Feb 2
The Murder at Ermita de la Trinitat.
The true story about Saint Cecile & The Three Coins.
On the evening of April 7th, 1872, Cecile de Marie was raped, murdered, and mutilated by one of the monks of Ermita de la Trinitat on her way home along the Moro trail between Valldemossa and Deia.
Miss Cecile worked as a young maid at the Bauzà estate in Deia and knew the trail that took her from her family home in Valldemosa, past the chapel, and down through the forest beneath the north side of the Talaia Peak, by heart. Every morning, through winter and rain, mud and snow, or beneath the burning summer sun, she carried the basket her mother prepared with bread, cheese, and olives, and every evening she returned with daily supplies from the local market.
The young monk Ernesto Sanches had been placed in the monastery as a favor from the Abbott to his father, Señor Mateo Sanches, who had grown impatient with the young boy’s incapability of choosing a craft.
Señor Sanches, a beloved stonemason at the time, refused to watch his son take over the masonry with neither interest nor skill. And after helping the monks repair the eastern wall, he allegedly pledged to the Abbott to relieve him of these painful thoughts and offer his son the firm hand of the secluded monastery.
The Abbott kindly obliged and had a bed and a cowl prepared for the young man by the following month. But, since young Ernesto lacked all knowledge of anything regarding the daily care of a monastery, he was placed doing the simplest of chores.
The Moro trail stretches beneath the Talaia Peak and passes the chapel alongside the southern wall. As you pass the main gate, there’s a sudden view of the sea, and the otherwise shaded trail opens up as a bright welcome. There’s a well there for those who arrive thirsty and benches among the trees for those who need a rest.
On the evening of April 7th, when Cecile de Marie was on her way home, young Ernesto, who had spent enough time doing nonsensical jobs to learn her routines, waited further up by the wall, right where the trail disappeared back into the shades.
The attack was immediate.
Miss Cecile was grabbed and slammed several times into the wall before Ernesto raped her with both hands and knife. During the act, he cut her chest and stabbed the side of her head. Then he strangled her while repeatedly beating the back of her skull on the stony ground.
Three silver coins had fallen from her apron when the other monks found her. “For luck”, her mother later told the local police, but the men who carried the lifeless body of Cecile de Marie into the courtyard watched her die by the gates as the Abbott gave the final blessings. And while young Ernesto Sanches hid in the forest like the coward he was, the monk’s prayers are said to have saved her from the cold eternal shadows of Sa Talaia.
That same night, young Ernesto cried for shelter in the chapel as the angry mob chased him out of the forest. The Abbott’s plea for forgiveness echoed emptily as the young boy got pulled out from the courtyard with a rope around his neck.
There’s no record of what happened next. It is said the birds stopped singing as desperate screams echoed through the forest before the crowd went their separate ways along the Moro trail in silence.
Señor Sanches claims he found his son’s mutilated body hanging head down from a tree two days later. He cut it down, made a bonfire of dry wood, and waited out the flames until the following morning. Then he supposedly left, leaving nothing behind. There’s no sign, no cross, or carved name, so nobody knows. Apart from his horrific deeds, young Ernesto Sanches never existed.
The sun slowly rose over the Tramuntanas as Señor Sanches took the Moro trail back toward his home in Deia. With hands dirty from the bonfire and a face slightly reddened by the flames, he moved quickly on the path while his mind wandered its own way.
At the height of the Moorish castle, he caught up with a young maid walking hand in hand with a small boy. The maid carried her basket with bread, cheese, and olives, partly covered by a folded apron, while the boy played with a thin olive branch.
As the young maid stepped aside to give way, she called him by name and asked, ‘Why this rush?’.
Señor Mateo Sanches, known as a polite and kind man, stopped when he heard his name but was still too absent-minded to utter anything coherent. But while the young maid continued by kindly proclaiming there couldn’t be any other place more important than being in the midst of this beautiful morning, Señor Sanches managed to apologize before stumbling out his first question.
‘Have we met before?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ she answered.
The young maid smiled, and as they all continued down the trail Señor Sanches, worried that his dark night would stain if shared, hid behind his age.
‘Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling a forgetful old man what he’s missing?’
The young maid stopped. She tightened the grip of the boy’s hand and looked at Señor Sanches. ‘I’m the one who will save you from the ashes of your bonfire.’
Señor Sanches already knew but couldn’t let it go before asking the last question.
‘And the boy?’
Cecile de Marie answered with a smile.
‘You know who it is.’
‘Could you tell me anyway?’
Señor Mateo Sanches’ feet froze, and as Cecile gently wiped a tear from his face, she said, “He’s here to take me home”. He tried to reach her, but with just a few steps, Cecile de Marie and the young boy were gone and out of sight.
It was already high noon when Señor Sanches rushed in through the chapel gates, shoutingly putting a halt to the sermon. And while all eyes turned toward him, no one knew how to answer.
According to the monastery log, the Abbott cleared the chapel, locked the doors, and sat in silence with Señor Sanches until he got all his grief released. And it’s said that the tears of a father who believed he had failed still fall on the floor.
From that day, Señor Mateo Sanches spent his mornings on the Moro trail, hoping he would meet the fair maiden again, always welcomed by the Abbott to either quench his thirst in the heat or dry his shoes in the cold. And as the months and years passed, his stay at the chapel grew a little longer until he one day never went back.
He carved the memory of the maid and the boy into a stone that the Abbott let him mount on the left side of the chapel gates, and legend has it that behind the stone lie three silver coins.
/// M.
