Chapter 2: The Abbey's Shadow

As the iron gate clanged shut behind them, its bolt failed to catch all the way. Diego had barely raised the oil lamp when a shadow flashed past the crack. The stranger didn’t push the door open. He only paused on the stone steps for a moment, then slipped away. Carmen caught his wrist. “Don’t chase him. Those footsteps were meant for us to hear. He isn’t lost—he’s checking whether this door has already been opened.”

Rust-eaten rails were embedded in the damp stone walls, but the sulfur smell came from a freshly burned match, not an abandoned mine tunnel. Diego crouched and pinched the ash between his fingers. “The matchstick hasn’t had time to soak up the moisture. Someone got here before us—and they knew where the hidden door was.”

Carmen slipped the key into her sleeve and led him around the collapsed beams. At the end of the transport rails stood nothing but an empty stone room. Pry marks and scattered nails littered the floor, while the wooden cabinet against the wall had been cleared out. She lowered her voice. “I heard something from the friar delivering medicine this morning. Fuentes has hired Aguilar to track down The Silver Plate. He says it was stolen property from the mine.”

Diego spotted pale square marks beneath the cabinet’s feet, exactly the size of a thick ledger. He wasn’t disappointed. He was only struck by how unnervingly fast the other side had moved.

“The Silver Plate only surfaced last night, but the news got here first. Unless someone had been waiting for it to reappear.”

A narrow gap split the rear wall of the stone room, with cold air squeezing through it. Carmen used the brass key to pick the hidden lock, revealing a flight of stone steps leading upward.

“This passage leads to the partition wall beside the old archive room. My father only brought me here once. If someone moved The Bottom Ledger, they probably wouldn’t use the front entrance.”

The two of them climbed the stairs. The rustle of turning pages drifted down from above. Diego snuffed out the lamp and peered through a ventilation hole. Guadalupe Aguilar sat beside a long table with a leather-bound register spread open before him. His expression was still warm and mild, but his fingers were folding one of the pages into his sleeve.

Aguilar heard the faint sound and immediately closed the register. He called toward the door, “Who’s there? The archive room is badly damp, and it’s not a good night to linger. If that’s the patrol, please move along.”

Diego didn’t answer. Carmen pointed toward the other end of the partition, and the two of them circled back to the corridor through the medicinal storeroom exit. By the time they entered the archive room under the pretext of making rounds, Aguilar was already standing and returning the register to its shelf. Diego said calmly, “Wounded men are prone to nighttime seizures, so I came to check whether any medicines that stimulate breathing are stored nearby. You don’t seem able to sleep either.”

Aguilar brushed a fleck of paper from his sleeve and smiled without the slightest crack in his composure.

“There have been too many dead and wounded at the mine. Fuentes ordered me to cross-check the compensation records. If anything is missing, the widows and children won’t receive their silver pesos.”

Carmen walked to the shelves and glanced at the year stamped on the leather cover. “The compensation ledgers are kept in the accounting room. What’s stored here are the Monastery’s admission registers. Mixing up the two seems unlike a veteran accountant.”

The smile on Aguilar’s face thinned by a fraction, but he didn’t back down.

“Accounts from ten years ago are scattered everywhere. Unless I search page by page, who can prove where the omission occurred?”

Diego pulled out the register and saw 1842 marked on its spine. The pages jumped from thirty-seven to thirty-nine, but the stitching remained intact. That meant the missing page hadn’t just been torn out. It had been folded into the binding. He ran a fingertip along the spine and felt an unnatural bulge.

“Paper expands sideways when it gets damp. An old page tucked into the spine makes the cover bulge. What you hid wasn’t a loose sheet—it was the missing thirty-eighth page of this register.”

Aguilar’s right hand curled slightly. “Does the head nurse study bookbinding too? A slight bulge hardly gives you grounds to accuse anyone.”

