Death Comes for the Archbishop (15 page)

When the Bishop, unable to compose their differences, supported the new priest, Father Martínez and his friend Father Lucero, of Arroyo Hondo, mutinied; flatly refused to submit, and organized a church of their own. This, they declared, was the old Holy Catholic Church of Mexico, while the Bishop’s church was an American institution. In both towns the greater part of the population went over to the schismatic church, though some pious Mexicans, in great perplexity, attended Mass at both. Father Martínez printed a long and eloquent Proclamation (which very few of his parishioners could read) giving an historical justification for his schism, and denying the obligation of celibacy for the priesthood. As both he and Father Lucero were well on in years, this particular clause could be of little benefit to anyone in their new organization except Trinidad. After the two old priests went off into schism, one of their first solemn acts was to elevate Father Lucero’s nephew to the priesthood, and he acted as curate to them both, swinging back and forth between Taos and Arroyo Hondo.

The schismatic church at least accomplished the rejuvenation of the two rebellious priests at its head, and far and wide revived men’s interest in them,—though they had always furnished their people with plenty to talk about. Ever since they were young men with adjoining parishes, they had been friends, cronies, rivals, sometimes bitter enemies. But their quarrels could never keep them apart for long.

Old Marino Lucero had not one trait in common with Martínez, except the love of authority. He had been a miser from his youth, and lived down in the sunken world of Arroyo Hondo in the barest poverty, though he was supposed to be very rich. He used to boast that his house was as poor as a burro’s stable. His bed, his crucifix, and his bean-pot were his furniture. He kept no live-stock but one poor mule, on which he rode over to Taos to quarrel with his friend Martínez, or to get a solid dinner when he was hungry. In his casa every day was Friday—unless one of his neighbour women cooked a chicken and brought it in to him out of pure compassion. For his people liked him. He was grasping, but not oppressive, and he wrung more pesos out of Arroyo Seco and Questa than out of his own arroyo. Thrift is such a rare quality among Mexicans that they find it very amusing; his people loved to tell how he never bought anything, but picked up old brooms after housewives had thrown them away, and that he wore Padre Martínez’s garments after the Padre would have them no longer, though they were so much too big for him. One of the priests’ fiercest quarrels had come about because Martínez gave some of his old clothes to a monk from Mexico who was studying at his house, and who had not wherewithal to cover himself as winter came on.

The two priests had always talked shamelessly about each other. All Martínez’s best stories were about Lucero, and all Lucero’s were about Martínez.

“You see how it is,” Padre Lucero would say to the young men at a wedding party, “my way is better than old José Martínez’s. His nose and chin are getting to be close neighbours now, and a petticoat is not much good to him any more. But I can still rise upright at the sight of a dollar. With a new piece of money in my hand I am happier than ever; and what can he do with a pretty girl but regret?”

Avarice, he assured them, was the one passion that grew stronger and sweeter in old age. He had the lust for money as Martínez had for women, and they had never been rivals in the pursuit of their pleasures. After Trinidad was ordained and went to stay with his uncle, Father Lucero complained that he had formed gross habits living with Martínez, and was eating him out of house and home. Father Martínez told with delight how Trinidad sponged upon the parish at Arroyo Hondo, and went about poking his nose into one bean-pot after another.

When the Bishop could no longer remain deaf to the rebellion, he sent Father Vaillant over to Taos to publish the warning for three weeks and exhort the two priests to renounce their heresy. On the fourth Sunday Father Joseph, who complained that he was always sent “ŕ fouetter les chats,” solemnly read the letter in which the Bishop stripped Father Martínez of the rights and privileges of the priesthood. On the afternoon of the same day, he rode over to Arroyo Hondo, eighteen miles away, and read a similar letter of excommunication against Father Lucero.

Father Martínez continued at the head of his schismatic church until, after a short illness, he died and was buried in schism, by Father Lucero. Soon after this, Father Lucero himself fell into a decline. But even after he was ailing he performed a feat which became one of the legends of the countryside,—killed a robber in a midnight scuffle.

