He came down through the ragged hills on his horse with the mountains behind him hiding the sun. He had his hat pulled down over his eyes and his injured left hand, wrapped in now-red cloth, tucked against his ribs, and he turned often to see if anyone followed. The shadow of the mountains fell over him, but not far ahead the last of the low hills smoothed out into saltpan, and there the shadow died.
He had not thought he would live to see this side of the mountains once the ambush began, nor to see the little cathedral shimmering far out across the saltpan where the blue mountains curved back around. When Garçon’s men sprang up out of the rocks and began firing, Fransisco Del Valle had not thought he would see anything again.
But he had survived, and made his way from that killing field. He was not sure if Garçon had lived. With the smoke from the rifles obscuring the world and the screams of the dying rebounding off the rocks, he did not think anyone had made it without some wound. The hand tucked against his chest was testament to that, as was the lead ball that had passed through the muscle in his right leg, narrowly missing bone. He would not have walked out of that ambush had it struck the knee. He would only have seen the Mother in all Her glory, as She called him home.
So if Garçon had not been called home, Del Valle thought, he would be injured. Perhaps bleeding to death even now, and that would suit Del Valle fine. He let the horse pick her way down the last slope. The cathedral—the one he had read about in the yellowed letter—seemed to hover in the distance. In the heat rising off the saltpan, it looked sometimes close enough to touch, sometimes as far as a dream. Which was fitting, he thought, considering what was there, what his great-greatfather had written about so long ago.
He checked his weapons as he rode. The letter had not known the future, nor did he know what had passed in the century since the letter was written, so he ran an inventory. He carried a pair of flintlock pistols, one at each side, their octagonal barrels filigreed with silver scrollwork in the shape of a griffin, the worn walnut handles capped with a silver gyrfalcon. Beside the pistol on his right was a curved sword; on the left hung a matching knife. He wore a whip coiled on one shoulder. His boots were dark leather with silver worked into the turned-down tops. His shirt and pants, once fine, were torn and dirty. His long mustaches were white with dust so that he seemed like a ghost. He had been shot through the palm of his left hand, near the wrist.
He stopped the horse still in the shadow of the mountain. Beyond, heat rose from the saltpan, and beyond the saltpan the cathedral—the one he had crossed an ocean, and a world, to find—wavered in the heat like a mirage.
It began with a letter.
He was sitting on the roof of his rooms in Bejaan-Nevar, the great capitol of Arravoña, listening to the bells calling the evening prayer, when a young vanquero arrived with a letter so old the writing had faded to the ghosts of words. Which was fitting, he thought, for it had been written by his great-greatfather, a man no longer among the living.
The letter led him across the seas to what the vanqueros were calling the New World. It led him to a stretch of beach where he grounded his caravel and unloaded the horses and turned their heads north, and it finally, after months of following the faint path his great-greatfather carved out in words, led him to the low mountains that loomed like bruises in the last light. There Garçon’s men ambushed Del Valle, and there Del Valle fled over the mountains.
But the real beginning went further back, to even before the first wild tales came to Arravoña of a new world the vanqueros had found in their travels: a century before the letter came to Fransisco Del Valle, a ship went missing.
It had been one of the first caravels to sail past charted waters, in a time when the vanqueros had begun searching for new lands to conquer, for new peoples to bring into the holy blessing of the Shepherd’s Mother, and for El Loro, the fabled city of gold, a legend from the mists of time.
The ship went over the far curve of the ocean and was lost. For close to a century, no one heard of it.
Del Valle’s great-greatfather had captained that lost ship. And somehow—through time or tide or the great turnings of the world—a letter had come from him.
The ship had been blown off course, Del Valle read on the rooftops looking out over Bejaan-Nevar. It had landed in a strange place, full of strange creatures. Starving, without food or water, the vanqueros had set off inland.
The letter did not tell of all their travails, only that there were many. They found food, and water. They found savages, and these savages wore trinkets of gold.
The savages told them of a place to the north, or the west, for the stories were always vague, that was made of gold. Or held gold, something beyond value in all the world—the translations were not clear.
The vanqueros set out in search, for one of the oldest legends of Arravoña—almost as old as the legend of the Fountain of Youth that is said to bring immortality to any man who drinks from it—was of El Loro.
