The Samurai of Seville

by John Healey

  It started badly for the Samurai. Julian pursued him with frenzied energy, swinging the Katana back and forth. At one point it seemed Shiro was running for his life. But as he ran, he lifted the awkward Christian weapon in different directions, getting the feel of it. Just as Julian, waxing triumphant, began to laugh at his rival’s retreat, Shiro stopped short and turned, and it caught Julian by surprise.

  He lifted his arms and began a slicing motion aimed at Shiro’s neck. The Samurai deflected it, using the thickest part of the Christian sword close to the hilt. For half a minute, Julian attacked as Shiro stood his ground protecting himself, parrying the Katana’s swift motions, one after the other, looking to wear his aggressor out. From where the other men watched, it appeared as if it would only be a matter of time before the foreigner would err and provide an entry for the ceaselessly moving blade. But Shiro held on. The more frantic Julian’s attack became, the more his frustration grew. It was the frustration Shiro was counting on. He did not retreat. He remained erect and poised, well planted on his feet, meeting each deadly swipe with practiced precision.

  Then, when the opportunity he’d been waiting for arrived, as Julian drew the Katana back in order to initiate yet another blow, Shiro, in a short but powerful motion, using all the strength in his arm, brought the Christian blade down and across, hitting Julian mid-calf, cutting into flesh and breaking the shin bone.

  Julian cried out and fell to the ground, shocked by the unexpectedness of it, enraged by the pain. Suddenly drained of strength, his heart filled with terror as he watched his blood seep into the earth.

  ‘I beg of you,’ he cried out. ‘I do not deserve to die like this.’

  There he was surrounded by men, one of them his own King, who were there to see him murdered. The bitterness and cruelty of it were overwhelming. He wished to be back in Marta Vélez’s bed falling asleep, back in Guada’s arms when the marriage seemed possible. He wanted warm morning air wafting through a window smelling of azahar orange blossoms. Instead, he was freezing and encircled like a dog, his leg smashed to bits.

  ‘I beg of you sir,’ he called out again.

  The men were uncomfortable and embarrassed for him, but his cries grabbed their hearts like talons. Shiro looked down at him, at Diego Molina’s murderer, the man who had ruined his hands and stabbed him with his own Tanto, the man who had called him a mongrel, cut off his finger, and had his way with Guada. He looked to the King for guidance, like a gladiator directing his gaze at Caesar.

  When Julian saw the Samurai look away, he came up onto his good knee and swept out at him one final time with the Katana, using all of his remaining strength. Shiro sensed it and pivoted away, pivoted around in a circle as he was trained to do, but the Katana’s blade was long, and the tip of it caught his shoulder, removing a lump of flesh. As he made a full turn, he stepped on the Christian’s hands that were still outstretched, as if they were venomous serpents. Then he leaned down to find an angle and thrust the dull metal Spanish sword into Julian’s chest. When he saw the blade emerge from Julian’s back he yanked it upwards with all his might, shattering ribs and severing arteries. Then he pulled it free. He released his foot as Julian fell dead upon the ground.

  – XLIV –

  In which the master remembers and Shiro says good-bye

  During the two weeks that followed, Julian was buried, Shiro’s wound was treated, and Guada gave birth to a son.

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, whose modest house was not far from the Alcázar in Madrid, lay at death’s door, drifting in and out of sleep. He was refusing food except for the simplest of caldos. Like his most renowned creation, he wandered between delusional and rational worlds. While in the former, he was often convinced the bed he lay upon was on board a ship off the coast of North Africa. He could feel the Mediterranean swells beneath, sense the clear heat of the day, smell the brine, hear sails flapping in want of wind, and he would worry, unsure whether the vessel was making its way toward the shore where he would be jailed anew and forgotten in captivity, or he had already been rescued and, pulling away, was on his way back to Spain. In the latter state when reason still had currency and that tended to occur during the morning hours, what he most enjoyed and took solace from were the sounds of two mourning doves coming through his window, the timbre and rhythm of their plaintive cooing. It ferried him back to childhood summer dawns in Alcalá de Henares, to Rome at first light after a night of love, to autumn afternoons in Napoli gazing out toward Capri.

