The Empire of Yearning

by Oakland Ross

  Carlota nodded. “I’ll grant you, the numbers are impressive. But the truth is, Bazaine commands almost all of these men.”

  “And he answers to Maximiliano.”

  She smiled. “I think it will become evident in time that Bazaine answers to himself—and to Napoleon. The crown in Mexico survives at the pleasure of Paris.”

  “You have spoken to your husband about this?”

  “Oh yes.” She reached up and fussed with several strands of hair that had come loose from her chignon. “But my husband … well …” Her voice trailed off.

  Diego understood. Lately, His Majesty seemed more absorbed by projects of his own devising—the new boulevard or his Montgolfier balloon. He had occupied himself for several weeks on his grand tour of the Bajío and now had taken up residence in Cuernavaca, preferring its warm days and ample sunshine to the often cooler temperatures of Mexico City.

  “My husband,” said Carlota, “has a very high opinion of your judgment. What do you think we ought to do?”

  “I’m not sure.” Diego had returned to the Mexican capital only a day earlier. He had been summoned almost at once to Chapultepec Castle by the empress, who was exercising the authority of the Crown in her husband’s absence. “Do you mean, as regards Napoleon?” He meant the Frenchman’s demands for the repayment of Mexico’s debts.

  “No. Let us leave that for another day. I mean, what ought we to do in general, as those who govern this land? What ought we to do about relations between the palace and the Church?”

  “Well, I don’t see what can be done, other than await the arrival of the papal envoy and take the matter up with him.” Monseñor Meglia had yet to reach Mexico, although it was said he would arrive almost any day.

  “And adopt what sort of line?”

  “A hard line. The hardest possible. These are not the Dark Ages. These are modern times. The Church must be separate from the state, and it must submit to the civil authority.”

  “In other words, the Church must do what the government says.”

  “In secular affairs, yes.”

  “Release Ángela Peralta, for example?”

  “Of course.”

  “And her son?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if the Church refuses?”

  Diego shrugged helplessly. “That is the problem.”

  “We could threaten the use of force, I suppose.” Carlota gave a wry smile. “But I wonder whether the troops of France would carry out our wishes. I would not like to issue a hollow threat.” She sipped her tea. “But we shall see.” She hesitated briefly. “Meanwhile,” she said, “we shall have other threats to confound us, I am sure. Please, tell me of your travels.”

  Diego took a deep breath. He tried to release the tension in his chest. The truth was, he felt a little intimidated by the empress, who was a far more forthright and clear-eyed individual than her husband. Briefly, he told her what he had heard and seen during his travels, sharing what intelligence he could while omitting many details from his account. Of course, he made no mention of Spencer rifles or of the man named Bartlett.

  Instead, he outlined what he had learned about the fortunes of war in the American states, making no effort to hide what was patently true. First, the Unionist forces were poised on the brink of victory. Second, such a victory would not serve the interests of Maximiliano or Carlota. He waited for the empress to respond.

  “I see,” she said.

  “I am sorry the news is not better.”

  Once again, she fiddled with some loose filaments of her hair. She seemed both distracted and agitated. “I suppose that if we ourselves are aware of these developments, it is only natural to assume that Napoleon must be in possession of similar intelligence. Don’t you think?”

  Diego inclined his head. Yes.

  She considered this, then straightened her shoulders. She fixed him with a strained and deliberate smile.

  “Very well then,” she said, her voice suddenly clipped and formal. It was as if she no longer recognized who he was. “Thank you for efforts on our behalf and for your report. I fear this is all the time I have for you this morning.” She proffered her right hand, fingers extended. “Welcome back to Mexico. And good day.”

  She could be like that—all friendliness one moment and curt to the point of coldness the next. Diego made directly for the stables. He asked the grooms to saddle his mare.

  One of the men glanced at his wardrobe. “¿Inglés o charro, señor?”

