“An eagle?”
“An eagle—exacto. Or a vulture, though I know of no emperor who kept a vulture. But for hunting there is nothing like a falcon. Marco Polo’s friend the Emperor of Cathay never went on a hunt with fewer than ten thousand falconers. What do you think of that?” he said, giving my knee a jocular tap. “Eh? Well yes, as you say … I’ve always thought ten thousand a lot myself. But you know, Pope Leo† was just as mad for falcons, as was only natural for one of his noble ancestry. And during his time, it is said, bishops all across Christendom wrote countless letters of admonishment: nuns were not to disrupt Mass—or come to confession either—with their falcons and bells. Letters uniformly ignored, for the ladies knew perfectly well that no mere bishop would stand against the Pope on this subject. Nun-falconers, Angelina. Imagine that!”
His arm around my shoulders, we sat silently for a moment watching the sun slump behind the hills, scanning the sky with the eyes of hawks. “And yours, Juanita, what kind were they, these five?” I didn’t know what kind. I supposed there were a lot?
“A lot?—all kinds. Lanners, gyrfalcons, peregrines. And merlins—very game for their size. I have heard of them attacking even herons. There was a book … Dios mio, I’d almost forgotten. El libro de la caza…. The favourite book of all my boyhood after that day on the riverbank. Don Pedro López de Ayala wrote it out in a Lisbon prison after the fiasco at Aljubarrota. His and King Frederick’s were the two greatest masterpieces ever drafted on the art of the falconers.”
He glanced at me to see if the topic of books might still be a painful one, then rose stiffly to his feet, putting a hand to the small of his back. “And how is it, I ask myself, that I have neither of them now? Then you could have found for me an engraving, shown me these falcons of yours. You know, Angel, you were right after all. It is high time I made a little trip to Mexico City.”
My stomach dropped. No, no, he assured me, he’d been meaning to go for some time, but I couldn’t persuade myself that he was not going just for me. I felt the gentle yoke of his arm across my shoulders…. Not now. To be apart from him was the last thing I wanted. Not even at the thought of him pulling into the courtyard with a whole wagonload of books. This grand notion only came briefly to me the next morning anyway, as I watched the wagon my grandfather drove disappearing up the road. For the first in all the times I had watched him leave, he was not on horseback.
What I was thinking now was war. Now—with Abuelo away. If a preening varlet in charreteras†—who I felt sure had hardly finished a book in his life—could just stroll into our library, now was very much the time. Grandfather would not be here to see me at my worst and be ashamed for me. Once I hit upon my strategy, I steeled myself to act very badly indeed.
Our perennial dinner guest was not remotely like my father, had none of the qualities I might envy him on my father’s part. Neither vital nor mysterious, not noble, nor in any discernible way intelligent. So it had not been long before I was back reading at the table. Isabel gave no sign of minding. It was not that she had grown so very flexible in her ideas of etiquette, however; it was that he was no longer quite a guest. He sat on my right, while on my left Abuelo would sit hunched at what I thought of as the head of the table. Very occasionally my grandfather might speak with Diego on some military question, rumours of a disturbance or unrest at one end of the territory or other. The lance-captain replied sparingly, as though invested with a chaste secret, or with what struck not just me but Abuelo too, I suspected, as an affectation of modesty.
Once Abuelo left for Mexico hostilities got underway. At supper Josefa fairly glistened in Diego’s company, as she had ever since their return from Chalco—she and María both, like porcelain, though I had not yet found out why, eyes glazed, they so brightly basked in our guest’s proximidad varonil,† in the radiant kiln of his smile. At least his teeth were straight. And he did have a thick head of wavy hair, almost black. The beard was of a rich oily black like a Moor’s. I knew little of men’s grooming, but those sweeping moustaches had always seemed not so much fashionable as the very locus of his vanity. Then there was the dashing uniform my sisters made so much of. Did no one notice him spilling food on it? Compared to the designs of Jacobi Topf, what a paltry thing that uniform was—all cloth, clusters and buttons. Less like a fighting soldier’s armour than a court juggler’s motley. As different as a pauldron was from an epaulette. And he may very well have danced splendidly, as Josefa insisted, but I’d have liked Amanda’s opinion before conceding even that.
Tonight for el plato principal was a fiery manchamanteles.† Stew green chillies for a full two days. Mix with roasted sesame seeds. Grind in mortar. Fry with chicken, sliced banana, apple, sweet potato.
Season as necessary.
Not for the first time I watched our parlour warrior displaying now the most sweetly piquant delicacy of constitution: sinuses and pores that fairly gushed at the slightest spiciness—making, to be sure, the stores accumulating there in the pilose pantry of his upper lip all the more savoury, despite all the hapless daubing and wiping of his overmatched napkin.
