The Cry of the Wind

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  Speaks While Leaving lowered her gaze, embarrassed by the comparison. “I did not intend any disrespect,” she said, acutely aware that her daughter was teething on the symbol of the vé’ho’e religion. “I was just out for a walk when—”

  “My dear.” The queen reached out into the sunlight to touch her hand, her skin shockingly pale against Speaks While Leaving’s darker flesh. “Do not think that I blame you for any of this. The people of Spain are a simple people. They are strong, independent, and incredibly devoted to their Church. As a result, they see things that might not truly exist.” She retreated into the shade once more. “Ironic, is it not? That I, a Grand-Duchess of Austria and now Queen Regent of Spain, born of a long line of royal blood, should depend on the love and support of the lowest classes? You see, governors and politicians can be removed from office and cast down in disgrace. Royalty, on the other hand, must be killed.”

  But she had not said it. She had not said what Speaks While Leaving had heard hiding within her words, the logical culmination of her thoughts and meaning.

  “Your Majesty, I beg your pardon, but was there something you wanted to tell me?”

  The queen regarded her, a small smile on her lips. “I don’t impress you, do I?”

  “No, your Majesty, except as a woman who has been able to manage her destiny, alone in a world of men, and as a woman who works hard to protect her family.”

  “A woman alone in a world of men. You know something of this, don’t you?”

  “My people have a saying. ‘Decisions are not made in the Council, but in the lodge.’”

  She laughed again her low, almost manly laugh. “Meaning that while men do not make the decisions, we must let it appear as if they do.”

  “Yes, your Majesty, which makes it difficult for a woman who does not have a man to act on her behalf.”

  “Yes, it does,” María Cristina said. “Unless that woman is a queen. You see, we have a saying, too, that I think is appropriate.”

  “What saying is that?”

  “Changing her mind is a woman’s prerogative.”

  Chapter 20

  Monday, June 23, A.D. 1890

  Palacio de San Lorenzo

  El Escorial, España

  Alejandro had just put pen to paper when he heard running footsteps and the jouncing wail of an unhappy baby. He rose and stepped to the door, opening it just as Speaks While Leaving was about to knock.

  “She has agreed!” she said, breathless and beaming with excited joy. Blue Shell Woman seemed less than pleased by the news, though she quieted now that her mother had stopped running.

  “Who?” Alejandro asked. “Agreed to what?”

  “María Cristina! To everything!”

  “No! To everything?”

  “Yes,” she said with a laugh. “I hardly believe it myself.”

  “But, but how?” He stepped back and gestured her within but she waved off the invitation.

  “I was outside, and she came, and we began to talk.” The words spilled from her mouth. “We talked of home and children and I told her she did not impress me much and then suddenly we were talking of how we could help each other, of how she could help save the People and how the People could help Spain.”

  “¡Dios mío! And she agreed? On what terms?”

  “She said we would work out the details tomorrow. For now, she has agreed to assist the People in any way she can in return for settlements, railroads, and safe conduct for her missionaries.”

  “Mining rights,” Alejandro said. “Did she mention anything about mining rights?”

  “No,” Speaks While Leaving said. “And I wouldn’t say anything about that when you meet tomorrow.” Her glee was infectious, and Alejandro found he was grinning broadly. “I need to find One Who Flies,” she said. “And Mouse Road. They will be so happy!” She turned and ran down the corridor toward her own rooms, her daughter once again taking up the job of siren, wailing to clear the way. Servants stood back to let her pass.

  He watched her go, stunned by her news. Finally, he crossed himself not once, but twice.

  “¡Gracias a Dios!” he whispered, and then, still grinning, a thought occurred to him.

  What if she was mistaken? What if she had misinterpreted the queen’s intention? Perhaps the queen only wanted to help, but had not actually agreed to anything. Speaks While Leaving was desperate for this alliance, but did she want it badly enough to have merely heard what she wanted to hear? Alejandro hoped he was mistaken, but better to get some confirmation on this miracle rather than to move forward on faith.

