“Don Carlos,” Olivares said in a loud baritone voice. “I do beg your pardon. You catch me in flagrante, a fly caught in the web of our esteemed countryman, Don Diego Velázquez.”
Velázquez pointed his brush at the count-duke. “Do stay still, my friend.”
“You see my predicament,” Olivares said to Carlos without averting his gaze.
The artist approached my uncle and greeted him, offering him a chair from which he could observe both the canvas and the model. Carlos knew little about art; nevertheless he was impressed by the nearly completed canvas.
“What do you think?” Olivares asked. “The devil will not allow me to see it until it is done.”
“It is most extraordinary,” my uncle replied, trying to keep his voice deep and manly. “It looks more like you than you, my lord.”
This caused the other two men to laugh, and Carlos was pleased.
“I wanted to meet with you and brief you before presenting you to His Majesty,” Olivares said, getting down to business.
“I am at your absolute disposal, sir,” Carlos replied, thinking a sentence like that to be most befitting. He too had dressed as somberly as his sense of style permitted. He remembered that day’s wardrobe with precision: dark chocolate velvet breeches, black boots, and a deep burgundy coat with silver buttons, but with a lime-green silk lining he prayed would remain unseen.
“Are you much of a military man, Don Carlos?” Olivares asked. “I know a good part of your youth was spent—wisely I feel—as a scholar. But have you any martial aspirations?”
“I have not given it much thought, my lord.”
“We are at war, you know.”
“I do, sir, if only by way of the rising taxes levied upon my estates.”
This too, he said, was the kind of thing he thought he should say, to bolster his self-regard, and to impress his listener.
“Precisely,” Olivares said. “And I know you’ve an uncle who has been defending Spain in Flanders with high honor.”
“My uncle Gonzalo.”
“The very same,” said the count-duke. “The siege of Wimpfen, the siege of Hochst, the siege of Heidelberg, all of them tremendously successful.”
This Gonzalo relation was my grandfather’s brother, and the governor of the Duchy of Milan. He was unmarried, a fighter and a loner from whom the wealthier and more colorful Don Rodrigo had stayed away.
“I would send you to join him, but he has retired and has been replaced by another man just as fierce and patriotic, Ambrosio Spinola, born like myself in Italy. His forces are gathering to lay siege on Breda.”
“Sir.”
“I am going to send you to stand at his side, or in the background if you prefer, away from arrows and cannon fire. But I feel a bit of military glory would be just the thing to impress the king.”
Carlos was alarmed, but strove to hide it.
“And you are in need of an heir,” the count-duke went on, “a proper heir of your own. As soon as you can present these two elements, the world here at court will be yours. You shall do me proud as a fellow son of Sevilla, and you will be setting an example for those of your station afflicted with lesser ambition and laxer moral fiber.”
My uncle told me he was horrified, but realized he could not refuse. Doing so would weaken his position. And he confessed that the adventure had its appeal: to be a soldier, armed and arrayed in dashing armor as an officer, standing side by side with other young men, swords raised on the faraway fields of Flanders.
“I shall be delighted, my lord,” he said without any hesitation.
To reach the monarch they had to navigate many layers of the palace, traversing room after room, each one barer and more protected than the one before it, guards and servants bowing before them. By the time they arrived at the inner sanctum, where the king awaited, Carlos was in precisely the state of awe the baroque protocol was designed to inspire. His first view of the monarch was in profile. The great-grandson of the Emperor Carlos V was kneeling in prayer at a prie-dieu before a stark wooden cross, affixed to an otherwise bare wall. He was hatless, and what first drew my uncle’s attention was the monarch’s wavy red hair and light orange beard, followed in quick succession by his distinctive nose and prominent chin. He said that seen from the side like that, the royal visage resembled a quarter moon.
Olivares kept his head bowed until the king made the sign of the cross, stood, and faced them. Carlos then saw that the monarch was much closer to him in age than the older count-duke. The king ignored Olivares and addressed Carlos directly. He did not smile. Employing the royal first person plural, he spoke as if enclosed within an aura of gloom. Carlos remembered thinking that the king had married the thirteen-year-old daughter of Marie de Medici and King Henry IV of France, and he wondered what the marriage might be like.
“We were grieved to learn of your father’s death,” said the king.
“Your Majesty.”
“He was close to my father, and always kind to me.”
“Your Majesty.”
“We take it you did not get along with him.”
“His devotion to the crown was such,” Carlos replied, “that there was little left for his children.”
“We take it you studied for the priesthood.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Most admirable. With the passing of my father, a new age is upon us, one we wish to count upon you for, to aid in our endeavor to restore dignity and decorum to the houses of nobility.”
“I shall apply myself to this endeavor with heart and soul, Your Majesty.”
“We are pleased, and pleased as well for the service you shall render us in the Low Countries.”
“Your Majesty.”
Carlos was astonished. He saw that his fate as a soldier for the crown had been decided before Olivares even spoke to him. He was irritated but impressed, and relieved that he had answered the call as he did. Then, in the very next moment, he was more astonished still.
