by James Runcie
As well as supervising the creation of the meal in secret, I was to be one of the guests, Isabella’s father remaining ignorant of the turbulence of our relationship. However, when the time came to take our seats at the table, I discovered that I was placed as far as possible from my former love. A slight was clearly intended for I found myself situated between two elderly crones of indeterminate age, both of whom appeared to be profoundly deaf.
Isabella sat like a princess, coldly beautiful in a green silk dress, her eyes half hidden behind a golden fan, dividing her attentions between a bibulous and somewhat swarthy soldier, and a pale young man who looked as if he might have played the lute.
This made me all the more determined upon my revenge.
The banquet had been announced as a celebration of the bounty from the New World, and the guests were treated to a selection of the delicacies I had first tasted in Mexico: watermelons, guinea fowl, partridge, quails and maize cakes; cherries, prickly pears, pineapples and mangoes. The diners were bemused by the rich array on offer, talking of each dish in turn, relieved that there should be some subject on which they could speak to strangers, yet unwilling to reveal their true opinions in this polite and withheld society. I listened to my deaf companions pronounce upon the achievements of their children and the possibilities they had spurned in earlier parts of their lives: loves, dowries, travel and ambition – all thwarted – until the turkey finally arrived upon the table.
Here at last was the food which I had prepared, its sauce as rich and as dark as molasses.
I watched Isabella take her first taste of the meat. She seemed to avoid the sauce, pushing the turkey gently away with the tines of her fork. I fixed all my concentration upon her, as if she should eat by the sheer force of my will; and, as she eventually placed the turkey and the mole in her mouth, her face contorted into the strangest of expressions, moving from tentative fear, through momentary disgust, to an aftertaste of unbounded pleasure.
The room was hushed at last. Every guest was beguiled by the taste of the sauce – at first smooth and reassuring, then fiery, and at last explosive in the mouth, softened by the sweet flavour of the turkey beneath. It was, one man pronounced, the original ambrosia, a dish so alluring that all delicacies he had previously enjoyed were dismissibly ordinary. The guests fell to, unable to speak, concentrating only upon their food, as if the sauce was nothing less than the lost elixir of silence and delight.
Minutes passed, and still it seemed that Isabella’s guests could do nothing but relish the chocolate which now coated their tongues, bidding them on to speechless joy.
At last, and still silent, the guests reached for wine and water, fearful indeed that such familiar flavours might corrupt their palates. The speed of eating slowed, as if they wished to conserve and revere every mouthful. The room was filled with pleasure. Perhaps Isabella had some dim memory of the taste, for she sat as if reminded of a dream.
At last she gestured to a servant, and whispered in his ear.
He mouthed the word ‘Mole’. When Isabella asked to be told of the ingredients, I fixed my gaze upon her, and waited to lip-read from the servant the word ‘Chocolatl’.
Instantly she looked up and her eyes found mine in a fury.
She threw down her napkin, but the swarthy man next to her stayed her hand, as if all who attended this banquet had mysteriously been given the gift of gentleness and courtesy. The pale lutenist murmured in surprise, unable to believe that there could be anything not to her liking.
Isabella paused, lost in thought for a moment, and returned to the meal.
I had won my victory. All that could be heard in the banquet hall were contented sighs until, one by one, the guests finished eating.
Isabella’s father then called for Sylvana, the cook.
As she entered the room, the guests at the banquet burst into spontaneous applause.
‘We will have this meal, exactly as we have enjoyed it, on the same day, every year, for the rest of our lives,’ called Isabella’s father.
‘Every year? Every week!’ shouted Gonzalo de Sandoval, amidst much laughter.
Sylvana looked slowly round the assembled gathering of appreciative faces, blushed, and then burst into tears, as if they had been mocking her.
I rose from the table and followed her into the kitchen, where she sat, head in hands, inconsolable.
‘How can I make such a feast again? Where will we find the ingredients?’ she cried.
I reassured her that we still possessed the vase of beans that I had taken from Montezuma’s treasury and that all might yet be well. We simply needed time and patience in order to work out a plan.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case, neither Sylvana nor I were in control of our destiny. For the very next day Isabella arrived at my home, alone, and unannounced.
She wasted no time in coming to her point.
‘It was you.’
‘I do not know of which you speak.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘What?’
‘You know perfectly well. Do not dissemble.’
‘Very well,’ I answered as calmly as I could. ‘I did this simply to show you that I could do such a thing. To prove worthy of your love.’
‘You bribed the cook.’
‘I did no such thing.’
‘You gave her the means and taught her the art of making it.’
Now I relished her fury.
‘I did.’
‘And it is the talk of the Barrio Santa Cruz. None can forget it; everyone longs to taste such food again. You have power over me, for we have no means of reproducing such a feast without appealing to your generosity.’
‘The meal cannot be made without cacao beans, I do confess.’
‘Then give me some.’
‘I only have a small supply remaining.’
‘Show me.’
‘Very well. But if you accept the gift, then you must accept my love.’
