The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (9 page)

It took him fifteen minutes to return. When he did, he carried my sheet of paper in his left hand and, in his right, a sheaf of stiff brown pages that I still recognized across the gulf of centuries. In the Cardinal's gaze I saw a mixture of fear and hope.

‘It is impossible,' he said.

‘Impossible,' I agreed.

He held out my sheet in a quivering hand. ‘The words are the same. The
handwriting
seems the same!'

I nodded.

He said, ‘And the word? The word the author says a seeker must speak?'

‘Guiakan,' I said.

The sheet dropped onto his lap. He picked it back up, as though it were a page of flame.

‘How can this be?' he asked, in the plaintive voice of the child that lives in every true scholar.

‘I do not know, Pater,' I said. ‘That is why I need your help.'

‘I cannot give you these,' he said, clutching the sheaf to his chest as though he feared I might grab them and run. ‘It is now even more important that the Church keeps it safe.'

‘I know. But a copy would be invaluable to me.'

He looked uncertainly at the single sheet I had given him. ‘But you know...'

I smiled without humour. ‘I
think
I know,' I said.

He watched me for a few moments, seeing the strain that had been etched into my face . ‘Yes,' he said finally. ‘Yes.'

He rang a bell and a young man, dressed in a dark business suit, appeared. He handed the Cardinal some stapled pages and the Cardinal handed them to me. The young man left as efficiently as he had come.

‘
Graci
,' I murmured, my eyebrows raised.

The Cardinal smiled, bringing a sudden brightness to his ascetic features. ‘I thought you might be persuasive. I am not sure why.'

I nodded and got up to leave. The Cardinal suddenly looked anxious. ‘You will let me know what you discover?' he asked.

‘Yes,' I said.

‘Soon?' he said, and now I heard in his voice the old man that he was. I was to see my fiftieth year, in this life, in eleven months. In five centuries of existence, I had never lived past the age of fifty. ‘Before the new year comes,' I promised.

I held out my hand. He grasped it with both of his. ‘God has given you a great gift,' he said.

‘Has He?' I asked, and left.

* * *

Seville,
Spain
August, 1559
To: His Holiness, Pope Paul III, descendant of St. Peter.

The following document is the Last Confession of Adam Colón de Espanola and a record of the atrocities he committed against the Indians of New Spain and several of His Holiness's priests. I believe his Confession to be the whole truth and have myself witnessed the miracle whereof he speaks.
Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas.

Holy Father:

I was born into Hell and did not know it. Hell is a beautiful place, lush with green forests where the sounds of the birds fill the air like angels singing without words. Mountains rise to a sky as blue as God's eye and, even in that season when the rains fall every day, it is a renewal and a reminder of the Almighty's abiding grace.

In this land so full of Nature's bounty, brown men and women and children troop in their hundreds to serve their Spanish masters. The hills have been scarred by our mines, in which the Indians toil ceaselessly to find the precious metals that we colonists live for. So the land seems like an ant hill, with the constant files of brown human beings working until they are broken by our iron will for gold. There are only hundreds now; there were thousands when I was a boy. They died from many causes: the pox, the hard labour, the inadequate food, our sport. But, in the end, they all died from only one cause: Spanish greed. And I am as culpable as any colonist – indeed, more so. If there are now only hundreds where once there were thousands, I have been a deliberate instrument of that depredation. It is no exaggeration to say that, until my thirty-second year, no single man killed or tortured more Indians in these islands than I. Whatever action I have taken in those ten years I spent in the wilderness can never compensate for my atrocities. The Bible says God forgives those who truly repent. Perhaps. But, blasphemous as it may be to say so, God can do nothing to punish me. I do not forgive myself, and I have lived in Hell all my earthly life. This Confession serves as evidence of my repentance but, more importantly, it records what evil men may do in the name of God. If this testament can, in some small way, help ensure that such evil never occurs again, then I will die having served some useful purpose on this earthly sphere. Even so, it were better had I never been born. But God's ways are a mystery to mortal men, and even to myself, who may not entirely fit that description. (But more of that in time.) So given the great gift God has bestowed upon me, I can only assume that even a sorry creature such as myself must play some role in His Divine plan.