They traveled for months, until finally they came across a low mountain range, one that looked like bruises spreading out in the last light of the sun, and down onto a shimmering saltpan.
You will not believe it, his greatfather had written a century before. You simply cannot believe what we have found. It is glory for the King. It is the blessing of the Mother.
But I am the last now. We lost too many in the mountains, and those who still live I have sent home. I fear our ships have been burned by the savages or smashed against the shore by the tide, but I send this letter with the last of my men and the last horses, hoping they can find their way back to Arravoña, where someone of my line might read these words.
As for me, I will build a cathedral here. A modest thing, nothing like the great halls of Bejaan-Nevar, but a mark of the Mother’s glory as she shines upon Arravoña. And here I will remain, guarding what I have found, until someone from my line comes.
Someone from my line must come.
It was dark by the time Del Valle lowered the letter. He looked out across the city. The three stars were brightening, and the Shepherd’s moon hung curved as the crook of His staff. He did not know—except by the grace of the Mother—how the letter had come to him across the years and waves.
It took him a month to gather what he needed. The mistake he made, which sent a lead shot through his hand and another through his leg, was going to see Juan Carlos, the king.
In that he had no choice. All vanqueros serve the king, and the Mother. But the palace of Bejaan-Nevar holds many ears, and Garçon must have heard a hint of knowledge on Del Valle’s tongue, must have known that Del Valle, unlike the other vanqueros who were setting sail for the New World on a whisper and a prayer, knew where he was going.
Del Valle had never looked behind, only forward. He read the letter a hundred times a night. He grew wild with fever, imagining El Loro hidden in this New World.
While he was dreaming, Garçon crept along behind.
When Del Valle landed on the rocky beach his greatfather had navigated him to, Garçon waited until Del Valle’s expedition disappeared over the hills. He sent his scouts to follow, growing ever more sure that Del Valle had somehow found El Loro. He grew feverish too, for he knew as well as Del Valle that the man who found El Loro would have his name written in the histories.
After close to a month, Garçon himself went to scout Del Valle’s camp. They were on a rocky plain, close to the mountains. There could be no doubt where Del Valle was headed, for his trail never veered from a stony draw in the hills, but Garçon had to make sure. He would get no second chance. So he crawled across the plain from rock to rock until he could see the flickering of Del Valle’s camp fire.
After a time he saw Del Valle leave the light of the fire to draw a last reckoning from the stars. Garçon, watching, had known then they were close. So he rose and backed away quietly, and in the night he roused his men and they made a great loop past Del Valle’s camp. They went up the narrow draw, and as the first thin tendrils of dawn drew the mountains into shape, Garçon raised his pistols and waited.
Del Valle saw the first flashes of fire. He heard Alarcon and Bastidas cry out. He heard a horse scream.
He kicked his leg over his horse and slid to the ground. Rifles and pistols fired all around, and smoke hung thick in the air. Someone had begun screaming. It would be a long time before they stopped.
He crawled on his belly to the nearest rock and tried to find the calm of battle. He could hear the gunfire and the screams but it all seemed distant, as if he were already half gone from this world, on his way to the next. His men had been raked hard with those first few volleys. Over half of them were dead. Garçon had just risen, his men coming behind him, picking their way down through the rocks to finish what they had started.
Rising up, Del Valle shot a man on his right, then another on his left. The smoke was so thick he could see only shadows. He caught a ball in the hand and another passed through his leg. He knelt in the rocks and reloaded his pistols with his bleeding hand and shot someone he thought was Garçon. Ayolas fell, and De Vaca. A horse stood screaming with a crossbow bolt in its neck. One man came rearing out of the smoke and Del Valle stabbed him with his curved knife. He heard Garçon screaming his name and he fired in the general direction with both guns.
He was reloading his pistols, blood running down his arm and leg, when he realized the firing had stopped. He heard nothing but the screams of men dying. He wondered how many men lived.
His leg was already swollen and his hand shattered as he crawled through the smoke to the nearest horse and mounted. If any of his men were alive, they would follow. If any of Garçon’s men were alive, they would too, but by the time night fell and the stars had come out, he had turned his thoughts to the letter once again, and what his greatfather had written. The fever was back on him, the one that drove vanqueros to the far ends of the earth. He checked the trail behind him as he rode, but he saw nothing moving in all that vast landscape except the birds descending toward the dead, and when he started down the other side of the mountain, they were gone as well.
