Hunger's Brides

by W. Paul Anderson

  “To us,” she adds, and gives my hand a little squeeze. Once her new dresses are finished, the best of her old ones will be altered for me. The honour is as unprecedented here as it is contemned by the wealthier ladies.

  “Beauty, mi amor, is the empire that knows no borders.”

  And Beauty’s proper consort is Laughter.

  Her first act as Vice-Queen is to solemnly inaugurate the New World chapter of the Academy of Improvisation, modelled on that of Madrid, in which all the writers and court wits contend for prizes and for the favour of a monarch’s laughter. But, for our Academy, a startling improvisation: Here in Mexico women shall participate. It is to the Academy that I owe my presence here …

  We had been summoned to the Hall of Mirrors, for an audience granted the three prize-winners of a poetry joust, and to my uncle, who had underwritten the whole affair. The Viceroy was again much taken with me, though with the Vice-Queen now at his side his interest was more clearly paternal than the first time we had met. But then, that was in a bullring. Uncle Juan had steered the conversation to the precariousness of commercial shipping and supply lines, to which the Viceroy responded by remarking upon the parlous state of the treasury just now, with so many silver ships being taken by privateers. The conversation was tailing off awkwardly, towards the parlous state of the empire itself.

  “Excellency, Spain so briefly on her knees,” I offered, “still stands taller than all Europe on its feet.”

  It was a little moment he was grateful for, from a fifteen-year-old. I have since learned few at court express such sentiments anymore. We went on to discuss the bright prospects for peace with the French, after fifty long years. I sensed her studying me, but we had been instructed to avoid looking at her—at either of them—directly, lest she yawn, perhaps, and we inadvertently penetrate with our commoner’s eyebeams an aperture of the Royal Person. I still had no idea how contemptible she found such protocols. But though I’d gained her interest, she waited to see how I would fare at the Academy before inviting me to come and serve her at the palace.

  At the north end of the west wing, the staircase has been removed to make room for the Vice-Queen’s personal study and gallery. From atop the south staircase, then, the weak-kneed visitor is led through an antechamber and a smaller reception hall, spirited through the Vice-Queen’s gallery—lest, perhaps, the plebeian gaze deface a painting—and shown into the salon, glittering home of the New World Academy…. In each chandelier burn a thousand candles, their lustre glowing in the gilded cornices and on walls panelled in white marble.

  If the Academy is in session, it is evening, unless it is well into the night. In which case everyone is drunk. The Viceroy has long since taken to his bed. The Vice-Queen has left her rock-crystal chair and the dais to join the others on cushions on a stone floor softened with deep Moorish carpets. A fire is blazing in a fireplace wide enough, in a pinch, to spit a bullock in. It is a fire which never burns down before dawn, at least while the pages who feed it live.

  If the visitor is young, she has smoked tobacco, maybe once, sipped wine once or twice, eaten chocolate much less often than she would have liked. But never all together, not like this. Under the steward’s disapproving eye, pages liveried in silver and satin circulate a dozen argent platters heaped high with cigarettes, a dozen gold braziers to light them; while chocolate offers itself in every form imaginable—sculpted or blocked, bitter or spiced, whipped or spiked with brandy …

  In deference to the Vice-Queen’s Austrian tastes, somewhere out of sight someone brightly savages on a clavichord a turbulent organ piece, which Leonor, giggling beside me, says is by the Werkmeister-designate in Lübeck, who has secured his appointment by marrying the old Werkmeister’s daughter.

  I have done little more than taste each thing to please her. Brandies, sherries, ports … a wine from France that bubbles, hilariously, on cavalcades of trays that wobble past like upturned balustrades; and indeed within a few hours, the room entire is upturned and hilariously unsteady. Even without the fine tobacco smoke too thick now to see quite through, I might have been drunk on the perfumes alone. Yet I am far from the most intoxicated in the room. No, holding that distinction is poor don Alfeo, of a highly distinguished family in Seville.

