by Oakland Ross
“Shh.” It was the girl.
“What are you scheming at out there? What are you plotting? Tell me.” Salm-Salm called from where he stood at the foot of the bed.
The healer seemed to recognize trouble and told the prince that hot water was needed, the hotter, the better. “At once,” he said. “Please. It is vital.”
Salm-Salm heaved a sigh of impatience, but he did as instructed. He marched downstairs and soon could be heard calling for water.
Don Plutarco turned to Diego. He asked if the emperor’s fragile state might not be complicated by some underlying condition. A mental upset, perhaps?
Diego briefly described the experience he had shared with Maximiliano that afternoon, the episode he not yet mentioned to any of the others—the pile of human bones heaped beyond the lagoon, deep in the shining caves. He spoke in a whisper.
The curandero nodded and gazed at the girl. She glanced up at Diego with a look that seemed to say she had suspected something of the kind all along, that she had known the poison was weak and had thought the emperor’s distress must have some other cause.
“What is going on?” The empress called from the bedroom. “What does the man say? This is madness. I demand a proper physician.”
Padre Buendía was at the stair landing. He assured the empress that he would send for a conventional doctor the instant it proved necessary, but he believed it might be as well to bear with don Plutarco for a time. He had never known the man to fail.
“I don’t understand,” said Carlota. She put a hand to her forehead and stared at the floor.
“In any case,” said the priest, “there is no doctor within easy travelling distance. It would take a day at least, perhaps two, to summon a physician here.”
Carlota gasped at this news. She took one of Maximiliano’s hands in both of hers. “There, there. Be calm, my love. Be brave.”
The emperor made a sound of acknowledgment, a low sort of moan.
Don Plutarco gazed back toward the room. “Poison or no poison,” he said to Diego and the girl, “the cure is the same.”
He began at once. He turned and shuffled into the bedroom, knelt beside the emperor, and murmured a series of incantations in his Indian tongue, Nahuatl, the ancient language of the central Mexican highlands.
Salm-Salm marched back up the stairs and settled himself in a low bench in a corner of the room by the window. “The water’s on its way,” he said to no one in particular. He fidgeted with his hands. Suddenly, he sprang to his feet and pushed the bench aside. He confronted Diego in the doorway, stabbing at him with a single outstretched finger.
“This is all your fault,” he said, his voice strained with anger. “You have placed the empire in the gravest peril.” He looked around at the small gathering. “Pray God he survives. Meanwhile, I must return to Mexico City without delay. The question of an heir must be resolved.”
He said he meant to ride to the hacienda at Cocoyotla immediately. He would inform those at the hacienda of the misfortune that had befallen the emperor. “Otherwise, they will think we have been attacked by highwaymen, robbed and murdered.”
Following a brief conference with his wife in the hallway, Salm-Salm gave a nod of farewell, turned, and bounded down the stairs, two at a time. The princess returned to the bedroom and perched on the bench just vacated by her husband. She seemed the embodiment of sang-froid.
“He’ll stop at Cuernavaca and then continue straight on to Mexico City,” she said.
The Count Kollonitz whistled. “That’s a three-day ride.”
“Then he will ride for three days,” said the princess. “He’s that stubborn. Besides, he’s terrified the emperor will die.”
Carlota turned and glared at the woman. “Max is not going to die.”
“I know that. It would take more than a little scorpion sting to kill a Hapsburg. But try telling that to Felix.”
“He certainly seemed upset,” said Diego.
“It’s just as I say. He’s scared out of his mind that Max will perish without an heir. It’s an obsession. It’s all he thinks about.”
“But why rush back to Mexico City?” said the count. “What can he do there?”
“Talk to the archbishop,” the princess replied in her usual matter-of-fact tone. “They’ve become great friends, you know.”
Diego would have liked to continue the conversation, but don Plutarco interrupted them.
“Bring me brandy,” he said, addressing Diego. “And where is the water? We need boiling water, bolts of silk, and pine gum.”
