The King's Fifth (25 page)

"But with the map you are making, the hole can be found? The man I send there, a trusted friend with much experience on the frontier, can go straight to this crater?"

"You do not go yourself?"

"Alas, no."

Don Felipe is embarrassed. This is the first hint I have had that he himself is a prisoner in the fortress.

"I will finish the map tomorrow," I say, "but I warn you again the gold will not be found."

"My friend will find it."

"The crater is only one of many."

"The gold shall be found."

"I have drawn everything as I remember it," I tell him. "But there are fifty or more such craters, all much alike. If I were to go there myself, I doubt that I could find it.
And having found it, I could never retrieve the gold."

Don Felipe smiles, the smile that always makes me uncomfortable. He believes that I am only trying to discourage him, that I have plans of my own to go one day and collect the treasure myself.

The iron door closes. I sit on the bench and wait. The wind grows colder and I walk up and down to keep warm, three strides one way, four strides the other. Shortly after noon, Don Felipe comes and takes me to the courtroom.

There is no sign on the faces of the judges of what the verdict will be. Wrapped in their fur-trimmed robes, they seem anxious to be done with the proceedings. Few have come to hear the verdict, but among them is Zia. She stands against the wall beside her aunt, where I can see her if I turn my head a little. Looking at her, I feel that she is more worried than I am.

The royal fiscal takes a single sheet of paper from the royal notary and begins to read, mumbling his words. He, too, seems anxious to be done with me. Perhaps, he is thinking of the expedition to Cíbola, which he will busy himself with, once the trial is over.

I hear him say, "...the charge of murder, in the belief of the Royal Audiencia, is unsupported by the facts and in our estimation should not have been brought. The charge of withholding the King's Fifth has been proven, and we do find the defendant, Estéban de Sandoval, guilty of that crime. We therefore sentence him, in the name of the King, His Cesarean Majesty, to five years of imprisonment."

Here the royal fiscal pauses and glances at me, thinking, perhaps, to find me shaken. I feel nothing, however, and this I show. Long before, I have steeled myself against this moment, indeed, since the day in Culiacán I confessed to the crime I had committed.

"In consideration of the defendant's youth," the royal fiscal says, "and in light of the defendant's own desire to be of help in the location of the treasure, we, the Royal Audiencia, commute this sentence to a period of three years, which is to be spent in His Majesty's prison, San Juan de Ulúa."

I look at Zia. I feel relief that my sentence is no more than it is, but her face is pale.

With a bow to the three judges, and thanking them for their courtesy to me, which Don Felipe has prompted me to do, I leave the courtroom.

I wait on the terrace for Zia. Seeing that I am determined to talk to her, Don Felipe draws away.

She is still pale.

"Three years are not long," I say to cheer her.

"Not so long as five years," she answers, "but very long. What will you do? Day after day, week after week, month after month? It is a long time, three years."

"I will do many things. And I will think of you."

The color comes back to her cheeks and she smiles her quick smile.

"Sometimes," she says, "I will also think of you. I will think of the meadow in the Valley of Hearts when we made the first map together."

"And of the time in Nexpan when you were angry with me, Zia, because I would not paint the river blue."

"Yes, I remember that day. I remember also the day when I left you, after Captain Mendoza was killed, and you gave me Blue Star."

"You were right to leave me then."

"But I would not wish to leave you again, no matter what you did."

Don Felipe, clearing his throat, comes between us and I have only the chance to say farewell before he leads me away. As we cross the terrace, I wait to hear the sound of the bells on her hat. I am almost to the stairs that lead to my cell, but I do not hear them. I turn and glance back. She is standing where I have left her. I wave and she waves back. It is then that I hear the ringing of the bells, the small, silver bells that I shall never forget.

There is little to do on the map, but while I work at it I think of the many craters, of the deep one where the gold is hidden, of its mouth yellow with crust, the sulphurous water boiling up, the bubbles that rise slowly through the slime and break, giving off their nauseous stench.

The map finished, I lift the stones and put it away. It is a good map, though not in color, everything set down—the Inferno, the soft, white dust that blinded Father Francisco, duly noted, the many craters and the spring and even Father Francisco's grave—everything as I recall it. Yet, Don Felipe will not find the treasure, nor will my notes help the royal fiscal and his expedition.

After dark, as I light the candle, Captain Martín comes to the cell. He has come by the long passage under the prison, for his doublet is dusty.

"The sentence I do not like," he says, refusing the
bench which I offer him. "It is too much for what you have done. Under the circumstances, you should have received your freedom. Those who have never lived on the frontier, who are ignorant of its dangers and temptations, should go there once before they die."

Captain Martín walks to the window and looks out. He turns and studies me for awhile.

"Are the notes you have given the Audiencia true?" he asks.

"Yes."

"The treasure is where you have noted it? In a place you call the Inferno?"

"Yes," I answer, surprised that he has seen my notes.

"An expedition can go there and find it?"

My surprise grows. I feel that I am listening to Don Felipe again.

"Yes, but the gold will not be found."

I tell him why, just as I have told Don Felipe. Yet, like Don Felipe, he does not believe me, thinking, once more like my jailer, that I plan to return someday to Cíbola and dig up the gold myself.

He talks quietly. "I wish to free you," he says. "Tomorrow night I have arranged for a boat to be at the landing. Your cell will be opened by a guard, not Don Felipe. You will follow him to the landing, where you will find a boat. You will be rowed across the bay to Vera Cruz. There a horse will be waiting. No expedition can start from here for another two weeks. You have the advantage of two weeks, at least, and your knowledge of Cíbola."

I am taken aback. For a moment I cannot speak. Since
he is the commander of the fortress, in charge of all prisoners, of the guards, of Don Felipe himself, his plan can be carried out. I am certain that he has thought of it in detail. I am certain, also, that he has made the offer in good faith.

I begin to speak, to thank him for his friendship and his offer of freedom, but he interrupts me.

"When the treasure is found," he says, "we will share alike. Half to you and half to me. Sixty thousand
onzas
divided is still a duke's ransom."

"The treasure cannot be found," I repeat, "by an expedition, even though the notes are truly put down. If I went to the Inferno myself and searched I could not find the crater where the gold is buried. I was exhausted when I left it there, so blinded by the sun that I scarce could see."

"Go," Captain Martín says, "and try. The guard will open your cell tomorrow night, an hour after supper."

I do not wish to tell him why I cannot accept his offer, that the burial of the gold has not absolved me of the evil nor of the wrongs I have done to myself and to others. I cannot say to him that although I am a prisoner in a fortress surrounded by the sea, whose walls are ten
varas
thick, in a cell with only one small window, still at last, at last I am free. Nor can I say to him that it is he himself who is really the prisoner, he and Don Felipe and all the rest who now dream of finding the hidden gold.

I say, "You have been kind to me, but your offer I must refuse."

He still does not believe what I have said, but at last he leaves, shaking his head.

The sea is dark and the sky clear of clouds. The star, which I should know but do not, shines in the west. In time, if Don Felipe can find me a chart, I will learn its name. If it has none, I will give it a name, in honor of the girl of the silver bells and the long black hair.

Father Francisco's book is here in my cell, hidden in the secret place. I also shall learn to know the flowers he gathered, and the many other things he found in Cíbola and loved so much. I shall read the breviary which he placed beside the cask, which was not empty when he left it there for me.

I shall give thought to the cross-staff, also. There must be some way it can be fashioned, differently from now, so that when a sight is taken upon the sun, the eyes are not blinded.

Yet three years is a long time, much longer than I pretended to Zia. I will be twenty years old when the door of my cell opens and I walk through it and up the twelve stone steps.