  He put on his coat, checked himself in the looking glass, and headed down the corridor in the opposite direction. Speaks While Leaving had run off toward the private apartments, but Alejandro wanted the business end of the palace. That was where he would find either Cánovas or Sagasta.

  Like tributaries to a greater river, the narrow hallways of the apartments led him to the broader corridors that ran the palace’s grid. He walked with a stride lengthened by equal parts triumph and alarm, hoping Speaks While Leaving had actually done the impossible, fearing that she had not.

  As he reached the main cross hall that would take him to the governmental offices within San Lorenzo, a liveried servant stopped and bowed to him as he passed.

  “Congratulations, Señor Silveira,” the man said.

  The simple phrase stopped him in his tracks. He turned, and the servant smiled and bowed again.

  “Thank you,” Alejandro said quietly before starting once more on his way.

  As he walked, other servants bowed as well, giving him their congratulations, good wishes, and a great deal more respect than they had upon his arrival. Speaks While Leaving seemed to have been correct, and in typical Spanish form, word was traveling quickly through the palace.

  “It is wonderful news,” a guardsman said when he asked the whereabouts of either Sagasta or Cánovas.

  “Yes,” Alejandro said. “Wonderful news.”

  “God is certainly with that woman. It is clear that He has taken a hand. Please permit me to offer my congratulations, Señor.”

  “My thanks,” he said, becoming more than slightly embarrassed at receiving such praise for something he did not do.

  “You will find Minister Sagasta in his offices. Down the hallway, turn right, and the fourth door on your left.”

  Alejandro nodded and walked down the hall, his footsteps muffled by the red and gold carpet. He stopped outside the heavy door, a door that was probably centuries old. Sagasta was likely to be unhappy at having been overruled by his queen’s change of heart. Did he want to go in? He hardly needed confirmation of the queen’s decision, but on the other hand, he would have to speak to Sagasta or Cánovas sooner or later.

  He knocked on the door.

  “Sí.”

  Alejandro entered.

  Sagasta sat at his desk, reading through papers written in his small but efficient hand. The offices were cramped—as were many of the ancillary rooms in this ancient building—but was richly appointed nonetheless with red carpets, an arras of brocade on one wall, and a shield with crossed halberds and drapes of red and gold fabric on the other. The desk at which he sat was of burled walnut with inlaid ivory and silver wire along the edges. A narrow doorway was open through which Alejandro spied another small room, the footboard of a small bed, and the end of a dressing table.

  “Your savage friend has bewitched our regent,” Sagasta said, his tenor voice and his acculturated lisp heightening the bitterness of his tone. “I have no other explanation for her contravention of the advice of both myself and Señor Cánovas. You are either incredibly shrewd or incredibly foolish, Don Alejandro.”

  “But she is in earnest?” Alejandro asked, stung, but ignoring the veiled insult. He still wanted to hear from an official source that this was indeed true.

  “In earnest? Oh, yes. Very much so. She is convinced in the potential of such an alliance. She thinks it is an important symbol of the benevolen
ce of the Spanish Crown.” He laughed: a single, sharp exhalation that held more contempt than humor. “I fear the Americans will think it more than merely symbolic.”

  “I should think they would see it as an act of aggression.”

  Sagasta’s bushy eyebrows lifted upward. “Ah, so you’re not a fool.”

  “No, Prime Minister. I am not,” he said.

  He leaned forward, an elbow on his desk. “Then you must think that there is something worth our trouble in this savage land.”

  Alejandro realized he may have let himself say too much. Though born of common stock, the prime minister was a sharp-eyed man, and little got past him unnoticed.

  “Surely the settlement lands alone—” Alejandro began.

  “No,” Sagasta said. “Taking on such a risk for the possibility of a few settlements and trade opportunities is ludicrous. What else?”

  “It is a fertile land, Prime Minister. Agricultural trade—”

  “No, we could feed the world out of the valleys of Alta California.” Sagasta peered at him, and Alejandro got the uncomfortable impression that the prime minister could hear the klaxon bells of warning inside his head, could read the words imprinted on his mind, words he did not want to utter or even acknowledge.

