You Can't Judge

The figure in the mirror looked pleased, calm, ready to go out. The pants fit well: casual, perfect length, black, more or less traditional in their cut. The top was also casual: cream-colored, tailored, natural cotton. Nothing that would attract attention, yet the fit and quality of the garment could possibly turn a head or two.The cuffs on the nicely-tailored sleeves almost begged for cufflinks, but instead had been given a turn or two so that the sleeves reached only just below the elbows. The arms teasingly peeked out and led to hands with well-groomed nails. Their owner had clearly not done any gardening or shoveling recently. 

The shoes, black or close to it, were appealingly plain, fit well, and allowed for an easy gait. There were no laces and these were not moccasins, which would have created a dissonant accent if paired with shirt and pants of the type just described. In essence, this was the type of footwear that could enhance any outfit because it was comfortable, not blocky, yet had simple lines. The wearer would assume a relaxed gait, could stride with confidence, not mince along like people do when they’re wearing expensive shoes to show off, then find they pinch or scuff a lot.

The figure looked in the mirror one last time, thought about taking an umbrella just in case, then decided against it. There was zero chance of rain in Santiago today. That’s not what the meteorology report said, it was the sky itself that was dictating celestial perfection. True, sometimes the city would play mean tricks on people with the weather, but today there was no doubt. Today would serve sun and nothing else to residents and tourists alike. 

On the other hand, it could be useful to take some sort of folder or portfolio for the book and notepaper that were also going to leave the house. That would protect them from marks that could be left by warm palms and provide a place for a writing utensil that could otherwise slip out of a shallow pocket, especially if the owner chose to sit on a terrace to have a beer or coffee. The terrace was not the first objective, however.

The neatly- and tastefully-attired individual had a plan. The plan included walking a certain route, to a large extent circumventing the heart of the city of Santiago and instead tracing the early construction, back from when the populace was emerging from the eighth and ninth centuries and the Church needed to create a safe space for the remains of Saint James. Compostela began on or near the site of a pre-Roman castro settlement, and the walls went up with seven gates. Most residents could name all the gateways, because everything has a place and its place provides the name. Sadly, only one gate was still standing, but at least people could point it out and say that’s the Porta de Mazarelos, the entry site for all the wine barrels. Nobody talked about who brought the barrels in or why that specific door was chosen for the wine or even why it was the last one standing. That was just the way things were, and the remnant of the pre-medieval past was highly admired. That door would be either the first or the last on today’s walk, which was intended just to get the lay of the land, so to speak.

One source, in the stunning language spoken in Portugal, explains the origin of the walls:

Para se precaver contra os ataques dos Vikings, um pouco antes do ano de 968, o bispo Sisnando II, reconstruiu com maior solides a primitiva cerca “del Locus Sanctus”, com a finalidade de proteger a Basílica Jacobea, Antealtares, la Corticela e o palácio Arcebispal.

In other words, it was the Vikings’ fault that Bishop Sisnando II had had to order the construction of a barrier to protect both Saint James and, of course, the bishopric. The immense tourist attraction that was the Catedral was still but a gleam in some religious higher-up’s eye back before 968. The Vikings weren’t done yet with their forays inland from the Galician coast, so one learns that:

Seguindo o traçado da paliçada de Sisnando II, posteriormente o bispo Cresconio (1037-1068), construiu a segunda e última muralha de Compostela, ampliando ligeiramente o seu perímetro. A nova muralha segundo López Alsina, tinha um perímetro de dois quilômetros e era dotada de sete portas de acesso que se denominaram: “A do Camiño”; “Algalia”; “San Francisco”; “Trinidade”; “Faxeira”; “Mámoa” e “Mazarelas”. Correspondente com todos os itinerários de chegada dos peregrinos a Santiago de Compostela.

So Bishop Cresconio came along and built the last wall, slightly increasing the size of Compostela to two kilometers in perimeter. The entry gates all were properly assigned a name and supposedly were the spots where pilgrims arrived to visit the resting place of Saint James. One has to wonder if there was that degree of segregation by the Church or if imagination likes labeling historical sites in curious ways, ways that help the tourist guides do their work. The details on these gates can be summarized, if anybody is interested:

A Porta do Camiño - French pilgrims;

A Porta de Algalia, or a da Pena or de Atalaia, was the way to enter from A Coruña , one of the sea routes for British pilgrims in the Middle Ages;

A Porta de San Francisco was also called Porta de Subfrativus;

A Porta da Trindade, pointed toward “Finis Terrae” or Land’s End and is called the Gate of the Holy Pilgrim (with no explanation of why some pilgrims are holier than others;

A Porta da Mámoa was also called Porta Sussanis;

A Porta Faxeira, was one of the entries used by the Portuguese, like the Porta de Mazarelas.

Some accounts affirmed it was the past threat of Almanzor that resulted in further fortification, rather than Vikings. Almanzor was a fiend, apparently, and had ravaged Santiago in the final years of the tenth century. He even stole the Berenguela from its bell tower and moved it to Córdoba. King Alfonso the Wise would trot it right back from the infidels just three years later, however.

All right, so the uses and name origins of these now-destroyed gates are not all explained in the source. Mazarelas also became Mazarelos, in a gender shift that is a bit perplexing. Maybe all this detail is excessive, but it does help understand what the figure in the carefully-chosen outfit was planning to do: walk the two-kilometer perimeter and note what was in the exact areas where the seven doors had been. The entries could very well have had important paths or buildings nearby, and therein lay the interest in looking at them all now.

