– IV –

In which the master suffers a bore whose worst fear is realized

Marta Vélez agreed to resume relations with Rodrigo after he presented her with a gold necklace and promised to never mention her nephew again. One evening when he should have been returning to Sevilla, he conspired to remain in Madrid. He took his prospective son-in-law to dine with Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

Rodrigo had come to know Cervantes while the author was imprisoned in Sevilla. The Grandee had food and writing materials regularly sent to the jail, and due to his intercession, Cervantes was released a year earlier than his sentence decreed. Rodrigo had not acted out of compassion or literary fervor. The only books seen in his households were volumes dedicated to hunting, the Bible, and, for show, Francesco Guicciardini’s The History of Italy. He had acted rather at the behest of his wife. Doña Inmaculada pointed out that the doctored accounts for which Cervantes had been unjustly imprisoned dated from a time when the writer worked as a purveyor of funds for the Spanish Armada. The admiral of the Armada was Rodrigo’s great-uncle, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia.

Afterwards, Cervantes was always willing to show his gratitude, and recently, more than ever, in light of the fact that Rodrigo had become a close friend of the most powerful mortal breathing on the peninsula, the Duke of Lerma. Cervantes hated the Duke of Lerma. When the King showed favor toward the author and instructed the Duke to lend the writer a hand, he had only dispensed the meagerest of funds, forcing Cervantes into poverty. Worse still, a spurious ‘continuation’ of his Quijote had appeared in Tarragona that very year, written, he was sure, by one of the Duke of Lerma’s minions, Fray Luis de Aliaga. The book had been a great success. But even with all of this, the last thing Cervantes wished was to end up on the Duke’s bad side.

On that particular evening, after laboring all day on his own second part of Don Quijote, he was glad for any interruption, especially one that included an invitation to a sumptuous meal. The tavern where they dined, popular and lively, was found along the fashionable end of the Calle Mayor not far from where Cervantes lived. Ever since Phillip the Second chose Madrid over Valladolid as the permanent capital, thousands of courtiers and nobles and the people who provided for them had flocked to the city, tripling its population. The area around the Alcázar, the royal palace, built along a promontory above the narrow stream affectionately called the “River” Manzanares, had become a filthy warren of narrow streets. These dirtied lanes were relieved here and there by a number of modest plazas. The whole labyrinthine network was scalding in summer, damp and cold in the winter. As the madrileños were known to say about the climate of their city, ‘Son seis meses de invierno y seis de infierno.’ (Six months of winter and six of hell.)

Over roasted lamb so succulent it could be sliced with the edge of a porcelain plate—a novelty the tiresome proprietor never wearied of demonstrating—and with the aid of a raw but pleasing red wine stored below in large clay cisterns, Rodrigo tried to impress his future son-in-law by pretending more familiarity with the writer than truth could admit.

‘I live in an old-fashioned, provincial, overly ceremonious world, amigo,’ he said to the author. ‘But you who have seen and contemplated the mysteries of life on many shores and who live here in this ceaseless tangle of humanity, in this far harsher sphere, pray tell me and this young nobleman with us this evening, how do you view the behavior of today’s youth?’

Cervantes was accustomed to the odd way in which Rodrigo spoke to him. Informed by other acquaintances that the Grandee was otherwise known for his directness, for being an elegant but taciturn man whose only known weaknesses were hunting, whoring, and his daughter, Cervantes had correctly concluded that the convoluted sentences Rodrigo used when speaking with him was the man’s mangled attempt to emulate what he imagined to be literary conversation. It amused Cervantes and even inspired some compassion for a man he suspected was a brute at heart.

