“The Castillo de San Marcos. The Spanish built it in the 1600s to protect the settlement from the British, and it worked, too. The town burned a few times, but the fort was only occupied by the English for about twenty years. Considering that Spain had it for a couple of centuries, it’s a pretty good track record. The church is down the street a couple of blocks towards—towards the shrine. We’ll be there in a minute.”

“And there are . . . lions? I like lions.” This sounded like the sort of place a Leo could make herself at home.

“Statues, dear. Not real lions.”

“Oh.” Disappointed but still determined to stay awake, I pressed on with the questions. “What shrine?”

He waggled his fingers towards the window and said something vague about Mary and milk. “There’s a shrine, with a big metal cross. It marks the first place in the New World where Christian mass was ever held. But we’re not going quite that far down the coast.”

“Too bad. That sounds like it might be . . . uh, informative.”

He tossed his shoulders in a quick shrug. “Yes, well, next time we’re passing through I’ll be sure and run you by the gift shop. You can get a mug, or a candle, and feel terrifically blessed, though unless you’re Catholic, I’m not sure why you’d be interested.”

As we drove through the narrow streets, still brick in places, I was strongly reminded of a Mardis Gras trip I took to the Vieux Carré in New Orleans, except that the trimmings were all Spanish instead of French and there were no drunken partyers stumbling along the sidewalks wearing plastic beads. Old stone storefronts with overhanging balconies graced the curbs, and the sense of antiquity was undeniable even in the dark.

This had been a colony for fifty years when the settlers at Jamestown arrived a few states north, and that realization threw my sense of historical perspective askew. Despite what the New England snobs think, this small city is the oldest European civilization in America—or the oldest consistently occupied one, as I would later learn. Anglo-centrists be damned.

When we stopped at a streetlight, a man in full Spanish military silver was perched atop a big brown horse beside us. He shifted his weight in the saddle and the joints in his armor clanked and ground together. A sword hung by his side, down close to my window, almost tapping against the glass by my cheek. The horse snorted and swung its huge head my way, then whinnied and flipped its mane. Its rider wrapped the reins another loop around his wrist and nudged the animal with his heels until it loped into a trot.