– XIV –

In which a night wind blows and confidences are exchanged

Rosario and the Duke lay under a coverlet listening to the wind buffeting the tent. Of all the young women over the years with whom he had exercised his droit de seigneur, she was, by far, his favorite. Her beauty, her seeming obliviousness to his age, her openness to pleasure, the offhand way she took his money, the clarity she maintained between what they did together and the rest of her life.

‘How are things with your husband?’ he asked.

‘Difficult,’ she said. ‘He keeps trying to get me pregnant.’

He wondered if she said it to irk him, which it did.

‘It’s time for that, I suppose. And he must, of course, desire you fiercely.’

‘I do not feel his desire. He only wants a child so that our families will stop making fun of him.’

‘To expect anything else from a man like that is foolish.’

‘That is what my mother says.’

‘She was always wise.’

She kissed his bare shoulder. He closed his eyes to savor it.

‘What was she like—then?’ she asked.

‘Quiet, angry at first. But that changed over time.’

‘Are you certain I am not your daughter?’

‘She assured me you weren’t.’

‘What if she is wrong?’

‘I think women know such things. If you became pregnant by me, wouldn’t you know who the father was?’

‘That would be easy. Antonio is short and hairy. You are tall and handsome.’

‘Bless you. But I am an old man.’

‘Not with me,’ she said. ‘I should never have married him.’

‘If you hadn’t, you would have been forced into a convent. Seeing you like this under those circumstances would have been much more difficult.’

For however sinful a thought, part of her wished he was her father. Her own had been coarse and mean. Then she imagined herself in the convent back up in the village, where the nuns were only glimpsed at mass through a Moorish grill when they sang hymns. Or you could only see their hands when they placed the pastels they made through the small iron bars in exchange for coins.

‘Have you ever been with a nun?’

‘Once.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Hairy, like your husband.’

They laughed aloud together.

‘What do you make of our guest,’ he asked her, ‘the stranger from the Orient?’

‘I have never seen anything like him. I wonder if he might be a devil.’

‘But he is handsome.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think Guada likes him?’

‘Guada is too in love with her esposo to notice anyone else.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She’s told me. She has said it often since arriving here.’

‘Too often perhaps.’

‘You are an evil man, Your Excellency.’

‘I care about her happiness. Is that so evil?’

‘But she is already happy.’

‘That’s what she tells herself and the world. But her husband is a bit of a scoundrel, more than she knows.’

‘Woman can be in love with scoundrels.’

She sat up. The whiteness of her slender back and the blackness of her hair caught him by surprise. She began to put her long tresses up with pins.

‘And you think there may be something between them?’ she asked.

‘Have you not noticed?’

‘My mind has been too occupied with you.’

He kissed a small dimple near the base of her spine.

‘You are an evil girl.’

‘I have been an evil girl, but now I must be a good girl again and return to Guada’s tent.’