The Nautical Chart (29 page)

Catastrophe being elaborated with such stealth. The Ecclesiastics themselves, who feel enmity toward the Society, have no aversion to acting as couriers and procurers of the calumnies that circulate with such impunity. As a result we are being forced to fall back upon our own resources by those who believe any act is licit in achieving (heir ends and in capturing the will not only of Our Sovereign, who is suspicious of us by reason of bad advice, but also our former friends.

Everything, Esteemed Padre, presages a coup against our Order, to be effected in the ominous manner of the crime in France and in the Portugal of the impious Pombal. By safe and most direct conduct Abbot G. has confirmed the list known to your most esteemed person, that of the individuals who are plotting the maneuver and (he manner in which they are working to execute it. But in that vast enterprise cloaked as a Secret Inquiry, there remains a tiny glimmer of hope. I write you the present missive, which will reach you by safe-conduct along our habitual route, for the purpose of urging you to endure as we carry out the undertaking that may influence in our favor the will of the most powerful.

In previous consultation with our superiors, and with regard to the proposition of which you are already apprised, I am preparing to voyage with the hope that
—Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam
(with that name and that refuge I prepare to embark)—the wind will blow from an auspicious quarter. Two hundred arguments in the form of untouched flames of green fire, perfect and large as walnuts (the Devils irises, the good abbot calls them), await in Cartagena de Indias in the care of Padre Josi Luis Tolosa, who is a dependable young man and well to be trusted. I shall be in Havana, be it God's will, toward the end of the month; and in the same manner expect to return to Our Port as quickly as possible, and with as much stealth, and as directly, as the privileges of the Society afford, avoiding dangerous intermediary calls in port. Our admired don P.P. has promised the abbot to wait, and despite all that has happened, and even in the face of his new dispositions and ambitions, we may still consider him sympathetic, for what he may find of benefit in this enterprise is very great.

I shall add, E.P., the happy news that yesterday I learned through our esteemed abbot that some close friends privy to the circle of the deeply mourned Queen Mother have remained amicable toward us, as is the worthy V. and also H.—although this latter cannot be entirely trusted because of his bent for intrigue. As for the abbot, he continues in the favor of royal persons and is plying to our benefit the threads of the enterprise, and he tells us that don P.P. remains very receptive to what occupies our concern. Until my return, therefore, nothing but
Tacere et Fidere.
And trust that Divine Providence will prevail.

Accept, Esteemed Padre, respectful greetings from your brother in ' Christ

Nicolas Escobar Marchamalo, S.J. In the port of Valencia, November 1 A.D. 1766

Over time, Tanger had identified all the people mentioned in the letter. Queen Mother Isabel Farnesio, very favorable to the Society of Jesus, had died six months before. The recipient of the letter was Padre Isidro Lopez, the most influential of the Spanish Jesuits, who enjoyed an excellent position in the court of Charles III and would die in Bologna eighteen years after the dissolution of the Society, without being allowed to return from exile. As for the initials, they presented no difficulty for someone accustomed to working with historical sources: P.P. was Pedro Pablo Abarca, Conde de Aranda. Behind the initial H. was a thinly veiled Lorenzo Hermoso, born in the New World but now located in Spain, an intriguer and conspirator who was involved in Esquilache's uprising, and who after the fall of the Jesuits was taken prisoner and exiled, although the prosecutor asked for
tanquam in cadavere,
severe corporal punishment. The person designated as V. was Luis Velazquez de Velasco, Marques de Valdeflores, a man of learning and intimate of the Society, who would pay for that friendship with ten years in the prisons of Alicante and Alhucemas. And the initial G. alluded to Abbot Gandara, known in the court of Charles III as the Jesuits' principal supporter within the circle of the king, whom he accompanied as gun bearer in his hunting parties. His real name was Miguel de la Gandara, and his misfortune may have inspired
The Count of Monte Cristo
or
The Iron Mask.
Taken prisoner shortly before the fall of the Order, he lived in prison the remaining eighteen years of his life, and died in the dungeon of Pamplona without anyone ever having established a clear cause for his incarceration.

