ALVARADO
            Well, now we’ve a translator, we can hear
            How much the Mayas hate us.

SANDOVAL                                          We should leave.
            As yet, we merely beg to buy their corn,        
            But fears impel them to combat with us.
            We’ve sixty wounded, heat stroke swoons the horse,
            And not a flake of gold for all these streams.
            Their ruins lurk like wrecks dredged from a swamp.

ALVARADO
            A stark reminder for aspiring minds
            That cultures often fall as well as rise.
            Here comes the father, with our medicine man.

                                       Enter AGUILAR and OLMEDO.

AGUILAR
            And so back home the Inquisition, brother,
            Still rules the roost?
    
OLMEDO                              It does so.
            
AGUILAR                                                 Grim regime!
            It clouds the air upon a thousand wings,
            Whose shadows spread to pall the gloomy sun.
            The cool, luxuriant trees on which it lights,
            It dries. How it decays! It browns green grass,
            And desolates the leafy countrysides
            Until they wither as the Syrian wastes.

OLMEDO        So it does.

SANDOVAL          [aside] Hark! The moral landslide rumbles.

OLMEDO
            Those fires of the Inquisition, lighted
            Exclusively to doom the Jews, one day
            Are destined to consume their smug oppressors.

SANDOVAL [aside to Alvarado]
            He strains a bit to shield the circumcised.
            Though I’ve a ***** mouth, my blood is pure.

ALVARADO [aside to Sandoval]
            Hush, Sandoval. You go too far.

OLMEDO                                                 And you?
            Know, Alvarado, there are many men
            Who, through misguided zeal- yes, Sandoval-
            Convince themselves that they commit no sin
            So long as those they **** and violate
            Are of a different faith.

ALVARADO                               It’s not our fault.
            I hate the Grand Inquisitor myself.

SANDOVAL
            Like any little-loved policing force,
            However, it preserves our way of life.

OLMEDO
            For its unwanted eye that never slumbers,
            Its arm, unseen and ever raised to strike,
            Does not o’ercast its gloom on you, but rather
            On deviants, foreigners, and heretics.

AGUILAR
            It bars all doors of human entry to them-
            Marginalized, shorn lambs it ferrets out,
            And scapegoats as the enemies of Rome.
            Thus, it condemns not only deeds, but thoughts.

DÍAZ
            Captain Cortés, at last our man is found.
            From two days inland, natives ferried him.
            Father Olmedo greets him as we speak-
            A fellow priest it seems.

CORTÉS                                      Bring him to me.                        Exit Díaz.
            From Cozumel to here in Yucatán,
            We’ve hunted this elusive castaway.
            These Indians hustle us from shore to shore,
            And, when their gifts of jade fail, toss us rocks.

ALVARADO
            Their dizzying synthesis of amity
            Backed up with menace proves unsettling.

                       Enter OLMEDO, SANDOVAL, and AGUILAR.

SANDOVAL
            Now, wayward beadsman, meet our strategist.

CORTÉS
            Who is this Indian? Where’s our long-lost priest?

AGUILAR
            Hail, Christian knights! Sweet accents of Castile!

CORTÉS
            Great welcome, cabined friar, you are free!

AGUILAR
            Is it a Wednesday?

OLMEDO                              It’s the Lord’s day, friend.
                
AGUILAR
            Of course it is! Grace to the only God!
            My only link with Europe, all these years,
            Has been to count the crawling calendar.

CORTÉS
            We’ll need your past, to learn their policies.

AGUILAR
            I wish I could. But of their etiquette
            I’m ignorant, save slavish drudgery.

CORTÉS
            You speak the language, though?

AGUILAR                                                  Why, like a native.

CORTÉS
            Your name?

AGUILAR                       Gerónimo de Aguilar.

OLMEDO
            Dear Aguilar! Your mother, home in Spain,
            On hearing you’d been snatched by cannibals,
            Abstained from meat, and cringed at frying flesh,
            For fear, by chance, it might be part of you.

AGUILAR
            Oh, rush me home to Écija, back where
            The only blood drunk is the wine of Christ,
            The only flesh consumed, our sacrament.

CORTÉS
            What fate befell your fellow countrymen?

AGUILAR
            The luckless women were harassed to death,
            The men, dishearted. But a happy few
            Broke from our cages and were spared for slaves,
            Within the warlike clutch of Na Chan Can.
            My freedom have your wax and honey bought.
            One stubborn soul, Guerrero, stays behind.

CORTÉS
            How now? What’s the debate?

AGUILAR                                              The­ Inquisition:
            It’s linked itself with tethers to our church,
            Like two, aloof, reluctant mountaineers.
            I fear, when that unholy office trips,
            And plummets in the popular regard,
            Its drop down estimation’s precipice
            Will pull down our religion in its tow.

OLMEDO
            We cavil, boys, as if there were two Spains.