Diego laid the register flat and watched Aguilar’s fingertips. They were stained with pale violet dye—the gentian violet used in the infirmary to mark the dates on bandages. There was nothing like it in the archive room. Only yesterday afternoon, Diego had ordered someone to relabel the boxes of wounded men from 1842.

“I don’t need to accuse you. That page touched an old box in the infirmary. The dye hasn’t fully dried, and your hand has already testified for it.”

Carmen shut the door. “The old boxes contain only artifacts from the mine disaster. If you really came for the compensation records, why won’t you let us see the victims’ names?”

Aguilar remained silent for a long while. At last, he pulled the folded page from his sleeve, but he didn’t hand it over. He stared at the paper as if it were a mine that refused to collapse.

“Some names, once written down, will get living people killed. You think dragging the past into the light is justice, but justice won’t be the one burying your loved ones.”

Diego extended his hand, his voice still controlled. “Give me the page. If the list concerns the wounded, I can at least determine who may still need protection instead of letting Fuentes find them first.”

Aguilar shook his head and tucked the folded page against his chest. “You can’t protect everyone. Once The Bottom Ledger surfaces, plenty of respectable households in Guanajuato would rather burn down the entire Monastery.”

A bell suddenly rang in the corridor. The night patrol would be passing soon. Aguilar took the opportunity to open the door and leave. His pace was unhurried, as if the confrontation had never happened. Carmen started after him, but Diego stopped her.

“Let him go. He knows we found the missing page. That means he’ll go straight to the people who are truly afraid of what it says.” Carmen’s brow tightened. “He’ll also watch for a tail. The Monastery’s corridors have only two exits. If we stay this close, he’ll notice us for sure.”

Diego looked down at the patrol log in his hand. “I don’t have to follow him. The west gallery, where the wounded are kept, is checked every quarter hour. If two people looking for a private conversation choose it to escape the rain, they’ll be walking straight into my path.”

Half an hour later, Diego entered the west gallery with a medical kit in hand. Gas lamps flickered in the draft blowing through the passage, and several miners coughed from inhaling dust. Rosario Vargas lay on the bed farthest inside, his chest rising in short, shallow breaths and the back of his hand cold. Diego checked his pulse, examined the color of his lips, and quickly propped up his shoulders.

“Don’t lie flat. Your breathing is already obstructed. Take slow breaths. Don’t try to talk yet—I’ll stay until the tightness eases.” Rosario grabbed his sleeve. “I heard the old rails. It wasn’t the wind. Before they sealed the shaft ten years ago, the iron wheels made that same sound as they rolled over cracks in the stone.”

Diego loosened the old man’s tight collar and caught the bitter-almond smell lingering in the bedding, but he didn’t let Rosario take another sip from the bowl of medicine beside the bed. He touched a silver spoon to a drop of the liquid. A strange sticky mark spread across the surface, and fine sediment clung to the bottom of the cup.

“Who brought this medicine? The original formula contained only herbs for coughs. It shouldn’t smell like this, and it shouldn’t make your pulse race and slow.”

Rosario answered between ragged breaths, “A man wearing a mine cap left it by the door. He said the accountant had ordered it and that it would help me sleep through the night.”

Diego sealed the cup inside his medical kit. “From now on, drink only water Carmen brings you herself. Someone doesn’t want you alive by dawn.”

By the time Carmen arrived to help, Diego had already rinsed the residue from Rosario’s mouth with warm water and placed him on his side so he wouldn’t choke if he slipped into unconsciousness. He didn’t induce vomiting. The old man’s breathing was too weak, and any violent stimulus might take away the last of his strength. Carmen examined the cup, fury flashing in her eyes.

“Fuentes is reaching even into Monastery sickbeds. If he’s only looking for The Bottom Ledger, why go after Rosario?” Diego checked the old man’s pulse again.

“Because The Bottom Ledger isn’t the only evidence. You can’t burn living people’s memories, so they want to silence the memories along with the names.”