Apart from incantations in Nahuatl, the emperor’s treatment seemed mainly to involve the frequent and copious administration of brandy. The curandero poured each draft from a crystal decanter that Diego had retrieved from the dining room.
Meanwhile, a pair of kitchen servants ferried boiling water into the bedroom in a succession of pots. They set the steaming containers on the bedroom floor and added resin of pine gum to the water before covering the vessels with bolts of silk. Soon, clouds of aromatic vapour swirled through the room, redolent of the high Mexican hills and of evergreen.
Don Plutarco asked everyone to leave so that he might be alone with the emperor for a time. Carlota resisted at first, but Padre Buendía assured her that all would be well, and so she trekked downstairs along with the others. The company huddled in the main salon, where they could hear muffled snatches of conversation from the bedroom upstairs. It was evident that don Plutarco and the emperor were involved in intense conversation, but it was impossible to determine what was being said.
Half an hour passed before the Indian healer appeared on the landing to say the treatment had been completed. Carlota hurried back upstairs, followed by a few of the others. The emperor was sufficiently revived that he was able to acknowledge each of them in turn, holding eye contact and nodding. He seemed both calm and self-possessed and was even able to speak, albeit in brief snatches. Whatever don Plutarco had done while the two men were alone, it had evidently worked.
The empress ran her hand across her husband’s forehead and caressed his hair, but Maximiliano no longer responded, and for good reason. It seemed he had fallen asleep. Don Plutarco said there was no longer any danger and His Majesty would pass the night in peace.
The following morning, the emperor was well enough to take a turn in the garden. He asked Diego to join him, and the two strolled among the mulberry shrubs and citrus trees. Maximiliano apologized for the events of the previous day.
“There is no need,” said Diego. “Your Majesty—”
“I always worry when you remember to call me that.”
Maximiliano said there was something he wished to say. He eased closer to Diego, lowering his voice, and Diego sensed a warmth in his chest, at once strange and familiar, the return of a welcome but long-absent feeling—it seemed they were confederates again. The emperor explained in a whisper that he had long suffered a horror of bones, and he thought he understood why. His older brother, Franz Josef, now ruler of the Austrian Empire, had tormented him when they both were young, telling him all sorts of lurid stories involving corpses, disfigured faces, and mutilated limbs. Limbs and bones. Those experiences had marked him deeply and must have played some role in his behaviour the previous day.
“I know the scorpion bite was harmless,” he said. “Or at least I know it now. It was all those terrible bones. They made me think of my brother’s stories.” He shuddered. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved. You must be disappointed.”
Diego began to deny it, but the emperor waved him off.
“You may think me a weakling, but I assure you I am not.”
Diego looked down at the grass. He had been considered a weakling himself once and, now that he had just one arm, he was a weakling. A weakling, squared.
Maximiliano said he was greatly in the debt of the Indian man who had ministered to him the evening before. “He told me things. He made me understand what was going on. The bones. My brother. The scorpion. They are all of
a piece. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Diego said he thought he did. In a way, the emperor was merely confirming what Diego already knew. Every man has his weaknesses, and there is no shame in it, or not necessarily. What is important is to face up to weakness and not back down. It seemed the emperor was doing that. Diego smiled.
“You can forgive me?” said Maximiliano.
“Yes, of course. There’s no—”
“Friends?” His Majesty offered his hand.
“Friends,” said Diego.
They shook hands and then embraced, a Mexican abrazo.
The travellers spent that day and the ensuing night in Taxco. By the second morning of their stay, the emperor was almost fully restored, and the entire party set out early for the return journey to the hacienda at Cocoyotla.
As for Beatríz, she said she was mystified about the boneyard Diego and Maximiliano had found at the edge of the subterranean lagoon. She’d had no knowledge of its existence, and Diego had no trouble believing her. She wanted to convey her apologies to the emperor, but he suggested it was unlikely that Maximiliano needed reminding.
“Very well,” she said. “I have faith in your judgment.”
