by John Healey
‘I mean it from the bottom of my heart,’ she said.
And it was true because her heart was racing.
‘Then I shall have your marriage annulled,’ he said, ‘on the grounds of your husband’s infertility. The Pope is an old friend, and I’m sure Antonio’s honor can be assuaged by a chest of coins emblazoned with the King’s likeness.’
‘A union with me would attract scandal to your reputation. I have no royal blood, my Lord.’
‘I am the Admiral of the High Seas, a Grandee of Spain. I can do as I wish. And as for your lack of “royal blood” as you call it, my own ancestors, without rummaging too far back, were surely sheep herders or oliveros with blood like yours running through their veins. Our children shall have our blood combined.’
She did not return to Guada. Though incensed by the girl’s boldness and by the fact she had been lied to, Guada was too embarrassed to protest. For the guards to observe her storming into her uncle’s tent for the purpose of punishing the girl would be unsightly and unforgiveable. What she found herself thinking about instead was how close the Samurai’s tent was to hers. Was he asleep, or awake like she? As she lay there, she was gripped by a fantasy difficult to control in which sticking her arm out from under her tent, feeling the narrow path of cold sand between them, she slipped her hand into his tent and gently placed her fingers upon his bare shoulder.
– XVI –
In which a Christian loses his head
On the next day, heavy clouds settled above that part of the coast. As the Duke and his retinue decamped and began their journey back up into the low mountains, a steady drizzle of autumn rain fell. Invigorated by the recklessness of his proposal and by having it accepted, and enjoying the sensation of keeping it secret for another day or two, the Duke barely noticed the weather or the pain in his hip. Rosario, too, still in shock, rode along side of Guada, stunned, exhilarated, fearful, but also serene, enjoying a degree of self-confidence new to her. Shiro took pleasure casting furtive glances at Guada while savoring the smells rising from the earth and shrubs. The guards and the cooking staff were bedraggled and tired.
One of them, a soldier called Guillermo, who had been in the Duke’s service for many years, permitted himself to wallow in a sullen state of mind. He had a friend in the village close to Rosario’s husband, and he had seen the girl entering the Duke’s tent. Assuming his Lord had done nothing more than exercise his feudal rights, the soldier felt only scorn for the girl and looked forward to ruining her reputation upon their return. Bored and emboldened, he spurred his mount and rode up next to her.
‘Who shall you confess to first, señora, to the priest or your husband?’
She looked at him, wide-eyed.
Not entirely meaning to, it had escaped his lips more loudly than he intended, loud enough for Guada to hear it word for word.
Up until that moment, Guada had been angry with Rosario; for the lie, for her behavior, for the girl’s decision to not even ask forgiveness for last night’s scandalous absence, the degree of self-assurance with which she had greeted Guada earlier that day. But the guard’s tone was so foul and offensive, it disturbed her more, not to mention the fact he had taken the liberty of proclaiming his insult, for however just it might be, so close to her person. Just as she was on the verge of saying something, the man compounded his offense tenfold.
‘If you wish to avoid a public beating,’ he said to Rosario, this time lowering his voice, ‘you’d best come round to my pallet on your way home tonight.’
Rosario reached across and slapped his unshaven face. Despite the rain and the hooves splashing in the mud, the retort was heard by all, and the Duke, interrupting his conversation with Shiro, turned in his saddle in time to see Guillermo grab Rosario by the wrist, twisting it, causing her to cry out. He called the caravan to a halt.
Overconfident that his status as a trusted guard would trump any influence a village girl might have, Guillermo now raised his voice for all to hear. ‘Proof if I ever saw it of what the village says about you, girl …’
The Duke walked his stallion in between the horses Guillermo and Rosario sat upon, pushing them apart.
‘Pray tell sir, what might that be?’
‘Your Excellency?’
‘I wish to hear it.’
‘That she is not a Christian, my Lord, but a Jew, or even an Infidel.’
‘Which, in your opinion, would be the worse of the two?’
