by Oakland Ross
“No, Basch. Allow me to consider this most diverting challenge.” The emperor grinned at Márquez. “I accept on one condition—that the same obligation fall upon you. If I do make this shot, you must accept a similar challenge.”
“Very well,” said Márquez.
“Your Majesty,” said Basch. “It is late. Would it not be better to complete the game without this additional complexity?”
“Nonsense, Basch. The wager is made.” Maximiliano looked around the room. “Someone—more port. Can you not see my glass is empty? The emperor’s glass is empty!”
A servant hurried into the room, bearing another bottle of fine port wine.
“Excellent,” said His Majesty. He raised his fresh drink toward Márquez. “A most invigorating proposal. The evening grows more interesting by the minute.”
“May it continue to do so, Your Majesty. Why should we not repeat this arrangement for each turn that remains in the game?”
“Gentlemen!” said Basch. “Really. I think this is going too far. It would be better, I think, simply to play out the match.”
“Why, Basch,” asked the emperor, “do you have so little confidence in my play?” He looked at Márquez. “I accept your challenge.”
With his cue in his right hand, Maximiliano huddled over the green baize surface and appraised the task before him. He moved his jaw from side to side. Diego was no expert at billiards, but even he could see the man had left himself in a poor position. His previous two shots had owed more to luck than skill. This next turn was a perplexing shot, one that would require the emperor to somehow bend the cue ball around the orange before connecting with the two and coaxing it into the side pocket.
Maximiliano frowned at the table. He took an inordinate amount of time setting up his shot. Finally, he squared his weight and leaned down over the baize. As he drew the cue back with his right arm, he clicked his teeth and clenched his jaw. With a sudden impulse of his right elbow, he snapped the cue forward into the ball. Struck slightly off-centre, the white ball curved around the orange, but already it was off course. It barely touched the two before rolling helplessly away. The two ball drifted a little distance across the green baize and then came to rest, not appreciably nearer the side pocket than it had been before.
CHAPTER 40
“THAT,” SAID MAXIMILIANO, “was not my intended shot.”
“No,” said Márquez. “You have missed completely.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Your Majesty.”
The emperor drained his glass, set it down once again on the edge of the billiards table, and lit a cigarette. Through a cloud of bluish smoke, he scrutinized the baize.
“So, which shall it be?” said Márquez. “Truth or dare?”
Once again, the room had fallen almost perfectly silent.
“Truth,” said the emperor.
“Then truth it shall be,” said Márquez. He took a step forward, placed both hands on the wooden edge of the billiards table, leaned into the swirls of smoke that drifted through the cone of sepia light cast by the candelabra. “Tell me, Your Majesty,” he said, “is it not true that you have written to your brother in Vienna in an effort to reclaim your right of succession to the Austrian throne? Is it not—?”
“Gentlemen …” Basch lumbered forward.
The emperor raised his hand. He turned back to Márquez. “Yes,” he said. “It is true.”
“I see. Interesting, don’t you think, considering that you are the emperor of Mexico? I take it you are not contemplating a change of crowns?”
“One question,” said Basch. “One question, one truth. The emperor has replied in full. The game has concluded.”
“No,” said Maximiliano. “I am willing to answer.” He addressed Márquez. “It is not true that I am contemplating a change of crowns. The issue you raise is a private matter, an affair between brothers, a question of principle, nothing more.”
“There you have it,” said Basch. “Question answered. That will be all.”
Again the emperor put up his hand. “But may I ask how you came by this intelligence? I was under the impression that my correspondence was private and transmitted in code. How did you come to know of this matter?”
“It is the talk of Europe,” said Márquez. “As surely you must have heard by now.”
The emperor drew upon his cigarette but said nothing. After a time, he stepped back and gestured toward the table. “Very well. It is your turn, I believe.”
Márquez stepped to the table and in one unbroken motion took up his position and made his shot, sending the cue ball racing into the two, which scurried into a corner pocket as if it had been lured there by a magnet.
