Our Lady of American Sorrows, Page 3

  The Mayan took another drag on his pipe. “You walk an old road.” There was nothing wrong with his English.

  “You’re a long way from the mountains,” I said, cautiously. Some few Mayans left their homes and crossed the coffee plantations to venture to New Albion from time to time, also to Teixeira and other cities of the Caribbean. Most were wanderers, poor or unhomed in search of work or shelter, but not all of them. Some were said to be princes, or priests, or great traders. Like all campfire stories, ours had held seeds of truth. For all the tales of terror, there were also rumors of young men given jade swords in exchange for a chance sharing of fruit.

  “This is our land.” He puffed on the pipe. “We cover it like the rain. You merely have use of it for a time.”

  “Peter,” said Rodger, tugging at my arm again. He wanted to go on, to scout the monastery. Whatever he’d hoped for from this man wasn’t to be found. But I was certain the Mayan had been waiting for us. I jerked my elbow free of Rodger’s grasp and waited. Rodger huffed, but he stayed with me.

  “Tun,” said the Mayan. “That is Peter in my language. You are the stone.” He laughed, and leaned down to tap his jade pipe against the first slabs of the sacbe. As he did a wind swirled up around us, circling as a dust devil will, though they do not blow at night.

  “Peter.” I remembered what I had been taught in Latin School. “The rock upon which Holy Mother Church was built.”

  “Your rock is foundering.” He tamped some fresh crumbling herbs into his pipe, that the wind somehow failed to snatch away from his fingers even as it built stronger and stronger. “Your king is troubled.”

  “The alcaldé? He died some years ago.”

  Another puff of the pipe. The wind was like a wall around us now, green sparks flickering within its dusty flanks. I should have been afraid, but I was not.

  “Your great king across the water plays at games,” said the Mayan. “His games should not come to our land. In time rain always defeats stone, but sometimes only another stone is required.” He handed me a feather which had not been there a moment before and smiled as the swirling wall of dust collapsed.

  Rodger and I both coughed so hard that we staggered, blundering into each other as we wiped the grit from our eyes. When I could clear away the tears, the Mayan was gone like a ghost out of legend. I still had the feather in my hand, though.

  “Look,” said Rodger.

  At our feet was the jade pipe, fallen inverted, a spray of crumbling herbs spread around it like a fan. A tiny jade idol, no larger than a saint’s medal, lay next to the pipe. We both stared, each afraid to touch.

  In the moonlight the idol was the very image of the Mayan. Had he ever been here? Or was there something in his pipe smoke?

  “We can’t leave those things lying around,” I said.

  Rodger knelt and gently touched the idol. It didn’t spark or sizzle or snap at his fingers, so after a moment, he picked it up. “Pipe’s yours.”

  I tried to scoop up the little fan of herbs, succeeded mostly in mixing them with dirt, but I refilled the tiny bowl. Then I plucked a few fresh leaves from a creosote bush growing nearby and sealed the herbs into the bowl before slipping the pipe into my pants pocket.

  The feather I held on to.

  “Death, then magic,” said Rodger. “I will never forget this day.”

  “We’ll see more death than magic before it’s all over with,” I replied.

  Half an hour later we huddled in a bougainvillea, brushing against the hairy leaves. The sweet-smelling plants had grown up around a dead stand of scrub pines filling a gap in the ridgeline that sheltered the sacbe, almost due south of Our Lady of American Sorrows. We could get no closer to the monastery without walking up to the front gates.

  By this time of the evening the air was cooling. I shivered, still clutching my feather, and stared across last few hundred meters at our goal. It remained brightly lit. This close, the details of structure were clearly visible. While the riverside, invisible to us, was sheer to Bullback Hill’s cliff over the water, the side facing south had buttresses footed in the slope of the hill. These supported the wall, which was about ten meters high and quite smooth. The top of the wall was clear except for corner towers, where the Cistercians kept eremite’s cells for contemplation. We were not high enough up to see over the walls to the buildings in the courtyard, but I knew from visits in better times that there were three floors of wooden galleries on the inside of the walls, with a stone chapel in the middle of the yard and various outbuildings.