The story of Abbot Gandara had fascinated Tanger, to the point that she ended up writing her thesis on him. That led her to examine all the papers relating to his trials and imprisonment, which were kept in the Grace and Justice section of the national archive in Simancas. She even determined the name of the Jesuit ship referred to only in veiled fashion in the letter—the
Dei Gloria.
Through her research she had ascertained that Padre Nicolas Escobar's farewell to Padre Lopez, in which he mentioned Gandara, was written one day before the latter's arrest, effected on November 2, 1766, the same day Escobar sailed for America aboard the brigantine on which, during the return voyage, he would disappear at sea. Tanger's thesis was tided "Abbot Gandara, Conspirator and Victim," and earned high marks for her master's degree in history. It was filled with facts about the abbot's long years in prison, his interrogations and judicial trials, and his imprisonment in Batres and then Pamplona, where he was secluded until his death. No one ever provided a reason for the zealous cruelty Aranda and others of Charles's ministers reserved for him—except perhaps his friendship with the Society of Jesus, whose members, among them the recipient of the letter, were arrested five months after the abbot and exiled to Italy, their Order disbanded. As for Padre Escobar's voyage to Havana, and those two hundred flames of green fire to which he cryptically alluded, he never received an answer from Gandara, although some of the interrogations referred to the subject. The secret of the
Dei Gloria
died with him.

Afterward life followed its course, and Tanger had other matters to occupy her. The competitive examinations for the Museo Naval and her work consumed her attention, and new interests took the forefront in her life. Until Nino Palermo appeared one day. In searching through books and catalogues, the treasure hunter had happened upon a reference to a report in the maritime section in Cartagena, dated 8 February 1767, regarding the loss of the
Dei Gloria
in battle with a corsair. The index referred to documents that had been sent to the Museo Naval in Madrid, so Palermo had gone there seeking information, and chance had set Tanger in his path. She was the person assigned to respond to the Gibraltarian's inquiries. He had approached the subject in the way of his trade, camouflaged with false scents and a studied lack of interest in his real purpose. But in the middle of their conversation, she had heard the name
Dei Gloria.
A brigantine lost, said Palermo, en route from Havana to Cadiz. That triggered Tanger's recollections, forming specific connections among what had until then been loose ends. She had hidden her excitement, dissembling as much as she was able. Later, after getting rid of the treasure hunter with vague promises, she verified that the document that interested him had been sent some time earlier to the general maritime archive in Viso del Marques. The next day she was there, and in the section on Privateering and Prizes she found the name of the ship: "Account of the loss of the brigantine
Dei Gloria,
4 February, 1767, in combat with the xebec corsair presumed to be the
Chergui.
.." There was everything officially known about the sinking, along with the statement of the only survivor. It was the answer to the mystery, the denouement of the adventure whose beginnings she had glimpsed years before in the Jesuit's letter. There was the reason the brigantine never reached port, and why the abbot Gandara was interrogated until his death in prison. There was clarified the fate of the two hundred flames of green fire that were intended to convince the members of the cabinet of the
Pesquisa Secrete,
and maybe the king himself, not to annul the Ignatian order.

She was dazed and fascinated, but also furious. She had all this right before her eyes years ago, and hadn't seen it. She hadn't been ready. But unexpectedly, as when you find the key piece to a complex jigsaw puzzle, everything fell into place. She went back to her notebooks and her old research notes, adding the new information. Now the tragedy of Abbot Gandara—which not even the papal nuncio could explain to the Pope in correspondence—was clear. The abbot knew what the
Dei Gloria
was transporting. His proximity to the king, his presence at court, made him the appropriate intermediary for the ambitious bribery scheme the Jesuits were weaving; he was the person charged with negotiating with the Conde de Aranda. But someone had wanted to forestall the maneuver, or to make off with the booty for himself, and Gandara was arrested and interrogated. Then the corsair
Chergui
sailed onto the scene, either by accident or by plan, and everything ended badly for everyone concerned. The Jesuits were expelled, the ship was sunk under hazy circumstances, and Gandara was the key to the entire affair. Which was why the authorities had kept him under lock and key for eighteen years. Now the clues scattered among the records of the various trials took on meaning. Until his death they were trying to get him to reveal what he knew about the brigan-tine. But he had kept silent, carrying the secret to the tomb. He lifted a corner of the veil only once, in an intercepted letter written by him in 1778, eleven years after the events, to the missionary Jesuit Sebastian de Mendiburu, who was exiled in Italy: "They ask about the large and perfect Devils irises, orbs clear as my conscience. But I say nothing, and though I am the tortured one, it is that which in their ambition tortures them."

