“Scads. But we do know Valladolid was the chief residence of the kings of Castile. Ferdinand and Isabella were married here and Columbus died here. Cervantes wrote part of Don Quixote here.”

“I’m impressed,” said Sam. “And I’m serious.”

Their last stop was the Colegio de San Gregorio, where Las Casas lived for several years after he returned from the New World. They walked to the front of the great stone building as Remi checked her guidebook. “The portal to the chapel—the building in front of us—was built by Alonso de Burgos, confessor to Queen Isabella, in 1488. The chapel itself was finished in 1490.” She looked down at the stones of the pavement. “So, right now, we’re standing where Columbus, Queen Isabella, and Ferdinand probably stood.”

“Not to mention Bartolomé de Las Casas,” Sam said quietly. “It’s really an amazing piece of architecture.”

“Las Casas came here to live in 1551. He rented a cell in the college. During this period, he was very influential at Emperor Charles V’s court. He died in 1566, in Madrid, but left his extensive library to the college. Our next mission is to see if we can find it.”

On the other side of the street there was a gaggle of German tourists being led by a tall blond woman who was lecturing them on the sights. In the center of the group were the two men who had followed Sam and Remi to Spain, Russell and Ruiz. When Sam and Remi stepped into the entrance, Russell and Ruiz separated themselves from the German tourists and moved down the street to watch the chapel from a distance.

Sam and Remi walked through the entrance and into the chapel. It was a dream of white stone, carved and polished five hundred years ago and still the same in the echoing silence as though time had only passed by outside, not in here.

“The upper tier must be where Las Casas rented his room,” said Sam, “and where he wrote his last few books.”

They walked through the college while Remi scanned the guidebook. “Life wasn’t all pretty here,” she said. “In 1559, the Inquisition burned twenty-seven people at the stake in Valladolid. And, at one point, an enemy denounced Las Casas to the Inquisitors too, but the accusation didn’t go anywhere. When Las Casas signed over the rights to his History of the Indies to the college, he added the condition that it not be published until forty years passed. He said that if God destroyed Spain for its sins, he wanted people in the future to know what exactly they had done wrong—they had treated the Indians with such cruelty.”