by John Healey
‘Not at all, sire. I only meant …’
‘In any event,’ said the King, interrupting Rodrigo’s worried apology, ‘it’s the topic of “husbandry” in fact that has led me to ask you back to Madrid, and for that it is I who must apologize. But I find myself in a potentially delicate situation.’
‘The journey is inconsequential, My Lord,’ said Rodrigo, hoping to get things back on a better track. ‘I am here to serve.’
There was something in the Monarch’s tone and body language that caused Rodrigo to realize that an ambassadorship would probably not be on the day’s agenda.
‘How do you feel about your son-in-law Julian? What opinion of him have you? And take a seat, man.’
The dogs had resettled themselves next to the King’s chair. One looked as if it might already be asleep while the other vigorously scratched at its neck with a hind paw. Rodrigo sat opposite the King, on a chair slightly lower than the Monarch’s. On the table between them were Cellini’s opened codex and the Moorish bowl of shiny nuts. For the life of him and as an indication of his general obtuseness, Rodrigo could not fathom why the King might have taken an interest in Julian, and he strained to respond with what would be the correct answer.
‘I must confess, sire, and at the cost of some embarrassment, that I do not know the boy all that well. My wife has often accused me of being a distant parent.’
‘The “boy” as you call him, is now very much a man as far as I am concerned. Surely you must have some inkling of an impression as to his nobility, and by that I am not referring to his lineage.’
‘Understood, my lord. Well, I would say, I might say, that it seems that sometimes he may exhibit somewhat temperamental qualities.’
‘Temperamental.’
‘Pique, anger, mixed with a certain hubristic bravado.’
Though the foul event claimed and protested by his daughter did cross his mind at this point, what he was most remembering with a much heftier dose of spite was the sound of the laughter he had heard from the boy and Marta Vélez on that night, now over a year ago, as he had clambered back down the tree in front of her bedroom window.
‘I’ve had him arrested,’ said the King.
‘Arrested?’
‘He’s here in the dungeon of the palace, in an area well aired and attended that is reserved for the nobility, but in chains.’
‘Virgen Santo!’ said the Grandee. ‘Why, sire?’
‘I will get to that in a minute. I’ve called you here for two reasons. First of all, his own father is old and ill. As you probably know, after a clutch of daughters Julian came along late in his parents’ life. I’ve never met the father, although my father and I have always been grateful for the taxes collected from their vast estates, some of which now belong to you. But he is not a Grandee. You, my friend, are in a different sphere altogether, and so I feel I have an obligation to warn you of the embarrassment the young fellow’s crimes might bring upon you and your family unless you disown him quickly.’
‘I see.’
‘Second of all, I was hoping you might corroborate a tale I’ve learned thanks to a most shocking letter I asked for and received last week from the recently widowed woman who married our beloved Duke of Medina-Sidonia, a letter that led to my asking you here.’
Inmaculada had been right. As his face reddened, Rodrigo unreasonably cursed the woman while simultaneously marveling at her perspicacity.
‘Might this have something to do with my daughter, sire?’
‘It does.’
‘I see.’
‘The letter states she was violated against her will by her own husband. Are you aware of this?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did you confront him about it?’
‘No, sire. It is a delicate matter,’ Rodrigo said, looking down.
‘Perhaps such a thing is ignored or even encouraged by the heathens of this world,’ said the King, ‘but it is not sanctioned in this realm by our Holy Mother Church, nor by me, who am the Church’s defender.’
‘I am aware of that, sire.”
‘Now, I realize it can be a delicate matter, as you put it. Such acts are inevitably committed in private and rarely have witnesses and come to depend on the sole testimony of the victim. But I must ask. How did you and your wife react when you learned of it?’
‘We counseled forbearance, my lord. We saw no advantage in airing such intimacies.’
‘An honest answer. I appreciate that.’
‘Why sire, might I ask, are you this concerned with this particular case?’