With all that material Tanger had been able to construct, almost step by step, the history of the emeralds and the voyage of the
Dei Gloria.
Padre Escobar had sailed from Valencia on November 2, unaware, paradoxically, that Abbot Gandara had been arrested in Madrid that very day. The brigantine, commanded by Captain Elezcano—brother of one of the superiors of the Society—crossed the Atlantic, arriving in Havana on December 16. There he met with Padre Tolosa, the "young, dependable, and well to be trusted" Jesuit who had been sent ahead with the mission of secretly gathering two hundred emeralds from mines the Society controlled in Colombia. These were uncut stones, the largest and best in color and purity. Tolosa had fulfilled his mission and then sailed from Cartagena de Indias aboard a different ship. His crossing was delayed by unfavorable winds between Grand Cayman and the Isle of Pines, and when finally they rounded Cape San Antonio and passed beneath the guns at El Morro castle, the
Dei Gloria
was already waiting in Havana Bay, at a discreet anchorage between Barrero cove and Cruz key The transfer of the cargo was undoubtedly made at night, or camouflaged amid the declared merchandise on the ship's manifest. Padres Escobar and Tolosa were listed as passengers, along with a crew of twenty-nine men that included the captain, don Juan Bautista Elezcano, the pilot, don Carmelo Valcells, the fifteen-year-old ship's boy, don Miguel Palau, an apprentice seaman and the nephew of the Valencian shipowner Fornet Palau, and twenty-six sailors. The
Dei Gloria
set sail from Havana on January 1. It traveled along the coast of Florida to the thirtieth parallel, continued five degrees north and sailed toward the east between just to the south of Bermuda and the Azores, and on this journey suffered the storm that damaged the rigging and made it necessary to man the pumps. The brigantine continued on her course east, avoiding the port of Cadiz— spared that obligatory call by the still-effective privileges of the Society—and passed Gibraltar between the first and second of February. The next day, after she had doubled the Cabo de Gata and had set a course northeast in search of Cabo de Palos and Valencia, the
Chergui
gave chase.

The part played by the corsair xebec remains an enigma that may never be clarified. Its ambush from some hidden inlet on the coast of Andalusia, or perhaps its departure from Gibraltar itself, may have been coincidental... or perhaps not. It was documented that the
Chergui
sailed with English or Algerine letters of marque— depending on the circumstances—and that Gibraltar was one of its usual bases, although at that time a precarious peace between Spain and England was still in effect. Perhaps it chose the
Dei Gloria
as its prey by chance, but the tenacity of the chase, and her presence at that precise time and place, appear too opportune to be coincidental. It was not difficult to imagine a part for the corsair in the complex game of self-interests and complicities of that era. The Conde de Aranda himself, or any of the members of the cabinet of the
Pesquisa Secreta
that had ordered the arrest of Abbot Gandara—who was a political adversary of Aranda—could have had information about the plan and had designs on the treasure of the Jesuits even before it was offered to him, killing two birds with one stone.

Whatever the fact, the pursuers had not counted on the tenacity of Captain Elezcano, which must have been reinforced by the presence of the two resolute Jesuits on board. He chose to fight, both ships were sunk, and the emeralds went to the bottom of the sea. The information provided by the surviving ship's boy was satisfactory, and the naval authorities charged with the initial investigation had no reason to dig deeper, a ship sunk by a corsair being routine in those days. By the time the order came from Madrid to make a more detailed inquiry, the witness had flown—a mysterious and timely disappearance, organized by the Jesuits, who had not as yet lost the cooperation of local authorities. Undoubtedly the Society studied the possibility of a clandestine recovery of the brigantine, but it was too late. The blow fell: imprisonment and diaspora. Everything was lost in the morass that followed the fall of the Order and its subsequent dissolution. The silence of Abbot Gandara, and the exile and death of those who knew the secret, cast an even heavier veil over the mystery. There was evidence of two official attempts by naval authorities to find the wreck during the time the Conde de Aranda was still in power, but neither was successful. Later, as new dramas shook Spain and Europe, the
Dei Gloria
was forgotten. Apart from a passing mention in a book entitled
La flota negro,
The Black Fleet', written by the librarian of San Fernando in 1803, there was one last and curious proposal, made two years later to Manuel Godoy, first minister to King Charles IV, requesting a search for "a certain ship said to have sunk with emeralds from Cuba," this according to Godoy s own account in his memoirs. But the plan did not flower, and in handwritten annotations in the margin of the proposal, the original of which Tanger had located in the national historical archive, Godoy's skepticism was evident: "... because of the illogic of the idea and because, as is well known, Cuba never produced emeralds." So, for nearly two centuries, the
Dei Gloria
had sunk back into oblivion and silence.