  Our Lady of American Sorrows resembled a fortress because it had been built as one, back when the British Americas Company had contested with the French, Spanish and Portuguese for control of the New World. The forests here had held mahogany and teak, there was more rain, and everyone had believed that the Mayans were wealthy with hidden gold.

  In the end the Pope had settled affairs to his own satisfaction, the Mayans had withdrawn, and the fortress became a monastery where Cistercians prayed for forgiveness from the abused land and its absent people. But those monks had always kept their walls in good repair.

  Nothing stirred there now, though the clatter of the diesel generator was quite loud from our little observation post.

  “‘Our king is troubled,’” I said under my breath. “What did he mean?”

  “I—” Rodger started to scream, quickly cut off.

  Feather still in my hand, I turned to look. Rodger’s eyes rolled white and wild as a black-gloved hand covered his mouth. His assailant, all in black, held a knife at Rodger’s throat. Another man in black with a machine pistol swung it back and forth, bobbing nervously, looking everywhere but at me.

  “À qui parliez-vous? “ whispered the man with the knife.

  Though I knew very little French, Rodger had more, from his aviation magazine. He rolled his eyes at me, as if trying to make me speak by main force of will. I shook my head slowly. The man with the machine pistol nearly jabbed me in the stomach, but still didn’t seem to see me.

  How was this possible? I was right in front of them.

  “Dites-moi maintenant, petit porc, avant que je vous colle.” The gloved hand slipped away from Rodger’s mouth as his captor looked around, eyes darting nervously in the gleaming dark, settling everywhere but on me.

  They were asking Rodger where I was. They had to be.

  “Please, sir,” my friend gasped.

  Good, I thought, don’t let them know you have some French. I was afraid to even breathe.

  “I was just out looking for my dog,” Rodger said.

  “Un chien? This far from the city?” The man with the machine pistol spoke heavily accented English. He jerked the weapon toward Our Lady of American Sorrows. “Nous le prendrons dedans.“ Both men laughed, then the pistol carrier added, “Il faut que nous ne laissons pas autre corps à trouver..”

  Even I knew what ‘autre corps’ meant. Another body. So they wouldn’t kill Rodger, not here and now. But they must have killed the priest in the river. And now someone knew about it besides us, or they wouldn’t care about there being another body. Which maybe explained the shooting in the city this afternoon.

  I shivered, torn between dread and disbelief, by some miracle standing unnoticed before these two dangerous men.

  The knife vanished, and large, hard hands hustled Rodger over the edge, down the slope toward the monastery. The feather trembled in my grasp as I realized the two Frenchmen—Jesuits? soldiers?—had never seen me at all.

  I was the stone.

  After waiting a few minutes, I followed them down the slope. I picked my way carefully. Invisible or not, they could still catch me crashing through the bushes.

  I almost caught up to Rodger and his captors just below the monastery. They had stopped at the bottom of a scree slope extending down from the roadbed, and seemed to be arguing. Rodger squatted between the two Frenchmen, who were pointing at each other and speaking in voices that I couldn’t quite hear, even if I had understo
od them.

  Rodger looked up to stare right at me. His face wrinkled into a sort of regretful smile, and he mouthed some word I could not catch. Then the Frenchman grabbed him, one to each armpit, and dragged my best friend up the slope to the roadbed and on to the monastery gates. Though I could still see no guards the postern opened as they approached. The three of them stepped through, Rodger making one last glance over his shoulder.

  I picked my way up the slope much more carefully, wary of dislodging rocks. I was desperate to rescue Rodger but could not imagine how to get through the gate. Whatever invisibility the Mayan had given me did not allow me to fly, or withstand bullets. Or perhaps it would—but I had no way to test my powers except by trying.

  The Mayan’s words came back to me again. Was I the rock? Or was I the one who was foundering? Clutching the feather, I fingered the pipe in my pocket. There were still some herbs in the bowl, but they wouldn’t help me cross the walls of Our Lady of American Sorrows.