A wandering teamster who had been discharged from a wagon train for theft, was picking up a living over in Taos and there heard the stories about Father Lucero’s hidden riches. He came to Arroyo Hondo to rob the old man. Father Lucero was a light sleeper, and hearing stealthy sounds in the middle of the night, he reached for the carving-knife he kept hidden under his mattress and sprang upon the intruder. They began fighting in the dark, and though the thief was a young man and armed, the old priest stabbed him to death and then, covered with blood, ran out to arouse the town. The neighbours found the Padre’s chamber like a slaughter-house, his victim lying dead beside the hole he had dug. They were amazed at what the old man had been able to do.

But from the shock of that night Father Lucero never recovered. He wasted away so rapidly that his people had the horse doctor come from Taos to look at him. This veterinary was a Yankee who had been successful in treating men as well as horses, but he said he could do nothing for Father Lucero; he believed he had an internal tumour or a cancer.

Padre Lucero died repentant, and Father Vaillant, who had pronounced his excommunication, was the one to reconcile him to the Church. The Vicar was in Taos on business for the Bishop, staying with Kit Carson and the Seńora. They were all sitting at supper one evening during a heavy rain-storm, when a horseman rode up to the portale. Carson went out to receive him. The visitor he brought in with him was Trinidad Lucero, who took off his rubber coat and stood in a full-skirted cassock of Arroyo Hondo make, a crucifix about his neck, seeming to fill the room with his size and importance. After bowing ceremoniously to the Seńora, he addressed himself to Father Vaillant in his best English, speaking slowly in his thick felty voice.

“I am the only nephew of Padre Lucero. My uncle is verra seek and soon to die. She has vomit the blood.” He dropped his eyes.

“Speak to me in your own language, man!” cried Father Joseph. “I can at least do more with Spanish than you can with English. Now tell me what you have to say of your uncle’s condition.”

Trinidad gave some account of his uncle’s illness, repeating solemnly the phrase, “She has vomit the blood,” which he seemed to find impressive. The sick man wished to see Father Vaillant, and begged that he would come to him and give him the Sacrament.

Carson urged the Vicar to wait until morning, as the road down into “the Hondo” would be badly washed by rain and dangerous to go over in the dark. But Father Vaillant said if the road were bad he could go down on foot. Excusing himself to the Seńora Carson, he went to his room to put on his riding-clothes and get his saddlebags. Trinidad, upon invitation, sat down at the empty place and made the most of his opportunity. The host saddled Father Vaillant’s mule, and the Vicar rode away, with Trinidad for guide.

Not that he needed a guide to Arroyo Hondo, it was a place especially dear to him, and he was always glad to find a pretext for going there. How often he had ridden over there on fine days in summer, or in early spring, before the green was out, when the whole country was pink and blue and yellow, like a coloured map.

One approached over a sage-brush plain that appeared to run level and unbroken to the base of the distant mountains; then without warning, one suddenly found oneself upon the brink of a precipice, of a chasm in the earth over two hundred feet deep, the sides sheer cliffs, but cliffs of earth, not rock. Drawing rein at the edge, one looked down into a sunken world of green fields and gardens, with a pink adobe town, at the bottom of this great ditch. The men and mules walking about down there, or plowing the fields, looked like the figures of a child’s Noah’s ark. Down the middle of the arroyo, through the sunken fields and pastures, flowed a rushing stream which came from the high mountains. Its original source was so high, indeed, that by merely laying a closed wooden trough up the face of the cliff, the Mexicans conveyed the water some hundreds of feet to an open ditch at the top of the precipice. Father Vaillant had often stopped to watch the imprisoned water leaping out into the light like a thing alive, just where the steep trail down into the Hondo began. The water thus diverted was but a tiny thread of the full creek; the main stream ran down the arroyo over a white rock bottom, with green willows and deep hay grass and brilliant wild flowers on its banks. Evening primroses, the fireweed, and butterfly weed grew to a tropical size and brilliance there among the sedges.

But this was the first time Father Vaillant had ever gone down into the Hondo after dark, and at the edge of the cliff he decided not to put Contento to so cruel a test. “He can do it,” he said to Trinidad, “but I will not make him.” He dismounted and went on foot down the steep winding trail.

They reached Father Lucero’s house before midnight. Half the population of the town seemed to be in attendance, and the place was lit up as if for a festival. The sick man’s chamber was full of Mexican women, sitting about on the floor, wrapped in their black shawls, saying their prayers with lighted candles before them. One could scarcely step for the candles.

