“It depicts the Slaughter of the Innocents.” His mellow Mexican accent echoed in the large stone room. “As originally described in the Gospel According to St. Matthew.”
“This place just gets more and more amazing,” Selena said.
Atticus nodded dreamily. “Indeed.”
Acosta clasped his hands in front of him. “It is a shame we must break through it to reach the chamber.”
Selena and her father had the same reaction. “You can’t be serious?” Atticus said. “Surely the convent authorities would never allow such destruction! I know I won’t be party to it.”
Acosta laughed. “Relax, I am just making a joke. How is it you say – I am pushing your legs?”
“It’s pulling,” Selena said. “And by the way – ha, ha, ha.”
“Sorry, just my little sense of humor,” Acosta waved the moment away. “According to the official I was speaking with moments ago, we can access the chamber through the vestry, which is just around this corner. I promise there will be no need for hammers, chisels or any type of explosives, but we will have to lift part of the floor.”
“Thank heavens for that,” Atticus said, with his traditional full eyebrow raise. “If there’s one thing I hate more than excitement, it’s noise.”
“You can imagine what his parties are like!” Riley Carr said with a smirk.
Hearing her ex’s voice, Selena turned and saw him walking up behind them. The rest of the crew were beside him. Mitch Decker, her boyfriend, Charlie Valentine and Diana Silva. Dressed in summer shirts and straw hats and wearing sunglasses, they looked like they were on vacation.
A final corner and they stepped inside the cool, dark vestry. Acosta led them across the smooth flagstone floor until they reached the entrance to the cellar. Acosta now turned a handle hidden behind a large religious screen for centuries, and walked inside. They followed him down some narrow stone steps and at the bottom, he made a generous sweeping motion with his arm as he indicated their arrival. “We are here! Years after he narrowly escaped with his life during a sacrifice ritual, this is the place where Friar Alfonso Montesino hid from a major attack by local Maya warriors. He was quite an adventurer.”
Selena gazed into the cellar. Amongst piles of rubble and debris from the ancient battle, she saw the grim, hopeless place where Alfonso Montesino had hidden all those centuries ago. It was a real privilege, she knew, to see where the friar and his small entourage had hidden and prayed for their lives during the onslaught.
“It’s hard to imagine a place this peaceful as once being in the middle of a warzone.”
“And not just once, Selena,” Acosta said. “There were several occasions when the settlements in this area, including this very convent, came under attack. It is with good reason that these places were built more like fortresses than churches or cathedrals. It’s fair to say that many of the local forces did not respond well to Spanish evangelization attempts.”
Atticus raised a sardonic eyebrow. “That’s putting it mildly, Pepe.”
“Indeed it is, my friend, and yet over nine million native people were converted to Catholicism in less than a century.”
Riley whistled. “That’s a lot of Bibles. Who got the publishing contract?”
Acosta gave him a disapproving look. “As you know, the Franciscans worked mostly in the northern parts of Mexico, and also partly in the central regions, but the southern regions were generally controlled by the Dominicans.” He paused and looked around the cellar. “Montesino was a good Dominican.”
She followed Acosta and her father further down a temporary ramp and stepped into another world, where the politics of sixteenth-century conquest had wiped out a modest contingent of friars, but also several dozen local warriors. This was a time riven by hatred and the brutal conflict between empire and tribal nation.
In the damp gloom of the cellar, she heard her father speaking quietly. “This is astonishing, Pepe. Truly remarkable. It seems morbid to mention it, but some of these human remains are in very good condition. Their clothes are almost as they must have been on the day of the battle.”
The man from the University of Veracruz nodded sadly and brought his hands up to his hips as he surveyed the remains littering the flagstone flooring. Leathery skin stretched taught over skulls by the dry, stable conditions of the cellar, skeletal hands reaching out from the musty-smelling monks’ robes, as if begging for help. “They will, of course, all be identified and returned to their families for a proper burial.”
“Yes, and quite right too,” Selena said. “Heaven only knows what these people must have gone through in the last few moments of their lives.”
“And yet Alfonso managed to escape with his life?” Decker said.
“Yes, he did,” Acosta said. “He saw an opportunity to flee and he seized it, leaving his personal possessions behind here in this place. He was subjected to a great deal of criticism when he returned to Spain. Some accused him of being too aggressive with the local tribes, and his journey into the Belize jungle was considered by many, perhaps even the King of Spain, to be a serious mishandling of his original brief.”
“And your opinion?” Decker asked.
Acosta grinned at him. “I think he was a very brave man, perhaps even a little foolhardy, to do what he did. After all, if it weren’t for his exploration of the deeper jungles, we would never know about all of the treasures and artifacts and rituals he described.”
“And talking of which,” Atticus said, slapping his hands together and greedily rubbing them back and forth with barely contained jubilation. “I think it’s time we went down inside the new part of the
