Free The Discovery of Chocolate by James Runcie Page A

terrified by the dangers of such knowledge, but knew that my life could not continue if I did not know what had happened. I found some sticks and began to dig, as if Ignacia had been buried alive and we only needed to pull the earth away to let her breathe once more.
    ‘My God, let her live,’ I prayed.
    Pulling away soil, leaf, plantain, and cacao husks with increasing urgency, we finally revealed the edge of a white tunic beneath the earth.
    Overcome with the most sudden and appalling grief, I could not bear to dig any further and began to re-cover the mound with earth, as if I had never begun the idea of exhumation, desperately trying to hide the memory of the discovery; as if my initial curiosity had never happened, and none of this was happening to me. Utterly disorientated, my head filled with pain and confusion, I wanted to run away, to be any place save here, but found that I could not move. Everything about my life had been suspended.
    I knelt at the grave, with Pedro by my side, and wept.
    My people had done this.
    My people had killed the woman I loved.
    It seemed that everything I had sought in life, all that I believed in no longer possessed any meaning. And the more I reflected on my helplessness before a history that I could not change, the more furious I became, losing my faith in justice, a divine creator, and the power of man to shape any kind of destiny.
    As dusk turned into night, Pedro and I lay down on the ground and slept like sentinels by Ignacia’s grave. We would stay here in quiet bereavement until we were able to recover. Even though our mouths were dry and our stomachs empty, I could neither eat, nor drink.
    I could not imagine being anywhere else on earth.
    The next morning I covered the mound with jacaranda blossom, praying for the reincarnation of Ignacia’s soul.
    At least we would try to honour her memory.
    We stood over the grave for many hours. Perhaps the night came, and the sun rose, but I had no sensation of day or night, life or death, energy or exhaustion. I was sick with emptiness, unable to move until it became clear that our lives could not continue in this way, that we must try to endure bereavement, even if it meant an existence with no real respite from sorrow.
    I laid a pile of stones around Ignacia’s grave, and carved her words to me around the bark of a tree: ‘Quien bien ama tarde olvida . He who loves truly, forgets slowly.’
    And then Pedro and I turned away from the plantation as we had done so many months before, slowly and reluctantly, our footsteps pointless and uneven, stumbling blindly away from the place that had seen both the greatesthappiness and now the greatest misery of our small lives.
    We returned to Tlaxcala. There I sought out people who had been in the Mexican campaign and asked if they knew of any who had survived the siege of the city and the battle for its possession so that they might tell us the story of what had happened.
    The cacique told me that he had seen groups from the city heading south, as far as Chiapas, to seek allies, whether old or new, to build up their broken lives. After a series of meals and conversations I told the man of the reason for my travels, and of my love for Ignacia.
    As my speech became increasingly desperate with grief, I wondered if the more I talked the greater might be the possibility of Ignacia being alive after all, as if, by talking of her, I could force her back into being; that she could live, tangibly, once more, because my memory of her was so strong. Perhaps the grave might not be hers, perhaps I could find her again, perhaps she lived after all?
    I think that I was hysterical with sadness.
    The chieftain took pity on me, expressing deep sympathy at my loss, and offered another wife in Ignacia’s place.
    I informed him that I only wanted Ignacia. I could love none but her.
    The cacique seemed almost amused by my loyalty and looked at Pedro.
    ‘One man, one woman, one dog.’
    ‘It is all that I require