‘Two reasons,’ said the King. ‘I have learned of it firsthand and therefore cannot look away from it. If that were all and you were to plead for me to share in you and your wife’s counsel of forbearance, I might have acceded. But I cannot, especially because I have such fond memories of the years Guada spent here at court. She was a favorite of our late Queen. The idea of her being subjected to such a thing is abhorrent to me. But that is my second reason. My first reason, in all honesty, is that I first became aware of this sad tale in a manner most offensive to my person.’
Rodrigo was appalled and enraged at having his own opinions questioned, his role as a father disparaged, nay, insulted and overlooked by the inbred gentleman across from him who had more Teuton blood in his veins than Iberian.
‘I am humbled, my lord,’ he said.
The King went on.
‘The late Duke of Medina-Sidonia was much beloved in this palace. He put up with immense challenges and even ridicule because of my father’s occasional pigheadedness, and he did so without ever losing his sense of grace or humor, ever the gentleman, ever the elegant warrior. In the final months of his life, he acquired a most unusual protégé, a young man, a Prince I’m told, from the distant realm of Japan, a young man of unusual distinction and taste I took a liking for, as well, and to whom I had commissioned a special gift that only he would truly appreciate. This young man left court shortly afterwards, of a sudden, and was not heard from again. Then some weeks ago while entertaining a generation of younger noblemen at a hunt organized by the Duke of Lerma I saw the gift, a red leather quiver filled with arrows from my personal supply. It was brought to the hunt by none other than your son-in-law, and when I questioned him about it, as to how he had come to acquire it, he lied to me, repeatedly, lied to my face.’
Rodrigo felt lost, like he was sinking, as if tossed from a ship into the sea.
‘The story, according to the letter I received,’ said the King, ‘goes like this…’
Relying on Rosario’s detailed account, taken down and neatly transcribed by the same gentleman who had helped Shiro with his first letters to Guada, the King then proceeded to tell the tale, beginning with Shiro’s befriending of Diego Molina aboard the Date Maru and ending with the heinous rape of Guada and her subsequent pregnancy. He also described the multifaceted role Marta Vélez had played in the affair.
‘I’m afraid your mistress has much to be sorry for,’ he said in conclusion.
‘I had no idea she was still entertaining Julian,’ Rodrigo said, if only to say something, anything at all, while the full weight of the account along with its possible consequences made its way through the conduits of his brain.
‘I’ve called you here to corroborate some facts,’ said the King, ‘one of which, the aggression against your daughter, you have already confirmed. Is she in fact pregnant?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘And living I understand with Soledad Medina.’
‘That is correct.’
‘Because you would not accede to her complaint.’
‘We saw no point, especially when the pregnancy was discovered.’
‘And there was the question of the estates accrued to you because of her marriage.’
‘That, too, sire.’
‘Once again, I respect your honesty, Rodrigo.’
‘Sire.’
A momentary silence gripped the room in a vise.
‘May I ask, sire,’ Rodrigo finally said, ‘what you are going to do with him?’
‘The charge of murder against the sailor or the olive worker or whatever he was is the most grievous one,’ said the King. ‘There were witnesses to it, two thugs who helped him carry it out. Both of them confessed. One of them did not survive his confession, but the other is still with us and was also present on the evening my young friend from Japan was assaulted, and this thug has also testified he heard Guada’s screams both during and after that event. I also know from my own guards that the young Samurai, now in Rome, has virtually lost the use of his hands. You ask me what I am going to do with Julian…’
Here the King paused and stared into the flames before them.
‘You know,’ he then said in a quieter tone, ‘I could have brooked almost anything from the cad, if only out of respect for you and for his aging father. But his lying to me the way he did, lies I now have had validated from sufficient sources, is unforgiveable.’
‘Of course,’ Rodrigo said. Then, somewhat wistfully, he added, ‘With my own son’s embrasure of chastity and the cross I had looked forward in Julian to having another.’
