Continuing, he recounted that once the imperial city had fallen, its inhabitants saw that they would once again be subjected, and Guzmán did not disenchant them. The natives’ wonderment decreased and they rebelled; but Guzmán knew how to respond. He forced the docile to accompany him as an armed retinue against other tribes; he devastated fields; he burned harvests; he burdened the prisoners with chains, branded them like cattle, and divided them as slaves among his troops. Each soldier of this expedition has thus come to have a thousand or more slaves in his possession, and any man who left Spain without a stitch on his back has promptly earned a much higher state in these lands. In great enclosures, as warning to all, he gathered together men, women, and children; the men with fetters about their necks, and the women roped together ten by ten, the children five by five; he dragged them from town to town, through every region, exhibiting them as a warning that whoever wished to escape that fate would be better advised to submit. In each village he branded some, killed others, promised life to many more if they agreed to a life as beasts of burden, he gave license to his soldiers to take any woman who pleased them, and instilled fear in all. Even among the peoples that did not offer resistance he followed this tactic in order to set a good example: he proposed either servitude or death; even of those who agreed to be servants, he killed many; and among those he took with him, chained and bound, he allowed many to die from hunger; actually, he preferred the death of very young children deprived of mother’s milk, whom he left along to roads to be seen by all. This rage against children culminated in a town of those called Purépechas, or Tarascans, where the inhabitants, as a gesture to demonstrate their peaceful intentions, delivered several pigs to Guzmán, and he, in return for their gift, gave them a great sack filled with dead children. When he came to the next town, he repeated these exploits. He has left no village between Tzintzuntzan and Aztatlán, between Mechuacán and Shalisco, between the lake of Cuitzeo and the river of Sinaloa, that does not weep for a child, scorn a woman, or hold dear the memory of a man.
Vast are the treasures in the temples, palaces, and mines, surpassing even what that poor dreamer and pilgrim told us. And if my eyes have seen much, my ears have heard more. They tell of a route through the deserts of the north that leads to seven cities of gold. They speak of a people of Amazon-like women warriors who have mutilated their right breasts that they might shoot their arrows with a man’s skill. They speak, Señor, of a fountain of eternal youth, hidden in the jungles, where one need bathe only once to recover one’s youth. I know that such fantastic stories are but illusions; they nourish, nevertheless, my men’s greed and desire for glory, inspiring them to run unparalleled risks; your young pilgrim retrieved nothing from his dream, Sire; in contrast, I send you, along with this letter, the most ample proof of the riches of the new world. It is barely the royal one fifth owed you. The booty has been divided among the enterprising members of this expedition which surpasses in boldness and merit even those of Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar. No one has refused his share, not even Brother Julián, whom I tolerate only by your mandate. Nevertheless, he does fulfill the charges of the Faith, erecting chapels and churches in all the towns we have conquered. Let no one say, therefore, that only the desire for gold brought us here, but rather, the desire to serve God.
This long document was signed by the Most Magnificent Señor Don Hernando de Guzmán.
El Señor looked up. The senior sacristan, with a golden sieve, was scattering ashes on the floor of the chapel, forming two lines from corner to corner that intersected in the middle of the temple. The choir sang the “Benedictus Domine Deus Israel” while the Bishop, with his shepherd’s staff, traced the Latin alphabet in the ashes, and then in the intersecting line, the Greek alphabet, intoning in a voice more burned out than the ashes: “Behold, Israel, that we shall not write here your Hebrew alphabet, in order to demonstrate the ingratitude of your people who, being the first, and the first to whom were made the promises of such sovereign treasures, did not recognize those treasures, preferring to live apart from them, a blind, obscured, and cruel people.”
El Señor walked painfully toward the altar, dragging his afflicted feet through the ashes; and there at the foot of the holy table of the Eucharist stood the enormous coffer overflowing with gold, molten gold, gold from ear ornaments, bracelets, idols, floors, ceilings, and collars melted down to remove from them any pagan sign and to invest them with their true value as treasure, money, funds with which to arm armies, combat heretics, erect palaces, placate nobles, endow convents, and regale clerics. El Señor saw the glances of greed which, still in the midst of their prayers of humility, the Bishop, the deacons, the sacristan, and the choir directed toward the coffer.
In a loud voice El Señor said: “Let no one remove this treasure. Let it remain here forever, open, as an offering to God Our Lord. Let no one employ it, divert it, or enjoy any advantage whatsoever from it, except God himself, at whose feet I lay it.”
He bent over to pick up ashes from the floor; with his finger he traced a black cross upon his forehead.
He returned to his bedchamber, from which he could watch unseen the ceremonies of this and all other days, of this and all other years.
Many years passed without his hearing the barking of the nuns announcing a visitor. Why did Mother Celestina not return to see him? What had become of Ludovico, the young Celestina, and the monk Simón, abandoned, although free, on the plain? He forgot his mother; surely, she had died, living, or must be living, dead; he respected her will that he abandon her in the walled tomb with neither inscription nor ceremony. In his arthritic hand he wrote: “One governs the world only if he is guided by the hand of God. Respect my solitude. Respect my devotion. What will it profit a man to gain the entire world if he lose his soul? I hunger for God. I hunger for death. Both are one in my desires. Communicate in writing to me the major news. It need not be good. As if unaware, I shall bear it with resignation.”
He was right. Occasionally missives reached him, rumors consigned to paper, warnings, proposals, suggestions, decrees that required his signature. He signed many things without even looking at them, others he forgot until he was reminded of the need for his signature. He hesitated; he postponed signing; he hesitated again. Such deliberation earned for him the designation of the Prudent. With horror, he received books printed by heretics who had divorced themselves forever from the tutelage of Rome and were founding new Churches. He guarded as secret the news communicated to him: if it was known by all, he would comport himself as if it were unknown.