Two sets of footsteps sounded outside. Carmen slipped behind the curtain while Diego picked up the washbasin and pretended to continue tending the patient. Raphael Fuentes stopped in the empty room next door. Aguilar entered after him, and the door failed to close completely. Fuentes’s voice was low and hard. “The Silver Plate ending up in Ibarra’s hands means the old miner has started talking.

“You must get The Bottom Ledger before noon tomorrow. No more delays.” Aguilar replied, “The missing page is still with me, but The Bottom Ledger isn’t in the archive. Someone moved it ahead of time. I suspect it was hidden along the old transport line.”

Fuentes gave a cold laugh. “Suspicion is worthless. If that ledger reaches a newspaper office or a court, the Fuentes family’s mining rights, reputation, and property will all turn to ash.”

Aguilar was silent for a long time. Rain tapped against the high windows like tiny stones falling into a deep well. At last, he said, “Ten years ago, you promised you would only seal off the collapsed section. You promised you wouldn’t leave living people inside. Yet thirteen people in the register were changed to ‘died at the scene.’”

Fuentes answered without hesitation. “If the mine hadn’t been sealed, the entire silver vein would have flooded. Thirteen people bought hundreds of livelihoods. That’s a cost, not a sin.”

Aguilar’s voice trembled. “The Bottom Ledger records the true amount of timber hauled in. It also records that your father ordered the support timbers removed. That wasn’t an accident. The collapse was deliberately caused.”

Diego tightened his grip on the edge of the washbasin. At last, he understood why the other side was so desperate. The ledger could prove both that the supports had been removed and that survivors were still alive after the disaster. Fuentes continued, “You falsified the books for my father back then, so you have no right to speak of regret now. Burn the missing page, then silence Rosario, and this can all be over.”

Aguilar answered in a low voice, “I can destroy the accounts, but I won’t kill again. I didn’t send that medicine. If you touch Rosario, I’ll hand over everything I know.”

Fuentes stepped closer. “Don’t forget who protected your family’s good name. Betray me once, and everyone will know you were the insider who buried them.”

After the footsteps faded away, Carmen emerged from behind the curtain, her face pale. She picked up a small scrap of paper Aguilar had dropped in his hurry. The number for page thirty-eight was still visible on it. Diego held the scrap near the oil lamp and saw reversed ink showing through on the back. He used the reflection in a mirror-finished medicine spoon to make out a line of tiny writing hidden beneath the main text.

Carmen held her breath. “This isn’t a note in the victims’ register. It’s a transfer record. The Bottom Ledger was sent to the Monastery infirmary, where a nurse was ordered to keep it hidden.”

Rosario forced his eyes open on the bed. “Not kept. Exchanged. We gave up The Bottom Ledger to get three men out of the sealed shaft.”

Diego opened the patrol log and fitted the scrap into an old copied page from 1842. The broken strokes matched perfectly, completing the record: of the thirteen people officially listed as dead, three had been secretly rescued; the other ten signed testimonies before the shaft was sealed. At the bottom, later ink listed where those testimonies had gone afterward.

Diego saw that the first keeper had been crossed out. A cross was drawn beside the second name, while Rosario was written on the third line. The final line contained no name, only today’s date and his profession. Carmen’s voice nearly vanished. “They aren’t trying to find where The Bottom Ledger is hidden. They’ve been following this list, eliminating every person who ever kept the truth.”

Diego turned the scrap over. The lamp flame revealed a signature hidden beneath the fold. The handwriting was identical to Aguilar’s entry from earlier that night, but the date was the night of the 1842 mine disaster. Beneath the signature were the words: By order: cancel the rations assigned to ten survivors, then seal the northern mine tunnel.

Before Diego could speak, Rosario used the last of his strength to say, “Now you understand. Guadalupe Aguilar wasn’t merely a later bookkeeper for the Fuentes family—the man who personally erased us from the register of the living ten years ago was him.”