by Oakland Ross
“He does what?” he said.
“He refuses to be pardoned.”
It was the sort of thing you needed to hear at least twice before you believed it. Even then, it was a challenge.
Ángela balanced herself on the edge of the wooden settee. She told him she had only just received the news, a half hour ago, maybe less. It was Achille Bazaine who’d told her.
“Bazaine in person?”
“Well … yes.”
“He came here?”
“He would have to, wouldn’t he? To give me the news directly? He would have to come here. I mean, I haven’t been out of this damned house in …” Ángela fell silent. She put her hands down on the settee, as if steadying herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It isn’t your fault. It’s my idiotic brother. Again.”
Diego took a deep breath. Bazaine commanded the French army in Mexico. Would he really have time to attend to a matter such as this in person? It seemed unlikely. It seemed … again Diego shook his head to free himself of unwelcome thoughts. Besides, the issue now was Baldemar.
“Did he say why?”
Ángela nodded. It seemed her brother had formed a bond of friendship with some fellow inmates in the Martinica Prison, a dozen or so, all of them confined to the same subterranean cell. Baldemar refused to accept his own release unless his new comrades were set free as well.
She raised both hands and held them before her, as though some kind of solution were written there. But, of course, it wasn’t. “Goddamn him. The fool.”
The fool? Maybe. Diego suspected that, beneath her distress, she was actually proud of her brother, the stubborn, headstrong hero. She was angry, frustrated, yes, but also proud. He remembered the names of those other men, the compinches of the two thieves who’d waylaid him on the road from Veracruz. Sánchez, Quiñones, Rivera. He wondered if they were among Baldemar’s fellow inmates.
He realized that Ángela was still speaking. She was saying she had presented Bazaine with a possible solution—do as Baldemar demanded. Extend the offer of clemency to the others. What was wrong with that? But the Frenchman had only laughed. He’d made it plain that the prospect of freedom for just one liberal prisoner—even if it was her brother—represented an affront to every French soldier who had died in this war, not to mention every French combatant still living. He was glad this had happened, glad the offer had been refused. And, on that note, the Frenchman had picked up his cap and left the house.
“Charming,” she said. She was silent for a time and did not look at him. Finally, she sighed. “Bien. Así es.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s Baldemar. He won’t change his mind. You know that. You know him as well as I do. He’s too stubborn. But maybe …” Her voice trailed off.
Diego could imagine what she was thinking. Maybe Baldemar wouldn’t change his mind—but the Austrian would. Was that it? If that was what she was hoping—that the new emperor would free all these men, Baldemar and the rest—then she was certain to be disappointed. He shook his head.
“I don’t think so. I can’t conceive of it. One man, yes. But not more, not as his first official act. They’re probably all liberals anyway.”
He sat back, wondering what to do or say next. The truth was, he had a duty—a solemn duty—to rescue Baldemar from death. What was he going to do now?
Just then, a howl erupted in another part of the house. It rose and fell, then rose and fell again. Diego turned to Ángela. He arched his eyebrows. What was that?
She sighed. “Diego …” she said. She eased forward and reached out with one hand, as if to place her palm against his knee, but something made her stop.
“Yes?”
“There is something I have to tell you. I should have told you before. I—”
The howl went up again.
Diego nodded, already knowing what she would say.
“My son,” she said.
He felt hot, light-headed.
“My son,” she repeated. “I have a son.”
Diego tried to focus his thoughts. It was uncommonly warm in the room, and he was finding it difficult to breathe. Dear God. Could it be that Salm-Salm had been right all along? He found it intolerable that the fellow should know more about Ángela than he did himself.
