– II –

In which a mistress is revealed

María Luisa Benavides Fernández de Córdoba y de la Cerda was a direct descendant of Isabel de la Cerda and Bernardo Bearne, Conde de Medinaceli. The baby girl’s parents, sevillanos with a palace in the city and numerous estates, were of royal blood dating from the reign of Alfonso the Wise.

Ignoring strenuous protest from the family priest, María Luisa’s father Don Rodrigo had the child baptized in the fetid waters of the Guadalquivir River. Her mother, Doña Inmaculada Gúzman de la Cerda, amused by her husband’s eccentric gesture, began to call her daughter ‘Guada.’ This led to confusion when the child was twelve and lived for a time at the court of Philip the Third in Madrid. She spent much time there with her cousin Guadalupe Medina. Guadalupe, who detested the shorter ‘Lupe,’ insisted on being called Guada as well, thus forcing courtiers to address the young ladies by their full names. But behind their backs, María Luisa was known as Guada the Fair.

Rodrigo’s son and namesake displayed a preference for other boys early on. Regular beatings and a mistress his father paid for proved useless. When the heir was admitted to the priesthood, continuance of the family line fell to Guada, for Doña Inmaculada refused to have any more children.

Shortly into her fifteenth year, Guada’s engagement was announced to a distant cousin, the Duke of Denia, whose properties would increase the already considerable family holdings three-fold. She thought the boy, who was called Julian and who was two years older than she, handsome and refined. She informed her mother that her prometido possessed ‘a poetic disposition.’ Walking on garden paths under the shade of chestnut blossoms behind the San Geronimo Monastery in Madrid, strolling through the rose garden at her great aunt’s finca ‘La Moratalla’ near Palma del Río, and sitting under shade at the beach in Sanlúcar de Barrameda observed by chaperones, the two youths allowed themselves to confuse instinct with love.

One day, she started to wonder about having children and expressed concern to her mother. ‘I know what happens,’ Guada said. ‘I have seen dogs by the walls of the Alcázar and our own horses here in the corral, and I have seen my brother bathing, and I have examined myself carefully.’

‘Then what more can I tell you child?’

They were in her mother’s chamber in a family finca outside the town of Carmona. From where they sat, they could see rolling fields of new green wheat so vast that when Guada half-shut her eyes, they transformed into a verdant sea. Standing behind Doña Inmaculada was the Moorish woman from across the strait who combed her hair each morning and who hardly spoke Castellano.

‘I know what happens,’ Guada said again, ‘but I do not know how it happens, the steps. How it comes about.’

‘Under the eyes of God,’ her mother said, leaning her head forward with each stroke of the wide ivory comb. ‘The body knows what to do. There is nothing to learn. It may be unpleasant, as is the case with other corporal functions, but it is a natural thing.’

‘Is it unpleasant?’

‘Not if your husband is gentle.’

‘Was father not gentle?’

‘Women of our station do not enjoy it. Although a lower sort is known to.’

‘You have not answered my question.’

‘Your father is many things, but gentle is not one of them. I was as young as you and knew far less. Your father was nervous and, despite all his talk, inexperienced. He felt the passion of desire and I a passion for obedience.’

‘And did it stay that way?’

‘We’ve never discussed it. And since you were born, we have not shared a bed. As we know, your father finds that sort of companionship elsewhere.’

Guada left the encounter more troubled than soothed. She had hoped her mother would humor her and assuage her fears with the Andalusian wit she was known for. But instead, Inmaculada’s normally cloistered northern roots had revealed themselves and bristled like Castilian steel.

Upon their return to Sevilla, Doña Inmaculada received a visit from her elderly aunt Doña Soledad Medina y Pérez Guzman de la Cerda, who brought a gift of gossip with her that put both women in a state of high agitation. On the following morning, Inmaculada sought out her husband after mass, before the midday meal, on the day before he was to travel to Madrid. He was in his study enjoying a glass of an amber toned Manzanilla sherry.

‘I must speak with you about a matter most pressing,’ she said, looking at him straight on.