‘The Moors are our sworn enemies, my Lord.’
‘And what is this all about? What has occurred here? What was the provocation that caused her to strike you?’
It was not a question the soldier wished to answer. He looked down at the muddy earth and then out at a green hill covered with bare almond trees.
‘Guillermo?’
Guada, seizing upon the chance to voice her own bottled-up suspicions, answered instead.
‘He accused her of indecent behavior, and …’ but she could not bring herself to finish.
‘And?’
Everyone could see the anger rising through the veins of the Duke’s face.
‘That if I knew what was good for me,’ Rosario said, staring at the mane of her chestnut mare, at the wet, glistening leather of the reins in her small hands, ‘I should come to him in the night, or else he would assure my humiliation.’
‘Up until this moment,’ said the Duke, looking at the soldier, ‘the weather notwithstanding; this has been a glorious day for me. Could you guess why, Guillermo?’
‘No sir.’
‘Because last night I asked this woman you have just insulted, insulted in a most grievous and unforgiveable fashion, for her hand, and she graced me with her approval.’
This caught everyone’s attention. The following silence was such that the rain sounded thunderous. As the irretrievable nature of his error wound its way about his gut, all Guillermo could bring himself to say was, ‘My Lord.’
‘And so now, I must ask for your hand,’ said the Duke. ‘Get down from your horse.’
Both men dismounted. The Duke drew his sword.
‘Down on the ground, man, and out with your arm.’
‘Please, sir.’
‘What were you thinking? Even if I had never made this young woman’s acquaintance, what sort of ruffian are you, what sort of Christian? Down in the mud with you.’
‘But she’s already married sir,’ Guillermo blurted out, wide-eyed with fear, but with rage, as well, spittle surging forth through the rain, giving voice to a thought that all who were present had.
The Duke turned and faced the rest of his guards. ‘I am loath to ask this of you, but it seems I must. Grab him and hold him down.’
The men dismounted, following the order with little hesitation. Whatever solidarity they felt with their comrade was overshadowed by relief it was someone else suffering the Duke’s wrath. Then Guillermo drew his sword.
‘I’ll tell you what sort of Christian I am,’ he said, yelling out for all to hear, ‘the sort who follows the commandments and condemns adultery.’
Both Guada and Rosario were horrified to see the Duke raise his sword in turn, preparing to do battle with the renegade. The other soldiers stood their ground, hands upon their hilts.
‘Stand back,’ said the Duke. ‘I swear by Almighty God that if I go down at the hand of this man, he’ll go down with me. Let us see what you are made of.’
‘My Lord—please,’ said Rosario.
Guada shot a glance of alarm at Shiro, a glance that above all was an entreaty, a glance that contained all manner of emotions he grasped at once. He dismounted quickly and strode into the circle that had been formed around the two combatants.
‘May I speak, my Lord,’ he said to the Duke.
‘If you must,’ the Duke replied, not taking his eye off Guillermo.
‘I offer you my services. It is unseemly for a noble of your station to have to deal with a man of such a rank. To ask for one of his own to deal with him, though a
more just alternative, would be difficult for them, for they have fought alongside him. I beg of you to allow me, as your guest, to do what I am trained to, I who am only passing through here, I who would be grateful for the opportunity to repay, in some small measure, your hospitality.’
‘The offense was committed against me, my friend. It is for me to address.’
‘I’ve no doubt that address it you surely can. I only ask this of you as a favor to me.’
The Duke was about to refuse him again when Guillermo, a massive man, spoke up yet again, sealing his fate definitively.
‘I’ll take on the two of you. If you’d been my guest,’ he said, looking at Shiro, ‘I’d have had you in a cage by now to show the village children for their amusement.’
The Duke looked at Shiro. ‘Very well, then.’
Rosario and Guada made the sign of the cross in thanks for this change of heart. Though the Duke did not yet place his sword back in its scabbard, he stood back, taking the reins of Rosario’s horse to hold it steady.
