The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (50 page)

From that time onwards the crusaders despoiled the andenes only at night when the moon and stars were sufficient, and during the day they hid behind their walls or marauded for the trustingly unattended flocks of sheep and goats in the neighbouring valleys and quebradas. No longer hungry, burning with irritation at their exclusion from the city, they cleaned their weapons and laid plans. One night, under the direction of Mgr Rechin Anquilar, they even waded out into the map of the world that had been constructed with so much fidelity by Dionisio Vivo and Profesor Luis, and shovelled into the water those parts that were not of the Roman faith. It turned into a shallow puddle of a pond, with only isolated patches of flowers where once whole continents had been represented; they had already eaten all the fish in it and consumed the wildfowl, and the loss of drainage now made their own camp into an unpleasant swamp.

‘I wish to see if diplomacy may succeed where resistance fails,’ said Father Garcia to the council of war, ‘as does Don Salvador. After all, I was ordained a priest, and he looks like one. An appeal to brotherliness may be worth a try.’

‘You are mad,’ said Remedios. ‘It is precisely the success of your ideas that has brought them here, it seems. Do you not remember what the cripple said?’

‘I admit that it is mad,’ agreed Don Salvador the False Priest, ‘but I have a secret weapon at my disposal which may strengthen my argument.’

‘A secret weapon?’

‘Yes indeed, a secret weapon.’ He nodded his head, smiling mysteriously.

‘And what is this secret weapon, may I ask?’

Don Salvador shrugged his bony shoulders and made a helpless gesture with both hands. ‘If I tell you, then it would not be a secret. And in any case, I am ashamed of it.’

‘You are both idiots,’ asserted Remedios.

Nonetheless the drawbridge was lowered and the two men ventured out. Father Garcia had dug out of his box what remained of his clerical garb, and Don Salvador had cut himself a new collar from white cardboard. The former carried with him a rosary in case he needed to escape, and the latter carried only his battered and beloved copy of Catullus’ poems and epigrams. They walked with no conversation between them, the gaunt height and distinguished features of Don Salvador in peculiar contrast to Father Garcia’s slight build and leporine face.

‘We have come to negotiate with the man who calls himself El Inocente,’ said Don Salvador to the group of surly and unshaven men who rose up to confront them as they passed the first line of makeshift drystone walls that served as protection against Pedro’s bullets: ‘I understand that he is your leader.’

The two men were brusquely searched for weapons, and made to wait, under guard. ‘A more barbarous and short-tempered bunch of people have I never seen,’ commented Don Salvador.

Very shortly, Mgr Rechin Anquilar approached. From a slight distance he saw something about the taller of the two negotiators that seemed both familiar and discomforting. His memory whirling, he
came closer, and suddenly realised who the tall man was. His ears flushed with shame, and the colour rose in his face. He began to think of excuses and justifications for exceeding his remit, and the awful prospect of unfrocking and legal process loomed in his mind. ‘Your Eminence?’ he said, with incredulity in his voice.

Don Salvador smiled. ‘Do I not look very like my brother, the Cardinal? We have often been mistaken for each other.’

Mgr Anquilar wondered if he was being toyed with. ‘Your Eminence, what brings you to these parts?’

‘I am Salvador Trujillo Guzman, the Cardinal’s brother, as I have said, and I have something to tell you.’ Don Salvador paused and considered his words, whilst the Monsignor continued to be confused and Father Garcia looked at him open-mouthed. In all their long friendship, in all their many discussions in which they had elaborated their doctrine, Don Salvador had never disclosed that his own brother was the head of the country’s Church.

Don Salvador looked very directly into the Monsignor’s eyes and said firmly, ‘My brother has always been a very conservative kind of man, especially in matters of the faith. He could never tolerate my levity. But for all that, I always knew that he had more faults than I do myself. We are both dissimulators, but in my case it is very obvious and in his case he hides it even from himself. I have made my living as a false priest who fools no one, and he has lived as an ordained priest who has been careful to fool the right people in order to rise to prominence. Nonetheless I know that my brother has a good heart, and I am certain that he would never have authorised you to commit atrocities and barbarities in God’s name, the name of the Church, or his own.

