“Go down the Calle Gondomar to the main university. Outside is the patio. There are three levels set on octagonal pillars. On the right side is the chapel and on the left is a semicircular porch. Go left. The first level houses the History Library.”
As they walked to the library, Sam noticed that two men were on the same course, walking far behind them on Calle Gondomar. He wondered for a moment if they could be following him and Remi. He and Remi had, after all, put Sarah Allersby on notice that they weren’t going to let her rob them and forget it. But they were a long way from Guatemala City, and they’d just arrived in Valladolid. Could these men have followed them here already? They would have had to be watching them in San Diego practically from the time they’d come home from Guatemala, then caught the same plane or the one after it.
They reached the History Library, and Remi asked in Spanish whether they could see the collection of books that Bartolomé de Las Casas had left the College of San Gregorio. They were pleasantly surprised to learn that they could sign in as visiting scholars, and a librarian would admit them, without too many intimidating formalities. They only had to prove their identities and leave Remi’s purse and their passports at the desk. When they entered a large reading room, there were already a few graduate students reading old books at tables.
A second history librarian showed them to a rare book room, gave them gloves, and allowed them to examine the volumes in the Las Casas collection for about three hours, going from one volume to the next. All of the volumes were bound or rebound in old leather. Some were hand-copied Latin or Spanish in archaic handwriting, some were incunabula — works printed before 1500—a few in medieval Gothic script with hand-painted illumination. Most were religious works in Latin. There were commentaries on the Bible, collected sermons, multiple copies of breviaries. There was a copy of the Corpus Aristotelicum. There were also Spanish volumes written or copied in a hand that was clearly the same as the writing on the letter that had been hidden in the Mayan codex. Whenever they saw one, it excited them, but none was what they had come so far to find. The treasure they searched for would consist of Mayan pictures and glyphs, not Spanish text.
At the end of the day, just before it was time for visitors to leave the library, the desk librarian made an announcement that readers should return books. The Fargos gave theirs up immediately, went to the desk to retrieve Remi’s bag, and left. As they emerged onto the patio outside the building, Remi whispered, “Have you seen those two men before?”
Sam stopped, apparently to look around him at the medieval Spanish architecture but took a moment to find the men she meant. They were already walking off in another direction. “I saw a couple of men earlier on the Calle Gondomar, but I can’t tell if those are the same ones. What did they do?”
“I could feel them staring at us.”
Sam smiled. “You could feel them staring at you, more likely. You should be used to that.”
That evening, Sam and Remi began their exploration of the city’s nightlife with the Plaza Mayor, right outside their hotel. They sampled the coffee in the Continental, then went for pinchos, the favorite local iteration of tapas, at Restaurante Los Zagales. They were made of morcilla sausages, red onion, and pork rind, all wrapped into a roll.
Each day, Sam and Remi walked from the Zenit Imperial Hotel and returned to the History Library to examine the next group of five-hundred-year-old books.
After the library closed that afternoon, Sam and Remi returned to their hotel for a nap, then got up at ten to begin their evening of exploring. That night they tried Taberna Pradera, known for the fresh calamari cracker in its own ink. The following night, they tried Fortuna 25, which served a free-range chicken stuffed with mussels and algae. Another night, it was Taberna del Zurdo. They drank Rueda, Ribera del Duero, and other fine Spanish red wines, moving from place to place as though each evening were a celebration.
During the days, they pressed on with the Las Casas collection, making their inventory and, in the process, getting to know a little about the man who had owned these books. Most of them were books like the Rule of Saint Benedict, the work that set the tone for the monastic life, the Moralium Libriof Pope Gregory I, and others that were appropriate for a monk in the sixteenth century. They found several copies of the works of Thomas Aquinas, and a handwritten volume of commentary on them.
It was on their eighth day in the library that Sam and Remi ran into another trove of volumes in Spanish that had been written on vellum in the hand of Bartolomé de Las Casas. They were tall, in a ledger format, all in a sequence. The first were his attempts, written in Mexico, at collecting a K’iche’ language glossary. There were also observations on the other languages of the Mayans, written in 1536. The next volume was a journal recording the daily activities that had gone on at the Dominican missions he had founded at Rabinal, Sacapulas, and Cobán. Records of expenditures and harvests were interspersed with various notes on the building of churches in the region and the names of Mayan converts who had come to live outside Rabinal. Remi read that he was opposed to mass conversions of Indians. He believed in teaching each prospective Catholic and then letting him or her make an informed decision, so the inventory of converts made sense.
The date of the volume after that was October 1536, and it extended through April 1537. It began with the now-familiar columns of figures and notations on vellum that had been divided into columns by straight lines. It went on for many pages, and then, at a certain point, the quality of the vellum changed.
The first pages were routine quality, made from the skin of an animal, treated by removing the hair, wetting, stretching, and drying the skin until it was a thin white surface for writing on both sides. But sewn in after fifty or sixty sheets was a long section of pages of a different quality vellum. These had been rubbed so thoroughly with pumice stone or a similar abrasive to make a perfectly smooth writing surface that they were translucent.
Sam turned the first page in this section and saw a startling sight. It was an exact copy of the letter from Las Casas that had been hidden in the binding of the Mayan codex. He touched Remi’s arm, and they both stared at the familiar Spanish words:
“A todos mis compatriotas, benediciones. Este libro y otros de los maya se refieren a su historia y sus observaciones acerca del mundo natural. No tienen nada que ver con el Diablo. Ellos deben ser preservados como una manera de entender nuestras tareas con los maya.”
“I can make out most of the words and can hardly believe it,” said Sam.
“I can hardly breathe,” said Remi. “I’m afraid to turn the page.”
Sam reached down and carefully turned the page. What appeared was the opening page of the Mayan codex they had found on the Mexican volcano. They turned page after page, slowly, gently. Each time the vellum turned, there was a familiar display. The four-page map was there in all its complexity. The illustrated story of the creation of the universe was there. The story of the war between the cities was there. Each small glyph was drawn with a fine-cut quill pen, its intricacies reproduced exactly.
Sam stood up. “Excuse me.” He went to the men’s room, made sure it was empty, took out his satellite phone, and called Selma in San Diego. “Selma?”
“Yes?”
“We’ve found it. Turn everything on, and prepare to receive live video starting in fifteen seconds. We won’t be able to speak to you until it’s over.”
“Got it. Making the connection to all four cameras now.”
“Got to go.”
Sam returned from the men’s room and whispered to Remi, “Your eyes must be getting strained. Don’t be vain. Put on your glasses.”