  During those same two weeks, the King and his Duke of Lerma returned to the prosecution of their heretics, recalcitrant Moriscos and Jews, and to bolstering the fragile peace along the northern frontiers of the empire. The Delegation from Japan was forgotten until the night before it was to set forth on its journey back south.

  Shiro was summoned once again to the King’s private study. Once again they sat by the towering hearth. The dogs were there this time. The Samurai still wore his left arm in a sling.

  ‘How is the shoulder?’ the Monarch asked.

  ‘Much improved,’ Shiro replied. ‘It has ceased to bleed, and there has been no further infection.’

  ‘I am glad to hear of it,’ the King said, petting one of the dogs. ‘And so you are off tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

  ‘You are going to miss my son’s wedding,’ said the King.

  ‘I am sorry for it,’ Shiro replied.

  ‘The boy is only ten, his bride thirteen, so I expect they shall have to wait a spell before procreating.’

  ‘Do they get on well?’ Shiro asked.

  ‘I’m not even sure they have met each other yet,’ said the King, laughing, putting his hands together and raising them toward the vaulted ceiling as if asking God for guidance. Then he reached out and took one of Shiro’s hands.

  ‘Chances are we shall never see each other again.’

  ‘Probably not, Sire.’

  ‘One rarely knows with certainty, I suppose, when one is seeing someone for the last time.’ He handed Shiro a parchment, folded into an envelope and sealed. ‘I want you to keep this with you, in case, for whatever reason, you should change your mind and choose to remain in Spain or anywhere within the empire for that matter. It states that you are under my protection and must be afforded the most generous and respectful treatment.’

  Shiro took the envelope and slipped it inside his robe next to the remaining Biwa seeds.

  ‘I am humbled, Your Majesty. It seems a more fitting gift for Hasekura Tsunenaga.’

  ‘I suspect your ambassador never wished to leave his homeland, and since I first set eyes upon him, it was clear to me he had only one serious concern, which was to return to Japan. Your story is a different one.’

  Shiro smiled, impressed once again by the Monarch’s perspicacity.

  ‘And he shall have his gift, too, of course,’ the King added.

  ‘In Japan my people have cast yours out,’ Shiro said, looking into the fire, as the dog closest to him rested its snout upon his thigh. ‘I am told you have cast out foreigners of different faiths, as well, ones who have lived here for centuries. And yet here we are, sitting together, at ease and on the verge of missing each other’s company—if I may speak for myself—two people so different in so many ways.’

  ‘Let us leave all that aside,’ answered the King, ‘and raise a cup to our late friend the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, and to ask that God grant you a safe journey.’

  – XLV –

  In which their life begins

  When he reached Sevilla, Shiro spent three days searching for Diego Molina’s widow, and when he found her he presented himself and told Rocío Sánchez that justice had been done. It was only then that he allowed himself to make his way to Soledad Medina’s palacete. There he was informed that Doña Guada had moved back into her own residence. By the time he arrived there, it was late in the afternoon, almost twilight. Before knocking on the massive door, he stared at the pavement out front where he had been th
rown half-dead almost a year earlier.

  Admitted within, he saw at once the beginnings of the Biwa trees surrounded by new tiles. A chambermaid accompanied him upstairs to the room where Guada was feeding her newborn. When she saw him standing there, she blushed and quickly covered her breast with a piece of linen, and in doing so covered the head of the child. At first they said nothing. The chambermaid retreated. All that could be heard was a fountain down in the garden and the baby gorging on his mother’s milk.

  ‘You’ve come,’ she finally said.

  ‘Here I am,’ he answered.

  ‘Is Julian alive?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She looked away, nodding her head.

  ‘I do not wish to know anything more about it,’ she said.

  He remained silent until she looked back at him.

  ‘For how long can you stay, here in Sevilla?’ she asked.