He heard a loud, persistent drone emanating from somewhere in his head, making it difficult to comprehend what she was saying. He realized she was still speaking, but her voice seemed to come from a great distance. It seemed disembodied, distorted. He could make out the individual words but not their collective sense. He forced himself to concentrate. Ángela was saying that the child’s father was Ángel de Iturbide. Diego knew him—rather, knew of him. His father had proclaimed himself emperor of Mexico and had ended his sorry life before a firing squad. The son, Ángel de Iturbide, the man Ángela was speaking of, had grown to be an individual of some property and wealth. Somehow, he and Ángela had met, and a child had been the eventual result. The boy had been conceived in Mexico but born in New York City, where Ángela had pursued the father in hopes of prevailing upon him to take responsibility for his actions. That was never likely—she understood it now—for the man was a notorious philanderer. It was in his blood.
“Diego—are you listening to me?”
“Yes.” And he was listening. He was trying to. Goddamn this ceaseless drone. It was as if his head were on fire.
Ángela continued. Now she was explaining the reason for these visits from the man he knew as the Prince of Salm-Salm but whom she identified as Father Fischer, a Catholic priest. It seemed he had visited her repeatedly. What he wanted was both simple and terrible. He wanted her to give the boy up.
Diego said nothing, just looked at her, trying to take all of it in.
“He wants me to give up my son so that the Austrian and his wife can adopt him.”
“Adopt him?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, as an heir?”
“Exactly. They themselves are without child, and my son is descended from an emperor.”
“An emperor?” He couldn’t believe he was being so stupid, but simply repeating her words seemed to be all that he could manage. “They want you to give him up?”
“Yes. They—what do you think I am saying? Are you listening to me? Father Fischer said exactly that. Give him up.”
“And will you?”
“What?” she practically shrieked. “Of course not. No, no, no.” She buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth on the settee, convulsed in tears. “No. Not ever. Never.”
The child cried out again.
“Ay Dios.” Ángela sprang to her feet, tears still running from her eyes. She begged Diego’s forgiveness—she had to go, to attend to Agustín.
So that was the child’s name.
She left without another word. A maidservant saw Diego from the house. He retrieved his horse and rode off in the direction of the Gran Teatro Nacional. Something drew him there, some faint glimmer of an idea. A banner mounted on the theatre’s facade announced that the forthcoming opera season would commence later in the month—a little more than two weeks away. Ángela—identified on the poster as La Peralta—would star in the opening production, playing the role of Violetta in La Traviata, by Giuseppe Verdi.
Diego reached out with his hand and slammed his knuckles, hard as he could, against one of the Romanesque pillars that stood at the theatre’s entrance.
¡Santa Madre de Jesús!
The pain was impossible to describe.
Then he did it again.
His hand scorched, his vision flamed red, and his eyes welled with tears. He reined his horse around, his fingers burning as if they really were on fire. He had no choice but to keep using his hand—he only had the one. He shifted his heels, and his horse broke into a slow canter.
So much for Ángela. So much for love.
The next day at noon, his hand wrapped in bandages, Diego rode to the National Palace, meaning to confront Salm-Salm.
He needed to know what the so-called prince was up to. Why was he tormenting Ángela? And why dress up as a priest?
When he reached the Zócalo, Diego slowed his horse to a trot and proceeded along the cobbled perimeter of the great plaza. He decided to enter by the porte cochère located well back from the main gates. Once there, he informed a guard that he had come to speak to the Prince of Salm-Salm. Minutes later, he was received by the prince in a gloomy antechamber with cracked plaster mouldings. The carpets were badly worn, and a dark gelatinous substance clung to the ceiling in one corner, dripping a viscous liquid onto the floor. Diego took a seat in a wobbly ladder-back chair. He sniffed suspiciously at the air.
“Black mould,” said Salm-Salm. “I’m surprised the place is still standing.”
Diego shrugged. No wonder the Europeans were desperate to leave.
“You have spoken to Ángela Peralta, I take it,” said Salm-Salm.
Diego frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“To judge by the condition of your hand.”
“Ah yes. Yes, I have.”
“I fear you must be in some pain.”
“A subjective notion.”
“Not in my experience.”
Diego took a deep breath and, without additional formalities, he recited all that he had learned from Ángela. He focused especially on Salm-Salm’s desire that she renounce her son. “Is it true?”