Of course I did not want such a love, particularly now that I had it within my grasp. I sought victory, forgiveness, dignity and, perhaps, it must be confessed, although I am ashamed to admit to such a thing, Isabella’s humiliation.
‘Show me.’
I pulled out the vase that I had carried from Montezuma’s treasury.
‘These are cacao beans,’ I said, ‘more precious than gold, for when you drink the chocolate concocted from them you are drinking your fortune.’
‘This is the true treasure?’
‘They must be kept dark, and hidden well.’
Isabella was hardly able to contain her impatience.
‘Give them to me.’
‘This vase has been sealed,’ I continued, speaking as if I were a conjuror, ‘and none has touched it but myself. You will be the first – and last – to see these beans since they were placed in Montezuma’s treasury.’
I pulled off the seal.
Isabella’s eyes glistened.
‘Can I touch them?’ she said.
‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Take thirty beans away with you tonight. Sylvana knows what to do.’
She stared as if they were holy relics or the wafers for Mass. ‘Surely this is a great treasure that makes men fall so silent at its taste.’ I had never seen her so moved.
‘Is this truly my gift?’ she asked.
Victory.
I had met the conditions of her challenge.
‘Take the beans. My felicitations, my admiration, and my deepest respect for your beauty go with them.’
‘I have mistreated you, Diego.’
‘No matter,’ I said, solemnly.
‘You have my love.’
If Isabella had said such a thing two years ago I would have fallen into a swoon.
Now it meant nothing.
Yet I stopped for a moment, knowing that a life of ease and grace awaited me if only I chose to take it.
Such are the attractions of wealth.
‘Come to me tomorrow,’ Isabella
continued. ‘I will take these to my cook, and we will taste this elixir once more.’
She held out her hand for me to kiss.
‘Farewell. My father will wish to see you to discuss the marriage dowry. You have succeeded in your quest.’
And with these words she returned to court.
María and Esperanza were delighted by my victory, and began to plan for their immediate employment in the ducal household.
What had I done?
Fear filled my heart as we approached Isabella’s house the next day. My servants wore their finest clothes, and had instructed me to trim my beard and wear my sword. This was to be the beginning of my new life at court.
The thought gave me no pleasure. Was I to be trapped within the expectations of civilised life? How could I ever return to Mexico? Life was now a dream in which I was carried further and further away from Ignacia. What was I doing?
We walked up to the gatehouse of the Quintallina residence, and knocked boldly on the door.
Imagine our surprise therefore, when the gatekeeper then directed us to the servants’ entrance.
Here Sylvana was waiting for us.
‘Impostors!’ she cried. ‘Deceivers! Adulterers! Crooks!’
She picked up the vase that I had given Isabella, raised it above her head, and, with a great heave, threw it onto the ground, smashing it in pieces before us.
Cacao beans rolled onto the courtyard.
María and Esperanza shrieked at the waste, but Sylvana only shouted all the more.
‘Criminals!’
Pedro raced forward and began to sniff at the cacao beans. I knelt down beside him and was immediately surprised by their softer texture.
They felt like crumbling cork.
I tried to break a bean in my hands, but it would not yield. Perhaps they were stale?
I raised it to my mouth and bit gently.
There was a strong taste of dried clay.
The beans were false.
They must have lain undisturbed in Montezuma’s treasury because they had been confiscated as counterfeit money. That was why such little attention was paid when I picked up the vase. People knew them to be fake.
I had been made a laughing stock.
I felt a surge of heat well up in my face, knowing that I must seem either foolish or malevolent.
From Sylvana’s words I came to understand that her mistress had thought that I had played the cruellest of tricks upon her. I was never to be allowed near her again.
My life in Seville was at an end.
I returned home to think about my future.
Without fortune, chocolate or a betrothed, I now had the freedom and the excuse to risk my life upon the seas and return to Mexico. If Ignacia was alive and still loved me, then I would fulfil my promise to her, and even find happiness. If not, then I would have nothing.
But it was clear that I must venture all upon that love. It was the only hope that might give my life purpose and meaning.
III
Nothing can convey my despair when my eyes first caught sight of the black and charred remains of that great city of Mexico, its towers destroyed, its people either dead or destitute. The vast marketplace lay empty. The majesty of the city had passed away. Houses were left derelict and the temples had been laid waste, their treasures drowned in the lake so that none should profit from them. It was as if Pedro and I had entered an abandoned world. No one we passed seemed able to tell us what had happened or where we might find survivors. This was a city of ghosts.
We found a canoe and paddled through the chinampas, past tree after burned-out tree. All that had previously been good and fertile had been destroyed. We travelled as if in a nightmare, unable to find respite from the succession of sights that awaited us. Approaching the former shelter where I had last seen Ignacia, despair entered the very soul of my being, a dread and a fear of death that I think has never left me to this day. I expected the worst, despised myself for expecting such a thing, and was both terrified and filled with self-hatred when my fears were confirmed. For there, in the distance, lay the burned remains of the adobe dwelling where Ignacia and I had found such happiness only two years before.