Of my situation: I have spent the past fourteen years in His Majesty's dungeons awaiting trial. My cell is unlit and infested with vermin. I have been fed nothing but mouldy bread, though the cockroaches and spiders which share my cell have supplemented that monotonous diet. As Your Holiness knows, heretics often spend several years awaiting trial after the first hearing. I find the extraordinary delay in my case curious, however. The murderer of a priest would, I thought, be tried and executed summarily. I can only suppose that the delay was deliberate: to ensure that I suffer for as long as possible before dying. Also, a Court of the Inquisition meant that everything I said would be recorded and, despite the famed secrecy which surrounds the Court, there are many who would be uneasy at the thought of my words being written down anywhere. When the Inquisitor heard of my remarkable ability to withstand torture, however, the decision could be delayed no longer. I have been subjected to the
tratti di fune
, better known as the strappado. Perhaps the Holy Father's delicate ears have never heard of these techniques by which the Inquisition brings heretics closer to the God. A brief account, then: my hands were tied behind my back and I was hoisted by the wrists. Weights were then attached to my feet and I was dropped for several feet, being stopped with a jerk before I reached the ground. Naturally, my arms were soon dislocated. I have also experienced the
aselli
: being put to lie on a trestle with sharp-edged rungs and secured with an iron band. My feet were elevated above my head and a small piece of linen forced into the gullet. Water was then poured from a jar into my mouth and nose, so that I nearly suffocated. During the process, the cords binding my limbs were tightened until I thought my very veins would explode. But His Majesty's torturers do their job well and I never actually died. This in itself became a cause for wonder, as well as the remarkable rate at which my wounds and broken bones healed.

This is the first evidence I offer Your Grace as to the truth of the story which I now write, and which was not told to the Court for fear that I would be burned as a witch. But that possibility exists: I suspect it is why I was finally brought before the Court. I will leave it to your infallible wisdom, having read my story, to decide whether my gift was bestowed by God or by Satan. It is my belief that the force of reason can lead only to one conclusion: that those who have played a part in my downfall are serpents of the Evil One nestled in the bosom of the Holy See. It is for this reason, too, that I write this record, in order that the true servants of the Heavenly Father and His One True Church may be warned of the evil that dwells within its very walls. God has given me a great gift and I shall use it, as I have always tried to do, for His greater glory. It is true that for the first three decades of my life I served instead the cause of the Enemy, but my actions for the three years preceding my arrest is proof that even the most depraved of human beings has hope of salvation. Was that not the message Christ came to bring to all mankind? If serving Christ meant pitting myself against every one of Satan's servants, who presently infest the great Spanish empire like so many termites, then I was obliged so to do. And herein lies the irony, for my arrest was impelled not by those acts I committed in the service of Satan, but those committed in the service of God. My only concern is that I shall die with my task unaccomplished and it is in this regard that the authority and wisdom of Holy Father can accomplish what I could not.

The trial then. I was brought into court wearing the sackcloth
sanbenito
and
croza
straw of infamy. It was a message: that there was no doubt of my guilt. My name was read out and, for the first time since my arrest fourteen years before, the charges against me proclaimed. The simplicity of my name reflects my unconnected birth. Since I was a child I had aspired to a name that rolled like a drum, to carry the names of my father's and mother's families like a true Spanish nobleman. I suppose all orphans have the same desire. I had at least achieved a name that was a phrase, for all New Spain knew me as
El Carnicero Sangriente de Espanola
– The Bloody Butcher of Espanola.

The charges against me read as follows: Profaning the sanctity of the Holy Church; Promulgating doctrines contrary to the Holy Canons of the Church; Contempt and disrespect of the clergy, including acts of violence against Fray Tomas de Gayana, Brothers Toribio E Ybarra and Ricardo Muñoz, and the murder of Diego Ortiz y Mantana.