  For a moment, the question caught him by surprise. Lately, he had taken to going about in a European style of dress—gabardine trousers and a cutaway frock coat. This was the sort of outfit he had worn while in Washington. It must have occurred to the grooms that he might prefer a different style of saddlery as well, the English style, rather than the more ostentatious Mexican finery.

  “Inglés?” he said a little tentatively. He wasn’t entirely sure. Then he nodded. “Sí. Inglés.”

  The man shrugged in reply and set off to fulfill the commission, leaving Diego to wonder just who and what he had become: a one-armed Mexican in an Englishman’s suit, at once an agent for the republicans and a servant of the imperialists. It seemed impossible that he should go on answering to both these masters, and yet what was to stop him? Who was to stop him? He was still debating these questions when the groom marched out into the courtyard, leading a small roan Arab rather than his horse, which would not have responded well to a European bit or bridle.

  He was soon perched upon a thin, unsubstantial saddle, holding two pairs of slender reins attached to a Pelham bit. It was one of the few times he had ridden in this style, and it seemed strange and unpleasant. Besides—four reins in one hand. He felt like an idiot. He kicked his heels and clicked his tongue, and the animal somehow understood what was required and set off for Mexico City at a brisk trot, Diego trying to post to the awkward beat of the horse’s stride. He had acquaintances to renew in the more disreputable parts of the capital, and he thought it possible that he might cross paths with Baldemar, too. The man seemed to know exactly when and where to appear, and it occurred to Diego that his old friend must have other spies in his service, men and women who told him all he needed to know—including news of the departure of a thin and swarthy Mexican dressed in an English suit, mounted upon a roan horse, and bound for the walled capital of Mexico.

  He felt as if he were impersonating someone. He wondered who this individual might be—his true name, his genuine allegiances, his authentic identity. To whom was he loyal? Whom did he betray? Was he Indian or European? Mexican or something else? The answers should have been obvious, but they were not. Who was he? He posed the question in his mind, over and over again, and he failed to come up with the same answer twice.

  CHAPTER 31

  DIEGO SPENT THE REST of that day and all that night in the walled city, but he found no trace of Baldemar Peralta. He made his way on foot through the hordes of eccentrics, derelicts, and crones that inhabited the city, eyeing each of them warily, as if this one or that one might suddenly break into laughter, remove a hairpiece or toss away a makeshift crutch, clap him on the back, and join him for jars of pulque at Memorias del Futuro. But no one did. If Baldemar was in Mexico City, he did not reveal himself to Diego.

  The following afternoon, clad once again in gabardine trousers and a cutaway jacket, Diego guided his roan back to Chapultepec. He found the castle in a torpid state. It was the hour of the siesta, and most of the courtiers and servants were sound asleep. He was intent on following suit, but a palace factotum approached to say that el señor had a visitor—a woman who awaited him in an anteroom, one of numerous such chambers on the ground floor of the castle.

  What Diego wanted was a bath, a change of clothes, and a long rest. He had barely slept the previous night and had consumed far too much raw aguardiente. He was tired, hungry, and sore. His head pounded. At the same time, he was curious to know who this visitor was, and so he followed the servant to the anteroom
in question, where he found a young, dark-skinned woman in a white blouse and a long blue skirt, with a brightly woven Indian falda wrapped around her waist. He was in such a bleary, muddled state that for a moment he failed to recognize her—but only for a moment. Then he remembered. She was the daughter of the chief gardener at the emperor’s house in Cuernavaca—la india bonita. He cast about for her name. Sedano? Beatríz Sedano? He had not set eyes upon her since their journey to the shining caves and on to Taxco. Months had passed by since then.

  “Señor Serrano,” she said.

  “You haven’t been here long, I hope.”

  “Only since last night.”

  “Last night? Here?”

  “Where else?”

  Diego took a seat opposite the woman. She seemed remarkably fresh given the circumstances. He imagined his own eyes must be bloodshot, his hair askew, his clothing rumpled and creased. Worse, he was wearing an English suit, which probably seemed ridiculous to her. He brushed his hair back with his one hand and tried to set his jacket to rights, smoothing one lapel and then the other. He sat up straight and sought to focus his gaze.