Isabel had known I was up to something from the instant I took up my station—without a book—next to Diego. And as I started in, those huge black eyes fixed me with such a look, as I addressed our military attachment with the first words I had ever spoken to him other than in answer to a direct question. What did he think of our little library? Surely in his travels he had seen much finer. Did he find anything in there he liked yesterday, had he flipped perhaps through a book or two? What were his own favourites and beloved authors? Novels of adventure, I guessed, as was only natural for a gentleman of action, but surely too the epics of chivalry, the exploits of the great knights, must fairly course through his veins—El Cid, Orlando. Why, he must be able to recite whole reams by heart as easily as breathing. On a day, that is, when his nostrils were less burdened. His martial intelligence could no doubt call upon vast stores of verses with which to inspire his men before a campaign. Like this one, wasn’t it fine?
When to gather in the taxes went forth the Campeador,
Many rich goods he garnered, but he only kept the best.
Therefore this accusation against him was addressed.
And now two mighty coffers full of pure gold hath he.
Why he lost the King’s favor a man may lightly see.
He has left his halls and houses, his meadow and his field,
And the chests he cannot bring you lest he should stand revealed.17
How did the next stanza go again, don Diego? No, but surely the simple soldier was only being modest. Even Cortés’s captains had time for literature, and they actually fought real battles, faced constant, cruel, relentless death. And hadn’t the odds against them been tremendous? To take the battlefield today must be so disappointing, against a foe so reduced—diseased, defenceless, starved….
Exasperated to see me acting up at supper, Josefa came into my room afterwards with the marvellous news. Our mother was pregnant again. We would have a new brother or sister. They had known for ages already.
The next night, seeing that Isabel had said nothing so far, I felt my own valour fairly soaring, and with it my volubility. How could I fail—I fought on the side of right. As Saint Teresa herself had once said, God moves even in cooking pots. And from there to our table through the transubstantiations of spinach purée, pollas Portuguesas, rice tortes, clemole de Oaxaca, turco de maíz …
After heaping my plate with food, I had not so much as touched the cutlery, so busy was I with chattering at our guest while maintaining a commanding view of the terrain. I sat in a superb position to inventory the contents of his moustaches, accumulating as he ate. Even had this last observation not come to me quite so vividly, I would not have been tempted to touch my food. The hungers of my body were as nothing compared to those of my mind. And yet I cannot say my thoughts ran yet to victory: rather, to the image of my dying unflinchingly in the attempt. Unlike my sisters, I had ne
ver seen our mother pregnant; but over these past few days and particularly since last night I’d divined something at once frightening and thrilling in her eyes. Something hooded and veiled, yet serene—the brooding of some great magic. But no, I told myself, this was only the mystery of life growing within her, and an everyday sort of magic that was.
Over the next few hours I found myself casting about for words more adequate to express the new sensations those eyes provoked. Naturally she was still annihilatingly beautiful, her eyes lustrous and black, enormous. But now there was something in the relentlessness of her focus, something pitiless. I saw a lioness stalking belly to ground, painfully, her milk pooling angrily in the dust … but no, hysteria would not do. Composing lines in my head as I watched her, caricature was what I reached for—some disarming conceit on architecture. Instead, what came crowding in were more like verses of incantation, propitiatory—a counterspell.
Her tresses chestnut freshets;
her front a banner’s vellum
scroll
on capitals of temple columns;
her brows an ogee archer’s unstrung
bows;
the aquaductile nose:
to rule and compass a triumph of compliance—
a rose bulb on a seraph’s wings declining;
while panther jaws (tabby’s chin)
gape like Night’s own portals
at her smile’s pure radiance.
But those two black moons in their orbits,
scattering sable shards and glints—
are they obsidian
or flint?18
In such desperate fashion did I screw up my courage, and so it went for the next few nights as I waged my crusade against the Infidel.
Through it all Diego nodded, sweated, stanched his nostrils, smiled and took more roast chicken, nodded bemusedly as my contempt grew. Just as I thought. Here was nothing but an opportunist, thick as pudding, and plodding and utterly without pride. It went on until even I began to pity him. With Grandfather there, I could not have done it. On the eve of Abuelo’s return, Isabel put an end to it.
“All right, Inés.”
“All right what, Mother?”
“You know what.” I did know to heed the warning in that tone. “But you’ll have the courtesy to ask him first.”
Ask Grandfather’s permission, to enter our library?—it was the merest formality. It was over. It had been so easy. At first I was surprised that she hadn’t intervened, if only to spare our guest. I had beaten him. But by now I knew my great ally had been neither valour nor righteousness but splendid timing. I had nature on my side, and Isabel had weightier concerns.
Within hours I would see by how much I had underestimated him. In my sisters’ eyes now he would be nobler than ever. They would gaze upon him with something less like hunger than tenderness. As for our mother, from that night forward she stopped asking him to leave her bed before dawn. Before I dismissed it, the idea came that she’d been sending him back to the garrison, just perhaps, to spare not Abuelo’s feelings but my own.
As far as I could tell, Diego never slept in town again.
Here, then, was a better strategist and actor, a mercenary more disciplined, than I had given him credit for. Never letting himself be angered, remaining to all appearances confused, too vain and dim to be anything but despised and dismissed by me.
I had worried only about my keys to the library, rather than his to our gates. I had talked loosely of war, but what I had won was only a skirmish.