‘That was a mistake,’ said the King. ‘But Perhaps Guada’s child will be a son, and you can spend your remaining years taking good care of them. She and the child, whatever its sex, shall inherit all of Julian’s holdings. I’ll see to that. As to what to do with him,’ he concluded, petting the sleeping dog, ‘I’ve decided to leave that up to the Samurai.’
– XXXIX –
In which Shiro takes a Roman bath
Edo and Kyoto were brown and white with green leaves and spindly flowering trees in spring and gray paths of raked pebbles. Madrid was orange and tan with burnt roofs and slate steeples and acacia blossoms late in summer. And Rome, Shiro thought, was salmon and ochre and overripened lemon, veined marble and stones smoothened with time, frescoes deep blue and cloaks the color of blood. It was close to the winter solstice, and the Tiber flowed high and full. The city smelled of drainage and debauchery, intimacy and incense. Citizens huddled by fires lit beside the ruins of its golden age.
Galileo Galilei invited the Samurai to a supper party in a villa owned by the physicist’s friend, Federico Cesi, Prince of St. Angelo and St. Polo. The enormous house, surrounded by umbrella pines and equipped with a still functioning 2nd century bath, dominated the top of the Gianicolo. From a wide veranda dotted with statues of naked goddesses, one could see many of the city’s most prominent buildings. The gathering commenced while there was still sufficient light to peer through Galileo’s telescope, by which one could clearly discern the letters chiseled into the distant facade of San Giovanni in Laterno. After supper a number of the guests attempted to find the moons of Jupiter but owing perhaps to the amount of spirits consumed, only with middling success.
Galileo had never made the acquaintance of anyone from the Far East. Shiro’s command of Latin, Greek, English, and Spanish astonished him, and he took delight in showing him off to the others. When the topic of his heretical theory came up as it inevitably did in those years, and with his tongue loosened that night by a liter of Chianti, the visionary held forth. Though he was addressing himself to Shiro, he made a point of directing his gaze to the others, as well.
‘Bellarmino is a Neanderthal who in that age might well have protested the invention of the wheel.’
Shiro maintained an impassive smile as the others laughed aloud.
‘I’ve little doubt he would have found a way to declare it sacrilegious. All I’ve tried to do is stand upon the shoulders of Nicolaus Copernicus, who stood upon the shoulders of Philolaus, Heraclides Ponticus, Aristarchus of Samos, the Islamic astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and the Indian mathematician Aryabhata.’
This was accompanied by cheers, even from those, the majority, with no idea who the historical figures being mentioned were.
‘Astronomy has played a key role in my culture and in its two central religions,’ Shiro said, ‘in Shintoism and Buddhism. Wise men from China have had a long influence on our astronomical observations, on our astrological calendar. But unlike you, I have no great names to cite. It has simply been a part of who we are, for as long as anyone can remember. But no one, as far as I know, has suffered because of any competing beliefs about the machinations of the stars.’
At first Galileo was irked at the interruption, but when his persecution by the Church was alluded to, all was forgiven.
‘As you can see by my surroundings here this evening, young man, I am not suffering too much, either,’ Galileo said, aiming his cup of wine at his friends to more laughter. ‘Yes, I am ahead of my time, but I’ve learned my place. It’s certainly not worth being tortured for. What the Church refuses to acknowledge will be a common fact after my death, and they will be embarrassed by it. So though I am shunned and isolated now, I have, as you can see, many good friends, and there are advantages to being on the outside of things.’
‘Hear! Hear!’ someone cried.
Shiro thought it rude and unbecoming that the physicist had paid no mind to the Samurai’s words concerning the status of astronomy in Japan.
‘I’ll wager that when you return to the East, young man, you will feel the same way,’ Galileo went on. ‘This journey you have made and your knowledge of language is going to change you in ways that will only become apparent when you return. It happened to me by simply moving from Pisa to Rome!’