CORTÉS
            One good, one evil?

OLMEDO                              Not so simple. Yet,
            One, global-bent, one isolationist,
            One liberal, one counter to reform,
            One, eyeing Greece, one stirring with the Moors,
            Who, like the fatal twins of Oedipus,
            Will not consent to reign in tandem more,
            But rather wound each other mortally.
            In Europe, there’s a word in currency:
            Renaissance- It is not a Spanish word,
            And there’s a reason.

CORTÉS                                And it is?

OLMEDO                                               Some flaw
            In Spain’s own character that’s culpable-
            Catholic fanaticism, feverish pride,
            Or warped deliriums of vanity.
            We thought we were the new elect of God,
            Mistook our patriotic egoism
            For fealty to the church. Hence, our divorce
            And isolation from the rest of Europe.

CORTÉS
            No, it’s not Spain, not Catholics, nor our race,
            But frailties of the human constitution,
            Which frequently reverse the gains achieved
            By previous generations, in the name
            Of progress, culture, and civility.                          Trumpet is heard.
            A parley sounds! See what those Mayas want.

OLMEDO
            Cortés, I have a new, but nagging, fear.
            I sense the premonition of a time
            When you might be corrupted by the taint
            Of evils lying latent in our task,
            That vice, which our assignment permeates,
            Will tempt resolve to heinous compromise.

CORTÉS
            Our mission is implicit in its vice,
            In evils ineradicably steeped,
            And our grand charge requires that we submit
            To its contamination and decay.
            A man who would embrace the human lot,
            To do so, must consent to be a sinner.

OLMEDO
            Blood has been shed- For what? Lives squandered- Why?
            You, having tripped in sin’s attractive trap,
            To thus, in fragrant snares so feebly flail,
            Through frail and flagrant failings such a way,
            How can you say to me you are contrite?

CORTÉS
            But father, mercy with my malice mingles.
            These dicey circumstances find me now
            In both a ruthless and reluctant role.
            What seems intolerable of this plight
            Is that it simply will not be reduced
            To trite antitheses of right and wrong.
            My conscience both opposes and demands
            A rouse to action.

           Enter AGUILAR, ALVARADO, MALINALLI, and a Mayan Girl.

AGUILAR                              Captain, by your will,
            These endless battles have despoiled your foe,
            Who offer you these slave girls as a bribe.
            The terrorized Chontal surrender now.
            They will be baptized, and befriend our king,
            Provided that we leave their country soon.
            
CORTÉS
            Easy to break that promise once we’re gone.
            Tell them we shall release all Mayan soil,
            And nomadize into the unknown North.                             Exit Aguilar.
            Here, Alvarado, [indicates girl] guide her to your tent.
            We’ll see what use for this one we can find.
                                                                                           Exit all but Malinalli.
MALINALLI
            Now, silly Malinalli, drop your sights,
            You pretty poppet for these bearded frights.

CORTÉS
            Trailblazing pioneers, God’s harbingers:
            The shining daylight of the Renaissance
            Now swiftly dissipates the blindfold gloom
            Of this benighted, dark, and iron age.
            And as this dawn of culture greets the globe,
            Our own Castile, of all the hosts of Europe,
            Emerges as its greatest modern power.
            If we receive the bounty of these lands,
            So must we bear our duty to convert,
            And shall redeem these hell-bound debutantes.
            Coincidence?- That as the graceless Moors
            Were drubbed and shunted from our Christian sands,
            And in the very year our spiring cross
            Eclipsed that toenail paring of a moon-
            That new horizons opened in the west?
            Do you not feel, my fresh adventurers,
            That you are precious to the Lord, and chosen?
            Strike sail!                                                          E­xit.
              
ALVARADO                  You heard the captain. Up and at ‘em.
            You porters, lash the tents to tame these winds.
            The horsemen will untwine the provender.             Exit Garrido.

SANDOVAL
            The women must find tinder, turf, and fuel.
            The sun is down. We race against the dusk.           Exit María.

ESCUDERO
            These heavy, gathering clouds have opened up,
            And threaten to bestow unwanted gifts.

DÍAZ
            It is the cyclone season out at sea.

SANDOVAL
            Such scuddy weather bodes a sudden turn.

ALVARADO
            Let’s hustle then to fumble up a camp,
            And save our “oo-” and “ahh”ing for the dawn.
                                                           ­                           Exit all but Olmedo.
OLMEDO
            Thus shall the ardent lights of Europe come,
            And pour upon these newfound neophytes.
            But will they be enlightening Catholic lamps,
            Or a consuming fire to destroy them?                     *Exit.

SANDOVAL
            Your brigs of bustling pilgrims light at last
            On this sweet-scented isle called Cozumel.
            Depopulating half of Cuba’s farms,
            The skills of our six hundred souls, or so,
            Erupt now in a pitched activity.
            We’ve confiscated idols, and our cross
            Now overlooks the rising ropes and tarps;
            Our cannons hedge the campground, with our horse,
            As secret weapons, hidden in the ships.

