Smoking Mirror

By Richard Anderson

In this epic historical adventure, ten years after the Conquest Orlando de Bolonia reaches the steamy coast of Vera Cruz, New Spain, as a relatively innocent Franciscan friar. He has come to the Americas to seek the meaning of a troubling vision he once had of a sacrifice in front of a crimson pyramid. Orlando does gain converts to the Faith, but because of his sensual nature and restless curiosity, his own transformation is even more radical: He takes an Indian lover, Itzel; and he samples sinicuichi, the hallucinogenic “sun opener” tea.

The Inquisition imprisons Orlando for supporting the Indians in their struggles against powerful Spanish landholders at the time of the Mixtón Rebellion. After his release Orlando quits the Franciscan Order to grow chilis on a flower-covered mountain overlooking Lake Chapala. Peace still eludes him, though, because his Indian friends require a sacrifice to save their world. The secret to helping them lies with Black Tezcatlipoca, the god of the Smoking Mirror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Anderson
• Release date: Apr 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311825858

Richard Anderson

Richard Anderson is a second generation beef cattle farmer from northern New South Wales. Married with two children. He has a degree in Communications majoring in journalism, from Charles Sturt University, Bathurst. He is also very involved with his community and a member of the local cricket team and committed to local charity fund raising events.

Book preview

I arrived in the colony of New Spain in 1530, nine years after the Conquest. During the fifty years since then, I witnessed devastating changes all around me, but New Spain changed me, too. We Franciscans believed that after all the pagans were converted and baptized, Christ would return and the New Millennium would begin. Our mission was to end the curses of human sacrifice, illicit sex, and savage wars.

Now I have willingly participated in all three of those abominations; and instead of welcoming the apocalypse with my mendicant brothers, soon I will forestall it with my Indian friends. Black Tezcatlipoca embodies contradiction.

The Inquisitors of the Holy Office, in their sympathy for the nefarious elite, charged me with spreading unchristian ideas. In fact, my crime was to defend the Indians against Spanish landholders. I argued my case well enough to avoid the auto de fe, and I am grateful for my sentence, three years and three months of enforced silence. I have put the time to use by composing the following chapters that recount the story of my odd life.

This should have been a brief memoir, but as my growing stack of barkpaper sheets attests, it has proven otherwise. Some parts of my story could best be told by use of Aztec glyphs, which take up more space on the sheet than do written words. Maybe I just had too much time for the project as I waited in my drear cell. Or perhaps, like many old men, I have rambled on in unnecessary detail.

Until recently I was too busy to think much about my early life; and on the rare occasions when my mind wandered to the past, I could see it only in hazy outline, the way Mount Jesús García on the other side of the lake becomes indistinct when the farmers burn their fields every autumn. But just as El Abajeño, the western winter wind, blows away the smoke to leave the towering form of the mountain in sharp relief, at the end of my life the past is returning to me.

But my long-windedness has yet another cause: My fondness for contradiction has led me to include many of the intense contrasts I have seen—sanguinary wars and blood sacrifice, self-denial and the most sensual of self-indulgence, the Sacred Host and the sacrament of the hallucinating sun opener plant. Recollection grinds smooth the jagged edges of historical events, coercing the obstreperous past into the plausible, albeit false, narrative of memory. My goal has been to avoid such falsehood and make sense of why I have defended the Indians. That objective can only be reached by a path that leads through an overgrown thicket of detail. More than once I have walked barefoot the breadth of New Spain, so a stroll through my knotty past should present no challenge.

A final complication is this: Some power—the Christian God or Black Tezcatlipoca—has given me the gift of prophecy. I have had vivid dreams and intense visions that took me to a future in which I saw, smelled, and felt things with complete veracity. Like most gifts, this one brings its burdens: Traveling to other times and realities sometimes lessens the sureness of my grip on the here and now, and it greatly complicates the telling of my story.

What is the here and now? The current year is 1580, and I am sitting in my little hermitage, an aerie perched atop a high, pyramidal hill. Outside are vermillion-blossoming tabachin trees, and down below is the Indian village of Chapallan, New Spain. Bordering the town is our beautiful lake, the largest in all the land. Beyond the lake I see the brave profile of Mount Jesús García.