  “Minerals.”

  Alejandro felt the blood drain from his face. “Prime Minister, I don’t know what you might mean.”

  Sagasta stood and, hands clasped at the small of his back, he began to walk a slow circuit around Alejandro. “You can’t go back to playing the fool, now, my friend. You have already proven yourself otherwise. No, it all makes perfect sense. I wondered how you had brought the Americans so close to an agreement with the paltry ten million in gold we allowed that fop of a viceroy to promise you.”

  He came back to his desk and sat on the edge of it. “How was that meeting, Don Alejandro? How was it, being so close to the man who cost you your career, your position in society?” Alejandro’s shock must have shown on his face for the minister reacted with a smile. “Oh, yes, we were well aware of your history with Custer and your loss to him at the Battle of El Bracito. Tell me, what was it like to stand next to him? To watch as he was gunned down before your very eyes?” Sagasta’s smile became an unpleasant thing as he leaned a little forward, as a conspirator. “Was it all you had hoped for?”

  Alejandro’s temper boiled over. “Señor Sagasta, I will not stand for such insinuations. You have touched my honor, sir, and I will have satisfaction!”

  Sagasta held up a hand. “I apologize, my friend.” He shrugged. “Call it a bad joke. I have often been told that my sense of humor is somewhat unpleasant. Please, Don Alejandro, accept my apology. I meant no disrespect.”

  Though the prime minister’s words were conciliatory, his insincerity showed in his knowing smile and the squint to his eye. Still, Alejandro had no recourse. He bowed.

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Good, we are friends again.” He stood and clapped a hand on Alejandro’s shoulder. “And to prove it, I have the perfect gift. This new alliance; how would you like to be the one to inform the Americans? Would that appeal to you?”

  The idea was more than appealing, and Alejandro allowed himself to be distracted. He agreed at once, and within the hour, he was back in a carriage, heading back down the mountains toward Madrid and the Embassy of the United States. In his pocket were the papers designating him “special envoy” for the Crown. Though the ink was barely dry and the wax seal still warm, it would gain him entry without appointment to see the American ambassador.

  As they drove over the final ridge, Alejandro leaned out the window. Past the vineyards and olive groves, across the dark ribbon of the Rio Manzanares lay the expanse of Madrid. Painted yellow by the westering sun, it was as faceted as a raw crystal, bristling with the tapered spires of cathedrals and churches. The carriage clattered down the roadway, rattled across the Romanesque stone bridge, and plunged into the dense forest of buildings. The driver knew the way, but Alejandro did not, never before having been to the heart of New Castile. Shops, schools, banks, and apartments flew past in a cloud of blurred impressions. Despite the late hour, the streets were thick with pedestrians, all out on the evening’s post-siesta business. The sun’s slanting rays made the sky purple, the clouds orange, and the rooftops red, but left the deep streets to glow yellow with lamplight. The carriage turned sharply onto a narrow street lined with well-trimmed houses standing shoulder to shoulder. Then the street debouched into a small circle with a central fountain. The carriage veered around it, making nearly a full circuit before the driver reined in before a tall square house of red brick. As with most Spanish homes, it had a fence and gate of finely wrought iron, black and coiled and twisted in graceful patterns, but behind this gate was something no other home had: a flagpole with the stars and stripes of the American flag. Two serving men, their black suits made darker and their white shirts whiter by the gloaming, worked the ropes at the pole, retiring the flag for the night. The driver descended from the cab and hailed them. One came over and exchanged words and gestures as the driver explained who his passenger was. The serving man opened the gate while the driver returned to his carriage to help his passenger debark.

  Alejandro felt his stomach tighten as he walked through the gate and up the path with a confident stride. He had seen so many of his plans go awry in his lifetime—military career ruined, social position lost, even his revenge against Custer soiled by an assassin’s whim—that he could hardly believe that something was about to go right.

  He was ushered into a den or smoking room; he could never tell with the ornate way in which Americans of the Gilded Age outfitted their homes.