  It is the last round of the night. I have won everything so far. Hiding my condition is so far beyond me that I’m inspired to take things in the other direction and, as the incumbent, propose a round on drunkenness itself. Slurring very deftly, I improvise a ditty on don Alfeo who lies mellifluously snoring now behind a drape.

  PORQUE tu sangre se sepa,

  cuentas a todos, Alfeo,

  que eres de Reyes. Yo creo

  que eres de muy buena cepa;

  y que, pues a cuentos topas

  con esos Reyes enfadas,

  que, más que Reyes de Espadas,

  debieron de ser de Copas.†

  Falling in worship to my knees, I then finish with a flourish.

  Mis amigos, os presento,25

  Don Alfeo de la Espada,

  ¡de la capa drape-ada,

  de la gloria remojada,

  del aguardiente empapada!††

  It is, I am told the next morning and to my great horror, not so much the verse as the besotted delivery that carries the final round. To close the session, the cleverest of the Vice-King’s sabandijas,‡ the dwarf Perico, cheekily christens me la Giganta, and placing a coronet of salad greens on my head, proclaims me the evening’s Mistress of Wit. I am especially honoured, for Perico was a fixture at the Academy in Madrid. He becomes my first true friend at the palace. He was once a great favourite of the Sovereign himself, but with death approaching, King Philip sent his most beloved sabandijas to accompany the Viceroy to the New World. Land of prodigies.

  “Our promised land,” Perico adds with a wry pout. “He thought he was sending us home.”

  Perico has never used any other name for me, but says it with such warmth and open admiration, even now I wear la Giganta as a badge of honour.

  New rhythms and new music, cultivated palates and clever tongues. The dangerous new ideas of Europe in free circulation and we, amazed by our daring. So many new friends, in my new home. Perico. Carlos, of course, who comes whenever he is back from Puebla. I make a few fast friends among the courtiers too. Fabio I help to devise a betting system for roulette, based on the new theories of probability of my dear friend the monk Pascal. Fabio is decent and light-hearted, nothing troubles him. Fabio I can learn from. He is in love with the Vice-Queen, I know, yet he finds the strength to love her from afar, knowing it is impossible. And among the handmaidens, there is Teresa, who for all her wealth and spirit will only ever be a Creole, as I am, and never accepted by the others.

  And yet the Vice-Queen calls me her literary lady-in-waiting. I should call her Leonor whenever we are alone. Leonor comes to find me every afternoon down in her library, devouring the contents of each aromatic page like a glutton over a new dish. Hers are the intrusions I never resent. The times spent with her are an extension of my education. Her judgement is flawless, and yet she flatters me by asking my opinion of this or that writer, about the plausibility or structure of a given philosopher’s arguments. Our impassioned conversations spill into her bedchamber, where we are more assured of privacy, and where, as we talk, I spend what seems like hours brushing her shimmering hair before a mirror. Sometimes she reaches back over her shoulder and fans my hair across hers, blue-black over palest blond. “Almost the same, don’t you think?” Leonor says, laughing sometimes, her blue eyes looking into mine—mine, black and round with disbelief as I see us in the glass. I am not quite so blind as to fail to see, the contrast could not be more complete. Her nakedness is at first a shock to me, but she explains that the body of the Royal Person belongs not to her but to the Realm. All her most intimate acts are open for inspection by physicians and counsellors. In the Queen’s case, notaries may be called to stand at the midwife’s shoulder as the heir is delivered, to warr
ant the integrity of succession. It was rumoured that Olivares† oversaw even the royal conceptions.

  “Perhaps this is why so many were botched.”

  She says this lightly. I tell myself the joke is aimed at the malignancy of Olivares.

  A small brazier stands beside the dressing table to keep her warm. We begin with the unguents and pastes, working up from her feet, finishing with a lotion made with almonds. She has heard of a miraculous cream made with avocados in the mountains, wonders how it is I haven’t heard of it. Her hair is next. By now her skin has absorbed the creams. I kneel and begin to apply the perfumes and powders with a feather brush. She stands, to assist me, steadies herself with two fingertips on my shoulder or the crown of my head, arches an arm gracefully over her head, then the other, lifts one foot to rest a toe on the chair, then the other. Finally her makeup.