  He said, “You came all this way alone?”

  She smiled. “My father accompanied me. We rode.”

  “I see. And your father is …?”

  “In the stable. He prefers it there, closer to the horses.”

  “Ah.” Diego inclined his head. “Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, but the emperor does not at present find himself at Chapultepec.”

  “I know.”

  Ah, of course. The emperor was in Cuernavaca, after all. She had just come from there. He frowned. “I don’t understand. If the emperor is in Cuernavaca, why are you here?”

  She coloured, and put a gloved hand to her lips. “I know of no one else I can trust. I …” Her voice trailed off. She seemed ill at ease.

  It took a few moments, but then Diego understood. “Here.” He got up, shut a pair of French doors, turned the latch, and returned to his seat. “Go on,” he said.

  She nodded and swallowed. “I have come to tell you,” she said, hesitating before going on, “that I know the whereabouts of Ángela Peralta. She—”

  “You what?”

  She repeated what she had just said and then proceeded to explain. When she had finished telling her story, Beatríz folded her hands on her lap, cleared her throat, and looked at Diego.

  She said, “We thought somebody should know, somebody in a position to do something. It isn’t right.”

  Diego pondered what he had just heard. Ángela was no longer under the power of Labastida or the Church. She was under the authority of Maximiliano. In Cuernavaca. At a second house he had had constructed there. La Casa del Olvido—this was the name it had been given by some. The House of Forgetfulness. It was so called because it was said to contain only a single bedchamber, as if its owner had forgotten to construct a second.

  It was Padre Buendía who had told Beatríz of the woman’s whereabouts. He had got word through channels of his own, a network of liberal priests. Ángela was effectively a prisoner, and yet it was not difficult to gain access to the house. Beatríz had done so, on the pretext of running an errand. She had been granted entry and had fallen into conversation with Ángela. The singer was unwell. She barely ate and never went out, wasn’t permitted to. Guards were stationed at intervals around the place. A captive in everything but name, Ángela had little to do but mope and fret all day, agonizing over what had become of her son. And, of course, she spent time, both during the day and during the night, with the emperor—and that particular aspect of her confinement was not, it seemed, entirely contrary to her will.

  “You know this?” Diego said.

  The girl nodded. “She confessed as much.”

  “To being his mistress?”

  Beatríz lowered her head and nodded.

  Diego tasted a thread of bile in his throat. He swallowed with difficulty and rubbed his forehead. He looked up. “What about the boy? Where is he?”

  “No one knows,” she said. “Ángela doesn’t know. Neither does the emperor. She told me this herself. He torments her constantly on the subject.”

  “I can imagine. He wants the child as his heir.”

  She nodded, then tilted her head. “Perhaps the Prince of Salm-Salm knows about the boy, where he is.”

  “Salm-Salm? What’s he got to do with this?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t explain it. It’s very mysterious. He visits her, dressed as a priest.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  She nodded. “Once. He said his name was Father Fischer. I suppose he thought I wouldn’t recognize him. But I did. What is he up to?”

  “Whatever works to his benefit,” said Diego. “That seems to be the sum of it.”

  The girl’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What should we do?”

  Diego had no idea. “What does Padre Buendía suggest?”

  It turned out the priest had a proposal, and she quickly outlined its main elements. Diego listened without saying a word. It sounded sensible to him—in fact, the only course possible. When she was done explaining, Beatríz smiled briefly and then declared that Padre Buendía wanted someone else’s authority for his actions. “Your authority,” she said. “He said it was up to you.”

  “Tell him to go ahead,” said Diego. He realized it was unusual for him to be so decisive, but he had been deeply disturbed by what she had told him—Ángela a prisoner, serving as the emperor’s concubine, with Salm-Salm’s complicity. “Tell Padre Buendía I agree.”

  “Very well,” she said.

  He stood up. “In the meantime, let me see about arranging some accommodation for you and your father.”

  “Thank you, don Diego,” she said.