  If I went back to New Albion, I could ask Papa for help. But somehow his revolver was more frightening to me than a monastery full of armed Frenchmen.

  The Pope’s man, whoever had come on that jet. Cardinal, Bishop, Chancery Secretary. Some high official of the Church was present in New Albion. I didn’t think he’d be out here at the monastery, either. I would take my feather and go find him on his aeroplane and warn him. Not even the Pope’s emissary would be guarded the way Rodger was right now.

  Someone had smuggled these false priests into Our Lady of American Sorrows. Surely the Pope could have sent soldiers to New Albion openly if he wanted to.

  But even though the Frenchmen had snuck in, the Pope’s man had flown in for all to see, without stealth or guile. Someone of his rank would be a true priest, a man I could trust, with authority to set things right. Heading back to the city to speak to him was the best way I could help Rodger right now. No one else had the power to rescue my best friend.

  I wasn’t happy with leaving Rodger, but I could think of no better plan. And I had to trust someone.

  Then the gates squealed open and a truck rumbled out. Up close, I could see it was a Bedford truck, one of the Port of Ostia vehicles used to bring cargo into New Albion from the ships that called.

  Surely this was a sign that I had made the right decision.

  The truck rolled by slowly, the driver grinding the gears downward, so I grabbed at the stake sides and scrambled over the tailgate into the open bed. There was no one back there, but I shared the cargo space with several long, narrow boxes under a canvas tarp. I glanced at the cab. Two priests—or rather, two men in priest’s collars—sat up front. I’d have bet they had machine pistols with them. Neither looked back, or even glanced in the mirrors.

  I lifted the corner of the tarp and looked. The boxes were crates, soft, splintered pine stenciled with letters and numbers. In the last gleam from the increasingly distant monastery walls, I could read ‘Missile Anti-Aérien.’

  More French I didn’t need a dictionary to understand. This was what the false priests were here for: an assassination that would rock Avignon and bring disgrace upon New Albion. Now I had something concrete to say to the Papal representative, news about the trail his Comète would blaze when next it vaulted into New Albion’s sky. I would trade that threat for Rodger’s life.

  The driver killed his lights and rumbled off the road just before we reached the edge of town. My ride was heading for the stony beaches of the river. I vaulted off the back, feather still gripped tight in my hand, and scuttled to the other side of the road to take cover in a line of tangled wild rose. The smell was clear and simple, slowing the beating of my heart, as I watched the truck lurch to the edge of the riverbed proper.

  It stopped there, the driver shutting off the engine. I watched for a little while, but nothing more happened. Not even so much as a cigarette being lit. Who were they meeting? People from the shanty town? Traitors among the Civil Guard?

  Could it be Papa?

  It wasn’t possible. Not my father. He worried about coffee prices and economic imperialism, not coups against the Church. Or by the Church, against the very government for which he worked.

  Shivering now in the midnight air, I imagined an interrogation. Men in red robes from the Holy Office, gun-toting French priests and fat Civil Guardsmen with egg on their tunics would surround me.

  “Would you call your father a loyal man, Peter?”

  “Did he fulfill his duties to the city government?”

  “What complaints did he voice about the affairs of New Albion? Londres? Avignon?”

  “What about you, Peter? Have you been sneaking around in the—”

  My head snapped up so hard my neck cracked. I was falling asleep on my feet, right here in the bushes. I couldn’t stay still any longer. All I needed was to drop the feather. Or worse, lose it. Mother Mary and the saints only knew how long the Mayan’s spell would last. Rodger’s life depended on me. If he still lived.

  With a heavy sigh, I crossed myself, then trotted toward town. A man who came to New Albion in such a magnificent craft as that Comète would most likely sleep aboard, just like the Nord-Américain tourists bunking in their cruise ships at Ostia. Our little hotels, the Hotel de la Réforme and the Ritz-Albion, were nothing compared to the luxury the Pope’s man would be accustomed to. Even the Archbishop of Teixeira stayed at Our Lady of American Sorrows when he visited.

