Las Casas took a last look at the soldiers building their big bonfire. The soldiers running back and forth, breaking apart anything made of wood and throwing it into the bright flames that billowed above them into the sky, looked more like demons than any of the deities depicted in the Mayan books. He turned and moved along the back of the adobe mission buildings, staying in the dark, sheltered places. At the edge of the cleared land, he stepped onto a jungle trail. The foliage grew so thick around the trail that his progress was like moving through a cave. The trail led downward toward the river.
When Las Casas reached the river, he saw that many of the Indians had come out of their huts in the village and that a fire had been lit. They had been aware of the arrival of the strange soldiers and had gathered in the center of their village to discuss what to do. He spoke to them in K’iche’, the language of the Mayans in this district. “It’s me, Brother Bartolomé,” he called out. “Soldiers have come to the mission.”
He saw Kukulcan, who remained seated in the doorway of his hut. He had been an important chieftain in Cobán before he had decided to come to the mission, and now the others all looked to him for leadership. He said, “We saw them. What do they want? Gold? Slaves?”
“They’ve come for books. They don’t understand the books, and someone told them that Mayan books were all about evil and magic. They’ve come to find any books you have and destroy them.”
There were murmurs and expressions of consternation. The news seemed utterly incomprehensible to the crowd, as though someone had come to chop down the trees, drain the rivers, or blot out the sun. This seemed to them an act of pure malice that could not gain the soldiers anything.
“What should we do?” Kukulcan asked. “Fight?”
“All we can do is try to save some of the books. Pick out the most important ones and take them away from here.”
Kukulcan beckoned to his son, Tepeu, a man about thirty years old who had been a respected warrior. They spoke together in quick whispers. Tepeu nodded. Kukulcan said to Las Casas, “There’s no question. It has to be the one I brought to the mission to show you. That one is worth all the others.”
Las Casas turned and moved toward the jungle path. Tepeu was suddenly at his shoulder. “We have to get up the trail before they find it,” Tepeu said. “Try to keep up.” Then he began to run.
Tepeu ran up the path as though he could see in the dark, and being able to make out his silhouette ahead made Las Casas able to move faster too. They went upward toward the mission at a full run. When they reached level ground, Las Casas could see a line of soldiers coming along the main road toward the Indian settlement.
Las Casas didn’t need to watch the soldiers now. He had been part of the extermination of the Taino on Hispaniola, and he could picture exactly what they were doing. The first team of soldiers burst into a hut. A minute later, one of them came out carrying a Mayan book. He heard a man say in Ch’olan, “I saved that from the city of Copán!” An arquebus shot shook the ground, and a flight of parrots rose from a tall tree in a flurry of flapping wings and screeches. The man lay dead in front of his hut.
As Las Casas and Tepeu slipped through the dimly lighted area behind the mission, Las Casas thought about Tepeu’s family. Kukulcan had been a high priest, a scholar. His family was of the royal class. When disease had killed the last ruler, he had been chosen to lead. He and Tepeu had given up their elaborate feathered regalia when they’d left home, but Tepeu was wearing the dark green jade ear plugs, bracelets, and bead necklace that only Mayan aristocrats were allowed to own.
They ran along the backs of the buildings toward the Dominican quarters, and they could see that the soldiers were returning from their search of the mission’s collection of native objects. They carried armloads of books, ceremonial pieces, and carvings to the bonfire.
Mayan books were long, folded strips made of the inner bark of the wild fig tree. The writing surface was painted with a thin white stucco, and the paints were made from native pigments. The books that the soldiers had found they tossed into the flames. The oldest ones were the driest and they ignited instantly — a flare of light — and then fifty or a hundred pages that had been saved for centuries were lost forever. Las Casas knew that in these books could be anything. Kukulcan had told him some were mathematical treatises, astronomical observations, the locations of lost cities, forgotten languages, the acts of kings, going back a thousand years. In a second, the information, painstakingly written and drawn by hand, was only sparks and smoke rising into the night sky.
Tepeu was quick and moved with great skill in the darkness. He opened the big wooden door of the church just enough to slip inside. Las Casas had the advantage of the black Dominican robe, which was shapeless and darker than a shadow. A few moments later, Las Casas caught up with him in the church.
He led Tepeu down the aisle of the church toward the altar, then to the right of it. There was a door that led into the sacristy. In the dim moonlight from the high windows, they passed by the alb and chasuble hanging on pegs set into the wall, the wooden chest where the rest of the vestments were stored, protected from the incessant humidity of the Guatemalan jungle. He led Tepeu out the small door on the other side of the room.
They left the church for the long, roofed-over gallery of the Dominicans’ quarters. They padded along the brick walkway barefoot so their sandals would make no sound. At the end of the gallery, they entered Las Casas’s study. Tepeu went to the simple worktable, where he saw the book. He picked it up carefully and looked at it with such intense devotion that he appeared to be greeting a living person, someone he had feared was lost.
Tepeu looked around the room. Las Casas had a native pot that was decorated with paintings of a Mayan king’s daily activities. Las Casas had the side turned outward that showed the man’s daily ablutions and not the side that showed him piercing his tongue to give a blood sacrifice. The pot held the friar’s supply of fresh water and was tied with a kind of sling that the Indian acolyte used to carry it.
Tepeu poured the rest of the water into Las Casas’s washbasin, then reached in and wiped the pot dry with a cloth. He put the precious book inside the pot.
Las Casas went to the cupboard on the wall that held several writing projects he was working on. He retrieved two more Mayan books and handed them to Tepeu. “We should save as many as we can.”
Tepeu said, “They will not fit. The first one is worth a hundred of these.”
“The rest will be gone forever.”
Tepeu said, “I’ll take the book far away to a place where the soldiers will never be able to find it.”
“Don’t let them catch you. They think what you’re carrying are messages from the devil.”
“I know that, Father,” Tepeu said. “Give me your blessing.” He knelt.
Las Casas placed his hand on Tepeu’s head, and said in Latin, “Lord, let this man’s righteousness be enough. He wants nothing for himself, only to be the preserver of his country’s wisdom for future generations. Amen.” He turned and went to the cupboard, then returned with three gold pieces. He handed them to Tepeu.
“This is all I have. Use it to get what you need on your journey.”
“Thank you, Father.” Tepeu walked toward the door.
“Wait. Don’t go out there yet. I hear them.” Las Casas went to the door and stepped outside. There was a strong smell of burning, and he could hear the shouts coming from the village by the river. He stood with his back to the door while a platoon of soldiers pushed through three of his Dominican monks who were trying to keep them from entering the mission. Four soldiers broke into a storeroom down the gallery to search it.
Las Casas reached behind him, turned the knob, and opened the door of his study. He caught only a glimpse of Tepeu slipping out. He had the water pot on his back, with the strap around his waist and a tumpline over his forehead so much of the pot’s weight rested there. He was across the clearing and into the trees at a run, but he was visible for only seconds, and utterly silent.