“Well played,” said the emperor. “You seem to have improved the quality of your game.”
“Getting out the rust,” said Márquez. With his cue held casually at his side, he drew upon his cigar. “In any case, I seem to have made my shot, which permits me another question.”
“So it does.”
“Tell me, Your Majesty, is it true that you have communicated on several occasions with that Indian swine Benito Juárez, with a view to inviting the scoundrel to serve as your prime minister? Is this so?”
“Please, gentlemen,” said Basch. “Gentlemen. This has gone far enough.”
Again the emperor waved his physician away. He turned back to General Márquez and informed the soldier that it was so. He would do what was necessary to end the war—but Juárez had turned him down.
“Is it not so, Serrano?” he said, scanning the assembly of men and fixing his gaze upon his secretary.
Diego wondered what to say. How had Márquez obtained this intelligence? From Salm-Salm? It didn’t matter. What mattered was Diego’s reply. If he answered truthfully, he would compromise himself. If he lied, he would only further embarrass the emperor. “It’s a complicated question,” he said. “It’s—”
“I see,” said the minister of war. He waved Diego off. “Well, I thank you for your candour. I think we may all draw the appropriate conclusions.” Again he inhaled on his cigar and squinted at the table. “Now, let us see what else we can manage.”
The officer made no further attempt to pretend that he was anything but an expert at the game. It was clear that his earlier ineptitude had been a ruse. Now the minister of war marched about the table with complete confidence. After each successful stroke, he addressed the emperor with another question.
Diego gazed about the room until his eyes lit upon the Prince of Salm-Salm, who seemed to be smiling to himself, no doubt in anticipation of his winnings. He must have known all along about the level of Márquez’s game.
Before the night was out, the emperor had divulged—in round numbers—his salary and that of his wife, which together amounted to approximately a tenth part of the Mexican treasury’s annual receipts, as Márquez observed. His Majesty was obliged to confess as well that he had constructed a second mansion for his use in Cuernavaca, a house that was furnished with only one bedchamber.
“Forgive me for being forward,” said Márquez, “but is it not normal for a house in this country to contain a second apartment?”
“Really!” said Basch. “I really must protest. You go too far.”
But Maximiliano failed to stand up to the man, even on a matter as personal as this. His gaze roamed about the gathering, no doubt on the lookout for Bazaine. Surely Bazaine would know how to proceed, would tell him what to do. Should he sack the minister of war right here and now? Pack him off to Constantinople once and for all? But Bazaine was gone, and the emperor seemed lost. The muscles of his neck bulged like cables. His eyes darted from side to side, and his complexion had lost its previous ruddiness. He was sombre and pale, his face damp with perspiration. Finally, he turned back to the table to address Márquez, and it was clear he had capitulated completely.
“What you say is true,” he said. “Such a house has indeed been constructed.”
“Enough. This is quite enough.” Basch rais
ed his hands. “I protest these remarks. They must cease at once. I cannot put it plainer.”
Good for Basch. The portly, hirsute doctor was making the best fist possible of a very bad circumstance. But why was it only Basch who was mounting a defence on the emperor’s behalf? Diego wondered if he should not be doing the same, but immediately he knew that he would not. He had no stake in this battle. Besides, all that Márquez said was true.
For his part, the emperor seemed stunned. He was wholly unaccustomed to this brand of abuse. Still, he had accepted the man’s challenge. In a way, this was his own doing.
“Please, do not take me amiss, Your Majesty,” said Márquez. “We are a crude people at times, we Mexicans. Tropicales is what we are. We lack your European refinement. Forgive me if I have given offence. It’s just that His Majesty so poorly understands this country that he would collaborate with its vilest enemies while insulting its bravest sons. He spends his money on trifles while Mexican men are dying in battle. He would reduce the Church to a pile of rubble. He insults the ambassador of Rome. He—”
“The ambassador of Rome?” said the emperor. He squashed out his cigarette. “You are wrong there. I offered no insult to this Monseñor …” He cast about for the name.
“Meglia,” said Diego.