  “The ambassador will be with you shortly,” the butler said, and withdrew, leaving him to inspect the room.

  Every flat surface and most of the vertical space either held or was covered by something that was intended to be decorative but generally only attracted the eye long enough to repulse it. Gaudily-framed pictures, flowered vases, figurines, bunting-draped mementos, doilies, fussy glass lamps, cut-glass ashtrays, plants in brass pots, and other such pieces of gimcrackery filled the room, making it so that a man could hardly tell the room’s purpose, much less discern its main furnishings, hidden as they were beneath the clutter. It was as furious a collection of junk as Alejandro had ever seen, surpassing even the more egregious examples he had seen while working as New Spain’s representative in the States. Amid the litter, he spied one item that seemed of genuine interest. It was a medal in a velvet box. He had to move a small ceramic turtle and a piece of shirred lacework before he could see it clearly. A Maltese cross struck in bronze, with a circlet of laurel leaves surrounding, and in the center a Confederate flag. Somewhat green with the patina of age, it had obviously been kept clean by a loving hand.

  “The Southern Cross of Honor,” said a man at the doorway, his words made slow and elastic by his Georgian accent. “Awarded to my father, Colonel George Anderson Boudoin.”

  Alejandro turned to find the ambassador entering the room. The man had obviously just come from dinner, as betokened by the serviette he was removing from its place tucked into his collar.

  “I am Henry Boudoin. My man said you wished to see me?”

  “Excellency,” Alejandro said with a bow. He retrieved his papers of office from within his coat and offered them to Boudoin. “Permit me to introduce myself...”

  Boudoin did not take the papers. “I know who you are, Silveira, and I know what you are. I have accepted you into my home out of respect for your government, but do not expect any courtesy. I’m told you have an important message. Please deliver it, and be on your way.”

  Alejandro clenched his teeth. Had the man been a Spaniard, had he been anyone other than the United States ambassador, he would have crossed the two steps that separated them and struck him across the face, such was the affront to his honor. The fact that Boudoin, as ambassador in Spain, was aware of how the Spanish cherished their honor, an
d had made the insult intentionally only infuriated Alejandro the more.

  But he controlled his anger and his indignation. Instead of rising to the bait, he bowed again, though more shallowly, as to an equal. He put his letter of introduction back into his coat pocket and retrieved the second piece of paper he had brought, this one with the official message from the Crown, penned also by Sagasta. The paper, folded thrice, held the image of the royal crest embedded in its wax seal. He held it out to Boudoin.

  “Mr. Ambassador, my message comes directly from her most royal and Catholic majesty, María Cristina, Queen Regent of Spain. Her Majesty wishes to inform your government of the Crown’s distress and dismay at your treatment of a group of people whose rights and lives you should be working to protect, namely the native tribes known as the Cheyenne Alliance. Her Majesty wishes to inform your government further that, upon great deliberation and in an effort to alleviate the suffering of these people, the Crown has decided to ally itself with the Cheyenne and their affiliated tribes.”

  The ambassador’s mouth opened and closed without a word passing his lips. He snatched the letter from Alejandro’s hand, broke the seal, and opened it. His jaw gaped once more as he read, and his ire rose until his cheeks were as florid as young wine, and the look in his eye was as raw and acidic.

  “This is lunacy,” Boudoin said, reading it again from the beginning. “‘Aid, succor, and support’? Has your Austrian queen finally gone mad?”

  “Sir,” Alejandro said, letting his anger show at last. “You may impugn my honor all you wish and for your position and station I will allow it, but do not dare to presume that I will let insults to my sovereign go unanswered.”

  Boudoin collected himself, standing tall. “Very well, Señor Silveira, then hear this: Any alliance Spain attempts to forge with the Cheyenne can only be an empty gesture, for there is no Cheyenne nation with which to ally.” He gripped the royal message in his fist as tightly as he might a saber. “And if Spain so much as sets one foot on American soil, there will be Hell to pay at the end of it.”