And though they couldn’t pause long enough for an indepth discussion, they were able to speak briefly, in a hushed undertone in case their pursuers were in earshot.
Mariella said, “Esparza and his men won’t be able to travel much farther by road. They’ll have to abandon their trucks and go ahead on foot, like us. But we’re a smaller group. We can move faster and reach Cuchatlán before they do.”
“That’s the third time you’ve mentioned this place,” Gabriel said. “What is it?”
“The birthplace of the Mayan Empire,” Mariella said.
Cierra frowned at her. “Mayan?” She shook her head. “That’s impossible. There are no signs of Mayan civilization in this area.”
Mariella just smiled, as if she knew better. She got to her feet and said, “We must go.”
Cierra gave Gabriel an exasperated look. He shrugged. It was doubtful that they could force Mariella to talk until she was ready, and anyway, they had to keep moving if they wanted to get where they were going before Esparza and his men.
It took the rest of the day to reach the next pass through the mountains. Mariella led them along a narrow ledge that twisted along the heights. They came to an overhang that formed a cave like recess in the face, and she said, “We can camp here tonight. No one will be able to see a fire if we build one here.”
“What will we do for food and water?” Cierra asked.
Mariella gave her a slightly superior look. “Why do you think I chose this place? My people use it sometimes when they’re hunting.”
She went to the back of the cave and returned with a couple of canteens and something wrapped in a piece of hide. She unwrapped the bundle to reveal strips of jerked meat that she passed around. Gabriel wasn’t sure what sort of meat it was—monkey, he suspected—but under the circumstances he wasn’t complaining. It tasted all right when he washed it down with the water from one of the canteens.
In the fading light, he studied the canteen and frowned. The letters CSA were stamped into it. He looked up at Mariella and asked, “Confederate States Army?”
“That’s right.”
“This is a museum piece. A century old. It might even be valuable.”
“It is valuable. It holds water when you are thirsty. How much more valuable can a thing be?” She moved off to tend the fire. The altitude wasn’t high enough here for the temperature to get very cold at night, but there would be a definite chill in the air before morning.
“Now,” Gabriel said as the five of them sat at last, resting their aching legs, “I think it’s time that you tell us what this is all about, Señorita Montez.”
Mariella hesitated a moment before answering but finally nodded and said, “You deserve to know, Señor Hunt. All of you do. As I mentioned earlier, Esparza is after the greatest secret ever discovered.”
“Which is…?” Gabriel said.
“The secret of eternal life,” she said simply.
Gabriel thought of the Ponce de Leon signs in St. Augustine. “You mean like the Fountain of Youth?”
“Exactly,” Mariella said with a smile. “Only in our language we call it the Well of Eternity.”
After a couple of seconds of looming silence, Cierra said, “Oh, come on! You can’t be serious.”
Mariella’s face flushed with anger. Gabriel said, “Let’s hear her out.”
“Thank you, Señor Hunt,” Mariella said with a frosty glance toward Cierra. “I knew I could trust you to keep an open mind, considering some of the expeditions the Hunt Foundation has been involved in.”
“I’m not saying I believe you,” Gabriel said. “Not yet. But I want to hear what you have to say.”
“Very well. Not far from here, in our valley, lie the ruins of the Mayan city Cuchatlán. It was from here that the Maya began to spread out three thousand years ago and establish their empire.”
“The Mayan empire,” Cierra said, “was located in Chiapas and the Yucatan. I spent a year conductingresearch in the ruins of Chichén Itzá. The jungle swallowed it up after it was abandoned, and it was lost until about a hundred and eighty years ago, but in its time it was the center of the Mayan empire.”
Mariella nodded. “It was—in its time. But Cuchatlán was the center of the empire long before Chichén Itzá. And the jungle swallowed it as well. But even covered by the jungle, its great secret was still there, a well fed by an underground stream that rises from springs in the mountains. Whoever drinks the water from the Well of Eternity…lives forever.”
“You’re going to have to give us more of an explanation than that,” Gabriel said.
Mariella smiled and nodded. “Many centuries ago, Mayan explorers left this land to venture out into the Gulf of Mexico, taking barrels of the water from the Well of Eternity with them to sustain them as they started a colony in what is now Florida. They had a wanderlust, a desire to explore; some say it was inspired by visitors who had traveled across the seas and stayed to make their home with the Maya.
“Only a small amount of the water is needed to reap its benefits. Once a year the Maya of Cuchatlán would hold a ritual, a religious ceremony, passing around a cup from which each adult drank, from the oldest to the youngest. A few sips are enough to restore youth and vigor for the coming year. The explorers were able to take enough of the water with them to keep them young and healthy for centuries.”
Cierra looked like she wanted to call the story hogwash, but Gabriel made a patting-the-air gesture in her direction and she remained quiet.
“To store the water they brought with them,” Mariella went on, “when they reached Florida and found a place where they wanted to settle, they built a rock-lined pool, and before filling it they etched a map to their home on the pool’s bottom.”
“The Fountain of Youth,” Gabriel said.
“Some called it that, when rumors spread. The Maya never did.”
“And what happened to this…pool?” Cierra said, unable to hold her tongue any longer. “Or are you saying there are still ancient Maya living in Florida today? Perhaps in one of that state’s famous retirement communities?”
“No,” Mariella said. “There are no Maya living there any longer. The water was enough for centuries—but not forever, and eventually it ran out. That’s what they’d put the map there for, to remind them how to return and get more. But none of the expeditions they sent ever came back—perhaps because there was no longer a city here for them to return to. And without a new supply of the water, the Mayan colonists resumed aging normally. In time they died. But their bloodlines continued, in the local Indians with whom they had intermarried. And the rumors continued, of the Fountain of Youth, even after there was no more fountain and no more youth to be had. Ponce de Leon heard of it and came to the New World seeking it, only to find it gone. But the legend remained, and some people have sought the truth of it ever since.”
“Like General Fargo?” Gabriel said.
“Yes. Perhaps you know that he was a professor of natural science before the war. He discovered the pool built by the Mayan colonists while he and his cavalry regiment were serving in Florida. He heard the legends from an old, old Indian living near the site, who’d heard them from his own grandfather, who’d heard them from his. He explained that the markings on the rocks were supposed to be a map—a map leading to the true Fountain of Youth, though of course he called it the Well of Eternity. Granville made a rough copy of the map, hiding it within the drawing on the flag, and made plans to find Cuchatlán after the war.”
Mariella sounded a little sorrowful as she went on, “As it happens, artillery fire during the battle of Olustee destroyed the pool, so the map copied onto the flag was the only one still in existence. That flag is the one I brought to New York. We wanted to give it and a sample of the water from the Well to the Hunt Foundation.”