“We look forward to the birth of your heir,” the king went on, “so that your house might continue to share in the glory of our enterprise.”
What did they know? Carlos wondered. The intrusiveness of the audience came as a shock. It was too reminiscent of what his life had been like in the seminary. While maintaining a brave face, he resolved to go out on the town that evening and do as he pleased, if only to prove that he could.
The king left the room without a smile or the utterance of another word. Carlos and Olivares retraced their path in silence as well, until they came into the vast entrance hall that was populated with many people rushing to and fro.
“Is he always like that?” my uncle asked.
“He takes his vocation very seriously,” Olivares replied.
But, Carlos told me, everyone knew that Philip IV was trained and schooled by Olivares himself.
***
He went to Flanders. He took part in the siege of Breda. He got along well with Ambrosio Spinola. He witnessed much death and destruction, and for the first time in his life, he fell in love. The object of his passion was a young nobleman called Hermenegildo Van der Wyden. He was blond like my uncle, of German extraction, and from Granada. Given all the woe this gentleman caused me, my uncle apologized once again for this relationship, but then added, “You, yourself, though much younger than I, may have already taken note of the fact that in matters of the heart, we have no control.”
With the siege of Breda successfully concluded, Carlos returned to Spain bedecked with honors and accompanied by Hermenegildo. When he rejoined Caitríona in Sevilla, over eight months had passed since the couple had seen each other. She told me she noticed the change in him at once. He was broader and more handsome, more serious. He had taken on a gait and posture and a set of facial expressions that were modeled, ironically, or so she imagined, after his own deceased father. She did not hesitate to say as much aloud to him, and to her relief the comment amused and even seemed to please him.
“War
alters a man,” he said to her, though I suspect he had not once unsheathed his sword in battle. “And passion,” he added.
“Passion?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “A he or a she?”
“The former my dear, not to fear.”
“So not everything has changed.”
“No.”
“I’m glad for it,” she said.
“But we’re to make an heir, Caitríona,” he said. “The king has all but commanded it.”
“What an odd thing for a king, or anyone, to command,” she replied, “especially in light of the fact that you already have an heir in my son.”
“I have given this careful consideration,” he said, “and I can assure you, in writing if you wish, that Patrick’s fortune and future shall not in any way be diminished. But if you could produce another boy, for me, it would bode well for all of us.”
“To have it in writing will suit me fine,” she said.
***
Later in our lives, when Caitríona felt sufficiently separated from those days, she confessed to me that the only man she had been with until then was my father, and that she had wondered from time to time if the pleasure she recalled was inherent in the act itself, or dependent on one’s partner. When the agreed-upon evening arrived, she drank many goblets of wine, determined to go through with it. Bathed in candle glow, Carlos asked her to lie upon their bed, on her stomach. He instructed her to raise her chemise, just above her hips. Then they were joined by Hermenegildo, who proceeded to embrace Carlos. When my uncle was sufficiently aroused, he turned from his German lover and mounted her. Caitríona felt discomfort, and little else. Nine months later, she gave birth to a baby girl.
– PART FOUR –
– XXIV –
The Pacific swelled and swerved. Furious, freezing winds blew. The food was abominable. The ship was small and primitive, the sailors taciturn. For many days I was ill. Father held my hand and did his best to distract me. I despaired and cried to go home, aiming much venom at him and blaming him for our exile and misfortune.
But then the sea becalmed and my appetite returned. I marveled at the families of whales, and at the vast schools of tuna that often raced through the water at either side of us. At night the stars were clearer and closer than any I had seen. The sailors sang plaintive melodies and taught me how to tie knots and gut fish. Land appeared, a chain of mysterious islands encircled by herds of seals, then more ocean and milder temperatures. Finally, a vast coastline emerged from a thick morning mist. We sailed down alongside of it. By the time we reached the immense harbor, where the Ezochi colony was hidden, I was more at home at sea than on land.
Father stepped off the ship in his samurai garb, and I behind him, in a blue silk kimono decorated with flying cranes. We were regarded with bulging eyes and open mouths. It was difficult to know whether they saw us as gods or fools. The natives lived in simple huts and wore little clothing. At night some of the men danced, and chanted to spirits in rooms dug underground that were covered with branches. The Ezochi colonists dressed like Japanese farmers. They had built themselves more sophisticated abodes. Four of the colonists had children with some of the native women.
The sailors who brought us there remained for a week. A few of them stayed behind at the colony, but most returned. I would be lying if I did not reveal the distress I experienced at seeing the ship sail away. It was heading back to the land that was my home, a land of comfort and order and civilization, where I had been raised and treated like a princess. In the primitive place and crude conditions in which we found ourselves, a place whose geographical reality I barely comprehended, Father seemed rejuvenated—freed, stronger, alive, and curious—while I felt abandoned and surrounded by filth.
***
Life in the colony was so slovenly that I was greatly relieved when Father informed me it was time for us to move on. After discussing a route with the Ezochi men and using sign language with the natives that included much tracing of maps in the earth with pointed sticks, we set out early one morning on foot.