  ‘Until we know a ship has been readied in Sanlúcar,’ he said. ‘A matter of weeks.’

  Tears came into her eyes. She did not fight them. Without knowing why, she felt as if her life might be leaving her.

  ‘Will you stay here?’ she said. ‘With me?’

  – XLVI –

  In which Shiro makes a decision

  When they touched each other, when they held hands, when they fell asleep naked in her bed, culture disappeared. When clothed and facing the world, her worried aunt, scandalized servants, her horrified parents, the world returned to them.

  She told him how she’d wished her arm had reached under his tent that night in Baelo Claudia. She described the intimate effect he had caused when his knees pressed against hers in the carriage from Medina-Sidonia to Sevilla. At night with the household asleep, they would take the baby and lie out on the upper balcony, staring at the heavens. He told her all he could remember about Japan. They compared memories of childhood summers, his within the gardens of the castle in Sendai, hers amongst the rolling plains surrounding Carmona.

  He believed she was made for him, her scent, her skin, the feel of her, the back of her neck, the way she looked at him. Nothing they said or did shamed them. Every posture and every word was a source of pleasure.

  And when the time arrived, he went to speak with Hasekura Tsunenaga. He returned the sword the older Samurai had lent to him, and they both admired anew Shiro’s recovered blade that had once been a point of contention between them. They walked conversing along the bank of the Guadalquivir toward the Compás del río, not far from where Guada had been baptized, not far from where Shiro had thrown himself from the bridge and drifted away, but keeping clear from the zone where thieves and men of ill repute lived in muddy hovels.

  ‘I shall not be leaving with you,’ Shiro said. ‘I have decided to stay for a time. Please convey my respects and apologies to the Lord and assure him of my fealty. Tell him my heart has been compromised and I must see to it. Tell my mother not to fret, to be patient, that I shall keep my promise to her.’

  ‘I am saddened to hear this, Shiro-San,’ Hasekura Tsunenaga replied, ‘for the journey is long and treacherous, and your company shall be missed. Despite my warnings about what might happen to him if he returns to Sendai, the Friar will be aboard. Months more of him at close quarters … I do not know how I shall stand it.’

  ‘Save the Shogun some firewood,’ Shiro said, ‘and toss him into the sea.’

  ‘Perhaps I will,’ said Hasekura Tsunenaga. ‘What is more galling still is that six of the remaining Samurai from Edo, the ones who have taken their conversion too seriously, have chosen to remain here, as well, for fear of persecution back home. But not the priest!’

  They approached the Torre de Oro, built by the Moors with mud and limestone in the early 13th century.

  ‘I shall try and convince them otherwise, Hasekura-San, and if I am unable, I will help them get settled here.’

  By the time Shiro and Guada travelled with the Delegation to Sanlúcar in order to see the ship off, most of the nobility in Sevilla had turned against them. Their only allies, significant ones but sympathetic to Guada only, were Don Rodrigo and Doña Soledad.

  In the newborn grandson that Guada named Rodrigo, her father had his heir. Neither the shameful demise of Julian, nor the manner in which the child had been conceived, nor the scandalous nature of his daughter’s relationship with the foreigner mattered to him when compared with the joy he felt at seeing his line continue.

  And there were other considerations. He knew from the Duke of Lerma that Shiro, for some reason, had become a favorite of the King, and the King himself had told Rodrigo in what high esteem he regarded Guada. Adding his own dose of slander to the rest, including that of his wife who blathered on about nothing else, would only diminish his stature at court.

  After the Delegation’s ship sailed, they made the trip once again to Medina-Sidonia and stayed for a time with Rosario. Returning to the Duke’s ancestral home, a place he thought he would never see again, moved Shiro in a way he could not explain. They watched the two baby boys play upon a large Alpujarreño coverlet spread out in the garden where Guada and Shiro had first met. Rosario was discrete and kind to them. The young women who had once been so far apart in many respects found themselves sharing a great deal, not only widowhood and motherhood, but public censure. An excursion was planned to Baelo Claudia for sentimental reasons, but the young women decided the winds might have an untoward effect upon the little boys. After Semana Santa, Shiro and Guada set out for Sevilla again, this time by way of Ronda.