“Yes. Meglia. I offered him no insult whatever. I did not meet the man.”
“Ah yes. So I recall. That is so. It was your wife. The empress was left to attend to this important matter of state, and she refused every effort by the papal nuncio to forge a concordat between Mexico City and the Holy See. That is how our country is being ruled—by women and neglect.” Márquez gazed down at the green baize, where two balls remained to be played. He shook his head and then glanced up at the emperor. “I see no shot,” he said, a patent untruth. The cue ball was perfectly positioned, as even Diego could tell. The game was Márquez’s to take if he chose. Instead, he placed his cue on the table. “I concede defeat. Good night, Your Majesty.”
General Márquez turned and departed. At once, the room reverberated with men’s voices, all barking away in tones of surprise and gloating. Only Salm-Salm was quiet. Márquez’s decision to abandon the game at the final moment had caught him completely unawares, saddling him with a substantial loss.
“Leave it be,” said Maréchal Bazaine. “This is my suggestion to Your Majesty. I see no better course.”
“He was grossly impertinent.”
“So I have heard.”
“He should be hanged, shot, horse-whipped, and then brought before a military tribunal to answer for his crimes. The charge—gross insubordination.”
“An unorthodox approach, Your Majesty. But I see your point. Once again, I recommend forbearance. He is a rough customer but a skilled soldier. You may come to value his services more highly than you do now.”
“I may come to do no such thing. I recommend the maximum penalty under the law.”
“Your Majesty, may I speak plainly?”
“Please do.”
Maximiliano was in his office at the Imperial Palace in Mexico City the day following his altercation with Márquez. Diego was scribbling notes.
Bazaine eased his weight forward in his chair and lowered his voice. He said he disagreed in most respects with Mexico’s conservative class, whose ranks most certainly included Márquez. They were an assembly of shallow, selfish men, with a severely blinkered view of the world, and yet he could understand some of their discontent. After much lobbying and politicking, they had brought an Austrian noble to their country, precisely to put an end to liberalism and godlessness. And what did this new monarch do? He filled three-quarters of his cabinet with men of known liberal sentiments and then sought to make a truce with the most villainous liberal of all, Benito Juárez.
Meanwhile, he spent what many regarded as an alarming portion of the national treasury on fancy uniforms, expensive balls, and personal indulgences, money that might have been added to the military budget. Even now, three years after they had first occupied Mexico, Bazaine said, his troops could properly claim to exercise control over something less than half the country’s territory. Even the strategically vital route to Veracruz was insecure, swarming with bandits and rogues. Barely half a dozen large cities were firmly under French authority. Elsewhere, travel was a perilous business at best.
“My dear Bazaine,” said the emperor, “that is all very well. But I—”
“Please, Your Majesty. Let me finish.”
The emperor sat back, nodded. The air seemed to go out of him.
It was these bloody gamberros, said Bazaine. Guerrilleros, some called them. Hooligans was what they were. And the worst of the lot was Baldemar Peralta, the very man whom His Majesty had pardoned not long after his arrival, the same man who had humiliated Márquez beyond human endurance.
“Forgive me for saying so, Your Majesty, but it is perhaps not impossible to understand that Márquez might be disgruntled.”
The emperor turned to his secretary. “Serrano—what do you say?”
Diego found it impossible to resist the urge to speak plainly. “I think,” he said, “that Ángela Peralta’s child should be returned to its mother.”
The emperor put back his head. His jaw seemed to fall. He looked as if someone had just struck him in the chest. He put up his hands. “You treat me like a child, both of you. You behave as if you understood affairs of state better than I, a Hapsburg, formerly admiral of the Austrian armada and governor of Venetia and Lombardy. How dare you!” He turned to Bazaine. “You think I am a waffler—”
“Please, Your Majesty—”
“Don’t interrupt me. Let me tell you both—on the question of succession I have not waffled by one degree. I have stood my ground. I will have an heir and, if my wife will not bear me one, then I shall make do with this boy.”
