Strangers by Mary Anna Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

admit that gold feels warm and wordlessly lovely in the hand. When we returned to the ship, the Captain-General’s eyes glittered over the glowing lumps of metal. How he gloated over the unequal exchange: our trinkets for their gold! And this is the tragedy underlying everything I have seen in this strange new world. I do not think the Timucua saw the exchange as unequal. They returned trinkets in exchange for the trinkets they were given.
    How could they have known that we would destroy them in the name of this luminous and glistering plaything…gold?
    __________
    I, Father Domingo Sanz de la Fuente, attest that the foregoing is a statement of actual events.

Chapter Six
    “You look terrible this morning, Faye.”
    As usual, Magda minced no words. She leaned in the doorway to the room where Faye and Joe were staying, with the relaxed demeanor of the mother who has just handed her cherished offspring over to a trusted babysitter and who is, therefore, drunk with freedom. Clearly enjoying her responsibility-free moment, Magda lounged, waiting for Faye to respond.
    “I look terrible? Why, thank you. Now let me check you out for physical flaws, okay? Where shall I begin—”
    Joe nudged her with his foot, and she knew this was a warning not to hit Magda in her soft spot. The older archaeologist was strong, smart, and tough, it was true, but she was a woman. She would have liked to have been pretty, too. And she was pretty, if you liked short, stocky, freckle-faced women whose beauty regimen consisted of washing their faces and wrapping a rubber band around their long bushy locks. Sheriff Mike thought Magda was ravishing.
    Nevertheless, it would be best to leave physical flaws out of this conversation, even if Magda did have personality flaws that included a distinct lack of tact.
    For once, Joe did the talking for the two of them, and Faye didn’t like what he had to say.
    “She doesn’t look terrible. But she does look like she was up most of the night.”
    “That’s why I’m here. When Faye sends you to my door asking for white cotton gloves, and it’s way after quitting time, I know something’s up. I would have come back with you last night, but Rachel was already asleep and I couldn’t leave her.”
    Faye was actually glad Magda was here to pry into her business. She had something big to share.
    “Check this out.”
    She put on the borrowed gloves and carefully folded back the acid-free paper she’d wrapped around the journal.
    Magda let her breath out in a slow hiss, but she turned her head, so as not to breathe on the old book. Faye gently opened it to the title page. When Magda saw the date “1565,” the rest of her breath left her with a whoosh.
    “Do you think it’s really that old? It sure is in good shape.”
    “The condition of the paper is one clue that it really might be that old. Paper from the last couple hundred years ages a whole lot faster than the really old stuff. The wood pulp makes modern paper too acid. Back in the day,” Faye patted the book with her gloved hand, “and I mean way, way back in the day, they made paper with cotton rags, and that stuff lasts. But you know that.”
    “I know that intellectually,” Magda said, pulling on another pair of cotton gloves that she’d brought with her, just in case, “but just look at that paper. It’s so white, and it still bends. Just look at it…” She stopped to look at Faye. “Can you still read it? You’re smiling. And you were up all night. That means it’s still readable. I’ll be damned. What does it say?”
    “Well, it’s in Spanish…”
    “Tell me you’re grateful that I didn’t let you quit taking Spanish after you met the grad school’s minimum requirements.”
    “I’m grateful. Now, do you want to hear what it says or not.”
    Magda raised her bushy eyebrows, which was her way of saying yes.
    “It’s the memoirs of a priest who landed here with Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565. It’s got