The view from my hermitage affords an example of the confusion that accompanies the gift of prophecy: Down in the town I see Chapallan’s fine, twin-towered church, a building whose cornerstone I was proud to lay when I was a younger man. But I know with clairvoyant certainty that future visitors will find a crypt to the left of the church’s alter. An antique plaque on the vault will proclaim that it holds the remains of a Franciscan friar named Orlando de Bolonia—that is, the remains of me. The plaque also mentions my having the gift of prophecy, but it is mute regarding my final secret—the identity of the skeleton inside the vault.

So here is the life of Fray Orlando de Bolonia. I know the current fashion is to make such essays self-revelatory. While awaiting the verdict of my trial, I had a book by Montaigne to keep me company. But instead of saying, I did this, I did that, I will tell my humble story from the viewpoint of another person, a story about a boy who starts out in a small but picturesque resort town in the northern Italian States, and who, after many adventures and perhaps a few good deeds, finishes his life far away in another pretty little village that someday will be a resort town, too.

The fictional character of Fray Orlando de Bolonia is based very loosely on the life of a real person, Fray Miguel de Bolonia. As far as is known (cf. José de Jesús Martín Flores’ Fray Miguel de Bolonia: El Guardián de los Indios, 2006), Fray Miguel lived an exemplary life. The good deeds described in the following pages should be credited to Fray Miguel; any mischief the fictional Fray Orlando gets into, blamed on the author of the present book. The historicity of this work of fiction is discussed in the "Author’s Note" at its conclusion.

Part 1 - Eavesdropping at the Hot Springs

Chapter 1

Orlando was awakened by the smell of fresh focaccia wafting up from the kitchen beneath his bedroom. Every morning was the same during the last weeks of summer, when his parents’ inn in Los Baños de Porretta filled with guests from the city of Bologna and elsewhere. Every morning the young sensualist lay on his cot, savored the bread’s pungent aroma, and gazed out his gable window to the Apennine Mountains beyond Porretta. They looked velvet green on their lower slopes, but the rockiness of the higher elevations made Orland’s toes curl downward as he remembered how deliciously jagged the terrain had been the time he climbed there, accidentally lost one of his boots, and returned home with his sole cut and bloodied. His foot still tingled from the unforgiving sharpness of the stones.

Returning to the present, Orlando visualized the mountainous brick oven below him, its scented air escaping through the chinks and rising between the loose floorboards, and finally (he inhaled deeply) entering his lungs to arouse and nourish him. How is it, he wondered, that some people—most people—go through their days without relishing such sensations? Or, his wandering thoughts continued, how can people come to a glorious place like Porretta; and rather than delighting in its scenery and enjoying the fresh streams that course down the mountain, they spend their days stewing in the spa’s thermal pool, waiting for pustules to form on their skin, then burst and drain the poisons from their bodies?

Orlando did not doubt the inn’s visitors’ intelligence because he often overheard their lively conversations while he cared for his parents’ spa. His job required constant oversight, little actual work, and almost no concentration. Thus the young man was free to listen to all sorts of discussions among the guests, whether about politics or business. Of greater interest was listening to the women, some of whom expressed pride in their city, which gave them more freedom than in any other of the Italian states.

The guests that fascinated Orlando most were those from the world beyond Bologna. Instead of speaking in the local tongue of Emilia–Romagna, some of them used other dialects—odd-sounding to his ear, but with effort he could understand them. Languages such as Langue d’oc, Occitan, and Catalan, spoken by traders on journeys from distant points, were more opaque. Orlando was supremely curious about what they said, and deciphering their language was a challenge that diverted him on many an afternoon. He was certain the foreigners guarded countless secrets, mysteries he could fathom if only he understood their languages. By the time Orlando was eighteen—that is, by the morning he was lying on his cot daydreaming about fresh focaccia and the mountain view—he had accumulated enough vocabulary to understand much of what was being said by foreign visitors to the spa.

Orlando was delighted by the doors the new languages opened for him. Still a listener—still, to be honest, an innocent eavesdropper—he looked forward to his work at the spa. The more visitors there were, whether Bolognese or, better, foreign, the happier he was. Perhaps because his three brothers were older and had taken jobs in Bologna, or because his parents were so busy with the inn that they rarely had meaningful conversations with him, or finally because his work, though done in a setting full of people, was in fact quite solitary—for whatever reason, Orlando felt isolated, always hungry to know what other people were thinking or feeling, constantly wondering how the world looked through their eyes.