  At this time of night our city’s visitor must have been asleep. So I headed toward his jet aeroplane to see what I could do.

  The landing field was no more than a long strip of dirt east of town alongside the road to Ostia. It had been bulldozed by the Brasilian army engineers during the Second Great War, back when I was a small child. The Brasilians had flown fat little gooneybird aeroplanes, as well as snarling fighters that I could still recall the sound of. Supposedly there was even an Ottoman squadron based here for a while, but no one I knew could remember ever seeing Turks or Arabs in the city.

  Later the FEFA—Force Expeditionaire Français-Anglais—had liberated New Albion from the Imperialists. For a while a different set of fat little aeroplanes had flown in and out. The fighters had already moved on, following the front south and east toward the Brasilian heartland.

  When the war was over, everyone had gone home, leaving New Albion with five captured Brasilian bulldozers not worth the trouble of hauling across the Atlantic as war booty. Now, fourteen years later, three of them still ran. They were used to maintain the road to Ostia and keep the landing field clear. The other two were parked for parts. Rodger and I had played on them for days on end when we were younger. Last winter, after the Boxing Day floods, I had even had the chance to drive one while working on the emergency road crew.

  Now I approached the landing field, still clutching my feather. The two abandoned bulldozers bulked dark next to the equipment shed where the working bulldozers were stored. The equipment shed was an old coffee warehouse that had been dismantled and moved inland from Ostia during the Brasilian occupation. There was no light other than the naked bulb flickering over the office door—as Rodger had explained to me, no one ever flew to New Albion by night, so there had never been a need for landing lights.

  Even while invisible I didn’t know whether I would cast a noticeable shadow, so I was glad enough for the darkness. My sheltering shadows wouldn’t last much longer, though. The three o’clock bells had rung in the Civil Palace as I passed through town along Water Avenue. Dawn would be coming in another hour or so.

  The Comète was easy to find. The big silver jet gleamed in the waning moonlight. The door was open, a round-cornered black rectangle just behind the pilots’ cabin. A coffee picker’s three-legged ladder leaned against the hull just beneath the opening. There was a slight red glow from the cockpit windows, but otherwise the aeroplane was dark.

  Too bad for me that a Civil Guardsman snored in a jitney parked under the wing. No, make that two, I thought. The second man was awake and smoking, lean
ing on a machine gun.

  I was invisible, right?

  Right.

  Clutching my feather in sweaty fingers, I walked slowly, softly, across the dirt. I didn’t want to kick a pebble or send up any little dust clouds in time with my footfalls. The man with the machine gun might see that, then see me. I kept a nervous eye on the wobbling glow as he took his cigarette from his lips, exhaled a cloud that gleamed silver in the moonlight, then resumed his smoking. I paused and waited to see if the coal would turn toward me, aiming like the barrel of a gun.

  At least it could not be Papa. He was a bureaucrat, not a Civil Guardsman. He would be home with Mama, not shivering on a landing field this late at night. Though I wondered where he kept his gun.

  Then I reached the ladder. I tested it with my hand. The wood shifted against the metal skin of the Comète. The coal of the Guardsman’s cigarette shifted toward me, and I heard the muffled creak of the machine gun swiveling on its mount.

  Nothing here, I thought. A stone. I am but a stone.

  After a few moments, the cigarette began to bob about. The man in the jitney had lost interest. Very slowly I leaned on the ladder, bringing my weight to bear. It creaked, not loudly.

  There was no reaction.

  I eased my foot up onto the lowest rung. The ladder groaned, a noise like a door hinge! I jumped away from ladder, holding my breath against the effort.

  The coal of the cigarette pointed right at the aeroplane again, and the Guardsman was muttering. How would I get into the aeroplane without him seeing me?

  One man with a machine gun could not stand between me and my only hope of rescuing Rodger.

  I made my way back across the field. I had to get the Civil Guard jitney away from the Comète long enough for me to board unnoticed. Once inside, it would be a different game, but I had to get in. Rodger’s life was at stake, and the Frenchmen had taken missiles to the river.