Father Vaillant beckoned to a woman he knew well, Conçeptión Gonzales, and asked her what was the meaning of this. She whispered that the dying Padre would have it so. His sight was growing dim, and he kept calling for more lights. All his life, Conçeptión sighed, he had been so saving of candles, and had mostly done with a pine splinter in the evenings.

In the corner, on the bed, Father Lucero was groaning and tossing, one man rubbing his feet, and another wringing cloths out of hot water and putting them on his stomach to dull the pain. Seńora Gonzales whispered that the sick man had been gnawing the sheets for pain; she had brought over her best ones, and they were chewed to lacework across the top.

Father Vaillant approached the bed-side, “Get away from the bed a little, my good women. Arrange yourselves along the wall, your candles blind me.”

But as they began rising and lifting their candlesticks from the floor, the sick man called, “No, no, do not take away the lights! Some thief will come, and I will have nothing left.”

The women shrugged, looked reproachfully at Father Vaillant, and sat down again.

Padre Lucero was wasted to the bones. His cheeks were sunken, his hooked nose was clay-coloured and waxy, his eyes were wild with fever. They burned up at Father Joseph,—great, black, glittering, distrustful eyes. On this night of his departure the old man looked more Spaniard than Mexican. He clutched Father Joseph’s hand with a grip surprisingly strong, and gave the man who was rubbing his feet a vigorous kick in the chest.

“Have done with my feet there, and take away these wet rags. Now that the Vicar has come, I have something to say, and I want you all to hear.” Father Lucero’s voice had always been thin and high in pitch, his parishioners used to say it was like a horse talking. “Seńor Vicario, you remember Padre Martínez? You ought to, for you served him as badly as you did me. Now listen:”

Father Lucero related that Martínez, before his death, had entrusted to him a certain sum of money to be spent in masses for the repose of his soul, these to be offered at his native church in Abiquiu. Lucero had not used the money as he promised, but had buried it under the dirt floor of this room, just below the large crucifix that hung on the wall yonder.

At this point Father Vaillant again signalled to the women to withdraw, but as they took up their candles, Father Lucero sat up in his night-shirt and cried, “Stay as you are! Are you going to run away and leave me with a stranger? I trust him no more than I do you! Oh, why did God not make some way for a man to protect his own after death? Alive, I can do it with my knife, old as I am. But after—?”

The Seńora Gonzales soothed Father Lucero, persuaded him to lie back upon his pillows and tell them what he wanted them to do. He explained that this money which he had taken in trust from Martínez was to be sent to Abiquiu and used as the Padre had wished. Under the crucifix, and under the floor beneath the bed on which he was lying, they would find his own savings. One third of his hoard was for Trinidad. The rest was to be spent in masses for his soul, and they were to be celebrated in the old church of San Miguel in Santa Fé.

Father Vaillant assured him that all his wishes should be scrupulously carried out, and now it was time for him to dismiss the cares of this world and prepare his mind to receive the Sacrament.

“All in good time. But a man does not let go of this world so easily. Where is Conçeptión Gonzales? Come here, my daughter. See to it that the money is taken up from under the floor while I am still in this chamber, before my body is cold, that it is counted in the presence of all these women, and the sum set down in writing.” At this point, the old man started, as with a new hope. “And Christóbal, he is the man! Christóbal Carson must be here to count it and set it down. He is a just man. Trinidad, you fool, why did you not bring Christóbal?”

Father Vaillant was scandalized. “Unless you compose yourself, Father Lucero, and fix your thoughts upon Heaven, I shall refuse to administer the Sacrament. In your present state of mind, it would be a sacrilege.”

The old man folded his hands and closed his eyes in assent. Father Vaillant went into the adjoining room to put on his cassock and stole, and in his absence Conçeptión Gonzales covered a small table by the bed with one of her own white napkins and placed upon it two wax candles, and a cup of water for the ministrant’s hands. Father Vaillant came back in his vestments, with his pyx and basin of holy water, and began sprinkling the bed and the watchers, repeating the antiphon, Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor. The women stole away, leaving their lights upon the floor. Father Lucero made his confession, renouncing his heresy and expressing contrition, after which he received the Sacrament.