For two weeks we made our way south and then inland, through a warm and fertile valley. Sometimes we passed native settlements where we were fed and treated kindly. Most of the time we were in the wild. We carried our swords. Father had his bow and a quiver filled with arrows slung over one shoulder. Over the other he carried a sack containing our keepsakes and better clothing. We wore simple trousers and tunics. When our sandals gave out, we traded two arrows for short deerskin boots like the natives wore. In the wild we grilled fish and hares. Once we tried cooking a snake that Father beheaded. It made us both violently ill. Guarding our modesty, we took turns bathing in rivers and streams. When Father saw the way some of the native men were looking at me, he cut my hair short to make me look like a boy. At first I cried, but after a time I liked it.
I forgot my sorrows. What occupied my waking hours was the beauty of the landscape and the daily challenges we faced to remain healthy and alive. At night we conversed by the fire. He told me stories about my mother, and my great-aunt, stories about Sevilla. I could only speak to him of what I knew, of what we had left behind in Japan. It was on one of these nights that he told me that his real father had come from China, and that this knowledge made him feel freer. He told me I might have a brother or sister somewhere, in Europe. From then on, we both wondered about Caitríona, though I could barely remember her. Sometimes in the night I could hear him pleasuring himself, and sometimes, when I knew he was asleep, I would do the same.
At a campsite near a canyon, by a narrow river with a small sandy beach, a waterfall, shade from trees, and smooth flat boulders to sleep upon, I was stung by a large red insect. The pain was terrible, my leg became swollen, and a fever gripped me. Though he tried not to show it, Father was desperate. A native family came by and gave me some tree bark to chew on, and within a few days I recovered. Father told me the site reminded him of the place on the island of Paxos, where he and Caitríona and I had lived for a summer in Greece after the shipwreck. My memories of that place were only brief flashes of sea and light, and a vision of their bodies together. I saw that the recollection filled him with melancholy, and for the first time I realized how fleeting his romances had been. He had only been with my mother for a year before she died. He had been with Caitríona for less than that. Though he lived with Yokiko for almost seven years, their relationship had not been blessed with passion.
***
We crossed a desert and learned to savor cactus fruit. Where the desert ended, green plains descended to a river. We followed the river north, content to be close to water. Sometimes there were clear pools that had formed along the river’s course, where we bathed and swam. We stayed with the river and went through a canyon so vast, so deep, and so foreign in its aspect, that we feared we might be approaching an entrance to hell. After three days the river narrowed and spilled into a lake, and on the shore of the lake we found the remains of a settlement. Wooden crosses were stuck in the ground with names etched into them. All of the names were Spanish. The largest cross bore the name of Hernando de Alarcón.“Does this mean that Spain is near?” I asked.
“No,” Father said, smiling at my ignorance. “It means the Spanish have come far.”
Three wide skiffs pulled onto the shore had succumbed to time. The hulls were old and cracked, the oars splintered or broken. I went into a wood to collect additional kindling for the evening’s fire and found a small herd of horses. Father chose three of them and decided they were offspring from the horses the Spanish had brought. He spent some days taming them, and we used old blankets left behind for saddles on two of the mares and kept the third to carry our belongings. Then we set out, continuing due east.
We fled Japan because Father wished for me to have a better life. I also believe he was driven by a desire to return to the place where he had become his own man, where he fell in love with someone as foreign and exotic to him as he was to her, where he had acquired an independence unavailable to
him in Sendai. It was something I could understand. But what of these men, these Spaniards who had traveled so far from their home, only to end up at the shore of a lake in the middle of nowhere? What had driven them? I suppose all inhabited lands began with men like these, but what incited them to wander so? Poverty? The promise of glory and riches? An inner emptiness of some kind, a refusal of domestic comfort that might be considered manly, but which might really be something else? No other animal I knew of—though I knew very little—was wont to roam so far from home. But then, as we rode through that virgin country, rampant with plains, mountains, and russet plateaus, I thought, what is home, really?
***
A week later, we rode into a large settlement that took us by surprise. Many natives from a tribe called Zuni lived there under the rule of Spanish soldiers and priests. The settlement even had a Spanish governor. Father told our story to this man, who was called Francisco de la Mora. He was astonished by our tale, though he seemed more interested in the harbor where the Ezochi colony was, and in the route we had taken to get there from Japan. For years the Spaniards had been looking for the mythical “Cities of Cibola,” thought to be filled with gold—gold for them to plunder, just as the priests only cared about converting the natives, be they the natives of that land so new to us or inhabitants of Japan.
To keep his promise to the Ezochi elder, Father lied about the location of the colony. He informed the priests in the settlement that both of us had been baptized, he in Mexico and I in Spain. He told me to pretend to be a good Christian, so that they would leave us alone. I had little idea about what that meant, and so he had to teach me. The settlement had existed for many centuries before the Spanish arrived, when Zuni natives lived without need of any name more complicated than “Ogapoge.” The invaders “christened” it with the absurd name of La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís—The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi. The soldiers stationed there simply called it Santa Fe.
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