‘I do not know what future you had planned for yourself after this escapade, Monsignor. It seems to me that a man like you has no future other than to be killed or to continue to pile horror upon horror. I cannot imagine you retiring to a cloister having tasted the exhilarating wine of bloodshed and generalship, can you? You have become a cacique, a caudillo –’

‘Am I to understand that your point, when you reach it, is going to be that unless I withdraw you will inform your brother of my activities?’ interrupted the Monsignor, his eyes glinting with malice and hostility.

‘That is exactly my point, Monsignor. And I also require you to disband your army of marauders and savages.’

Rechin Anquilar put his hands behind his back and adopted a lofty demeanour that belied his trepidation. It was true that he had never given thought as to how he would return to a workaday life after the crusade; the contemplation of it gave rise to a tremor of dread in his heart, and he knew that sooner or later the details of the episode would emerge, that fingers would sooner or later be pointed at him. For the first time his faith in his mission wavered, and his imagination began to itch with the prospect of having to justify himself.

‘My authority comes not from your brother, but from God. My aim is solely to spare souls the pain of Hell.’

‘Personally acquainted with Him, are you?’ asked Garcia. ‘And why is it your business whether or not I go to Hell?’

‘There is only one law,’ said Don Salvador sententiously: ‘
Vivamus atque amemus.
’

‘“Let us live and let us love?” Is that from the fourth Gospel?’ asked the Monsignor, who was unable under any circumstances to avoid the temptation to fix correctly the attribution of a quotation.

‘The Gospel according to Catullus,’ said Don Salvador.

The Monsignor’s attention seemed to wander. He reflected for a moment. He recalled the names of the two heresiarchs of Cochadebajo de los Gatos that he had read in the submission of the Holy Office, and thought simultaneously of a way of avoiding the story of his exploits ever coming to the Cardinal’s ears. He raised his voice and addressed the crusaders who had gathered round.

‘This man,’ he said, pointing, ‘is Salvador. And this man is the alleged “Father” Garcia. They are heretics, and the leaders of heretics. Kill them both, before they pollute this place any further.’

FATHER GARCIA LOOKED
down at the severed head of his companion where it lay in profile upon the mud, and at the body that now seemed to have no identity, as though it were a part of a mannequin. He raised his eyes and looked at the man with the machete who was advancing upon him. He appealed directly to Monsignor Rechin Anquilar. ‘Before I die I would like to say a rosary. As a Christian man, you cannot refuse my request.’

‘You should prefer to confess,’ said Anquilar, ‘but say a rosary if it pleases you. There will be no harm in keeping the Devil waiting.’

Father Garcia crossed himself and recited the Apostles’ Creed. He moved his fingers to the first bead, and, despite himself, he noticed that his fingers were trembling so greatly that the bead slipped his grasp. He recited the Our Father, and moved to the next bead. His knees began to shake, but he said the three Hail Marys and the Glory Be, bowing his head at the name of Jesus. Onwards his fingers moved, and, his voice quavering, he contemplated the first joyful mystery, that of the Annunciation. He said the Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and the Glory Be. A modicum of calm descended upon him, and he moved on to the second joyful mystery of the Visitation. He repeated the formula of the ten Hail Marys and the Glory Be, and proceeded to the mystery of the Nativity. Relentlessly his voice intoned the Hail Marys and the Glory Bes for the mysteries of the Presentation and the Finding In The Temple.

Father Garcia’s plan had been that in contemplating the mysteries of the rosary he would become rapt, and this would enable him to levitate. He had never levitated to a very great height at any great speed, but was convinced that this could be done merely by intensifying his degree of concentration. But now he was finding that the prospect of imminent and bloody death was paralysing his soul. It was as if only the front part of his brain was operating, and all the rest of it consisted of an undifferentiated jelly of fear that could only
repeat, ‘I am going to die,’ and which drowned out the pacifying monotony of his prayers.