Before leaving Taxco, Diego spoke privately with Padre Buendía. The priest said he had no information about Ángela Peralta or her whereabouts, or those of her son, but he thought he might be able to acquire some intelligence on both counts. There was within the Church a network of priests who subscribed to liberal principles and were unhappy with the present hierarchy. He would make inquiries and report to Diego in the strictest confidence.
They shook hands, and Diego strode out into the stable yard, where his horse was waiting along with the rest of the party. The priest gave him a leg up and handed him the reins. Almost at once, the emperor guided his horse alongside Diego’s.
“Ride with me, Serrano,” he said. “Let us speak of happy things.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Diego’s heart seemed to swell.
“Let us be off, then,” said Bombelles. The Austrian officer reined his horse around and began the long journey home. The others all followed.
PART THREE
THE FAT MAN WITH GLASSES
CHAPTER 25
IT WAS LATE AT NIGHT. After stabling his horse near the Plaza Santa Cecilia, Diego ambled along the rain-dark street, picking his way through the mud and dung, trying to avoid the beggars and hawkers. Suddenly, a wiry trollop hailed him with a cackle, followed by a disgusting proposition.
He waved her away. “¡Váyase!”
Normally, such a hag would have taken him at his word, but this woman proved more persistent.
“Go away,” he repeated.
She replied that, as a manco—a man with just one arm—he might have need of her assistance in order to gratify himself, as she put it. It was a service she would be only too happy to provide.
“I said no!”
Diego turned upon the woman and would have applied a well-aimed boot had the creature not begun to laugh in a throaty voice that soon betrayed its owner—Baldemar. The two men embraced. Even dressed as an old whore, Baldemar seemed in much improved condition, his frame at least somewhat filled out, his complexion far less sallow, no sign of the terrible rash he had suffered previously.
They quickly found their way to their usual haunt, a dark and creaking place hidden away from prying eyes. Over jars of pulque, Baldemar announced that he was a gamberro now—an outlaw, as such men were called by Mexico’s conservatives, who refused to flatter their enemies by calling them soldiers. Baldemar and several dozen other men, including those who had been freed with him from the Martinica Prison, were honouring a pact they had made while under sentence of death. They were dwelling among the people. They were fighting the monarchists and the French. Their numbers had grown, and they continued to grow.
“It began with Márquez,” Baldemar said. “When we handed him and his men over to the French in Veracruz, they gave us three hundred reals apiece. A thousand for Márquez. Not only that, but they agreed to open the prison at San Juan de Ulúa and set the inmates free. Nearly a hundred of them. We promised each man a carbine and a horse, and they all joined up with us. Well, most of them did. They call me el Gordo de las Gafas.”
The fat man with glasses.
The name had gained currency even though Baldemar was anything but fat nowadays. But he did wear glasses, a pair of green-tinted lenses that gave him a mysterious air, at once studious and daring. Already, he and his fellow gamberros had fought several battles in the rugged, precipitous lands to the east. They had taken dozens of prisoners each time. And, each time, Baldemar had followed a remarkable course, his signal inspiration. He actually set his prisoners free, something almost unheard of in Mexico, where prisoners taken in combat normally stood an excellent prospect of torture followed by execution. Word of this practice had spread widely, giving him a decisive advantage in battle.
“It means our enemies don’t fight so much,” he said. “There’s no need to battle to the death. What would be the point? They might as well give themselves up. They know we won’t kill them. A lot of them turn coats and join our side. The rest go back to their wives.”
To the people who dwelled in the hill country to the east and on the coastal flats, Baldemar had already become a hero, a legend. As he spoke of this newly won status he betrayed no trace of false modesty but no boastfulness, either. It wasn’t a hollow claim but simple fact.
“I should have killed Márquez, though,” he said. “I can see that now. I should have put him under while I had the chance.”
“Why?”
“He’s put together his own band of fighters. They’re based in Tampico.” Baldemar spat on the floor. “Murdering scum. People call them the Blue Butchers on account of their uniforms.” Baldemar tipped back his drink, swallowed, wiped his lips. “He means to kill me.”
“That surprises you?”
