by James Philip
In the cities the Church of Rome was less concerned with the temporal, an integral major constituent of the body politic with its fingers in every aspect of government; but out in the country an argument could be made that it was ‘the government’, albeit in its most benign ‘suffer the children to me’ incarnation.
Here in the mountains, in places like Chinchón imperial power politics and the machinations of the rival factions in the Royal Palaces of Madrid might have been happening on the surface of some alien, distant planet. Dressed in the fashion of better off local women Melody and Henrietta almost but not quite blended into the milieu of the town, unselfconsciously wandering hand in hand and sitting, as they did now, outside an old taverna which catered in the main for visitors, drinking rich coffee from Colombia, and nibbling biscuits chipped through with cocoa from the Indies.
“This must be a horrible place when they hold their twice-yearly bull fights in the square?” Henrietta remarked, enjoying the cool spring sunshine bathing her face. She had let her long hair down in the fashion of Spanish women in the country. “I suppose? You told me once that you’d been to the great bullring in Madrid?”
Melody wrinkled her nose.
“Yes, it was horrible,” she remembered, ‘yet beautiful in its tragedy. It’s really hard to describe. One side of me was disgusted, ashamed to be watching it at and the other, was, well, fascinated by the drama of it all. A lot of the ‘bull fight’ was really like an intricate, very dangerous ballet played out in a huge sandy arena, scene after scene until in the final acts the matadors’ swords stab and the gladiatorial circus comes to a tumultuous end…”
Melody still felt conflicted, guilty and defiant about sleeping with Alonso. She wondered if she would have felt half so conflicted if she had fallen into his bed on an impulse, suffered some kind of rush of blood. That she had planned to be seduced, or to seduce him - she had no idea which clause applied even in hindsight - for several weeks before the event, tugged persistently at her conscience even though Henrietta had forgiven her.
The last two nights they had abandoned pretence, wrapped each other in their arms and slept curled, clinging together in Henrietta’s room, slowly healing.
“Do you think Alonso is one of the Queen’s lovers?” The younger woman asked, so lowly that Melody had to piece together the interrogative before she could consider it.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” she whispered, quirking a very wan smile. And then, spontaneously, giggling like a girl and almost spilling her coffee.
Among other dissonances within the ‘Madrid bubble’ at the nexus of the dysfunctional Empire of New Spain was the tension between the ‘modernisers’ of the Aranjuez Court and the ‘traditionalists’ of the El Escorial. While it would be a gross misrepresentation to claim that one faction was in any way anti-Catholic – such a thing was unthinkable in the Spanish Imperial establishment – the Holy See in Rome periodically castigated those ‘who would overturn the tradition in the name of progress’, and now and then had backed up this with bulls of ex-communication against several of Queen Sophia’s advisors in recent years. Moreover, the Cardinal of Madrid, a man in his eighties whom many considered a living anachronism had once famously bemoaned ‘the feebleness of the modern-day Inquisition.’ Apparently, he was still a ‘burning’ cardinal!
One of the main tasks assigned to ‘British’ members of the impotent Joint Commission to which Melody and Henrietta had been appointed last year, had been to probe both Royal Courts to identify people – men, if one was being picky because there were few women of influence, courtesans apart within either court – with whom London might ‘do business.’
Melody had actually been a little shocked to discover that Imperial Intelligence had so singularly failed to penetrate the apparatus of the Empire’s only serious transatlantic rival. The reasons for this had soon become crystal clear. Belatedly, she had come to understand that the closer to the top of Spanish society one moved the more profoundly opaque things became until by the time one tried to peer into the workings of the Royal Courts, all was veiled, smoke and mirrors and scores, possibly hundreds or thousands of lies, schemes and subterfuges obscured any glimpse of reality.
Consequently, the very fact that outside observers could see even slim shafts of murky daylight between the Courts of the El Escorial and Aranjuez was the real litmus test of how much trouble the Empire of Spain was in, and the likely ramifications for New Spain overseas. It was almost as if what everybody had known for decades but been afraid to talk about, was now the least-best kept secret in Christendom.
Even in Old Spain, there were factions who understood that the Empire of New Spain was dying, disintegrating around them and with it the century’s old dominion of an infallible monarchy.
Old Spain was not a country, it was an empire within an empire: Castile and Leon, Aragon, Galicia, Asturias, La Mancha, Catalonia, Extremadura, Andalusia, Navarre and all the other lands of the Iberian Peninsula might be nominally ‘Spanish’ but each had their own language, culture, histories and communal identities buried beneath ‘Spain’ but not extinguished, waiting to find new expression if and when the burden of the upstart Castilian, or Aragonese, or Asturian, or whichever royal blood line, which temporarily sat upon the throne in Madrid stood aside, or was…over-thrown.
However, for the moment Melody was content to forget all the wearisome ‘background noise’ and enjoy being with Henrietta, safe in this rural backwater many miles from the harsh realities of a once great nation in sad, irreversible decline.