‘Give them room,’ he said to the men.
Everyone moved back. The chef’s assistants had to force their mules off the road into a small pasture. Shiro drew his sword and focused on what would be his second opportunity for real combat, his first with an authentic barbarian. The brutish guard, with little to lose, lunged at him forthwith, hoping to catch the slender foreigner unprepared, but Shiro stepped back and let the man fly past him, the long, heavy Christian blade piercing nothing but rain. Shiro stood his ground and allowed Guillermo time enough to turn around and catch his breath.
‘You’ll not escape me for very long,’ barked the Spaniard.
It was then that Shiro sliced the man’s sword hand off. It was done before anyone could really see it, in a single motion that was followed by another, a deep cut into the man’s abdomen that brought the guard to his knees. Shiro spun, fixed his mark, and then relieved Guillermo of his head. He would later tell others and try and tell himself he performed this coup de grâce as an act of mercy, to save the man from the pain and humiliation about to invade him from the loss of his hand and the stench of his loosening guts, and he would reiterate, to the Duke later in the day as the soggy group approached the outskirts of Medina-Sidonia, that decapitation was the norm for warriors convicted of treason against their Lord. But inside, he knew he had done it out of hubris, letting those within the Duke’s employ who had pegged him for a freakish fop to see whom they were dealing with.
Many of the younger guards had yet to see battle. For the older men, those who had served with Guillermo and the Duke aboard the Armada, scenes like this had all but slipped from memory. In seconds their compatriot had gone from being a fearsome, angry man to a bloody trunk of meat. The chef, his workers, and the rest of the servants had recoiled in shock.
Rosario reacted to the spectacle with deep sobs the Duke did his best to assuage. And Guada, rigid in her saddle and pale as chalk, stared at the severed hand and its sword so as to avoid contemplating the ghoulish remains of the man or the blood-splattered figure of Shiro. She felt responsible. She had asked for his intervention with her eyes. The Samurai she had decided to disdain so recently had answered her call and probably saved her uncle’s life. All of this she attempted to process within the mad beating of her heart along with the scandalous declaration the Duke had made with respect to her handmaiden and the base excitement Shiro’s savage execution stirred within her. She bound it all together and hated her husband for having left her to deal with all of this alone, and she prayed for the day they might be united again in Sevilla.
As his blade passed through the Christian’s neck and vertebra, Shiro had taken hold of the fact that he was ending a man’s life. It was a life that had started decades earlier, born to a woman who had surely cooed and swaddled her newborn and who had taught the boy to walk and talk. The boy had grown into a man and had traveled and seen much and had staked out a manner in which to regard himself and survive. The man had wakened that day by the sea with his mind intact, filled with a confusion of memories and sensations and pedestrian concerns without giving the merest thought to when his death might arrive, blissfully unaware that only hours remained to him. The lesson was there, one Date Masamune had spoken to him about before Shiro took leave of Sendai Castle. ‘Each sunrise,’ the Lord had said, ‘each breath you take, brings you closer to death. Breathe deeply and be where you are.’
– XVII –
In which youth is scorned
Marta Vélez tired of her nephew. Julian’s conversation was limited to little more than opportunities to speak well of himself. She had stayed too long in Sanlúcar. The damp sea air drained her and made her hair unruly. She longed for the mountainous, dry climate of Madrid. She missed her own house and servants. She missed the lazy grandeur of court with its fierce rivalries cloaked in faux religiosity.
Waiting for Julian to return each afternoon, invariably drunk after frittering away the morning hours with rich and rancid provincial friends who never seemed to tire of the same stories told in one of two taverns, had become unbearable. The only thing keeping her there was the discomfort and angst she felt at being alone. But after last night’s debilitating argument, she was ready to go. Once back in Madrid, she would renew her dinner parties and be kinder to Don Rodrigo during his visits to court. Perhaps a new admirer might be found less related to her by blood and more interesting to share her bed with.
