sheer amount of information always provoked a strange dizziness in him. How could he get his hands on what he was looking for if he had to wade through its collection of thirty thousand manuscripts, three thousand books from the dawn of the printing press, half a million books published before 1831, not to mention the more than six million monographs written on the most diverse subjects imaginable? The forest that lurked inside the temple of Spanish wisdom struck him as impossibly dense but nonetheless alluring.
His first search among the library’s card catalogs lifted his spirits. Carlos found various carefully annotated references to Friar Alonso de Benavides, the man who in 1630 undertook the investigation into Mother Ágreda’s alleged bilocations. Toward the back of the drawer was a reference to an unusual document that, according to the bibliographic information, was filled with references to a certain “Lady in Blue” who preached to the indigenous tribes of New Mexico before the arrival of the first Franciscans.
A day and a half of bureaucratic requests later, on the seventeenth of April, in the manuscript room of the National Library, after Carlos had signed innumerable forms and permission slips, the book he had been waiting for was finally in his hands. The room itself was an immense rectangle, three hundred feet from one end to the other, its rarely swept floor pitted with ruts and pockmarks. Fifty slanted writing desks, ancient and unwieldy, were spaced around the room, all of them under the watchful eye of a librarian whose demeanor indicated she had very few friends. Her work, which she discharged like a soldier on guard duty, consisted of walking over to the lifts when they brought the books up from the archives, and then checking to see if the volumes the readers had asked for had arrived.
“Memorial by Benavides.” The librarian read the pink card while hovering over Carlos’s shoulder.
“Yes, I requested it.”
The librarian regarded the journalist with displeasure.
“Don’t forget, we close at nine.”
“I know that.”
The librarian put the book down on the desk and walked away. Carlos was excited. Here was a book of some one hundred nine pages, its leather cover faded to black over the course of time, its paper yellowed and crumbling with each turn of the
page. On its worn frontispiece, printed on top of a crude engraving of the Virgin crowned with stars, Carlos read: “Memoirs that Friar Juan de Santander, member of the Franciscan order, Commissioner General of the Indies, presents to His Majesty the Catholic King, Philip IV.” And in a handwritten line that followed: “By Friar Alonso de Benavides, of the Holy Office, Custodian of the Provinces, with respect to the religious conversions in New Mexico.”
Carlos smiled with satisfaction. And yet, despite his precautions in handling the book, the volume was crumbling in his hands like rotting wood.
Several pages were enough to give him an idea of its contents: the author was explaining to a very young Philip IV what the expedition of twelve Franciscan missionaries, headed by the same Benavides, had achieved as they proselytized in the territories of New Mexico between 1626 and 1630.
Employing the baroque style of the day, Friar Alonso outdid himself in praise of “the Lord our God and his Power” (Carlos jotted down Benavides’s exact words), to whom he attributed the discovery of mines, the rapid eradication of idolatry, the conversion of more than half a million souls in record time, and, above all, the unceasing work of building churches and monasteries. “In one district alone, within a space of one hundred leagues,” the journalist copied into his notebook, “the Order has baptized more than eighty thousand souls and constructed more than fifty churches and convents.”
Carlos immediately realized that the Benavides Memorial was a typical work of propaganda for its century. It was clear that its author was attempting to secure the king’s economic assistance, to reinforce the positions taken by the Franciscans in America, as well as to finance voyages by new missionaries. The text exaggerated when it spoke of “inexhaustible mines” and associated their exploration with the conversion of the natives.
In any case, the writing disguised its intentions in elegant fashion. It reviewed in passing all the Indian tribes that Benavides’s men had encountered: the Apaches, the Piros, the Senecas, the Conchas, and many others.
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