  A week later, a letter arrived from Cuernavaca, sent by the emperor and addressed to Salm-Salm. Somehow, the missive found its way into Diego’s mail. At once, he set off for the office occupied by the prince. The errand provided him with an excuse for a conversation with the man. Salm-Salm had recently returned from Cuernavaca, but they had barely spoken.

  The prince waved Diego in.

  “Dear Lord,” he said. “What a relief to be away from that place. So remote. So provincial. I miss the city.”

  Diego held out the errant letter. “Here. I have brought you this.”

  Salm-Salm glanced at the wax seal and must have recognized the emperor’s crest. But he merely nodded and tossed the document onto his desk.

  Diego took a seat. “I want to speak to you about Ángela Peralta.”

  “Really?”

  “And her son.”

  But Salm-Salm would not be drawn out on the subject. Had Ángela taken up residence at a house in Cuernavaca? Was she under guard there? Was the emperor in the habit of visiting the place at all hours? Salm-Salm declined to speak about any of these matters. Nor would he own up to having played any role in any of the events now unfolding in Cuernavaca.

  “You know,” said the prince, “you seem to have got hold of a fairy tale. It must be the poet in you. As for the woman’s son, as far as I know, he remains under the care of the Church.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Something to do with the registration of his birth, I believe. Some irregularity there.”

  “But he was born in New York—as you well know.”

  “Ah,” said Salm-Salm. “That might explain it.”

  It was clear to Diego that he had little to gain here. He rose to his feet. As he did so, Salm-Salm reached for the letter from the emperor and opened it. Almost immediately, his face fell.

  “Dear God,” he said. “She’s gone.” He looked up, apparently so shocked by the revelation that he was unaware he was speaking out loud.

  “You mean Ángela?” said Diego. “Gone where?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Diego turned to leave, smiling as he did so. He would have made a large wager that Ángela Peralta was safely installed in the presbytery by the parish ch
urch in the silver-mining town of Taxco.

  CHAPTER 32

  WITHIN A WEEK, the emperor returned to Mexico City and promptly sent word to Diego proposing that they resume their normal schedule the next morning at shortly after four o’clock. Precisely at that hour, the bell rang in Diego’s apartment, as it always did when Maximiliano was at Chapultepec. He splashed water onto his face from the ceramic bowl on the dresser, smoothed back his hair, and stumbled out into the darkened, open-air corridor. A half moon peered down from the dark sky, and he shivered in the familiar early morning chill.

  Even so, he still felt the heat rise at his collar when he thought of Ángela, of her treatment by the emperor. He stopped and gazed out at the shadowy view, took a deep breath, followed by another, trying to calm himself. Along the walkway below, the pineapple palms glimmered in the moonlight, as though fashioned of tarnished silver. The fronds shifted in the cool breeze. When he thought he was ready, he continued on his way to the emperor’s study. At the door, he knocked and then entered.

  Maximiliano was pacing the floor in his dressing gown, silhouetted by candlelight, sipping a cup of hot chocolate. He stopped, and his face lit up, as if Diego’s arrival had taken him completely by surprise.

  “Ah, Serrano. Good to see you.”

  He seemed unusually excited, his high spirits evident from the staccato tone of his voice. By now, Diego thought he could gauge the state of the emperor’s mood with just a glance, and it seemed Maximiliano was bursting with news, with revelations he was eager to share. Diego half expected him to speak of Ángela, of the House of Forgetfulness, and of her mysterious disappearance. But if the emperor was distressed by recent events in Cuernavaca, he did not speak of them now.

  Instead, he recounted the details of his journey through the Bajío, especially his visit to the town of Dolores, famous throughout Mexico as the birthplace of the country’s struggle for freedom from Spanish rule. It was there more than four decades earlier that the renegade priest Miguel Hidalgo first uttered el grito de la independencia—the cry of independence. Maximiliano was evidently galvanized by the tale. He said he had walked in Hidalgo’s footsteps. He had addressed a crowd from the same balcony where Hidalgo had appeared. He, too, had issued the cry of independence.