Feigning sleep until Julian left one morning to find his friends, she made haste with her toilette, ordering a servant to pack and hire a carriage. When he returned for the midday meal holding a large bouquet of mimosa, he hoped her ill humor might have passed, that he might get her to laugh and undress for him again. A comely young serving girl he and his mates had bantered with earlier in the day had put him in the mood for a siesta amorosa.
But after slapping the servant for obeying Marta’s commands and ransacking their suite of rooms in fruitless search for a note of explanation, throwing the sprigs of mimosa to the floor, he collapsed in a corner and cried. As a small boy, his mother left him often when she would go to be with his father in distant castles and provinces, abandoning him to fend for himself. She would go off without a second thought, eager to give her body to his revolting sire.
Marta’s departure coincided with the only event Julian truly had to attend that very afternoon, as the Duke of Medina-Sidonia’s personal emissary. Since the arrival of the Japanese Delegation, he had largely ignored his official obligations. He had taken it upon himself to decide that the Duke’s attitude toward the foreigners should be one of condescension. Wrapped in a flag of aristocratic snobbery, he’d been able to justify his inclination to avoid almost every opportunity for improving relations with the Japanese, while giving ample rein to his debaucheries. It did not go unnoticed by local officials with ties to the Duke, and his bragging about it to Marta Vélez had only diminished his stature in her eyes.
The meeting taking place that afternoon would finalize the arrangements and protocol for how the Japanese Delegation would enter Sevilla: the route, security, who should be present, when and where. Input from the Duke, due to his close relations with the King and as a singular representative of Sevilla’s high society, was considered crucial. Julian, in his own way, had actually cobbled together a program that, whenever possible, looked to limit public contact and popular enthusiasm for the exotic guests. Leaving his friends late that morning, he had counted on a meal, an assignation with Marta after regaining her sympathies, and a rest before dressing suitably and arriving sober at the appointed chamber where Hasekura Tsunenaga and Father Sotelo would be present.
But Marta had fled. Grief overwhelmed him. The thought of having to go on without the affections of his aunt was unbearable. A relationship he had often seemed cavalier about and that he had often assured himself he could walk away from was now something he could not live without. He had managed to imagine it as being only a satellite about his marriage to Guada, but now it
meant more to him than anything in the world. He saddled his horse and went after her.
Three hours later, he caught up with her carriage between Lebrija and Las Cabezas de San Juan. The carriage came to a halt by a stand of azaleas near a farm where goats grazed in an adjacent field. The goats were minded by a youth who leaned upon a walking stick to watch the novel encounter. The carriage was green and gold and drawn by four black horses. The young nobleman who had implored it to stop was dressed in sky-blue silken finery and rode an Arabian stallion.
Marta Vélez refused to step down from the cabin, preferring to conduct the conversation through the lowered window with a veil covering her face. Upon accepting the fact she would not deign to leave the carriage, Julian dismounted and asked, ‘Why? Why have you done this? Where are you going?’
‘I’m going home where I belong,’ she said.
‘But what’s happened?’
‘I’m tired, Julian.’
‘Tired.’
‘Of many things.’
‘Tired of me?’
‘Once again you disappoint me. A real man would not have come after me. A real man would have fulfilled his responsibility attending the meeting that was scheduled for an hour ago. Only a spoiled boy, a hapless scrounger unworthy of his title and inheritance, would have shamed himself by following me instead of doing his duty.’
A sword driven through his heart would not have pained him more.
‘You mock my affection for you.’
‘The affection of which you speak has run its course and come to an end. It was there, once upon a time, we embraced it, unwisely I’m sure, but now it’s been used up.’
‘Not for me.’
‘You must grow up, Julian. Abandon your boring, illiterate, unattractive friends. Return to your wife and give her children. Take care of your estates. Honor the King.’
‘I cannot face my wife unless I have you.’
‘Then find another, or another me. There are many of us, I fear.’
‘There is someone else, isn’t there?’