What could explain that curiosity? Perhaps it came from events in his formative years. Before his brothers left home, they often teased him by telling secrets among themselves, excluding him from their company. One evening he managed to overhear his tormenters by pressing his ear to his bedroom’s thin wall. Orlando never forgot the thrill of hearing their voices, even though the substance of their secrets was trivial. The forbidden nature of the secrets made them all the more exciting. The charged event echoed down the rest of his life.

There was yet another reason Orlando liked to work at his parents’ spa: Women. Like most young men in Porretta, his curiosity about local girls far exceeded his experience. It was different, though, with the women who visited the spa, whether they were wives or daughters of male guests or groups that came on women-only outings. Their big-city upbringing, plus the holiday atmosphere of the spa, led to occasional furtive trysts with the handsome spa boy, with his sympathetic ear, fair face, and wiry build. Given the circumstances, Orlando’s intimate encounters with women were inevitably fleeting, as superficial as the scents they wore. (Orlando learned to distinguish rosewater, Hungary water, and aqua admirabilis.) Although he knew their bodies, the inner lives of women constituted one more world that Orlando was unquenchably curious about. He thought maybe he should feel guilty for his dalliances, but a moral reaction was overshadowed by Orlando’s innate inquisitiveness. Perhaps, he told himself, base animal functions, such as the instinct for reproduction, follow a different moral compass than more everyday affairs. For their part, the women saw the liaisons as a natural part of the spa’s services that they or their husbands paid for.

Chapter 2

Do you smell the bread, Orlando? It’s time to get up. The customary call from Orlando’s mother, Apolina, came up from the kitchen accompanying the scent of focaccia. Don Pellegrino’s coming today, so you’ve got lots to do, she added.

As he rolled off his low cot and pulled on his loose-fitting breeches, Orlando thought about his mother having said don Pellegrino, not Father Pellegrino. After all, the man was the officiating priest at the church in Campugnano, whose parish included tiny Porretta. Apolina scorned the man as an embodiment of the depths to which the Holy Catholic Church had sunk in recent times. She thought it unconscionable that he indulged his appetites to the fullest, being a big eater, a frequent visitor to the spa and, worst of all, sometimes bringing along his mistress and occasionally even his two troublesome boys. Never mind that such behavior had become common among the clergy. Why, she huffed, back when I was a girl, such scandalous conduct…, her rant would begin.

Orlando listened to his mother’s tirades; but to him don Pellegrino was just a jolly man who, after a brief dip in the spa’s thermal waters, spent the rest of his time eating sweets, sipping sparkling wine from a delicate glass flute, and chatting with his female companion and the other guests. From what Orlando overheard (and he always listened with care), don Pellegrino believed that people like him should be credited with the rebirth of culture and art, which had made the Italian states the envy of all Europe.

When don Pellegrino arrived that afternoon, he greeted the other inn guests and stepped into the pool. He submerged himself in the steaming water uttering a series of sotto voce curses while the water slowly rose to his chin and then quickly receded as he removed his well-fed body from the water. He found lounges for himself and his companion, uncharacteristically choosing ones that were somewhat removed from the other guests. Then he called Orlando to his side.

Well, Orlando, as always you prepared everything perfectly today. Granted, the water could have been a bit less blistering, but otherwise everything is faultless, is it not, my sweet?

The woman smiled enigmatically at Orlando.

Orlando felt his cheeks turn red, stammered a Thank you, and began to withdraw when don Pellegrino stopped him.

Oh, don’t leave us so quickly. I’ve noticed before how conscientiously you carry out your responsibilities, the priest continued. You’re always close enough at hand to meet your guests’ needs—and, I dare say, to overhear their comments without being drawn into conversation.

Orlando’s blush deepened, but he could only stand in embarrassed silence.

So what do you think of this place? How about that fellow there in the pool, the one whose body is redder than your face. If he were a crab, the chef would’ve plucked him from the boil long ago. But there he sits with his pained expression, just waiting for the blisters to rise on his poor skin. A student of the German Method, no doubt.

Well, father, from what I’ve heard him say, he’s convinced the treatment will do him good.

But it’s mortification of the flesh. We churchmen gave that up long ago—except for those mendicant friars, and I don’t understand them any more than I understand Herr Crab over there.