More laughter followed along with a prolonged fit of coughing from a short fat man who nevertheless did not cease chewing on a leg of chicken.
‘Now let us have a look at those hands,’ concluded the physicist. And at that a number of men and a few of the women gathered around the Samurai.
Shiro by then had mastered the ability to close his hands about the hilt of his sword, but he was unable to squeeze them tight enough for fighting. He had regained strength in his arms, but most of his fingers were still plagued with a tingling numbness that came and went. One of the doctors present suggested a system of leather straps that might be attached to one another with small buckles and that would force the damaged hands into a more rigid grip.
Late in the evening, there was music and revelry, and one of the women approached Shiro. They spoke for a time and went as far as sharing a bath in the ancient balnea romani. Under the hot water and lit by torches, he admired its floor covered with small tiles depicting sea horses. But since bidding farewell to Rosario, he noticed how his interest in other women waned because of his correspondence with Guada.
He gently put the puella off and, wrapped in towels, was content to lie back on a pallet gazing at the stars until dawn, listening to the merrymakers on the veranda. He thought them a wise, easygoing, provincial group, content within the familiarity of their singular city, paying scant attention to his own condition, as far that night from home as he would ever be, on the far side of the moon, at the outermost limit, poised on the verge of return.
– XL –
In which Guada returns home
Rodrigo left for Sevilla directly from the Alcázar. He did not return to Marta Vélez’s house. He would never return there again. The anger he felt toward the woman who had been his mistress for five years, though aided and abetted by the role she had played in his daughter’s misery, was primarily due to his having discovered, from the King no less, that Marta had continued to lie with his son-in-law. She had sworn to him that the dalliance with her nephew had come to an end; that she had grown bored to tears with the lad. The vigor she displayed, at least at the beginning, when renewing her sympathies for the Grandee had been convincing. But clearly her unseemly lust for Julian had continued. He would not allow her the satisfaction of making a fool of him again.
Riding down through the flatlands of La Mancha and Valdepeñas, down through the vertiginous wilds of Despeñaperros and on to Córdoba, he spent profligately, inviting himself into the best homes, bestowing lavish gifts upon his hosts, eating and imbibing in excess. Sto
pping at Soledad Medina’s estate, La Moratalla, where Guada and Julian had passed their honeymoon, he lingered for two full days and nights, making repeated and useless attempts to bed down a servant girl. Considering himself to be once again a single man, for Doña Inmaculada did not figure into it, he felt both the power and the dread of his new status. It dizzied him. And he was no longer the man he had been when he first began courting Marta Vélez. He wished to prove something by getting his way with the servant girl and thus was doubly humiliated when she turned down his charms, the power of his station, and finally an exorbitant offer of silver to give in to him. But she had said no and at one moment called him ‘un abuelito.’
He arrived in Sevilla despondent, put out to pasture, feeling gray and unappealing, his run as a Don Juan at an end. He rode directly to Doña Soledad’s palacete, for he was not yet ready to bear the scourge of what would be Inmaculada’s volcanic derision, congratulating herself for having been right about why the King had summoned him. He hoped that by doing the right thing by his daughter, taking the bull by the horns, his wife’s spite might be diluted.
He found Soledad’s residence almost irritatingly superior to his own. It occurred to him that years had passed since his last visit there. The condition of her gardens and carriages, the gravel of the front drive, the magnificent facade, the understatement and luxurious quality of the floor tiles in the entranceway, the paintings, the ferns cleanly and simply planted in plain terracotta pots placed at either side of the stairwells. Was she that much wealthier than he, or worse, simply endowed with better taste and the will to exercise it consistently? He would have to speak with Inmaculada about this once the storm had passed.
He waited in the sitting room, exhausted from the journey, fully aware that he looked unpresentable and in need of a bath. As their footsteps approached, he rose to greet them.
‘Rodrigo,’ said Doña Soledad. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’