With mounting terror I scoured the blackened vegetation until I found a small mound.
My heart emptied.
Could this be Ignacia’s grave?
Pedro whimpered and began to paw at the earth.
If I was to know what had happened I would have to dig away at the mound, uncovering what lay inside it, even if it meant the discovery of my beloved’s body.
I was terrified by the dangers of such knowledge, but knew that my life could not continue if I did not know what had happened. I found some sticks and began to dig, as if Ignacia had been buried alive and we only needed to pull the earth away to let her breathe once more.
‘My God, let her live,’ I prayed.
Pulling away soil, leaf, plantain, and cacao husks with increasing urgency, we finally revealed the edge of a white tunic beneath the earth.
Overcome with the most sudden and appalling grief, I could not bear to dig any further and began to re-cover the mound with earth, as if I had never begun the idea of exhumation, desperately trying to hide the memory of the discovery; as if my initial curiosity had never happened, and none of this was happening to me. Utterly disorientated, my head filled with pain and confusion, I wanted to run away, to be any place save here, but found that I could not move. Everything about my life had been suspended.
I knelt at the grave, with Pedro by my side, and wept.
My people had done this.
My people had killed the woman I loved.
It seemed that everything I had sought in life, all that I believed in no longer possessed any meaning. And the more I reflected on my helplessness before a history that I could not change, the more furious I became, losing my faith in justice, a divine creator, and the power of man to shape any kind of destiny.
As dusk turned into night, Pedro and I lay down on the ground and slept like sentinels by Ignacia’s grave. We would stay here in quiet bereavement until we were able to recover. Even though our mouths were dry and our stomachs empty, I could neither eat, nor drink.
I could not imagine being anywhere else on earth.
The next morning I covered the mound with jacaranda blossom, praying for the reincarnation of Ignacia’s soul.
At least we would try to honour her memory.
We stood over the grave for many hours. Perhaps the night came, and the sun rose, but I had no sensation of day or night, life or death, energy or exhaustion. I was sick with emptiness, unable to move until it became clear that our lives could not continue in this way, that we must try to endure bereavement, even if it meant an existence with no real respite from sorrow.
I laid a pile of stones around Ignacia’s grave, and carved her words to me around the bark of a tree: ‘Quien bien ama tarde olvida. He who loves truly, forgets slowly.’
And then Pedro and I turned away from the plantation as we had done so many months before, slowly and reluctantly, our footsteps pointless and uneven, stumbling blindly away from the place that had seen both the greatest happiness and now the greatest misery of our small lives.
We returned to Tlaxcala. There I sought out people who had been in the Mexican campaign and asked if they knew of any who had survived the siege of the city and the battle for its possession so that they might tell us the story of what had happened.
The cacique told me that he had seen groups from the city heading south, as far as Chiapas, to seek allies, whether old or new, to build up their broken lives. After a series of meals and conversations I told the man of the reason for my travels, and of my love for Ignacia.
As my speech became increasingly desperate with grief, I wondered if the more I talked the greater might be the possibility of Ignacia being alive after all, as if, by talking of her, I could force her back into being; that she could live, tangibly, once more, because my memory of her w
as so strong. Perhaps the grave might not be hers, perhaps I could find her again, perhaps she lived after all?
I think that I was hysterical with sadness.
The chieftain took pity on me, expressing deep sympathy at my loss, and offered another wife in Ignacia’s place.
I informed him that I only wanted Ignacia. I could love none but her.
The cacique seemed almost amused by my loyalty and looked at Pedro.
‘One man, one woman, one dog.’
‘It is all that I require for happiness,’ I replied.
‘You want happiness?’ he asked incredulously.
‘I do not expect it. I simply seek it.’
There seemed little choice but to cast our fate to the winds and head for Ignacia’s home of Chiapas. Perhaps her surviving relatives might tell us what had occurred. Perhaps they would allow us to live in the love and memory of her.
Outside the city, the land seemed as vast as the sea, and Pedro and I found ourselves lost between plain and mountain, sun and moon, noon and midnight. We must have seemed such small figures, adrift in the grandeur of an infinite and hostile landscape. The fierce rays of the sun were almost unbearable, our thirst seemed unquenchable, and each day I had to make bandages for Pedro’s feet so that the searing heat of the sand would not burn his paws.
We built fires at night, cooking simple meals where we could, and huddled together against the cold climate and our fear of the future. We slept in the open under the stars. The heat from the fire made me dream of flames, of travelling down an endless series of corridors in a great palace, all opening out into vast landscapes, but all on fire, impenetrable, a labyrinth of avenues in which Ignacia appeared in the distance, endlessly unreachable.
Pedro and I suffered days of fear and nights of loneliness, not knowing if we lived or dreamed, forever dependent on the kindness of strangers.
It was an eternity of travel.
I could hardly count the days or measure the years that we walked through pine-forested hills, past the stone sentinels of the Atlantes of Tula, following the course of lakes and waterfalls and crossing dry sierra until we climbed up the mountains and reached, at last, Ignacia’s home of Chiapas.