  In that gentle mountain town and sporting the quiver and arrows given to him by the King, Shiro gave an exhibition one day for the Hermandad del Santo Espíritu of archery from horseback. The local nobles, more impressed with his skill than suspicious of his relation with the daughter of a Grandee of Spain, feted him.

  That night, from a room that had a ceiling decorated with calligraphy quoting the Koran, that looked across to distant hills rising above the Río Guadiaro, they could see the occasional cortijo lit by firelight.

  – XLVII –

  In which Guada returns to La Moratalla

  Two months later, Guada was pregnant again. Once certain of her state, she paid a visit to her aunt. She had not been back to the palacete since the day her father returned from Madrid with the news of Julian’s detention. In light of what she had been through during the time she lived there, it felt like a second home, and despite her trepidation about how Doña Soledad might receive her news, it comforted her to walk its halls again.

  Aunt and niece took the midday meal together in the same room where they had once discussed Guada’s approaching marriage.

  ‘I am with child,’ Guada said.

  Doña Soledad, dressed in black for the anniversary of the death of her oldest son, raised a spoon filled with chilled almond soup to her lips and savored it before replying.

  ‘Congratulations, my dear. Are you pleased?’

  ‘Very,’ said Guada.

  ‘Does anyone else know?’ her aunt asked.

  ‘Only Shiro. I wanted to tell you first.’

  Soledad smiled, trying to hide her nerves. She closed her eyes for a moment and came to a decision.

  ‘I am honored by your confidence, Guada. Might I give you some advice?’

  ‘That is why I am here.’

  ‘If you remain in Sevilla, it will be a nuisance for you with each passing month. Not only because of the society we live in, but because of your mother. I suggest that you and your gentleman friend move into La Moratalla. I shall come with you. But we will tell all of those concerned that we are travelling to Italy. It will be easier for you to present the new baby next year as a fait accompli.’

  ‘La Moratalla …’ said Guada, casting her gaze to the side.

  ‘You disapprove of the idea?’

  ‘No,’ she said, looking back at her aunt. ‘It is a wonderful idea, it is only that it was there that Julian and I went after our wedding.’

  ‘It is my home,’ Soledad said. ‘So
meday it will belong to you and your children. Better that you wash away any sad memories by putting new ones in their place. Does your friend know you were there with Julian?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it shall be our secret. You will see that after only a short while, all your concerns will evaporate into the heavens.’

  Don Rodrigo and Doña Inmaculada were alarmed and riled to lose sight of their grandson for such a long time. They vigorously tried to convince Guada to leave him in their care. But they were also relieved at the thought of their daughter’s absence for a year under the wing of Soledad Medina, the most esteemed doyenne of their world.

  The threesome and the child and a small contingent of servants set off for the estate in May. Guada began to show in June. Doña Soledad had not spent so much time there since she had been Guada’s age, and what first seemed like a sacrifice soon became a great satisfaction. The gardens were preened and mulched into shape, the statues cleaned, leaks in the massive manse repaired. The servants particular to the house were drilled back to snuff or dismissed and replaced. The orange and lemon groves behind the house were neatened and raked, their slender trunks painted with whitewash.

  Despite what she had heard from her niece and from the Duke, Doña Soledad maintained serious misgivings about the foreigner and his claim to be a Prince. But once they had settled in at La Moratalla, he won her over. His reserved manner, his love for her land, his demeanor and aristocratic bearing, his unashamed enthusiasm for flowers, his penchant for cleanliness, and, above all, the love he showered upon her niece coaxed her into their camp. His was not the Spanish version of masculinity she had known all her life. He exhibited no pretense of gruffness, no affected graveled voice. His good manners were not fraudulent or theatrical or mixed with questionable taste and a flair for vulgarity.