On a burning autumn afternoon, in the Sixteenth Century, which had then passed its meridian by rather more than ten years, Don Fray Tomas de San Martin, the stately prior of the great Franciscan monastery of Ciudad de los Reyes, now called Lima, was sitting alone in his private apartment… In spite of physical languor and exhaustion, an expression of satisfaction lit up his countenance as he finished his second careful perusal of a letter he held in his hand. Then he laid the document on the table before him, pausing, however, to glance, with a slight smile, at the pompous armorial bearings inscribed on the seals with which the floss silk that bound it had been secured.

Author

Deborah Alcock (1835-1913) was a prolific Victorian author of historical fiction on religious themes. She was born in Ireland, where her father, the Venerable John Alcock, became Archdeacon of Waterford. She also wrote The Czar (1882), Under the Southern Cross: Tales of the New World (1900), and Under Calvin’s Spell (1902).