All this he remembered as he rode toward the cathedral. The shadow of the mountain followed him as the sun went down. The horse was labored; it needed water. They both needed water, but there was nothing here to be had. Even the mountains were brown and dead.
When the stars came out the heat faded rapidly and the night turned cold. Far ahead a light came on in the cathedral, and Del Valle watched it for a long time as his horse went along.
It is still there, he thought, and for a moment, thirsty and weak from blood loss, still fevered with dreams of El Loro, he thought his great-greatfather had somehow managed to wait all these years. He had heard of dry and arid lands that preserved the body of the dead—why not a land that preserved the living?
But it could not be his great-greatfather. A hundred years had passed since his ship had sailed, and even though he had been a young man then, he would be long dead now. No land would preserve a man that long.
It would be his children, a voice said in Del Valle’s mind. His greatfather must have married a savage so his line would not end here if the letter did not make its way back to Arravoña. Men, all men, Del Valle had found, even at his young age, had no desire to see their line ended.
His shattered hand still throbbed and his leg still burned, and he was sure that not all the fever coursing through him came from his need to find El Loro. He took a deep breath and stilled his thoughts, though one kept slipping through, again and again: I have found it, came the thought. I have found it.
He rode all night while stars fell white-hot and smoking across the sky and the dust he kicked up behind him seemed to swirl into the shapes of men who wore the armor and swords of old vanqueros. Some point past the rise of the moon he slept in the saddle, and when he woke the horse had stopped. He blinked, trying to clear away the dreams he had of golden cities and dying men, of vanqueros so old they turned to dust at his touch. The cathedral stood before him. A small square of light fell from the open doorway, and in the light stood the shape of a man, who raised one hand in welcome.
As if he had been waiting, Del Valle thought.
Del Valle dismounted in the small cathedral yard and walked toward the man. He could not see the man’s face, but from the shadows a voice like a tomb door swinging open issued forth.
“Drink first.”
There was a trough of water just inside the wall. Del Valle burned to find out who the man was and what lay hidden here, but his thirst was stronger. The man in the doorway waited while Del Valle dipped first one cupped hand into the water, and then his whole head, coming up rejuvenated, his thirst quenched, his wounds not as painful. He felt as if he had woken from a long sleep, fully refreshed.
There were a few chickens in the sideyard, a great green rooster just now calling the arrival of morning. The pain in his leg seemed to belong to someone else now, and his hand no longer hurt.
His boots crunched the saltpan as he walked toward the man in the doorway. He still could not see him. The man had not moved from the doorway. Del Valle stopped a few paces away. He still could not quite make out the face in the darkness.
“Your name,” the man said in his cracked voice.
“Fransisco,” he said. “Of the valley.”
“Del Valle,” the man said. “I have been waiting for you.”
He raised the lantern then and Del Valle felt a thing soar up in him as if the Mother’s song were ringing out over the mountains, for it was a face he had seen before on the walls of his home, among the portraits of the men who had come before him. This was the face of the man who had set sail from Kala’Vin a century ago. The man whose letter he now carried.
Who had called him here. Who had found El Loro.
In another moment, he knew he was wrong. The man standing in the first light of dawn was no older than middle-age. He wore the robes of a priest, not the curved sword of the vanquero, and his hair was turning silver, not the white of old age. His skin, while lined from the sun and darkened by it, was not creased and folded a thousand times like the skin of the very old.
“You look as if you have seen a ghost,” the priest said.
“You are no ghost. But you bear a strong resemblance to one.”
Instead of answering, the priest turned, motioning Del Valle to follow. They went into the cool interior of the cathedral. The floor was stone. Great wooden beams hung overhead, and it took Del Valle a moment to recognize them as ship’s beams.
The old man made his way toward the front of the cathedral. A small altar stood beneath a stained-glass window that would catch the setting sun. Another stained-glass window above the door behind them caught the first rays of the just rising sun and turned the room to gold.
“And to whom do I bear a resemblance?” the priest said. He went past the altar, moving through the golden glow, and out a door at the back. Del Valle followed him into a small garden. He could smell herbs. A few bees were buzzing around the flowers.