“Very well,” said Bazaine. “Very well, Your Majesty.” He rose to leave. “And as for General Márquez?”
“I shall consider what you have said. I do not mean to act without considering all sides.”
Bazaine nodded his head in lieu of a bow. He retrieved his hat and left the room.
Maximiliano was silent for a time and then returned his focus to Diego. His outburst of petulance was done, it seemed. He smiled and lit a cigarette. “We have not yet spoken of your journey,” he said. “You met Juárez, I take it? Charlotte tells me it is so.”
Diego said yes.
“In the flesh?”
“Yes.”
The emperor settled back in his chair. “Extraordinary,” he said. “Tell me—and spare no detail—what manner of man is he?”
CHAPTER 41
THE EMPEROR FAILED TO make good on his threats against Márquez. Either he had decided to heed Bazaine’s advice or he feared what the Tiger of Tacubaya, thoroughly enraged, might do. Besides, the fortunes of war had lately turned against the imperial forces, and Márquez’s warrior instincts could no longer be easily spurned. In short, Maximiliano needed the man on his side, just as Bazaine had predicted.
Emboldened by the end of the war in the American states, and strengthened by new supplies of weaponry, the armies loyal to Juárez had begun to gain ground. Bazaine and Márquez were both adamant that more aggressive battlefield measures were necessary. In particular, Márquez demanded that his officers be authorized to summarily execute anyone suspected of membership in an armed group on the liberal side. Captured combatants would be dealt with in the same way. He seized every opportunity to promote his case, brow-beating the emperor to authorize the measures, not next week, not tomorrow, but now.
“Chinga a su madre,” the general swore one day. He roared out the words—a deeply offensive oath—loudly enough that anyone nearby could hear him, no doubt including His Majesty. The officer had just left another meeting with the emperor, a meeting that had evidently produced yet another indecisive result on the question of summary execution, and Márquez was leaving no doubt about his displeasure. Ever since the game of billiards at
Chapultepec, he had abandoned any pretence of holding Maximiliano in anything but the roundest contempt.
This time, Diego happened to be advancing along the corridor and heard the officer’s obscene outburst. He wondered how the emperor abided the man. Yet so he did, out of both necessity and fear. Lately, the atmosphere at the Imperial Palace had become deeply oppressive, rife with treachery and suspicion and doubt. Diego needed air. He hurried out onto the Zócalo, where a riddle of rickety scaffolding clung to the stone exterior of the Metropolitan Cathedral, and workmen bustled about, repairing the bell tower that had nearly been destroyed by the blast of Bazaine’s sixteen-pounder.
“Serrano!”
A man’s voice called out from behind, and Diego turned to see who it was. Salm-Salm. He waited for the man to catch up. The prince made as flamboyant a figure as ever, wearing a voluminous white blouse above a mauve cummerbund and a pair of wine-red trousers. He announced that he wished to propose a truce between himself and his old friend, el poeta manco.
“Are we in need of one?”
“Come now. We have been adversaries ever since that evening at the opera, when dear Ángela was shot.”
Diego made no comment either way.
“I want to speak to you about the child,” said Salm-Salm. “And the mother.”
“Yes?”
“Look. It might not seem that the question of succession is the most pressing matter facing Max. But the affair should be settled just the same, in fairness to all. We should come to an agreement, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.”
Salm-Salm explained that Maximiliano and Labastida were at an impasse. Yes, Ángela’s son had been handed over as agreed. No, the Church would not authorize his adoption by Maximiliano, or not without the mother’s formal agreement.
“Which you do not have.”
“Which we do not have. That brings us to the crux of my proposal. I know where the boy is currently residing, and I suspect that you know where the mother might be found.”
“I see.”
“I’m sure you do. And I don’t believe you are alone. I believe that little witch in Cuernavaca knows, too. Twice, to my knowledge, she has communicated with you about something. Shortly after the first instance, Ángela disappeared from Max’s, ah … from his second house in Cuernavaca. I call that an interesting coincidence.”