The prince settled back into his creaking swivel chair. He set the heels of his shoes atop an ancient wooden desk, crossing his legs at the ankles. He exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke that coiled into the murky light. He smiled at Diego for what seemed an inordinately long time. Only then did he speak. It was, of course, well known, he said, that Maximilian and Charlotte were without offspring, despite seven years of marriage. Naturally, the empress craved a child, and for all the usual reasons, having nothing to do with establishing a line of succession and everything to do with what many a woman in the prime of her child-bearing years might reasonably feel.
Diego tried to remain quiet. What he really wanted was a shouting match, not a civilized conversation, but he understood that a shouting match would accomplish little, as gratifying as it might be. “They cannot produce a child on their own?” he said.
“Well, they haven’t managed it yet, after seven years. Make of that what you will.”
“What do you make of it?”
The prince gazed about the room, then looked back at Diego. He lowered his feet to the floor. He leaned closer, his complexion seeming paler than ever. Did the man not go out in the sun?
“Most people believe that Max is the party at fault,” he said in what was almost a whisper. He explained that Maximilian had made a journey to Brazil several years earlier to visit his cousin, Dom Pedro II, who was emperor of that distant and mysterious land. It was rumoured that, while there, Max had conducted an amorous affair with a Brazilian woman of a certain station, a woman who frequented the court. He had thereby contracted an unidentified infirmity that had left him sterile, or so it was said.
“Tit for tat,” said Salm-Salm. He sat back. “We gave you smallpox. You give us syphilis.”
When Diego failed to react, he smiled.
“A joke.”
Still Diego said nothing.
The prince briefly contemplated his cigarette. Whatever its cause, he said, the condition seemed to be of a permanent nature, and it imperilled the future of what Salm-Salm now grandly referred to as the Second Mexican Empire. The first Mexican empire had of course consisted of the brief reign of Agustín de Iturbide, grandfather of Ángela’s son.
“Bastard son,” said Diego. “The child is a bastard.”
“Not at all.” Salm-Salm rose to his feet and began to pace about the room. “Nothing of the sort. The couple are married. All perfectly legal. Who knows what Iturbide was thinking? A moment of weakness? An attack of remorse? Maybe he was drunk. But he and Ángela Peralta were married in New York City. I possess an affidavit sworn out by an attorney of the firm Tweed, Bascombe, attesting to this fact. It is all quite in order.”
Diego waved dismissively, as if this were nothing to him now. “Where is Iturbide?”
“Oh, God knows.” Salm-Salm gestured in the air with his cigarette. “Still out whoring with showgirls, I imagine, in New York or Madrid. The marriage with Ángela Peralta was a deceit from the beginning. Still, it’s perfectly legal. The boy is the legitimate grandson of an emperor.”
“A self-proclaimed emperor. Executed by a firing squad.”
“Sad to say.” Salm-Salm shook his head in a brief show of sympathy for the former ruler, then quickly smiled. “But the child possesses the necessary pedigree. That’s the important thing.”
“I wonder why you told me none of this before.”
“Oh, but I did,” said Salm-Salm. “In Veracruz—don’t you remember? I told you that Ángela Peralta had borne a child.”
“That much, yes. But none of all this. Imperial lineage. Affidavits. The rest.” He paused. “Why not?”
“Surely it’s obvious,” said the prince. He let his cigarette fall to the floor, where he ground it out with the toe of his shoe. He looked up. “You didn’t ask. You didn’t want to know.” He clasped his hands behind his back, rocked on his heels. “But now you do know—and I have a proposal to make.”
Diego had expected something of the sort. “Yes?” he said.
It was simple, said the German. Ángela would surrender her son to the emperor and empress. In exchange, Maximilian would pardon Baldemar as well as his new-found compañeros, all inmates at the Martinica Prison. Salm-Salm made a gesture of washing his hands. “Finished and done.”
“Her son for her brother?”
“Crassly put. But yes.”