“My great-greatfather,” Del Valle said.
“Who carried your name,” the priest said. “He was Fransisco as well.”
Del Valle felt as if he might faint. The priest’s voice sounded like his father’s. Behind the cathedral, the mountains curved in close. There was a V-notch cut into them, just as his greatfather had described.
“I thought you were him, at first,” Del Valle said.
The priest motioned to a bench in the garden. “You came for him.”
“I received a letter.” Del Valle reached into his shirt and pulled it out. “It tells of El Loro,” he said. “My great-greatfather found it. Here. He describes this place in every detail.”
The priest looked at him. He seemed to speak across a great distance. “There may be a city of gold somewhere in this world, but it isn’t here. The only gold here is a little trickle of water from a spring, and in this land that’s more valuable than gold.”
“No.” Del Valle shook his head. “My greatfather—and yours, for you must be his greatson—wrote about it. Here, in this letter. It took a century for it to reach Arravoña. It came to me, and it drew me here.”
“He wrote of something of value,” the priest said, taking the letter, “not El Loro.”
“There is nothing more valuable than El Loro.” The morning sunlight fell in long shadows through the door of the little church, here at what he had thought was the end of the world. “Now where is it?”
The priest looked at the hills again. His resemblance to the men in the long hallway of Del Valle’s father’s house did make him seem like a ghost. Del Valle had spent hours studying those paintings, thinking of the world the men who had come before him had carved out for themselves, and their king, and their Mother. And it occurred to him perhaps this was some kind of test, that the man was weighing him, deciding.
Even as the thought came the man turned to Del Valle. “For long years the vanqueros have searched for the city of gold, Fransisco. But there are more legends than El Loro in this world. And I am not your greatfather’s son.”
Del Valle opened his mouth, then closed it. His right hand, for some reason he could not explain, some reason deeper than knowledge, reached for one of the pistols. He heard his horse whinny once. He heard what sounded like a boot crunching on salt. He saw the shadows of men thrown by the morning sun come creeping around the cathedral, all of this just before the priest’s head peeled back from his skull as the world erupted into gunfire.
Del Valle drew his pistol and fired as the priest fell at his feet. His shot caught one of the men in the cheek, and his face disappeared. Del Valle dropped one pistol and drew the other, stepping around the side of the cathedral for cover.
He had not yet made it when Garçon came around the far corner with a crossbow raised. Del Valle heard the snap of the string, and the bolt went through his side, just beneath the ribcage. He bit his lip to keep from crying out. Garçon ducked back behind the cathedral to reload.
Del leaned against the cathedral wall. The world had gone suddenly quiet. Del Valle could see the shadow of his horse thrown long in the morning sun; he wondered if he could reach it.
The priest was crawling to the shade at the rear of the little cathedral, blood running down his face. He had one hand stretched out as if reaching for Del Valle, his mouth working, trying to speak, but the top of his head was a ruined mess where the lead ball had tore a furrow through his scalp, and Del Valle did not think he would ever speak again.
He leaned against the cool wall and tried to think. His left hand no longer hurt, nor did his leg, but the bolt in his side made it hard to draw breath, and white lines of fire ran through him when he moved. His mouth was dry as dust. Water, he thought. I would kill a man for a drink of water, and then, despite himself, laughed.
“You laugh, Fransisco?” he heard Garçon say.
“I do,” Del Valle said. “For you and I have come across the world to kill each other for nothing. There is no gold here.”
There was a long silence from Garçon. Then: “You lie.”
“I do not lie. The priest you killed just told me.”
Garçon went silent again. He does not believe me, Del Valle thought. And why not? He hardly believed it himself. To have come all this way for nothing. No gold, only an old priest in the shadow of the mountain. He thinks I am trying to trick him into leaving, or dropping his guard—
He spun and fired in one motion, just as Garçon’s man stepped around the back side of the cathedral with another crossbow raised. Del Valle’s shot took him in the throat and he dropped the crossbow. His hands flew up to try to contain his blood. A moment later he fell in the herbs the old man had been growing.
Del Valle did not watch him fall, nor give Garçon a chance to catch him with pistols unloaded. He stepped through the back door of the cathedral fast, reloading his pistol, wincing with each step. He passed the altar and ran through the golden glow of the cathedral and out the front door, into the rising sun.