The two women finished their drinks and walked slowly back up the gently rising cobbled street to the Hacienda de los Conquistadores, where, asking not to be disturbed until a few minutes before the evening meal was served, they retired to their bed chambers – or rather, Henrietta’s bed – to enjoy a lazy, playful siesta little knowing that the great storm long-predicted by an army of ‘Spanish experts’, few of whom had ever stepped foot on the soil of Old Spain, was about to break over the Mountains of Madrid.
It seemed odd that evening, eating alone together at the big table where Alonso had regaled them with witty asides, pithy word plays and gossip, both scurrilous and ironic about the goings on in his time in Philadelphia.
The women ate sparingly having excelled themselves in their wanderings around the town that morning, enjoying a long, browsing lunch in the Plaza Mayor and subsequently, done little to burn off the calories they had taken on board during their post-prandial perambulations and naps that afternoon. They savoured small glasses of wine, talked awhile on the veranda until a light, spotting rain began to fall in the darkness and the wind, as if on cue, chilled several degrees, quickly driving them inside.
“I could get used to this,” Melody admitted. “But I think we’d both grow quite plump in no time at all living the easy life!”
They laughed as they shut the door to Henrietta’s bed chamber at their backs, disrobed, trooped into the small washroom to wipe away a little of the day’s dust, brushed their teeth, and discarding their shifts, slipped beneath the blankets together.
“I’m sorry,” Melody whispered in the Stygian gloom. “I do thoughtless things sometimes, that’s who I am.”
Henrietta kissed her as their limbs tangled together.
“I’m sure I will do something bad one day,” the younger woman gasped, breathlessly.
Melody laughed softly.
“I shall look forward to that!”
It was all the prompting her lover needed to roll on top of her and straddle her.
Melody stretched and pressed against her, her hands gently kneading Henrietta’s breasts; presently her lover lowered herself onto her elbows, began to plant small, moist kisses on and around her mouth, moaning as Melody’s fingers began to explore between her thighs. Suddenly she wanted to lick and suck every inch of her partner’s flesh, touch her with every part of her being.
Much, much later the two women slept.
Their sleep was dreamless, sated,
both utterly comfortable, safe in their own skins in the warm blanket of the Spanish night far, far from the troubles of the age.
Chapter 8
Friday 17th March
Government House, Philadelphia
The Governor of the Crown Colonies of the Commonwealth of New England, Edward Philip Cornwallis Sidney, 7th Viscount De L'Isle, who only usually used his full title ‘The Lord De L'Isle, Dudley and Northampton’ in his annual, summer appearances in the House of Lords to make his customary report on the year just completed in the Americas, was a much pre-occupied man that morning. Not least because he had felt it necessary to dissemble when, some minutes ago, his wife Diana had inquired, with horrible pertinacity, whether the ‘commotion in Spain’ was ‘likely to effect Henrietta and Miss Danson?’
‘Hen and the others will be as safe as houses in the Embassy, my love. It’ll all turn out to be a storm in a tea cup. You know how volatile the Latin temperament can be!’
The Governor of New England’s wife had been very ill in the last few days and although he justified his white lie – in reality only an embellishment of the truth because nobody seemed to know anything about the situation in Madrid or anywhere else in Old Spain at the moment – he felt damnably guilty.
Not to say more than a little worried about his daughter.
“Excuse me, My Lord,” a Government House staffer, a subaltern in the uniform of the 20th/21st Hussars murmured, reluctant to interrupt the great man mid-stream in the consideration of whatever mighty matters of state were demanding his immediate attention, ‘Brigadier Harrison has asked to speak to you at your earliest convenience. Should I put the call through to you, My Lord?”
“Yes, if you’d be so good. Thank you.”
De L’Isle settled behind his broad, uncluttered desk and waited a few seconds for the phone to ring. He had asked London if they had any idea what was going on in Spain, only to be informed that the Foreign and Colonial Secretary was in a meeting with ‘Cabinet colleagues’, which did not bode well.
“I apologise for not getting through to you earlier, sir,” the Head of the Colonial Security Service apologised, his Virginian drawl belying the fears both men shared. “I’ve only just landed in New Orleans.”
Although the Mississippi Delta had been border-country in the two men’s youth, successive dirty little wars had since pushed the frontier all the way into the badlands of West Texas and Coahuila since the 1950s. The lands west of the vast Louisiana Territories had been a harsh, windswept desert wilderness in those days, a terrible place to fight any kind of war. However, the most recent – 1971 - ceasefire in the borderlands had held, more or less intact. Not so much because the regime in Mexico City was any less acquisitive or embittered than any of its predecessors but because it understood that it could not win – other than at immense cost - a ‘long war’ in the South West.
Successive New England governors had driven railheads and a network of broad, arrow-straight highways across the coastal flats of the Gulf of Spain and the rolling plains west of the Mississippi. New boom towns had been founded and now dotted the previously empty landscape, and factories had moved into ‘tax and tariff free’ zones. Lately, the fast-expanding gulf ports of Pelican Island and Buffalo Bayou west of the Delta had accelerated the rush to claim and develop the new territories opened up to settlers and immigrants from the East.