Rather than adding more detail to what is already way too much information, for now it’s best to follow the figure who planned to trace the outline of the walls - walls that should never have been torn down in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - and consider what they might suggest regarding Santiago’s secrets. The idea was to pinpoint the spot, remain in it for a time, and observe the routes people passing through would follow. No, that wasn’t right. The idea was to scan the areas and link the ancient steps to places they would need to access safely. Stone archways would have protected travelers, merchants, even religious officials from the elements. Those were relevant, and thankfully some of those remained.

What the nicely-clad observer needed to do was to unravel the invisible threads that connected the more clandestine activities. Clandestine might mean the transportation of valuables, places for lovers’ trysts, escape routes for an important figure of the clergy. Those persons, needs, and goods could signify tunnels. Tunnels that radiated out from, or inward toward, the site that had the shape of a huge beating heart if you looked at a map of the city. Tunnels like veins and arteries that could be sliced or traversed as if made for people to use. Except most people did not have access to them, and the centuries had barricaded them for the most part to human memory.

The observer knew that the key phrase was “for the most part.” Some individuals would have had access for years, and some must still know how to enter and go through the passageways. Where the sites of ingress and egress were located was another story. Even more important was how the tunnels flowed together and if they might have points along them where the users might come to the surface, for air, food and wine, or to rest. The latter might be where a tunnel was linked to the foundation of an old building and might be no more than a minuscule cubby or berth in which to rest a weary head.

These possibilities were all well and good, but the observer, also a note-taker, wanted to find answers to specific questions, specific underground veins and arteries. Some of those might have provided a safe refuge, but some could have been traps that then were filled with silent bloods that, when spilled, ran into the vital system that sustained the underworld of Santiago as well as the world above. The most relevant door for today was probably the Porta de San Francisco or Trindade. Porta da Pena (the Big Rock Gate might be a good translation) was another candidate for close inspection. All were on the western side of the heart and seemed to be in less sophisticated neighborhoods, with less vehicle traffic. 

In another part of the city, a terrible coincidence was occurring. Lavinia had also donned clothing that was well-cut to fit her slender form. It was also very simple but made of material that obviously did not come from a thrift shop or big box store. She needed to tuck her hair behind her ears because it had grown some, but she knew that anybody who spotted her might think she was just some youngish fellow out for a stroll. Except she wasn’t strolling. She was mapping a likely route from the little bar-café down on Pombal Street up toward Fonseca Square. She had to understand what she had found in the items they gave to her to examine when A Tertulia was being renovated. Items of varying sorts and written in English, some of them. This wasn’t the first time she had tried to map what she thought was pulsating beneath the surface of the streets. It probably wouldn’t be the last, either.

Thus, as Lavinia strode uphill from Pombal, looking to any casual observer like she was an elegant young man because she was so plainly attired, was about to cross paths with another person whose outward appearance was similar. The thing was, they might both have been thinking about tunnels and trying to unravel the threads of history and webs of oblivion, but their motives were different. Lavinia was searching for some way the items she was examining could have been safely transported to a destination she thought of as a nosa biblioteca, our library. Items that had found their ways from other Atlantic shores and had an important purpose. She dressed in a way that she hoped would allow her, a foreigner, to avoid attracting attention on her odd walks.

In contrast, the other figure, who was really disguised so as to be able to follow Lavinia and not be spotted, had the goal of deterring the target (Lavinia) from discovering things that were none of her business and, worse yet, from making certain things known that were not supposed to be revealed, ever. 

The other figure was the problem Lavinia had not reckoned with, but that did not mean she was unable to see what was happening.

“Bo día,” was the simple greeting each used.

“Bo día,” was the simple response.

Except it wasn’t that simple. Each continued to study the other, not without suspicion, but not too obviously. Neither wanted to seem to be looking too closely at the other, so both feigned an air of not noticing the other.

Wrong move, for both of them.

Figure number one thought nothing out of the ordinary had been noticed, and the encounter could actually be beneficial, so a conversation began.

“Ti non es de aquí, nonsí?” You’re not from here, are you?

To ask in Galician and receive a quick reply was not expected. The language was supposed to be a barrier to the meddlesome forasteira, the woman from away.

“Non, son de fóra. Só veño facer unhas pescudas sobre temas de xénero.” No, I’m not from here. I’m doing some gender studies. The explanation sounded dumb, dull, insincere, and not at all professional.

“Nós nos precisamos diso. Temos xente que sabe máis da nosa historia.” We don’t need that. We’ve got people who know more about our history. That was a true statement, but it had an edge to it that Lavinia wanted to address.

“Seique.” Maybe so. The researcher and academic hastened to explain how she’d ended up working on this project, but figured the other person wasn’t going to be interested. She was right. She needed to get on with pacing out the distance from the little bar up to a certain point on the Rúa da Raíña, where she suspected a tunnel had an egress. That was something she was not going to reveal to the stranger. Yes, so they say: Santiago, the saint’s city, had a lot to hide and a lot to display. The thing was knowing when display would endanger its treasures, as it had with the Berenguela, the bell stolen centuries ago by a Muslim who’d traveled north from far to the south who didn’t speak the language of the Galicians and who probably didn’t give a hoot about what the women of the city thought.

That was more gender stereotyping, and Lavinia was ashamed. On the other hand, she couldn’t tell if she was talking to a man or a woman right now. She wondered if it mattered. 

The conversation was nearly over, but she was the one who had to make that decision. She needed to know who could be trusted with both the questions and the answers, and she needed to know how to ask and listen. 

She was prepared to do that.