Three horses stood beside Del Valle’s. He dipped his hand into the water trough and splashed his face. His left hand felt almost whole again; the pain had receded, as if he had never been wounded. He splashed water over the wound in his side, and felt that pain recede as well.
He took a deep breath and uncoiled his whip in one motion and snapped it out, sending Garçon’s horses running. He ran behind them as they went along the side of the cathedral, whipping them again.
When they reached the corner he waited while the horses ran on. He hoped Garçon would fire his crossbow in panic at one of the horses, or, even better, that one of them would run him over, but neither happened. Del Valle stood at the corner, his pain forgotten now, knowing Garçon was waiting with his crossbow raised.
He crossed himself quickly and said a brief prayer to the mother, then took a few running steps and slid on his knees as he came around the corner. Garçon had indeed been waiting to shoot him, but his crossbow bolt flew high, just over Del Valle’s low slide. It whispered past, Del Valle on his knees watching it go, smiling now, feeling really quite invigorated, youthful, as if this battle had torn away years from his tired flesh. As he popped back up to his feet, still smiling, almost laughing now, Garçon hurled the crossbow. Del Valle slapped it away. Garçon went for his sword, and Del Valle’s whip lashed out, tearing a long gash in Garçon’s right arm. Del Valle took another step toward Garçon, then another, his right hand leveling the pistol.
“You need me,” Garçon said, talking fast, his hands coming up to stay Del Valle from firing. “You’ll never make it back. Your ships are destroyed.”
“Yours aren’t,” Del Valle said, and pulled the trigger.
The shot took Garçon in the stomach and he sat down heavily against the wall of the cathedral, not far from where the priest lay with his hand outstretched.
Del Valle stood over Garçon, slowly loading his pistol. “I should leave you gutshot,” he said.
Garçon looked up at him. He was fumbling at the wound, Del Valle thought, perhaps trying to hold his blood in, and that suited Del Valle just fine, that this man should spend his last few minutes trying to keep his blood and guts from spilling out of his body.
“Even if you make it to the ships, my men won’t follow you, you know,” Garçon said.
“They will,” Del Valle said. “They need me to navigate.”
“Then they will murder you in your sleep once Arravoña is in sight.”
“Then I will die closer to Arravoña than you,” he said.
“I think not,” Garçon said, and fired the tiny pistol he had been fumbling for.
Del Valle staggered backward in terrible red pain, but he didn’t black out. Later, he would wonder what might have happened if he had. If Garçon would have reached the priest first.
He stumbled back until he leaned against the wall of the cathedral. Blood ran down his face and into one eye. His ears were ringing. He tried to draw his sword, but there was no need; Garçon had dropped the pistol.
Garçon’s blood had soaked into the saltpan and dried there, leaving the ground beneath him the deep red of the sky at sunset, just before night sets in. His eyes were open. He sat upright with his chin on his chest, his hand covering the wound in his stomach.
Del Valle shook his head to clear the ringing, and went to his knees with the pain. His head felt ripped open, much like the priest’s did, and he felt himself wandering in time. He felt himself rising up toward the sky, and he wondered if this was how it would end, here, far from Arravoña.
Then slowly he spiraled back down to his body. The pain was terrible, and he regretted for a moment his return. When he was able to open his eyes again, Garçon was dead, sitting upright against the little cathedral.
Soon I will join him, Del Valle thought. He leaned back against the cathedral wall. It was cool in the shade. He could feel the blood drying on his face. He looked off at the mountains, where the priest had said there was a spring. It would be cool there, he thought, where the water came trickling from the earth. And he could drink before he died. It was said in the teachings of the Mother that She had created everything on the earth, and that all she had created was for her children. Which meant She had created the water for him.
When he opened his eyes again he saw the dead priest. Only he didn’t think the priest was dead. He no longer looked middle-aged. Now he looked ancient, old as the dust stirred by the first men to set foot in this world, but he still drew breath. His hair had thinned to faint wisps and the lines had gathered in his face like an ancient map that marked the way to a new world, but he still lived.
He looks a thousand years old now, Del Valle thought, and his father’s voice spoke in his head again.
