Free The Discovery of Chocolate by James Runcie

next day. My servants wore their finest clothes, and had instructed me to trim my beard and wear my sword. This was to be the beginning of my new life at court.
    The thought gave me no pleasure. Was I to be trapped within the expectations of civilised life? How could I ever return to Mexico? Life was now a dream in which I was carried further and further away from Ignacia. What was I doing?
    We walked up to the gatehouse of the Quintallina residence, and knocked boldly on the door.
    Imagine our surprise therefore, when the gatekeeper then directed us to the servants’ entrance.
    Here Sylvana was waiting for us.
    ‘Impostors!’ she cried. ‘Deceivers! Adulterers! Crooks!’
    She picked up the vase that I had given Isabella, raised it above her head, and, with a great heave, threw it onto the ground, smashing it in pieces before us.
    Cacao beans rolled onto the courtyard.
    María and Esperanza shrieked at the waste, but Sylvana only shouted all the more.
    ‘Criminals!’
    Pedro raced forward and began to sniff at the cacao beans. I knelt down beside him and was immediately surprised by their softer texture.
    They felt like crumbling cork.
    I tried to break a bean in my hands, but it would not yield. Perhaps they were stale?
    I raised it to my mouth and bit gently.
    There was a strong taste of dried clay.
    The beans were false.
    They must have lain undisturbed in Montezuma’s treasury because they had been confiscated as counterfeit money. That was why such little attention was paid when I picked up the vase. People knew them to be fake.
    I had been made a laughing stock.
    I felt a surge of heat well up in my face, knowing that I must seem either foolish or malevolent.
    From Sylvana’s words I came to understand that her mistress had thought that I had played the cruellest of tricks upon her. I was never to be allowed near her again.
    My life in Seville was at an end.
    I returned home to think about my future.
    Without fortune, chocolate or a betrothed, I now had the freedom and the excuse to risk my life upon the seas and return to Mexico. If Ignacia was alive and still loved me, then I would fulfil my promise to her, and even find happiness. If not, then I would have nothing.
    But it was clear that I must venture all upon that love. It was the only hope that might give my life purpose and meaning.

III
    N othing can convey my despair when my eyes first caught sight of the black and charred remains of that great city of Mexico, its towers destroyed, its people either dead or destitute. The vast marketplace lay empty. The majesty of the city had passed away. Houses were left derelict and the temples had been laid waste, their treasures drowned in the lake so that none should profit from them. It was as if Pedro and I had entered an abandoned world. No one we passed seemed able to tell us what had happened or where we might find survivors. This was a city of ghosts.
    We found a canoe and paddled through the chinampas , past tree after burned-out tree. All that had previously been good and fertile had been destroyed. We travelled as if in a nightmare, unable to find respite from the succession of sights that awaited us. Approaching the former shelter where I had last seen Ignacia, despair entered the very soul of my being, a dread and a fear of death that I think has never left me to this day. I expected the worst, despised myself for expecting such a thing, and was both terrified and filled with self-hatred when my fears were confirmed. For there, in the distance, lay the burned remains of theadobe dwelling where Ignacia and I had found such happiness only two years before.
    With mounting terror I scoured the blackened vegetation until I found a small mound.
    My heart emptied.
    Could this be Ignacia’s grave?
    Pedro whimpered and began to paw at the earth.
    If I was to know what had happened I would have to dig away at the mound, uncovering what lay inside it, even if it meant the discovery of my beloved’s body.
    I was