Bagley, Desmond - The Vivero Letter Read online

  I grinned. 'I surprise myself sometimes.' And so I did! Whatever had happened to the grey little man?

  Three

  It was an astonishing, incredible and quite preposterous story, and, if I did not have a queer and inexplicable photograph up in the darkroom, I would have rejected it out of hand. And yet Fallon was no fool and he believed it—and so did Hal-stead, although I wouldn't have bet on the adequacy of his mental processes.

  I ruled the proceedings firmly while the story was being told. Occasionally there were outbursts of temper, mostly from Halstead but with a couple of bitter attacks from Fallon, and I had to crack down hard. It was quite apparent that, while none of them liked what I was doing, they had no alternative but to comply. My possession of the tray was a trump card in this curious and involved game, and neither Fallon nor Halstead was prepared to let the other get away with it.

  Fallon seemed to be the more sensible and objective of the two men so I let him open the account, asking him to begin, He pulled his ear gently, and said, 'It's hard to know where to start.'

  I said, 'Begin at the beginning. Where did you come into it?'

  He gave his ear a final tug, then folded one thin hand on top of the other. 'I'm an archeologist, working in Mexico mostly. Do you know anything about the Mayas?'

  I shook my head.

  'That's a great help,' he said acidly. 'But I don't suppose it matters at this stage because the preliminaries had nothing to do with the Mayas at all—superficially. I came across several references in my work to the de Vivero family of Mexico, The de Viveros were an old Spanish family—Jaime de Vivero, the founder, staked his claim in Mexico just after the time of Cortes; he grabbed a lot of land, and his descendants made it pay very well. They became big landowners, ranchers, owners of mines and, towards the end, industrialists. They were one of the big Mexican families that really ruled the roost. They weren't what you'd call a very public-spirited crowd and most of their money came from squeezing the peasants. They supported Maximilian in that damn-fool effort of the Hapsburgs to establish a kingdom in Mexico in the eighteen-sixties.

  'That was their first mistake because Maximilian couldn't stand the pace and he went down. Still, that wasn't enough to break the de Viveros, but Mexico was in upheaval; dictator followed dictator, revolution followed revolution, and every time the de Viveros backed the wrong horse. It seems they lost their powers of judgement. Over a period of a hundred years the de Vivero family was smashed; if there are any of them still around they're lying mighty low because I haven't come across any of them.' He cocked an eye at Halstead. 'Have you come across a live de Vivero?' 'No,' said Halstead shortly.

  Fallon nodded in satisfaction. 'Now, this was a very wealthy family in its time, even for Mexico, and a wealthy Mexican family was really something. They had a lot of possessions which were dispersed during the break-up, and one of these items was a golden tray something like yours, Wheale.' He picked up his briefcase and opened it. 'Let me read you something about it.'

  He pulled out a sheaf of papers. 'The tray was something of a family heirloom and the de Viveros looked after it; they didn't use it except at formal banquets and most of the time it was locked away. Here's a bit of gossip from the eighteenth century; a Frenchman called Murville visited Mexico and wrote a book about it. He stayed on one of the de Vivero estates when they threw a party for the governor of the province—this is the relevant bit.'

  He cleared his throat. ' "Never have I seen such a splendid table even in our French Court. The grandees of Mexico live like princes and eat off gold plate of which there was a profusion here. As a centrepiece to the table there was a magnificent array of the fruits of the country on golden trays, the most magnificent of which was curiously wrought in a pattern of vine leaves of exquisite design. I was informed by one of the sons of the family that this tray had a legend—that it was reputed to have been made by an ancestor of the de Viveros. This is unlikely since it is well known that the de Viveros have a noble lineage extending far back into the history of Old Spain and could not possibly have indulged in work of this nature, no matter how artful. I was told also that the tray is supposed to hold a secret, the discovery of which will make the recipient wealthy beyond measure. My informant smiled as he communicated this to me and added that as the de Viveros were already rich beyond computation the discovery of such a secret could not possibly make them effectively wealthier."'