He also knew from previous evenings that Rodrigo fancied himself a kindred soul, a man of the world who had also tasted battle. Though this amused the writer some, it occasionally irritated him. For Cervantes had actually been a soldier, had been shot twice in the chest and once in his left arm during the battle of Lepanto. It was not for nothing he was called the Manco de Lepanto. Then he had spent five years captive in Algiers, from whose infested dungeons he had tried on numerous occasions to escape. Rodrigo, on the other hand, who regularly claimed to have seen active service during Spain’s unsuccessful naval war with England in 1588, had been but an eighteen-year-old aide-de-camp to his great-uncle, the 7th Duke of Medina-Sidonia. Apart from a prolonged bout of seasickness, Rodrigo and his illustrious relation had survived the debacle without a scratch. While Cervantes sat in chains taunted by murderous jailers, Rodrigo and his uncle had continued a life of linen sheets at country estates rife with game, pious wives, and willing servant girls.

‘I am not certain I grasp the exact meaning of your query,’ Cervantes replied. ‘But it seems to me that youths today comport themselves much like they always have.’

‘Not at all, my friend,’ Rodrigo said dismissively, ‘At least among my class of people, and please do not take that the wrong way.’

‘Not at all, Don Rodrigo.’

The irony of the repeated phrase was lost upon the aristocrat, but not upon the youth sitting next to him.

‘When you and I were young we went to war, Miguel, and gladly,’ Rodrigo said with an expression that implied he might actually be remembering scenes of gory battles barely survived. ‘I’ve yet to meet or hear of any nobleman’s son today who is eager to prove himself in a similar fashion.’ This last phrase was accompanied by a gentle elbow aimed at Julian’s ribs.

Cervantes did his best to appear interested and understanding, wondering where, if anywhere, the inane conversation was going. Simultaneously, he enjoyed a spasm of relief upon noticing that a short man entering the tavern he at first feared to be the rival he most maligned and detested, the insufferable and crowd-pleasing Lope de Vega, was in fact someone else.

‘Where would you suggest these youth brandish their swords, Don Rodrigo? We’ve been at peace with the English since 1604 and with the Dutch for five years now.’

‘None of that will last, my friend. Trust me on this, I who have the confidence of many in the know about these things. But that was not really my point. What I most fear with respect to our youth,’ Rodrigo said, looking at the author with a seriousness that was almost comical, ‘is an alarming rise in perversity.’

This caught the author’s attention.

‘Perversity.’

‘Depraved perversity, young men cavorting with relatives rather than testing their mettle on the battlefield.’

Julian felt a blush rise up from his throat. Cervantes placed his good hand on Rodrigo’s wrist.

‘Tell me, good man. What is bothering you? When you say ‘cavorting,’ are you referring to carnal relations?’

Rodrigo emptied his goblet and closed his eyes for a moment.

‘Exactamente.’

‘This is the first I am hearing of such behavior. Perhaps it is only the case within your higher circles.’

Rodrigo, suddenly not in the mood for literary wit, responded with a grumbling noise and ordered more wine.

‘But if that be so,’ Cervantes persisted, ‘I must say it would not constitute a novelty.’

‘What in damnation are you referring to?’ Rodrigo sputtered.

‘What do you think, young man?’ Cervantes asked Julian, ignoring the other man’s fulminations in the hope of widening the forum.

‘I confess,’ Julian said, staring down at the surface of the table stained with grease, ‘I’ve little notion of what this is all about.’

‘Well, I should hope not,’ Rodrigo said, a bit too energetically.

Cervantes wondered whether a form of ictus might be in play.

‘What I am referring to, sir,’ the writer said, ‘is a phenomenon common throughout history, so much so I see little point in devoting more time to it.’

‘Common? Common you say?’ Rodrigo fumed.

‘Common in your decidedly uncommon upper classes.’

‘Damn you man! This is not what I wished for you to say.’

All three men took stock of this latter declaration with varying degrees of puzzlement.

‘Our own king was married to his cousin,’ Cervantes said. ‘The Hapsburg Monarch Maximillian II married his first cousin, María of Spain, daughter of Charles the Fifth, and they had sixteen children. Cleopatra was married to her younger brother. Adonis was the child of a father and his daughter. Abraham and his wife Sarah were half-siblings. Brother and sister unions were common during the Roman period. Though an aura of taboo has often accompanied this sort of cavorting, as you call it, the practice it seems is as old and “common” as man himself.’