Not a thousand, his father said. A hundred.
You look as if you have seen a ghost, the priest had said.
But he had not seen a ghost, Del Valle thought. He had seen a man. A very old one.
It was hard to concentrate through the pain. His head burned like fire. He kept looking at the mountains and the little garden of herbs and the priest, who seemed old enough now to be blown away by the wind.
I am not your greatfather’s son, the priest had said.
The voice in his head was trying to tell him something important. About the cathedral, and the spring, that trickle of water that came out of the rocks.
Trying to tell him how a man might live to be a hundred years old.
A man who was not his greatfather’s son, but might very well be his greatfather.
Who had found something there in the rocks, and had waited. For over a century.
There are things more valuable than gold, he had said. There are more legends than El Loro.
Struggling to his feet, Del Valle set off for the cave, where there lay a legend older even than El Loro, he was sure. He crossed the little garden and passed through the door in the outer wall. He could only see out of one eye. The blood had dried and cracked on his face, as if he wore a mask that was falling away.
He had to stop twice. The second time he fell to his knees and did not think he would get up, but he could smell the water now. The little cave was hardly the size of the cathedral, but it blocked the hard morning sun. In the floor, a small fountain seeped out of the stone. The little pool was no bigger than a child’s bath.
He stood looking at it for some time, wondering what would happen when he drank. Then he knelt and cupped his hands, bringing them slowly to his mouth. When he had drunk he splashed water on his head, and the pain fell away instantly, the same way it had when he had drunk from the trough, which was surely water from this same spring. He looked down the hill at the little cathedral, gleaming white in the morning sun, wondering about the Mother’s blessings, wondering about the priest—his great-greatfather, who had come to this land and found this little fountain here. The water sloshed cold in Del Valle’s stomach and the morning breeze chilled his wet hair. He knelt in the cave while the tiny pool of water filled itself again, and in the water he saw his great-greatfather and his men come straggling across the saltpan, their eyes wrapped in rags to keep them from going blind on the salt, their frames desiccated, weakened, dying of thirst.
They come upon the thin trickle of water in the rocks and drink one by one, each man only allowed a tiny bit, but afterward they are refreshed. His greatfather feels like a child again. The men dance in the little cave. What wounds they had carried with them are healed. What lines of age they wear on their faces are smoothed away. They marvel at one another. They pray to the Mother. Then they drink again.
Del Valle wondered how long before they knew, or if they knew immediately, if the legend was swimming in their heads even then.
It is a thing of great value, his greatfather had written. A glory to the king. A blessing from the Mother.
And a curse to me, he might have written, for Del Valle wondered what it must have been like living those long years with only the rain and wind as friends.
Or would he have thanked the Mother for every moment of that long life, as he waited, day after day, for riders to come down out of the hills, one of them bearing his name?
Del Valle did not know.
What he did know was that the old man would revive when Del Valle brought him water down from the hills. Together, they would make their way back to Garçon’s ships. Garçon would have left a small crew, and they would follow Del Valle’s command. And if they did not at first, they would when he gave them the elixir of life. When they drank from the water he carried back to them, water that had flowed from the Fountain of Youth, the legend his great-greatfather had found in this land.
They would follow him, and be young. And they would set sail again, searching for another legend. One that told of cities of gold rising from the plains or hidden in the mountains. Where the streets were paved with jewels and the walls built of jade and onyx and starfire.
He did wonder if the Mother might be displeased that he had been given not only a second chance at life but an extended one, and he had decided to spend it searching for gold. But the gold he found could build the fleets. It could raise cathedrals in all the countries they conquered. The Mother would have Her glory, he thought.
Fransisco Del Valle wanted his as well. His great-greatfather had not waited all these years to stay in this land, sipping idly from a tiny fountain. Nor could they take it with them.
South then, Del Valle thought, drinking again, filling all the water-skins he could carry. Into the wild heart of this vast continent. Where there would be other tales of legends from the mists of time. Other shimmerings, that might be gold.
| Paul Crenshaw is the author of three essay collections: This One Will Hurt You, This We’ll Defend, and Melt With Me, on the Cold War culture of the 1980s. Other work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Pushcart Prize, and Lightspeed. khttps://linktr.ee/paulcrenshaw. |  |