The Mayan Secrets

Chapter 27

“I’ll help dig graves.” A second man stepped forward and joined the first on the outside of the circle. After that, a couple of others just waved hands and joined the burial crew.

Pepe the mechanic stepped into the circle. “Remember, we have no reason to make these people suffer. Someone shoot them in the head with a hunting rifle and make it fast.”

Sam spoke loudly. “We would like to know why you would want to harm us at all.” He whispered to Remi, “Help me with the language.”

Remi called out, “We came to your town twice. Both times, we told whoever would listen what we were doing here. Yesterday we told Father Gomez what we were going to do today. We came with the most peaceful of intentions.”

Señor Alvarez, the restaurant owner, said, “I’m sorry that you have to die. Nobody here hates you. But you’ve found this place. It’s a sacred place to us. We’re not rich people, but we have a rich past. Our town was founded as part of this complex nearly two thousand years ago. This was a refuge where the people of the city twenty miles to the east came after they were defeated in war. This mesa is one of the highest places in Alta Verapaz. The king and a few loyal survivors came here, turned and fought. Then, hundreds of years later, a period of war came again. Then again. Each time a king of the city was defeated, he and his faction fell back to this place and held out. Up here there are the remains of five great kings. When the Spanish soldiers came the first time, the king prepared the place one last time. But they defeated the Spanish again and again and never needed to come here. Instead, they made peace with the priests. The watchtower on the hill was torn down and made into a church. Nobody from this town has ever betrayed its secrets.”

Sam said, “This place can’t be a secret forever. It’s marked on a map in a Mayan codex we found on a volcano in Mexico. It’s shown up on satellite photographs and been noticed by university professors.”

“We don’t have to let you dig up our ancestors and steal their belongings,” said Señora Velasquez. “You’re like Columbus and the Spanish. You think knowing about them makes them yours.”

Remi said, “You don’t have to let us study your special place. If you didn’t want us to climb up here, you could have told us while we were with Father Gomez. We thought we were finding a place nobody knew about.”

There was a roar of derisive laughter as the townspeople looked at one another with grim amusement. One of the men was angry. “You see graves on a satellite photo and think it’s all right to dig them up? It never seems to occur to you people that we know anything about the places where we’ve always lived. It was our ancestors who built these tombs, who made the mesa into a fortress. We’ve all been coming here since we were small children. Do you think we can’t see walls and burial mounds? You think that if we don’t dig up our ancestors and sell their treasures, we must be ignorant.” He turned away from Sam and Remi and took a rifle from one of the men near him. He cycled the bolt to load a round.

“Stop!” The voice was powerful but strained. As everyone turned to look, Father Gomez’s head rose above the rim of the plateau by the trailhead, and he took the last step up onto the plateau. He was panting and wheezing from the long, steep climb. He held up his arms. “Stop! Don’t do this. Arturo, put down that rifle. What you’re about to do is just murder. It has no higher meaning.”

The angry man looked at his feet, then opened the bolt of the rifle and handed it back to its owner.

Father Gomez seemed to be relieved, but his expression showed he knew this was not over.

Pepe, the mechanic, spoke. “You’re not from this town, Father. You’re not one of us. You don’t know.”

A man who seemed to be a relative of Señora Velasquez said, “Since the days of the kings, we’ve had nothing except this place. The walls are where brave men and women fought to their deaths, and great leaders lie inside each of these mounds. Nobody has been allowed to desecrate this place or take away what’s buried here. The second king who led his people up here respected the remains of the first, and the one after that respected him.”

He paused and pointed at the mound Sam and Remi had reopened. “Only once before did a stranger make it up to this spot. He’s lying in there now, although it’s been more than a hundred years and nobody now alive has seen him before today. Everyone knows that he was killed by townspeople with hoes and hatchets. The secret was safe again.”

“No! No! No!” said Father Gomez. “I may not have been born in Santa Maria, but I’ve lived here longer than many who were and I’m responsible for the state of your souls. Do you think the men who committed that murder a hundred years ago aren’t suffering for it in hell?”

A few people looked down at the ground and others crossed themselves. A couple spat.

Pepe said, “We’ve lived for centuries at the mercy of men in Madrid or Guatemala City, signing pieces of paper to make other rulers over us and control what we have — men who never even saw us. This is more of the same. All we’re doing is trying to protect the bodies of our ancestors from the men far away who own everything.”

Father Gomez took a breath to speak, but Sam said, “Hold it, Father.” He turned to the people in the circle. “My wife and I had no plans to take anything away from here. The people we work with are university professors who are only interested in gaining more knowledge about the Mayan people. We’re here for that reason alone. There are other people who already have maps with this spot marked. One of them is Sarah Allersby, who owns the Estancia Guerrero. Even if you kill us, she and people she hires will come to find this place. She’ll dig up whatever there is and leave things looking like this.” He turned and nodded toward the open trench.

People were disturbed, in doubt, murmuring among themselves, while others seemed to be angrier. Small arguments began.

A new voice came across the plateau. “Señor Fargo is right. Listen to him.”

People turned their heads to see Dr. Huerta come around the mound near the trailhead.

“What are you doing here?” asked Señor Lopez, the storekeeper.

Dr. Huerta shrugged. “I noticed people were gone, so I asked some of your children. And, over the years, I’ve found that whenever there were a lot of people out, carrying sharp objects and firearms, there has been plenty of work for a doctor.”

“What are these people — friends of yours?” asked Señor Lopez.

“This is only the second time I’ve seen them,” Dr. Huerta said. “But I find I like them more and more. I’ll show you why.”

He stepped up to Sam and Remi, lifted Sam’s shirt, and pulled his semiautomatic pistol from its hiding place and held it up. There was a murmur from the crowd. He released the magazine, looked at it, pushed it back, then stuck the pistol back under Sam’s shirt. He lifted Remi’s shirt slightly to reveal her gun. “After all these years as a doctor, I’m good at seeing things on people that aren’t part of their bodies.” He stared at the circle of townspeople. “Some of you are eager to kill them. If they’d wanted to, they could have killed plenty of you. But they didn’t want to. They were here on a friendly mission and didn’t let your threats change that.”

He put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and the other on Remi’s and began to walk them toward the trail to town.

“Stop.” They stopped and slowly turned. It was Señor Lopez again. “Maybe you’re right and these people should be freed. But we need time to decide what to do.”

The townspeople responded with a roar composed equally of approval and relief that they didn’t have to make such a momentous decision right then. The people swarmed around Dr. Huerta and the Fargos and swept them along the trail, down from the stronghold, and into the town.