  If there are no distractions it takes an hour to finish dressing her for the evening. Leonor says it is important to be discreet: Some of the other handmaidens, with duties less exalted, are from rich and powerful families. There is resentment enough, now that I am so often called to dress her.

  Flashing eyes, a Tartar’s wide cheekbones and high—a ripe, smiling mouth, and yet her features are strangely delicate. Her figure is full and womanly yet so finely boned she is as small as a girl. Who dominates every room from the moment she wades lightly in, skirts flowing like a river. Playful and teasing, clever and intuitive. Sophisticated, in politics a subtle strategist. The Viceroy never comes to a decision without seeking her advice. Though descended from the House of Austria and married now to a Spanish Marquis, Leonor Carreto was a handmaiden too once, in the service of Queen Mariana. “Exáctamente como tú, mi alma.” Exactly as I am. The Marquise says this more than once.

  She has decided I must accompany her to Spain when it is time for her to return, so I must learn all about the life there. Mariana was just my age when she came from Vienna to marry her uncle Philip. The palace protocol was odious, is still. The stories are legend. Once, Philip’s first wife took a bad fall, and though badly injured, Queen Isabela de Borbón lay in the road for hours while the one man other than the King permitted to touch her person was fetched from the palace. Some time later, a quite dashing Count had the temerity to sweep her up and out to safety during a fire at a theatre. A few days afterwards, he was murdered in the street.

  “But then,” Leonor says, her eyes glittering, “they say he set the fire….”

  She has known the greatest artists and writers of the empire. She met Lope when she was only five, Quevedo at fifteen, Tirso at eighteen. She grew to know Calderón intimately, and met with him frequently after he was made King Philip’s chaplain. And while Quevedo was often crowned the Master of Wit in Madrid, she is not at all sure he would have such an easy time of it here in Mexico. Not that my gifts caught her completely by surprise. The greatest improviser the Spanish court has ever seen was from the Indies, too. The poet Atillano could make up the most astounding verses—learned or salacious, or both at once—according to the whimsies of his audience.

  And so it is in this that I am keenest to impress her. She can recite the wittiest passages from dozens of comedies, to which, when we are alone, I improvise new speeches and dialogues to divert her from her loneliness.

  Finally the court life she and Mariana dreamt of. Mariana, she says, would envy her now.

  Leonor confesses to having dreamt of coming to New Spain ever since meeting the great American Ruiz de Alarcón, when she was only nine. We should go one day to his birthplace. Is this Taxco far? She is casually proud of her gift for languages—German, French, two dialects of northern Italy. The Castilian spoken here in the New World enchants her, the pleasant turns of phrase, the warmth and charm of our terms of endearment. Mi alma, mi espejo, mi conquistador … She delights in finding in my speech some expression or other that had been Alarcón’s. I do recall that she had only been nine, but am nonetheless flattered. The seductions of the powerful are seduction to a second power.

  Now that the renovations are quite done, Leonor is rarely seen outside the Vice-Queen’s wing of the palace but is everywhere within it. For two more years the hojarasca whirls harder, as if by the hour. Every day a saint’s day, a prince’s birthday, a wedding, a confirmation. Rousing displays of horsemanship and jousting with cane lances beneath her balcony. So many occasions to be commemorated with poetry, so many gifts and prizes to be accompanied with a verse. Nights of masquerades, carnival processions, mock battles in the square with flaming arrows, Roman candles. The dances. I have so many dances to learn I am grateful for each single one of the dozen I know. The dignified pavanes, la Chacona, la Capona, and others less decorous—none less so than the Canary and the Folly. But now there are dances to be sung to, and even a few to improvise poetry to. The best by far for poetry is the Rattlesnake. But the revels cannot really be said to be in full swing until the shocking and shockingly popular bailes bacanales are announced—the sarabande from India, for one, and an African dance so lascivious it has never been danced at court. Until now.

  So much laughter—Beauty’s consort too is everywhere. And knows no borders either, it would seem. Leonor has the idea of releasing a crate of snakes into the Hall of Comedies one night during a play. Only with the greatest difficulty do I dissuade her. No?—not even harmless ones?