ALVARADO
            Now what a breezing cakewalk will it be
            To pacify this docile flock of lambs!
            Let’s ****** the sweetmeats from their trembling lips,
            And wean them to the yoke of servitude.
            Vassals alone make masters out of men.

CORTÉS
            Not yet so fast. For Cuba’s stewardship
            Forbids such a carnivorous regime.
            Father Olmedo warns us not to tease,
            Much less ******, the native nymphs.

ALVARADO                                                        Cortés,
            We trust that you, like all stargazing men,
            Crave glory, fortune, and above all, fame;
            That royal favor and divine accord
            Will light on those who quell idolatry,
            And carve new lands for God and His Castile.

CORTÉS
            But like a gentlemanly pirate, I.
            For Cuba’s governor deceives himself.
            His pure concern for human chattel, gold,
            And bandying the Indies as it were
            A distant annex of the Moorish war
            Has wrought a desert from a paradise.
            Long-term success requires a colony.
            And with what wherewithal! These islanders
            Stand head and shoulders o’er Carribbeans,
            With their rich-painted books and towering keeps,
            The graceful girding of their modesties-

SANDOVAL
            Their slave trades, and their binding bright bouquets-

ALVARADO
            Distilling liquor: Culture’s surest sign.

CORTÉS
            Our prime directive is to baptize them,
            Not march before their eyes the Seven Sins.
            But how to learn their Tower-of-Babel tongues?

AGUILAR
                                                         ­        But a happy few
            Broke from our cages and were spared for slaves,
            Within the warlike clutch of Na Chan Can.
            My freedom have your wax and honey bought.
            One stubborn soul, Guerrero, stays behind.          

CORTÉS
            And with slave’s ransoms, we must rescue him.

AGUILAR
            He will not come.

ALVARADO                          You must mean “could not,” man.
            What exile, broiling in the pits of hell
            Is tossed a rope from heaven and will not come?
            Your Spanish rusted in these humid airs.

AGUILAR
            These Mayas have seduced him to their cause.
            When I confronted him, he spoke to me:
            “I am a wartime chieftain, and their judge,
            And see how lovely are my wife and sons!”
            Three handsome half-castes nestled at his hip.
            “You go,” he said, “and may God go with you.
            But black tattoos have spiraled round my eyes,
            And broad, thick discs now pierce my ears and lips.
            Would Christians welcome one so scarified?”

CORTÉS
            God only scorns the scars of souls.

OLMEDO                                                   ­   Well said.

AGUILAR
            His crabbed wife waved in my face and spat:
            “What grimy scarecrow dares provoke my lord?
            Shove off!” But our Guerrero caught my arm.
            “I’ve warned our Mayas of Castile,” he hissed.
            “If Spanish visitations will be suffered,
            The scabies of their ‘culture’ will erupt,
            And Europe’s slow, inexorable flow
            Must soon encrust and case these florid lands
            As running wax will coat a candlestick.
            Then must I trim Death’s wicks.”

CORTÉS                                                 What can that mean?

SANDOVAL
            At home, they say Death takes a female form,
            And in her cave a billion candles burn
            Which mark the dwindling measure of our lives-
            Short stubs for the infirm, fresh spires for babes.
            When our own taper sputters at the base,
            This fickle life winks out.

CORTÉS                                            What said he next?

AGUILAR
            “You see our signal fire on the butte,
            Whose dark clouds broadcast swift alarms for war.
            If our old friends push off with crowded sails
            Before those flames to embers smolder low,
            Then shall they safely coast from Mayaland,
            And may God blunt what mischiefs are to come.
            But, if they loiter when this fire is cold,
            We’ll ***** their lingering lives, for at that time
            Shall I raise up my droves of rabid braves
            To course this quarry like the hounds of hell.”

CORTÉS
            I wish I’d that false truant in my hands,
            For it will never do to leave him here.

OLMEDO
            Those of the breed to grapple their own hearts
            Must own that something in their soul is stirred
            In answer to the awful frankness of these howls,
            And if, by our own shared humanity,
            We may uplift them to civility,
            So might they pull our most self-searching down,
            To dance, to stamp and rage. We, to resist,
            Must be as much a man as they. If not,
            Rebarbarism claims her wayward natures,
            And our prim, mincing minuets may yet
            Yield to innate impulse: leaps, bones and blood.

CORTÉS
            Clear out! Our foe’s friend orders we embark,
            With sails puffed by this sometime Spaniard’s threats.
            These titles- “Captain,” “Chief”- these are but breath,
            Yet- backed with tooth- are words which utter death.
            Speed North! At merrier campfires will we rest.                  *All exit.