He slowed his voice and tried to cover the Sorrowful Mysteries at a snail’s pace. He looked around at the crusaders as they exchanged bored glances, looked at their watches, and fingered the shafts of their machetes. He tried to close his mind to them, and concentrate upon the Agony In The Garden, the Scourging, the Crowning With Thorns, and the Carrying of the Cross. He arrived at the Crucifixion with his feet still firmly upon the ground and a sense of utter despair burrowing in his heart.

Even a devout Irishwoman gabbling the rosary at a speed reminiscent of an express takes a very long time indeed to cover an entire rosary in one session. Even such a lady would rarely attempt more than five decades at a time, and Garcia was now beginning the eleventh of the fifteen. At Garcia’s rate it would have been many hours before he finished, and he gave brief thanks in prayer to St Dominic for having decreed that each mystery requires ten Hail Marys and a Glory Be. He slowed his pace still further, and adopted the singsong tone of voice that he knew from experience could send a congregation to sleep.

On and on he droned, through the glorious mysteries. The Resurrection, the Ascension, the Descent Of The Holy Spirit, The Assumption. At last, his feet still upon terra firma, and his throat dry with panic and repetition, he arrived at the Coronation and embarked upon the concluding litany. He thanked St Dominic for having composed so many honorific epithets for the Virgin, and for having to say ‘Pray for us’ after every one of them. He reached the end of the rosary after five and a half hours, and, heavy with resignation, looked up.

The crusaders were all wandering about, chatting and joking with each other. The executioner with his machete was nowhere to be seen, and Monsignor Anquilar was discussing something with Father Valentino. It seemed that he had managed to dampen the bloodlust of his persecutors by means of the implausible length of his recitation. Seizing his chance, he began again at the Apostles’ Creed, and sidled away behind one of the tents. From thence he darted to a section of wall, saying the Our Father. He set out briskly for the city, still reciting, and was half way there when he encountered
Dionisio Vivo, soaking wet, and striding towards the crusader’s encampment.

‘I came to rescue you,’ said Dionisio. ‘I was hoping that they would not dare to touch me because of that story that anyone who tried to harm me would receive the wound in their own body.’

‘Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death,’ said Father Garcia, who from now on would be forever unable to get the rosary out of his mind and speech, ‘Thank you, Dionisio, Blessed art Thou amongst women. You know that the stories about you are all true, on Earth as it is in Heaven. You could defeat those bastards on your own, God is with you, Queen Conceived Without Original Sin, so why don’t you? I suppose you got wet swimming across the moat. Did you see that they killed Don Salvador? I will never forget it, Mother Inviolate, it was the worst thing I have ever seen, Hail Holy Queen.’

‘Come quickly, Garcia, they have noticed. We will have to run.’

Together the two men sprinted for the drawbridge, which had been lowered as soon as Dionisio had impulsively dived off the rampart into the moat. A bullet whined past Garcia’s head as he threw himself panting to the cobbles of the street, and the drawbridge was raised. All he could see before his eyes was the scuffed toecap of an old army boot. He raised his eyes, and they met those of Remedios, who was standing above him with her hands on her hips, looking down at him disdainfully. ‘Idiot,’ she said.

‘Remedios,’ he gasped, ‘Blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus.’ He nodded, as from now on he always would when he mentioned that Name, and tapped his forehead smartly on the stones. ‘Now and at the hour of our death,’ he said, and passed out with concussion.

FATHER GARCIA’S WORDS
weighed heavily with Dionisio. Dionisio’s reputation for miraculous invulnerability and extraordinary power, his title of the Deliverer, and his prolific paternity, had endowed him with a clearly perceived aura of praeternatural invincibility. The fact that his own father was chief of the General Staff, and that even cabinet ministers replied swiftly to his correspondence, seemed also to put him somewhere at the very centre of that vast civil power that enclosed the country in its umbriferous embrace. For most people the state was something to which they knew that they belonged, but which never impinged upon the lives that they led far out on the extremities of the frontiers or deep in the impenetrable interior. No tax gatherers appeared, no health and safety officers inspected the sanitary arrangements in mud huts; there were solely the local judges, quixotic and unpredictable police, and perhaps a deeply unpleasant encounter with the Army once every ten years. The state was simply an enormous machine that rumbled in the far distance, and one’s only connection with it was the ability to remember the colours of the national flag.