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In which the Admiral of the High Seas recalls a painful day

Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y de Zúñiga-Sotomayor, the 7th Duke of Medina-Sidonia, observed the newlyweds from a balcony at his ancestral palace set in the hills outside the village of Medina-Sidonia. He tried, with the aid of a cane, to find a position in which the shooting pains in his hip might diminish. A light September drizzle fell. The couple in the garden below, recently arrived from La Moratalla, sat by the fountain holding hands. It irked him to see them oblivious to the weather. The beauty of his niece brought back memories of the first months he had spent with his own wife, Ana de Silva y Mendoza, the daughter of the Princess of Éboli. They were betrothed when the girl was only four and he fifteen. Eight years later, after a dispensation from the Pope due to Ana’s age, they married. Now their children were grown and married, and the skinny girl who had been his twelve-year-old bride was long dead and buried in his family crypt not a five-minute walk from where he stood. He imagined her, shriveled and blackened, her rotting fingers covered in white gloves and rosary beads.

Inside, on his desk, there was a letter addressed to the Admiral of the High Seas, penned no doubt by an official in Sevilla looking to flatter, but who was unaware of how much the title irked him. Fellow nobles who knew him well had, at his request, ceased using the accolade years ago.

For reasons the Duke could never fathom, Philip the Second had handed him the helm of the Spanish Armada when the Marques of Santa Cruz died. He had refused, ineffectively, for he had no experience at sea. The ignominious defeat in 1588 at the hands of the English off the coast of France and Ireland was blamed on him. The sacking of Cádiz in 1596 had been blamed on him. Then they blamed his stubbornness in 1606 for the loss of a squadron of ships off the coast of Gibraltar. He always contended that the King, now deceased, had been a fool to choose him. The Duke was a Grandee of the land, a Duke at home on horseback riding through the countryside of his estates or along his family’s beaches in Sanlúcar. He was a man of saddles and reins, dogs and hunting muskets. Sails and swirling seawater, ocean gales and slimy fish were alien to him. Oquendos and Bazanes were born and raised for that. He had not been bred to vomit over the side of a galleon or to issue orders to insolent sailors from Lugo. He could never live down the public humiliation the title had brought upon him.

And yet, he thought, the contents of the letter were curious and had a certain gracia about them. It claimed that a tribe of Asian devils was approaching Spain accompanied by Franciscans from Sevilla and a naval captain by the name of Sebastian Vizcaino, whose name was somehow familiar. The Asians had discovered the truth of Jesus Christ and sought trade. They came from an island nation he remembered being told about one evening some years back at a dinner where he was seated next to a Jesuit with knowledge of the subject. He remembered how the Jesuit told him that before the heathens of that land came to know Christianity, they had worshipped rocks and trees.

Let them come, he thought. Spain was hungry for new ports as well, new minerals and forests, new converts, new money. It was, after all, their holy obligation as soldiers for Christ. The letter implored him to organize a proper reception for the delegation. It went on to mention that most of the group had been baptized and that the nation they represented was known for its fine arts and exquisite manners.

He found the matter immensely ironic. Just when the issue of the purity of one’s blood was being so hotly argued, prosecuted, and persecuted by a Holy Inquisition engorged with its own power, when its irons of torture were burning brightest, when only five years had passed since the new King and his disagreeable, arriviste sidekick, the Duke of Lerma, had expelled all of the Moriscos from Spain, just when all this was afoot, he was being asked to unfurl a carpet of welcome to another race of dubious converts. The Duke of Lerma, a thorn he could not remove, whose daughter was married to his oldest son Juan Mañuel who would succeed him someday and become the 8th Duke of Medina-Sidonia. He had given the pair his blessing in a moment of weakness.

He decided he would show the visitors from Japan and the palace officials asking him to greet them how an old aristocrat responds in times tainted by religious provincialism. He would open the palace in Sanlúcar de Barrameda and have all available carriages dusted and repainted and properly paired with braided steeds to meet and escort the tree-worshippers from their ship. It went without saying he would not be there to receive them in person. There were limits to be respected. He would send Julian, plus a nephew or two, to represent him. It would be a pleasure to have his niece to himself for a spell without the presence of the handsome young husband.

The pain in his hip continued as he made his way downstairs to his secretary’s quarters. He dictated a response to Sevilla and to Madrid. He composed a separate and detailed letter to his man in Sanlúcar listing all the necessary preparations he could think of for the Asian delegation. He also commended the services of Don Julian and two ne’er-do-well nephews.

Afterwards he took a strong drink of wine and limped to the stables. As if to further affirm his ties to the land and putting up with considerable discomfort, he mounted his favorite Arabian and went for a ride up into the hills. He rode between hundreds of olive and almond trees. The paths were damp from the early morning rain. From earth the color of dried blood, there rose an odor of renewal, a scent of chthonic gratitude, primary odors the land awards to riders and horses fortunate enough to be out after a long-needed shower. He passed a family of campesinos harvesting potatoes and deigned to recognize their salutations with a brief wave while wistfully entertaining a fantasy he would have been happier born into a family such as theirs. He thought of his mistress from the village, Rosario, whom he had brought into the house to serve as Guada’s chambermaid so that it would be easier to sneak her into his bedroom.

He reached the ridge and trotted along a goat path to an alberca, an irrigation pool, fed by rivulets from the mountains. He let the reins drop, permitting his horse to lap up the clear cold water. Turning in the saddle with a wince, he took in the view of his house below and its chapel adjacent to the village. The older he became, the closer he felt to this terrain, the more loath he was to make any further journeys away from it.

He patted the horse’s strong neck, appreciating the warmth of it in the brisk air. Autumn, his favorite season, was imminent. He took a hank of the chestnut-hued mane in his elderly spotted hand, giving it an affectionate tug the horse ignored, but in doing so he awakened a memory he could have done without. An event connected with the dismal demise of the Armada twenty-four years earlier. All had been done to save the fleet. All hope of ferrying Parma’s troops to France had been abandoned. He commanded his ships to flee north, trying to escape Drake’s lighter vessels that persisted in attacking them like angry wasps from a bothered nest. It was September then, as well, but far colder when they rounded Scotland and came about, finally pointing south again. As they sailed along the western coast of Ireland, he tried to keep them well out at sea, but currents and storms that seemed to mock him drove the fleet landward. Many of the ships were damaged. Provisions and water supplies dwindled. Spirits were as foul as the weather. And then there came the moment when he had to order his cavalry officers to drive their mounts into the sea.

The sight of his sailors screaming aflame from the vile fire ships off of Gravelines, watching his cabin boy expire on deck from a musket wound, living with the ravaged faces of his troops ill with starvation and dysentery, none of these images affected him as much as seeing the horses being forced to dive into the cold sea, seeing their heads bobbing in the rough, deep, foreign waves as he left them behind to drown, so far from their paddocks in Andalusia.

At the midday meal that afternoon, Don Julian took the news of his being sent to the Medina-Sidonia palace in Sanlúcar with surprising pleasure. The Duke observed how Guada put on a brave smile. She thanked him for showing such confidence in her husband. But he would have sworn the girl was on the verge of tears.