  Fallon dropped the papers back into the briefcase. That didn't mean much to me at the time, but I'm always interested in any secrets concerning Mexico so I copied it out as a matter of routine and filed it away. Incidentally, that bit about the noble lineage in Old Spain is phoney; the de Viveros were social climbers, men on the make—but we'll come to that later.

  'Pretty soon after that I seemed to run into the de Viveros no matter which way I turned. You know how it is—you come across a strange word in a book, one which you've never seen before, and then you come across it again twice in the same week. It was like that with the de Viveros and their tray. Coming across references to the de Viveros is no trick in Mexico—they were a powerful family—but, in the next year I came across no less than seven references to the de Vivero tray, three of which mentioned this supposed secret. It appeared that the tray was important to the de Viveros. I just filed the stuff away; it was a minor problem of marginal interest and not really in my field.'

  'Which is?' I asked.

  'The pre-Columbian civilizations of Central America,' he answered. 'A sixteenth-century Spanish tray didn't mean much to me at the time. I was busy working on a dig in south Campeche. Halstead was with me then, among others. When the dig was finished for the season and we'd got back to civilization he picked a quarrel with me and left. With him went my de Vivero file.'

  Halstead's voice was like a lash. That's a lie!'

  Fallon shrugged. That's the way it was.'

  So far we hadn't reached any point at which the tray was important, but here was the first mention of the deep-rooted quarrel between these two men, and that might be of consequence so I decided to probe. 'What was the quarrel about?'

  He stole my work,' said Halstead flatly.

  The hell I did!' Fallon turned to me. This is one of the things that crop up in academic circles, I'm sorry to say. It happens like this; young men just out of college work in the field with older and more experienced workers-- I did the same myself with Murray many years ago. Papers get written and sometimes the younger fellow reckons he's not given due credit. It happens all the time.'

  'Was it true in this case?'

  Halstead was about to speak up but his wife put her hand on his knee and motioned him to silence. Fallon said, 'Most certainly not. Oh, I admit I wrote a paper on some aspects of the Quetzaecoatl legend which Halstead said I stole from him, but it wasn't like that at all.' He shook his head wearily. 'You've got to get the picture. You're on a dig and you work hard all day and at night you tend to relax and, maybe, drink a bit. Now, if there's half a dozen of you then you might have a bull session—what you English call "talking shop". Ideas fly around thick and fast and nobody is ever certain who said what or when; these ideas tend to be regarded as common property. Now, it may be that the origin of the paper I wrote happened in such a way, and it may be that it was Halstead's suggestion, but I can't prove it and, by God, neither can he.'

  Halstead said, 'You know damn well that I suggested the central idea of that paper.'

  Fallon spread his hands and appealed to me. 'You see how it is. It might have gone for nothing if this young fool hadn't written to the journals and publicly accused me of theft. I could have sued the pants off him—but I didn't. I wrote to him privately and suggested that he refrain from entering into public controversy because I certainly wasn't going to enter into an argument of that nature in the professional prints. But he continued and finally the editors wouldn't print his letters any more.'

  Halstead's voice was malevolent. 'You mean you bought the goddamn editors, don't you?'<
br />
  Think what you like,' said Fallon in disgust. 'At any rate, I found my de Vivero file had vanished when Halstead left. It didn't mean much at the time, and when it did start to mean something it wasn't much trouble to go back to the original sources. But when I started to bump into the Halsteads around every corner I put two and two together.'

  'But you don't know he took your file,' I said. 'You couldn't prove it in a law court.'

  'I don't suppose I could,' agreed Fallon, 'Then the less said about it the better.' Halstead looked pleased at that, so I added, 'You both seem free and easy in throwing accusations about. This isn't my idea of professional dignity.'

  You. haven't heard the whole story yet, Mr. Wheale,' said Mrs. Halstead.

  'Well, let's get on with it,' I said. 'Go ahead, Professor Fallon—or do you have anything to say, Dr. Halstead?'

  Halstead gloomed at me. 'Not yet.' He said it with an air of foreboding and I knew there were some more fireworks ahead.