What’s more, I was to discover that he’d fooled not just our mother and my sisters, not just me, but somehow Abuelo, too. For in a manoeuvre worthy of los contratistas milaneses,† he’d persuaded my grandfather to accept a loan. Though I would not know it for some time yet, this had been the very business they were concluding when I first stumbled upon them in the library. I never found out precisely how he managed it. Would it have been a gesture of restitution for leaving—or rather not leaving—Abuelo’s daughter with child without marrying her? Whatever the stratagem, he must, with the most superb delicacy, have left the merest suggestion in the air….
So it was not, no, the poetry of El Cid that coursed through his veins but the icy blood of the Sforzas. Here was the best investment a hundred pesos ever returned. A payout on the arithmetical dowry machine like a win at roulette.
When Grandfather returned home he took the news of our great good fortune with admirable calm. I’d been looking out for him from the watchtower for hours. At a dead run I cut across the bean fields to meet him halfway up the track from the main road. He had brought the wagon back empty. Abuelo reined in the horses right there in the road and retrieved a single book from his carpeta.
“Here it is, Angel. El libro de la caza de las aves…. Now we shall find out about those falcons of yours.”
But did he think I had run to him only for this?
Looking anxiously into my face he went on. “I mentioned it was written in prison, did I not?” Now he seemed to think my expression one of disappointment. Hastily I accepted the book he’d been holding out to me. “But did I remember to tell you that our author was also a kinsman of los Manriques? Queen Isabela’s noblest defenders—the poet and his father? the founder of the Order of Santiago? You’ve not forgotten….”
The beautiful verses in the mouldering book he had asked me to read for him last year. No I hadn’t forgotten. And I was not disappointed; no, I was grateful for his safe return, but puzzled, and yet could find no way to frame the question without seeming to complain. All that way for one book? Why take the wagon, then?
Naturally we had a special dinner to celebrate Abuelo’s homecoming. There was a beet and apple cordial to drink, and red wine for Diego and my grandfather. Even María had a little glass. As we sipped and dabbled at a sopa de ajo, our mother smiled and chatted easily with my sisters and Diego, while equably I avoided glancing at the moistening tip of his nose. There was such an air of occasion I was half expecting her to announce her condition to all, although it was ridiculous: this was not at all the way to break such news to one’s own father. And yet it seemed suddenly mean and unfair that Grandfather should be the last to know….
In fact, I had been the last to know. He had been the first she’d told. It had prompted his trip. Abuelo had gone to talk to Uncle Juan about my one day soon coming to Mexico.
After Amanda had cleared the soup bowls, Isabel encouraged Abuelo to tell us of his journey, which he did with surprising economy. Returned from such excursions in the past, he had treated us to accounts of hair-raising encounters with highwaymen and wild beasts never before seen outside of Africa, and to rousing denunciations of the grasping churchmen from whom we leased the hacienda. Tonight he mumbled only that it had gone well. Taking in his weariness, Mother asked gently for simpler news, of Aunt María and her husband; and as Isabel waited for a reply the black eyes I had lately been composing apotropaic verses upon glanced an instant into mine. Just then Amanda came in with less than her usual grace as she strained under the weight of a great china platter almost her armspan wide.
I had managed to avoid her eyes for days now. I hadn’t played—had hardly spoken with her since the disaster at Ixayac. If I had looked at her now I might have seen she was the one who thought she’d done something wrong up there, that she had let me down somehow, or hurt me.
Nor did I see that she had followed my lead and stopped eating too, just as I had while Abuelo was away, as evidence of my seriousness. It was a gesture Amanda had read instantly and answered in kind, in the language she understood better than anyone … and so much better than I, who took so long to read her reply.
And how like Amanda to speak as she spoke to me now.
Under a sprinkling of black olives and pine nuts, raisins and chile chipotles were two enormous trout, grilled whole and entirely filling the platter. One trout lay on its side, the other on its belly—they must have weighed five libras† each. They could only have come from one
place, one way. And indeed the platter had been placed before me and turned to show the wound in each trout’s side, where the spear had gone through.
How could I avoid her eyes now? I couldn’t, but for an instant I still tried, dreading what I might find there—triumph, vindication, scorn? Instead I found what looked like exhaustion, like Abuelo, as if she had carried that platter all the way from Mexico. And then she was gone.
The morning after my grandfather’s return I was up early, and it was back to the watchtower I went now. Not to watch the sunrise, as Amanda and I had used to, but to keep an eye on Abuelo’s room for the first signs of stirring. It took hours for him to wash up for breakfast then shuffle back after it from the dining room. By then I was freezing even under the heavy wool blankets I had dragged off my bed.
Beside the well a pastilla† of ice sealed the full bucket over, as if with wax. A light frost glittered on the slate flagstones. Grandfather rocked his way over them unsteadily, cautiously, as if his soles hurt. Heedless, I raced down the steps and across the courtyard after him.
I caught up as he reached the library door. He looked surprised to see me—was he teasing or had he really forgotten? Then I noticed that despite the cold, the cloak he wore was not his heaviest but the formal one. And from the gentle smile spreading across that big face I felt sure he’d remembered all along.
“Si la damisela sonriente would do me the honour….” He moved aside, and with a little bow invited me in ahead of him.
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