  Parties at the merest pretext or, of late, the rarest: the celebration of a Spanish military triumph. We celebrate, one whole night, the forty-sixth anniversary of the famous surrender of Breda; the women play the Spanish, the men the beaten Netherlanders. Not long after the King’s death, there is a party with a secret theme, only later confided to me in greatest secrecy. We fête the loss of Portugal, eight thousand Spanish soldiers lost in eight hours. It is only once Philip dies that I understand how much she has despised him.

  But she forgives me my elegy on the King. Because it is beautiful, she says, because I am beautiful, because I am seventeen.

  There are some things it is time for me to understand about our late sovereign. His infidelities, his actresses, his obsession with nuns. Even in the Queen’s company he made no effort to keep it to himself. The fortunes of a nation rise and fall on the spirit of its queens, and it is the married queen who bears the most terrible burden of all—supreme responsibility without power. So it is the duty of the Queen’s ladies to cheer her, minister to her spirits. Mariana arrived at fifteen but each month thereafter aged her a year. Leonor did everything in her power. How terrible to stand by, to watch Mariana’s spirit broken.

  Our salons of jests and jousts only gain in ferocity, and at first I glory in it. And how it unnerves these men to listen to the verses the cavalier owes to the lady of the Hall—verses of a refined passion—but written by a woman now. Ah, to see their faces. To see hers.

  … On your most hallowed altars

  no Sheban gums are burnt,

  no human blood is spilt,

  no throat of beast is slit,

  for even warring desires

  within the human breast

  are a sacrifice unclean,

  a tie to things material,

  and only when the soul

  is afire with holiness

  does sacrifice grow pure,

  is adoration mute …

  I, like the hapless lover

  who, blindly circling and circling,

  on reaching the glowing core …26

  Such was the shock, one might have heard a pin drop.

  More ferocious, too, the rumours and speculations about this person winning almost every night at rhymes; and even the laurels for learned discourses go to almost no one else, unless the topic is mathematics, which I avoid, or is astronomy and Carlos has come. Carlos too is brilliant but a man. Carlos too is poor but has a distinguished name, if not exactly noble. Yes, great things are expected of Carlos. Just not at the palace.

  And Carlos at least has a father’s name that is his to use.

  But this other one, la Mo
nstrua—I’ve heard them whisper it—how can anyone, a girl so young, acquire such learning in the wilds of that demonic countryside? No, there is something too uncanny about it. Nepantla? Is there such a town—and what must it be like, if los nepantlas are the local word for rabble? This bit of local intelligence comes courtesy of Teresa.

  It is just a matter of time. Late one evening a cultured gentleman makes bold to impugn in rhyme an unnamed maiden’s paternity—to which, before striding from the room, she rhymes something to this effect: Not being born of an honourable father would indeed be a defect, but only if she’d given him his being, rather than receiving hers from him. Whereas the cultivated gentleman’s mother was much the more magnanimous (in having him follow such multitudes) so that he might just as freely follow the suit and choose the father who best suits him….

  Have I gone too far? But not at all. Leonor is all assurances afterwards. In Madrid, the rough and tumble is more savage by half. I should have heard Quevedo’s squibs on Alarcón’s hunched back. Truly?—she hadn’t mentioned his deformity before? But no, Alarcón was not wounded by the cut, any more than my Perico would be. And in administering it, Quevedo had no more dishonoured himself than Velázquez had by frequenting dwarves. No watcher of this curious compendium that is Man must ever close her eyes to this—this is life, life in its entirety. These were geniuses. It may hurt the man, but life nourishes the genius. I, more than anyone, must learn to see this.

  The next night she sets the opening topic: the intellectual superiority of the white European born in the New World. In a salon full of gentle-born Castilians she herself takes the affirmative, taking me, Carlos, and the new Jesuit confessor at the palace as her prime examples. Relentless, she chooses for our second topic the effect of African breast milk on the Creole male. Carlos is stewing, has come to talk with me about something. I see him regretting it.