Well, his explanation is…

"Oh, so you’re one of those people who tries to see other peoples’ points of view, no matter how ridiculous they are. There’s something to be said for that, I suppose; but it presents problems in the realm of faith.

But tell me this, young man: Have you given any thought to what you’ll do with your life? I know your brothers have gone off to Bologna. What about you?

Sometimes, father, I do daydream about what lies beyond Porretta. But I’ve got to stay here to keep the spa going when Mother and Father grow old.

Being a responsible son is commendable, Orlando, but let me tell you a secret: Before your brothers left for Bologna, they asked my view on their decision. Giacomo and Paganino were eager for city life; but young Juan Bautista was different. He told me confidentially he’d rather stay here in Porretta, raise a family, and some day take over the inn and the spa. So if you left, instead of letting down your parents, you’d be doing a favor for Juan Bautista.

But if I quit Porretta, how would I survive? I have neither a trade nor money. I’ve learned bits of this and that language from our guests, but…

So you have a talent for languages? All the better. You’re a bright lad. Tell me this: What would you think of becoming a priest?

Once more Orlando could only stand in shocked silence. His education in religious dogma had barely sufficed for baptism. Because of his long hours at the inn, he seldom went to church; and like most working people, he only took communion on Easter Sunday. As for the church service itself, sometimes he found sermons on theological points thought provoking. Discourses on the glories of heaven and the horrors of hell sparked his imagination because of their vivid imagery, and he enjoyed the theater of the mass.

As the idea of becoming a priest was registering in Orlando’s mind, don Pellegrino turned to his companion and told her the idea that he obviously found quite brilliant. Her only reaction was to smile and flash another tentative glance at Orlando.

Addressing Orlando again, don Pellegrino said, "I know entering the seminary requires resources, but I have a solution for that. With all the commotion that Augustinian is causing up in Germany—what’s his name, Luder?, Muther?, Luther?—the Papal States have allotted each parish a stipend for the support of a promising young member of the flock to enter the seminary.

In effect, the money would come from my own pocket since I have to pay a special tariff to the Church to keep this lovely lady by my side. Turning to the young woman, he added, Ah, but you’re well worth the money, my dear. Orlando wondered how the woman felt about the priest’s remark, but her smile remained inscrutable.

Part 2 – A Vision of Sacrifice

Chapter 3

Orlando decided he would enter the seminary because such a calling would fit his interests and talents: He would have limitless opportunities to learn about the lives of others and maybe even do some good in the world.

The seminary town of Pistoya was not as large as bustling Bologna, but it was more exciting than Orlando’s tiny hometown of Porretta. Orlando’s seminary classes emphasized canon law and theology. As with most students, he learned as much sitting in rowdy inns with other students as he did from tedious teachers in fusty classrooms.

After Orlando was ordained, he was assigned to a church in Pistoya. During his ten years there, Father Orlando fell into a comfortable routine of priestly duties, wanting for little and indulging his appetites. Nevertheless, he did not feel satisfied. Being a priest brought him into constant contact with the people of Pistoya, but his collar was an insuperable barrier between him and others. If Father Orlando occasionally broke his vow of celibacy, the motivation lie only in part in sensuality; the rest, in his unfulfilled desire for closeness to others. Genuine intimacy eluded him, and his sense of being an onlooker, rather than a participant, was growing stronger. It was a feeling that went back to his being so much younger than his brothers, making him effectively the only child of ever-busy, remote parents.

Life in Pistoya was more interesting than it had been in Porretta, but Orlando still wondered about the world beyond its walls. The town lay on a main road to the coast, and travelers from Bologna often spent their last night there on their way to the port city of Pisa. Itinerant traders found lodging in either of Pistoia’s two rowdy inns. To offer more respectable accommodations to priests and friars in transit, Orlando built a guesthouse beside his church.

Orlando’s religious visitors fell into two distinct categories: seculars, that is, priests and other members of the church hierarchy whose lifestyle resembled Orlando’s, versus the regulars, the austere mendicant friars who were faithful to their order’s regulations (hence their appellation as regulars) of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Orlando relished the evenings he spent with both types. From priests he might learn of a new variety of wine that was becoming available in his area; from friars, news of the revival in asceticism that was spreading from the South.