  'Nothing much happened after that for quite a while,' said Fallon. Then when I was in New York, I received a letter from Mark Gerryson suggesting I see him. Gerryson is a dealer whom I have used from time to time, and he said he had some Mayan chocolate jugs—not the ordinary pottery jugs, but made of gold. They must have come from a noble house. He also said he had part of a feather cloak and a few other things.'

  Halstead snorted and muttered audibly, 'A goddamn feather cloak!'

  'I know it was a fake,' said Fallon. 'And I didn't buy it. But the chocolate jugs were genuine. Gerryson knew I'd be interested—the ordinary Mayan specialist doesn't interest Gerryson because he hasn't the money that Gerryson asks; he usually sells to museums and rich collectors.' Well, I run a museum myself—among other things—and I've had some good stuff from Gerryson in the past.

  'We dickered for a bit and I told him what I thought of his feather cloak; he laughed about that and said he was pulling my leg. The chocolate jugs were genuine enough and [ bought those. Then he said he wanted my opinion on something that had just come in—it was a manuscript account by a Spaniard who had lived among the Mayas in the early sixteenth century and he wanted to know if it was genuine.'

  'He was consulting you as an expert in the field?' I said. I saw Katherine Halstead lean forward intently.

  Fallon nodded. That's right. The name of the Spaniard was de Vivero, and the manuscript was a letter to his sons.' He Ml Silent.

  Halstead said, 'Don't stop now, Fallon—just when it's getting interesting.'

  Fallon looked at me. 'Do you know anything about the conquest of Mexico?'

  'Not much.' I said. 'I learned a bit about it at school—' Cortes and all that—but I've forgotten the details, if I ever knew them.'

  'Just like most people. Have you got a map of Mexico?'

  I walked across the room and picked an atlas from the shelf. I drew up the coffee table and laid down the atlas turned to the correct page. Fallon hovered over it, and said, 'I'll have to give you some background detail or else the letter won't make sense.' He brought down his finger on to the map of Mexico close to the coast near Tampico. 'In the first couple of decades of the fifteen-hundreds the Spaniards had their eyes on what we now know as Mexico. There were rumours about the place—stories of unimaginable wealth— and they were noising themselves to go in and get it.'

  His finger swept in an arc around the Gulf of Mexico. 'Hernandez de Cordoba explored the coast in 1517 and Juan de Grijalva followed in 1518. In 1519 Hernan Cortes took the plunge and mounted an expedition into the interior and we know what happened. He came up against the Aztecs and by a masterly mixture of force, statesmanship, superstition and pure confidence trickery he licked them—one of the most amazing feats any man has ever done.

  'But having done it he found there were other worlds to conquer. To the south, covering what is now Yucatan, Guatemala and Honduras was another Amerind empire—that of the Mayas. He hadn't got as much gold from the Aztecs as he expected, but the Mayas were dripping with it if the reports that came up from the south were true. So in 1525 he marched against the Mayas. He left Tenochtitlan—now Mexico City— and hit the coast here, at Coatzacualco, and then struck along the spine of the isthmus to Lake Peten and thus to Coban. He didn't get much for his pains because the main strength of the Mayas wasn't on the Anahuac plateau at all but in the Yucatan Peninsula.'

  I leaned over his shoulder and followed his exposition alertly. Fallon said, 'Cortes gave up personal direction at that point—he was pulled back to Spain—and the next expedition was led by Francisco de Montejo, who had already explored the coast of Yucatan from the sea. He had quite a respectable force but he found the Mayas a different proposition from the Aztecs. They fought back, and fought back hard, and Montejo was no Cortes—the Spaniards were trounced in the first few battles.

  'With Montejo was Manuel de Vivero. I don't suppose Vivero was much more than a common foot soldier, but something funny happened to him. He was captured by the Mayas and they didn't kill him; they kept him alive as a sort of slave and as a mascot. Now, Montejo never did pacify Yucatan—he never got on top of the Mayas. Come to that, nobody ever did; they were weakened and absorbed to some extent, but they were never defeated in battle. In 1549, twenty-two years after he started out, Montejo was in control of barely half of the Yucatan Peninsula—and all this time Vivero was a captive in the interior.