The first and second of these charges are as without substance as the endearments of a faithless wife. Of the third I say only this: my beating of the priests named and the death of Fr. Ortiz came about only because these supposed servants of God, by word and deed, showed themselves to be far more guilty of the first and second charges than I ever could be.

The priest Las Casas, once my sworn enemy, was in court. He is now in his eighties, but he seems no more than a spry sixty. Were it not for his bald pate and the deep creases of his face, I might almost have believed that he shared my own most secret gift. Indeed, I noted that his eyes widened as I entered the court. I look not much older than when he last saw me in the light of day, twenty-two years ago. He had come to see me in my cell some days before the trial.

It was natural that Las Casas be interested in this case, given the sensational debate between himself and the great Sepulveda at Valladolid a decade before. When the Valladolid debate produced no effective measures to save the Indians Fray Las Casas so passionately wished to protect, he continued his campaign with the Kings who came after Fernando, as King Carlos is no doubt aware. When he first introduced himself in my cell some months ago, I thought he might have come as a witness against me, but I was in error.

The Inquisitor was Fr. Juan de Zumárraga and the President of the Court was Vicar-General Fr. Francisco de Castillo. When Zumárraga had read the final charge, I stated, ‘What I did, I did for the greater glory of God and His Church here on Earth.'

The Inquisitor then put his first question to me, and I readily admit that this question confused me. I could not see its purport then, but the strategy of the prosecution would reveal itself before my trial ended.

‘Señor Colón, are you a Spaniard?' he asked.

‘Of course,' I answered, with all the haughtiness I could muster. I assumed they were trying to call my loyalty to the Crown into question.

‘But were you not born on the island of Hamaica?'

‘I am not sure of the circumstances of my birth.'

‘Come, come, Señor. You were found at the door of the monastery when you were but a babe of less than one month. I have the written testimony of Brother Ricardo Muñoz, who helped raise you as a child. The journey from Spain to the New World takes at least three months. So it is fair to conclude, is it not, that you were born in Hamaica?'

‘It is fair. And I am still a Spaniard.'

‘More precisely, you are Creole.'

I was beginning to get angry at Fr. Zumárraga's line of questioning. ‘No less a Spaniard for that!' I answered. ‘My loyalty to the King and the Pope cannot be questioned.' But my anger was impelled by fear, for I had begun to divine the purpose of his questions.

‘Señor, there is nothing that cannot be questioned save the authority of God and His Church. We are here today to decide if you have flouted that authority.'

‘I did not,' I said.

‘We shall see. You were brought up in a monastery, were you not?'

‘That is correct. The Franciscan brothers took me in and raised me in the service of God.'

‘Yet it is for the crime of violence against these same brothers, and the murder of one of their order, that you stand before this court today.'

‘My violence, as you call it, is a crime only if it were not done in the service of God.'

‘That is your argument?'

‘That is my argument.'

I must here interject, Holy Father, to present an argument which I did not give the court. My reasons for not doing so shall be clear from what I am about to relate.

As Fr. Zumárraga mentioned at the outset, I was born in the New World. In fact, I was the first child to be born in the island of Hamaica. Although the settlers had occupied the island for fifteen years, every baby conceived was stillborn or died soon after birth. Some people thought the cause was the climate, perhaps the swamp near which the town of Sevilla La Nueva had been founded. At any rate, the island seemed inhospitable to civilized men, so when I appeared in a woven basket at the door of the church, the event was naturally hailed as a miracle. I was, I am told, a child of remarkable beauty: golden locks, wide green eyes, and plump red cheeks. A veritable cherub, if I may say so. It seemed unlikely that any mother would have abandoned such a child and, for this reason, several persons suggested that I had not been born of earthly parents, but had perhaps been delivered by the angel Gabriel himself as a sign of God's approval of Spain's dominion of the New World. I hasten to add, Holy Father, that I believe no such asseveration: I merely repeat what others said. Yet, as I grew older, it became clear that God did indeed have a direct hand in my birth.