Maintaining his church was burdensome for Orlando—keeping his vestments spotless, the chalice polished, and the wine properly stored. His horse had to be groomed and kept in good health so Orlando could ride with dignity to the small towns in his parish. Such everyday priestly duties made the friars’ lives of impoverished simplicity appealing to Orlando. What caught Orlando’s imagination most, though, were the friars’ stories about their brothers who were accompanying armies to outposts in distant regions of the globe—the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

Orlando’s predictable pattern of life was interrupted one day when a traveller brought news that his old patron, don Pellegrino Zanini, was gravely ill and was not expected to survive. The next morning Orlando closed the doors of his church and began the two-day ride to Campugnano. Although he had never felt very close to the priest, Orlando had always appreciated Pellegrino’s divining something of his character and personality.

For the first day of the trip, an intermittent drizzle made travel through the wooded hills difficult for horse and rider. Early on the second afternoon the shower grew in intensity, then abruptly became a downpour accompanied by furious lightning and thunder, at first in the distance but growing closer and closer. As Orlando crested a steep hill, a thunderous bolt struck a bay laurel tree beside the road, blasting the top branches into fiery slivers that rained down on Orlando. The concussion knocked him from his horse, and he landed sprawled on the roadway.

Orlando was briefly unconscious, but as his senses returned he was aware, first, of a sharp ringing in his ears, and then of a vision before his eyes:

Instead of lying in the muddy roadway, he is prostrate on a massive, round stone that has cryptic figures cut into its surface. He cannot not get up—couldn’t if he wanted to. His arms, legs, and head surrender to the brutal hands that hold him down on the stone.

Now he is viewing the scene from a short remove and sees a person pinioned to the stone by four men in black robes who clench his limbs. A fifth man, also in black and with matted hair down to his chest, grips a shiny, black blade in both hands, poised above the chest of his victim. In the background is a vermillion pyramid so enormous it dwarfs the scene of sacrifice.

Orlando is on the stone again. He feels he is on the brink of a profound insight.

The men fade into the mist that has obscured the pyramid behind them, and soon they disappear into the haze of falling rain, their undecipherable voices lost in the sound of the passing storm.

Orlando’s vision ended, but for the moment he was too shaky to stand up. Lying there he realized that his horse was gone and that he had been knocked free of his sandals by the lightning blast. The top of his head smarted, and when he touched it he found that the flash and firestorm had singed the hair from his pate. What he smelled instead of charred hair, though, was the pungent scent of burned bay leaves.

Orlando had had visions before, but of such a quotidian nature that he never gave them any thought. This presentment was another matter. It was so vivid, so specific, so thoroughly improbable that it seemed almost biblical. All Christians honored the prophets of the Old and New Testaments; but the Bible also warned of false prophets. Orlando could not believe he was significant enough to be a prophet of any stripe, good or bad. The only people who could predict the future were the few odd sorts who, following the ancient Greeks, closely observed the ocean tides or the movements of heavenly bodies, laboriously recorded and analyzed their findings, and then made tedious forecasts about what would happen. But Orlando’s vision of the pyramid, sacrificial platform, and glinting black blade had come unbidden. It left him feeling light-headed.

Orlando shakily picked himself up from the ground; and still not seeing his horse, he resumed his journey on faltering feet. Perhaps his mind would clear and the meaning of his vision would become apparent in the hours that lay between him and his destination. Only after he had made his way over several hills and valleys did he notice he was barefoot: He must have left his sandals on the road at the site of his revelation. Still later, when he stopped at an inn to buy some food, he discovered that his small pouch of money was gone also, probably left along the road with his sandals. Fortunately, the innkeeper was sympathetic when he heard the traveler’s tale and gave him a stale, half-eaten loaf.

Walking barefoot through the countryside, eating only the alms that the charitable were willing to give, and sporting a bald head: To his great surprise, Orlando realized that in the instant of the lightning flash he had taken on the hallmark traits of a mendicant friar. As he continued down the road gnawing on the bread, he also found that instead of regretting the loss of his horse, sandals, money, and hair, he felt unburdened. The zealous mendicants who stayed at Orlando’s guesthouse always told him that without possessions or the quest for possessions, it was easier to live a simple spiritual life. Reflecting on his onerous duties as a priest, Orlando thought to himself that poverty does have its virtues.