  This was a rather curious time in the history of the Mayas and something happened which puzzled archeologists for a long time. They found that the Spaniards and the Mayas were living and working together side by side, each in his own culture; they found a Mayan temple and a Spanish church built next to each other and, what is more, contemporaneous —built at the same time. This was puzzling until the sequence of events had been sorted out as I've just described.

  'In any event, there the Mayas and the Spaniards were, living cheek by jowl. They fought each other, but not continuously. The Spaniards controlled eastern Yucatan where the great Mayan cities of Chichen Itza and Uxmal are, but western Yucatan, the modern province of Quintana Roo, was a closed book to them. It's still pretty much of a closed book even now. However, there must have been quite a bit of trade going on between the two halves and Vivero, captive though he was, managed to write a letter to his sons and smuggle it out. That's the Vivero letter.'

  He dug into his briefcase again. 'I have a transcription of it here if you want to read it.'

  I flipped open the file he gave me—there was quite a lot of it. I said, 'Do you want me to read this now?'

  'It would be better if you did,' he said. 'We'd be able to get on with the rest of our business a little faster. You can't understand anything until you read that letter.'

  'All right,' I said. 'But I'll take it into my study. Can I trust you two not to kill each other in my absence?'

  Katherine Halstead said coolly, 'There will be no trouble.'

  I grinned at her cheerfully. 'Ill have Mrs. Edgecombe bring you tea; that ought to keep the temperature down—no one Ells over the teacups, it would be downright uncivilized.'

  II

  To my sons, Jaime and Juan, greetings from Manuel de Vivero y Castuera, your father.

  For many years, my sons, I have been seeking ways by which I could speak to you to assure you of my safety in this heathen land. Many times have I sought escape and as many times I have been defeated and I know now that escape from my captivity cannot be, for I am watched continually. But by secret stratagems and the friendship of two men of the Mayas I am able to send you this missive in the hope that your hearts will be lightened and you will not grieve for me as for a dead man. But you must know, my sons, that I will never come out of this land of the Mayas nor out of this city called Uaxuanoc; like the Children of Israel I shall be captive for as long as it pleases the Lord, our God, to keep me alive.

  In this letter I shall relate how I came to be here, how God preserved my life when so many of my comrades were slain, and tell of my life among those people,, the Mayas. Twe
lve years have I been here and have seen many marvels, for this is the Great City of the Mayas, the prize we have all sought in the Americas. Uaxuanoc is to Tenochtitlan which Hernan Cortes conquered as Madrid is to the meanest village in Huelva, the province of our family. I was with Cortes in the taking of Tenochtitlan and saw the puissant Montezuma and his downfall, but that mighty king was as a mere peasant, a man poor in wealth, when put against even the ordinary nobility of Uaxuanoc.

  You must know that in the Year of Christ One Thousand, Five Hundred and Twenty Seven I marched with Francisco de Montejo into the Yucatan against the Mayas. My position in the company was high and I led a band of our Spanish soldiers. I had a voice with Cortes when I was with that subtle soldier and I was high in the councils of Francisco de Montejo, and so I know the inner reasons for the many stratagems of the campaign. Since I have lived with the Mayas I have come to know them, to speak their words and to think their thoughts, and so I know also why those stratagems came to naught.

  Francisco de Montejo was—and, I hope, still is—my friend But friendship cannot blind me to his shortcomings as a soldier and as a statesman. Brave he undoubtedly is, but his is the bravery of the wild boar or of the bull of the Basque country which charges straight without deceit or evasion and so is easily defeated. Bravery is not enough for a soldier, my sons: he must be wily and dishonest, telling lies when appearing to speak truth, even to his men when he finds this necessary; he must retreat to gain an advantage, ignoring the ignorant pleadings of braver but lesser soldiers; he must lay traps to ensnare the enemy and he must use the strength of the enemy against himself as Cortes did when he allied himself with the Tlascalans against the men of Mexico.