‘Pray tell,’ said Don Rodrigo, only half-listening, expecting a complaint about some domestic squabble or yet another worry on his spouse’s part about a new physical woe, imagined or real. The obsession she had nurtured since they had stopped having relations, speaking endlessly of illness and disease, tired him. As she spoke, he contemplated the ring on the middle finger of his right hand embellished with his coat of arms.

‘What do you think of Don Julian?’ Inmaculada asked, taking him by surprise.

‘In what regard?’

‘In every regard,’ she said, surprising him further still.

‘Why?’

‘I’m told he has a mistress. The boy is seventeen and has a mistress twice his age who is none other than his own aunt.’

‘Which aunt?’ he asked her, looking away from the ring as if bidding farewell to happiness. For intuition instantly provided the answer to his question. He gazed down at the large terra-cotta floor tiles they stood upon, stained with a burnt hue that reminded him of Sicily.

‘Marta Vélez,’ she replied.

‘That cannot be,’ he said, knowing it could.

‘That was my reaction exactly, but Soledad claims it is certain.’

‘I sincerely doubt it.’

‘Both of Marta’s sons are dead. Her beastly husband stays away slaughtering game in Asturias. She is still attractive. Julian is handsome. And she is only his half-aunt from a blood point of view. Apparently he stays with her often in Madrid and not in a separate room.’

In bed with Marta Vélez four days later, Rodrigo broached the topic.

‘Where on earth did you hear such a thing?’ Marta Vélez demanded, pulling her peignoir shut from his suddenly undeserving eyes.

‘So you are not denying it.’

‘I will not even acknowledge such foul gossip.’

‘Because it is true.’

‘Don’t be a hapless bore.’

At court the following day, Don Rodrigo called upon his childhood friend Don Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, the First Duke of Lerma. Rodrigo was a Grandee of Spain. The Sandovals, also from Sevilla, but nobles of lesser strata, had to work and scheme for their money. The Duke, who had insinuated himself into the life of Philip the Third when the boy was still a young prince, now ran the empire, amassing great fortune for himself and his family. But one thing he wanted and could not have despite his power and ambition was what Rodrigo had inherited by birth. They got along and used each other well. Few dared to cross Rodrigo for fear of offending the Duke of Lerma, and the Duke enjoyed tossing the name of his aristocratic friend around in a manner that made it seem like he, too, was a member of that special fold.

The Duke of Lerma’s only claim to masculine appeal derived from the charisma radiated by his power. Nevertheless, he considered himself handsome and had many women more than pleased to agree. His office at the royal palace separated the halls and rooms permitted to nobles from those reserved for the King and his family. As he listened to his friend, he regarded himself in a large Venetian mirror donated to the crown by the Cardinal Bishop of Sabina, Scipione Borghese, the Pope’s brother. His desk, simple but massive, had come from a looted synagogue in Toledo. Don Rodrigo stood by a window gazing down at an enclosed garden that had a fountain in the middle where a priest read from a breviary.

‘She denies it,’ Rodrigo said. ‘But I could tell she was lying.’

‘Did you tell her this bit of news before or after you had your way with her?’

‘Before.’

‘Which is to say you did not have your way then, did you?’

‘This is serious.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘The boy is about to marry my daughter.’

‘What would you have me do? Drag Marta Vélez before the Inquisition? What is the crime? Where is the heresy? She is well regarded by the King, ignored by her dullard husband, and she’s lost her sons. She probably just dotes on the boy. You should be grateful.’

‘Grateful.’

The Duke began to laugh.

‘You are mocking me,’ Rodrigo said, exasperated. ‘Maybe she is innocent and telling the truth.’

‘I certainly hope not,’ the Duke replied.

‘How can you say such a thing?’

‘It’s too delicious.’

‘You, sir, are a vile man.’

‘And you an angry one at the thought of being cuckolded by your mistress and future son-in-law. You must take the news with philosophy, humor even, some of that compassion you always accuse me of lacking. And surely once the boy marries he will stop seeing her, and you can have her all to yourself again.’