Taking a long walk can be a fruitful occasion for contemplation, which perhaps is why so many famous people have had revelatory visions while on a journey—St. Paul on the road to Damascus, even that German heretic Martin Luther returning home from Erfurt. The same for philosophers of the ancient Peripatetic School. A walker can determinedly ponder issues, only to have his thoughts interrupted by the challenge of, say, fording a flooded stream. While he focuses on getting across the tempestuous water, another part of the mind must take up the reflective process, for when the crossing is complete and the hike resumed, the question is seen in a new, clearer light.

Whatever the reason, as Orlando walked he thought more about his current, friar-like poverty, and he realized he felt more relief than regret.

From the subject of poverty, Orlando’s mind wandered to chastity. If he were to become a friar—and he realized he was entertaining the idea—what about the vow of chastity? As a priest, the occasional dalliance had never caused him problems: He believed the women derived as much satisfaction from the liaisons as he; and don Pellegrino, bless his faltering heart, had set such a low standard of behavior that Orlando’s parishioners never condemned his peccadillos. But unlike priests, friars usually took the vow of chastity seriously. Could he live a life without sex? Was any incentive desirable enough for him to forego relations with women?

Let me see, thought Orlando, poverty, chastity, and…obedience. Could I follow a vow of obedience? Another open question, he realized. In the past he had been obedient to his parents and his bishop, but their demands had been so minor and reasonable that submitting to them had been easy. As for unreasonable demands by figures in authority, only time would tell the story.

Then there was the matter of Orlando’s vision earlier in the day. It was still vivid in his mind—the viselike grip of the men restraining him on the sacrificial stone, the black blade poised above his chest, the vermillion pyramid in the background. If the apparition was a prophecy, Orlando said a heartfelt prayer that it would not come true.

When Orlando arrived in Campugnano, he went directly to don Pellegrino’s rectory. He found the don’s body already laid out in a coffin lined with red satin, his child-soft face with a serene aspect. His lady companion sat nearby, and once more she smiled up at Orlando, though with dark eyes glistening from tears. Orlando wondered if she mourned the passing of the jovial don Pellegrino from her life, if she dreaded the loss of his financial support, or if she would miss both.

The next morning the disheveled image Orlando saw in the mirror reminded him of the question of becoming a friar. He still did not have an answer, but he did decide to journey on to Bologna and pay a visit to the Franciscan monastery there. In his absence, his secretary in Pistoya could take care of his church. Would more information about the friar’s life convince him to take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience?

Part 3 – Becoming a Friar

Chapter 4

When Orlando entered Bologna the Fat, as gourmands called the town of rich and varied food, the city extended well beyond the high wall and deep moat that had protected it for centuries. The Basilica of San Francisco and its friary lay within the enclosure. Orlando saw the basilica’s bell tower from the city gate, but when he arrived at the plaza in front of the church he was stunned to find four pyramids standing on its grounds. They were nothing like the pyramid of his vision, however: They were green, not red; and they lacked the monumentality of the envisioned pyramid. A closer look revealed that each pyramid sheltered the tomb of a long-dead law professor at the nearby University of Bologna. The pyramidal shapes were incongruous in a city of rectangular prisms.

Orlando’s legs began to tremble—from the arduous walk or from being reminded of the previous day’s vision beside the lightning-blasted bay laurel tree. He sat down on a bench to rest and contemplate the tombs. In earlier times, nobody would have doubted the vision’s prophetic veracity; and the unlikely pyramids now before him would have merely confirmed the vision’s truth. Even in Orlando’s day many people would have agreed. More modern thinkers, Orlando among them, while not doubting the miracles and prophecies of the Bible, gave no credence to such wonders. The green pyramids at the Friary of San Francisco, however, coming after the previous day’s cinnabar-red pyramid, forced Orlando to reconsider the matter.

Orlando closed his eyes to block out the hectic scene around him, but immediately his prescient vision came back to his mind in unsettling detail, including the scene of human sacrifice—his own imminent sacrifice. His pulse quickened in confusion.

To return to the present, Orlando arose from the bench and approached the friary. The building’s red brick facade, flanked by the Basilica with its dramatic flying buttresses, was a beauty to the eye, but when he entered the monastery he found himself in a stark, undecorated chapel. To his left a dark passageway must have led to the friars’ cells.

Benches were arrayed in the church. Orlando knelt to say a prayer of heartfelt thanksgiving for his safe