“I take it the Austrian—the emperor, I mean … he has agreed to this?”
Salm-Salm’s expression darkened a fraction. “Not exactly.”
“You mean he hasn’t agreed to it?”
“Not yet. But he must. Without an heir, the empire lacks legitimacy and, without legitimacy, it is nothing.”
“What of Bazaine?”
“What of him?”
“He was furious about the original pardon.”
“I fail to see how that matters.”
“Well, he’s bound to be even more opposed to this arrangement.”
“So he is,” said Salm-Salm. “But Bazaine is not the ruler here.”
“And you think you can persuade the emperor to accept this bargain—a pardon in exchange for an heir?”
“I do.” Salm-Salm began to pace about the room again, alternately smoothing his hair and adjusting his frock coat. “In any event, there is no choice.” He stopped. “That reminds me. You received an invitation from His Majesty, I believe—an audience? Two days from now?”
“Yes. That’s right.” The reason for the invitation remained a mystery, but Diego saw no reason not to acknowledge it.
“Well, it’s cancelled. Postponed, anyway.”
“It is? Why?”
“I spoke out against it.” Salm-Salm shrugged. “Sorry, but it’s true. No reflection on you. It really has to do with the emperor’s secretary. Very ill. They say it’s the yellow fever. Poor man. Anyhow, this is not a good time.”
He returned to his desk and began to poke through the drawers. In short order, he produced a bottle, half full, of what turned out to be an exquisite French brandy. He also came up with two crystal goblets, both embossed with the monogram MIM.
“Maximilianus Imperator Mexici,” he explained once again. He said the same monogram had been emblazoned on almost everything the Austrian owned, all of it newly purchased from the best suppliers in Europe. He uncorked the bottle and began to pour out two glasses, but something made him hesitate.
“Oh,” he said. “Your hand. The bandages. I forgot.”
“I’ll manage.” Diego was in need of a drink. He accepted a glass and lifted it gingerly. He studied the liquid, the way the oblique light filte
red through it, the colour shifting from bronze to gold. He had already more or less forgotten about the Austrian’s puzzling summons and, now, its abrupt cancellation. He was thinking instead of Salm-Salm’s proposal—Ángela’s son in exchange for Baldemar’s freedom. It was impossible, of course. Only a monster would put any woman in such a position, much less Ángela Peralta. Force her to choose between a brother and a son? It was unthinkable—especially if there were any other way to save Baldemar, and it so happened there was. At least, he thought there might be. The rough shape of a plan had occurred to him the previous day as he rode past the Gran Teatro Nacional. The memory of that incident sharpened the pain still coursing through his hand. He took another swallow of brandy. The drink calmed him a little, and his idea seemed to harden in his mind, take on greater detail. Maybe, just maybe, a woman would do something out of gratitude that she would never do under duress.
“You haven’t answered my question,” said Salm-Salm.
“It isn’t up to me.”
“But you’ll talk to our friend Ángela?”
Diego bridled. ‘Our friend’? What did that mean? But instead of protesting, he merely shrugged. “I’ll try. I’ll do what I can.”
“I’m counting on you.”
“Yes. Well …” Diego gazed around the room. He had another thought. “The emperor,” he said. “Would it be your judgment that he is governed by the head or by the heart?”
“Why do you ask?”
In fact, Diego was thinking about this scheme that was taking shape in his mind—his plan for Baldemar’s rescue. Much would depend on the Austrian. But he didn’t say so. “I’m just curious,” he said.
“How quaint.” Salm-Salm flicked a trace of lint from the collar of his frock coat. He frowned. “‘Just curious’? Really? Nothing more?”
“That’s right.”
“I see. Well, since you ask, I would say the answer is quite clear. By the heart. Max will always behave according to the dictates of the heart.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“Oh yes. It is a great weakness in him, a great weakness in anyone. But he is a younger brother, you see, and suffers a younger brother’s frailties.” Salm-Salm smiled and raised his glass. “Like you.”