‘What utter nonsense,’ Rodrigo said.

‘I find it fascinating,’ said the young man.

‘Do you believe in the Bible, Don Rodrigo?’ Cervantes asked.

‘Well, of course I do.’

‘Who did Cain have his children with? The only woman about was Eve, his mother. So we are all descended from carnal relations between relatives, sir.’

Rodrigo finished his meal in a foul temper, wondering if there might be a way to have the famous author brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition. As they left the premises, he was set upon by Gaspar de Guzmán with his absurd moustache, the fawning nephew of Don Baltasar de Zúñiga. Gaspar de Guzmán spent his time laboring to ingratiate himself with the young prince who would someday become King Philip the Fourth, just as the Duke of Lerma had with the prince’s father. Finally disentangled from the smoke-filled tavern after repeated exchanges of pointless backslapping, the three men said good-bye out front. Cervantes gave Julian a wink and told him to take good care of his future father-in-law. Rodrigo made a heroic effort to overcome his bad humor and bid the author adieu with admirable grace, if only because the moment he had been waiting for all evening was fast at hand.

As an awkward silence enveloped them, the aristocrats watched Cervantes walk off, the lame arm hanging limply at his side, his posture stooped. There then ensued a brief roundelay about who should accompany whom back to their lodgings. Julian insisted upon seeing Don Rodrigo to the room prepared for him at the Alcázar, and the latter thought it wisest to accede. During the ten minutes it took them to reach the Royal Palace and doing their best to ignore the appalling scent in the air from the garbage and human waste lining the gutters, they took turns extolling the virtues of Guada. After passing through the guarded gates, they embraced and said good-night. But less than a minute later, Rodrigo was pursuing the young man back through the dark streets, a hunter stalking his buck. Part of him desperately hoped the boy would go to the Academia de Madrid that, over dinner, the youth had casually mentioned as the place where he was staying, but Rodrigo was prepared for the worst.

And thus it was. The boy went straight to the palacete of his aunt, built along the Carrer de San Geronimo, where the Duke of Lerma kept a residence as well. Following the fashion, these large buildings had austere windows and balconies and facades made of simple brick, but they hid sumptuous, colorful interiors filled with paintings and French furniture. Rodrigo watched as Julian let himself in with the relaxed assurance of someone well accustomed to being welcomed there. Feeling like a buffoon and praying he would not be seen or caught or fall and break his head, the forty-eight-year-old Grandee of Spain climbed a plantain tree outside the window of Marta’s bedroom and found a perch with an ideal view through her windows.

Were it not for the emotions shredding his heart he would have been most pleased with the privileged view he achieved, a voyeur’s dream. Enough candles were lit within to permit him to suffer the entire reunion: the torrid embrace, the mad kisses, the mutual disrobing, the sickeningly intimate caresses thereafter, seeing her do something to the young nephew she had never done to him, and then, upon the bed he had left that very morning, the culminating act during which his Marta uttered moans and cries far more intense than any he had ever inspired. It took more control than he was used to not to cry out himself. As he began to clamber back down, numbed with despair, he heard them laughing, swept up in postcoital joy. He would have wagered Guada’s dowry they were laughing at his expense.

Rodrigo returned to the Alcázar a wounded beast, feeling his age, immensely sorry for himself while manufacturing outrage for his poor deluded daughter. He’d been reduced to the cuckolded fool the Duke of Lerma had called him. Sleep did not come easily as he moped about the royal apartment, the one where his wife always pictured him, but where he rarely ever stayed. What was a man like himself to do, he thought? It was expected he have a mistress. Now he would have to seek another, a task that night that felt Herculean. How could Marta be so treacherous? For the past five years, he had made her life infinitely more comfortable than it would have been. Was he that boring, that dull in bed, that pompous and ridiculous?