In retrospect, had the same policy of incentives – free land grants and Imperial agricultural subsidies been made available in the south as had been promoted in the north back in the 1930s, it might not even have been necessary to fight the border wars of the mid-years of the century. But that was hindsight and little use to man nor beast…
The ‘land rush’ – essentially, loosely regulated ‘land-grabbing’ and settlement right up to the borders with New Granada - had gone into overdrive in the last few years. Huge ranges had been opened up to cattle farmers and in the last two or three years the small garrisons stationed, much in the fashion of trip-wire, or deterrent outposts, close to the contested border line had been mainly pre-occupied keeping the peace between the newcomers and the indigenous Apaches and Cherokees.
De L’Isle hoped above hope that memories of how those railroads and highways had enabled Empire forces to win the logistics war and eventually, to crush the last foray of an invading army onto New England soil, were still fresh in the mind of his counterpart in Mexico City. In the last big ‘border war’ in the late 1960s the enemy, reliant for all his supplies on a few narrow un-metalled roads and tracks across the deserts and through the mountain passes that guarded Nuevo Mexico, Chihuahua and Coahuila had swiftly run out of ammunition, fuel and food once it moved into New England territory.
He hoped they remembered that because right now, all those recently planted towns and villages, cattle and sheep stations lost in the wilderness of the South West, were potentially in the firing line and if things went badly, there was nothing he could do to protect them in the short-term.
Worryingly, what was going on in Old Spain had the look and the feel about it of a madman lighting the fuse to…
God only knew what!
“How are things down there, Matt?” The Governor of New England inquired urbanely.
“Calm enough for the moment. The party started when the Navy came up the river a couple of days ago and people are still getting over their hangovers!”
Philip De L’Isle guffawed at this.
New Orleans was over a hundred miles from the Gulf of Spain but the Mississippi was easily navigable for even very big ships, as had been proven by the despatch of the forty-two thousand ton, eight-hundred-and-fifty feet-long battlecruiser HMS Indomitable and a squadron of fleet destroyers ‘up river’ to reassert that neither he, nor the Royal Navy had forgotten the people of the city or of the vast, poorly mapped and still relatively sparsely populated country to the west between it and the rapidly expanding Pelican Island-Buffalo Bayou port complex, the opening of which had prompted a rush of fresh private investment into the express development of the oilfields of West Texas.
The light cruiser HMS Devonshire and two more destroyers, detached from Indomitable’s squadron, had steamed west to Pelican Island with orders to ‘make their presence felt’ in international waters along the coast of the Spanish province of Coahuila.
Every war plan the Governor had ever seen predicted, that in the event of a general war with the Empire of New Spain two things would happen: firstly, the Royal Navy would blockade the Gulf of Spain, Cuba and Santo Domingo and destroy ‘enemy’ maritime assets in detail at its leisure; and secondly, that the Army of Nuevo Granada would make mechanised thrusts – in strength, possibly with columns simultaneously emerging from Nuevo Mexico and Coahuila – into West Texas, or east into the unincorporated protectorate of Sequoyah, or conceivably, north into the mountainous Colorado Valley concession. In this scenario, Pelican Island would be an obvious early objective for the invaders, possibly opening up a deep-water port he might employ as a bridgehead, thereby bypassing the virtually impassable terrain of much of the borderland and obviating the supply issues which had hamstrung every previous attempt to push the boundaries of New Granada farther to the north and east.
Thirty years ago, a Spanish column had advanced along the Gulf coast before bogging down in swamp land only a few miles short of being able to bring long-range artillery fire down upon New Orleans…
That fiasco had led to the summary dismissal of the then Governor. But every Governor in the Empire understood that the one indefensible, unforgivable sin of a man in his position, was to allow events to make his masters back in London look silly. That was invariably the sort of thing which sent a fellow into the sort of retirement from which there was no resurrection!
Unfortunately, with the best will in the world there were an awful lot of things beyond the control of even a pro-consul as mighty as the man who sat in Government House in Philadelphia.
For example, even though Colonial forces in the South West ha
d been beefed up in recent months, albeit from a ‘skeleton level’, well short of a general mobilisation New England land and air resources might, if the Spanish really grasped the nettle – which they had never done before, admittedly – and exploited their problematic but undeniably much shorter lines of communication, and took advantage of the fact that well over half their standing army and air force was already stationed within a hundred miles of the border, there would be very little that his forces could do to seriously inconvenience the invaders in the opening days of the campaign. The enemy had a huge numerical superiority in men - easily ten-to-one or greater in manpower – and a four or five-to-one advantage in armoured and other vehicles. Likewise, although their aircraft tended to be older, and less capable than those operated by the small number of scout and reconnaissance CAF squadrons permanently based within range of the border, the Spanish had perhaps, twenty aircraft to every operational machine on the New England side. Put bluntly, if the Spanish attacked with everything they had, they would simply roll over the ‘trip wire’ Colonial units, and rag-tag civilian militias theoretically barring their path.
Granted, colonial land cruisers were markedly harder nuts to crack and carried far deadlier high-velocity long-range rifles in comparison to their Spanish counterparts, and the latest CAF scouts were formidable aircraft but if the worst came to the worst, they would inevitably be ‘mobbed under’ by sheer weight of numbers.