“No. It’s just that he can’t. I have a claim on his soul. Remember?”
Diego did remember. But he wasn’t so sure any longer that Baldemar was right. Other men might abide by that ancient code of honour. But Márquez? He glanced up at the barman, and motioned for their glasses to be refilled. He changed the subject. “What about Ángela?”
“I hear you spoke to Padre Buendía. In Taxco.”
“I did. How did you know?”
Baldemar shrugged. “These priests,” he said. “Anyway, I’m sure he’ll find her—or at least find out where she is. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Then what?”
“Then we spring her loose. Or I do. You won’t be in Mexico when that happens.”
“I won’t?”
“No, you won’t.”
Diego gazed at his surroundings, the murky light of the pulquería, the wavering candles, the half-illuminated men hunched over their crude irregular glasses. He had no idea what Baldemar was getting at, but he had little doubt that something was about to change and that he would have little say in the matter. He owed Baldemar a debt he could never hope to repay. But, unlike the Tiger of Tacubaya, he would keep chipping away at it just the same. He knew it, and Baldemar knew it, too.
But still his friend said nothing further on this subject he’d just raised.
Finally, Diego banged his palm against the wooden counter. “If I’m not in Mexico,” he said, “then where the hell will I be?”
Baldemar turned his jar around in a circle on the bar. Then he turned it around again. “In Washington,” he said. “In Washington, District of Columbia.”
Diego looked down at the milky surface of his drink. He lifted the jar to his lips, tipped it back, felt the liquid well in his throat. He swallowed. He hadn’t expected this, and he had no idea what it meant. But there it was again. He wasn’t a free man yet. He knew he had only to wait and sip his drink, and eventually Baldemar would get around to explaining what all this was about. Eventually, Baldemar did.
“Fine,” Diego said when
his friend was done explaining, although it wasn’t fine at all. But he would do it because he had a duty to uphold. Besides, who knew where it all might lead? He was the servant of two masters and did not have the luxury of knowing anything for certain.
Out on the street, in the chill nighttime breeze, the two parted company and walked off in contrary directions yet again.
It was either a very good time or a very bad time to be leaving Mexico. Diego couldn’t decide which.
Since his return to the capital, the emperor seemed to have recovered from his strange ordeal at the shining caves and had thrown himself back into his daily round of duties and recreations. He rose early, as always. He continued to work on his magnum opus, codifying the innumerable protocols and formalities that pertained to the imperial court. He rode through the countryside near Chapultepec. He signed decrees. He visited orphanages. He received petitioners. He presided at receptions and balls. He appointed and sacked ministers so frequently that Diego sometimes wondered whether his own job was safe. But, no matter how quickly he lost patience with others, the emperor seemed to have an abiding faith in his one-armed secretary.
In most ways, everything was just as it had been before. Still, something had changed. The trauma Maximiliano had suffered that day in the rugged lands beyond Cuernavaca had left its mark. He did not talk about the cache of bones he and Diego had discovered. For the most part, he did not refer to the scorpion sting or the ensuing drama, but it was clear the experience had affected him deeply. He seemed distracted at times. He made excuses and neglected some of his former duties, eager to escape the endless ceremonies and rituals of high office. He began to take an inordinate interest in what seemed to be marginal enterprises—pet projects of his own devising. He began to absent himself more often from the capital. Diego could only speculate about what had changed or why. But when he looked back on that foray to the shining caves, he sometimes wondered whether Maximiliano had discovered in that excess of bones some premonition of his own death.
If the emperor spoke of that day at all, it was to recall the curandero in Taxco, his soothing, sympathetic ways. Once or twice he even called for pots of boiling water and pine gum to be set up in his study, so that he might purify his lungs while dictating his correspondence. Mindful that don Plutarco was of native blood, Maximiliano developed a new interest in Mexico’s indigenous people. He officially declared himself “Protector of the Indians” and formally outlawed the practice of debt peonage. These measures produced no practical benefit as far as Diego could tell, but they did cause additional grumbling among the Mexicans at court and further alienated the emperor from the Church.