– XV –

In which sushi is served and a hand is asked for

Shiro woke and swam at dawn. No one entered the sea willingly at any time of the year there, and the local fishermen who saw him thought him mad. The water was cold and clear, but once accustomed to it he felt a surge of invigoration that approached a state of grace. Looking back to shore, he took in the wide sweeping beach, the towering dune at its western edge, the ruins of Baelo Claudia, the tops of the Duke’s encampment where the Gúzman colors fluttered in the steady wind.

By the time the others appeared, Shiro had befriended the tuna fishermen and a roundup was under way. Skiffs placed a wide net out from the shore held by buoys that horses on the sand drew slowly shoreward. As the muscular school of bluefin tuna, massive and silvery, began to understand what was happening, they started to panic and thrash, turning the diminishing volume of water into a spectacle of frothing foam. Awaiting them on the beach was a group of executioners clad in rags, armed with hooks and spikes. Off to the side, the Duke and his retinue observed the proceedings. The men waded into the low breaking waves, meting out mighty blows that turned the water crimson. Shiro, wearing little more than a loincloth, walked among the dying victims looking for the best specimen. Though focused on the task at hand, he could not help but remember the careless slaughter of the elephant seals he’d witnessed on the beach in San Simeon.

The two young women, plus some of the guards and locals, found it hard to look away from Shiro’s lean body, tall and taut, gleaming with blood and salt water. Guada finally did avert her gaze when instinct cautioned that sin was near. Soon after the last fish was hauled to shore, the young Samurai chose one that a guard then promptly paid for. Using his tanto, Shiro gutted it on the spot. The rapidity of the cuts and the knowledge it displayed impressed the tuna men, and the Duke enjoyed it, knowing it would somehow raise his reputation in their eyes.

At the midday meal, served about a makeshift table, Shiro presented them with small slices of toro carefully sliced from the bluefin’s underbelly. They were bite-sized and gleaming, pressed upon small clusters of Calasparra rice harvested from the low mountains of Murcia. The Duke, Rosario, and the Duke’s chef were the only ones willing to try it. Guada found it difficult to look at and regarded the presentation as yet another example of the young man’s primitivism. She used this latest affront to her sensibility in conjunction with the sacrilegious tone he used in his conversation during their walk the night before, the ignorance of modesty displayed by his casual nakedness in the sea, the manner in which he swam and waded through the bloodied water, his eyes, the hair pulled back into a short tail, the odd clothing and armament, to reinforce her opinion as to his extreme and troublesome foreignness. She found her uncle’s fascination with his guest disconcerting and was disappointed when she realized that Rosario, whom she had come to like and confide in, was having some sort of relationship with the Duke, a idea she felt to be obscene and tasteless. Were it up to Guada, they would return to Medina-Sidonia that very day. But her uncle was insisting upon another night by the unsettling ruins and the infernal waves that she now believed carried all manner of harmful humors within their ceaseless, wind-sprayed emanations. For reasons she could not, or simply would not, try to uncover, she’d been uncomfortable within her own skin since waking that day. She was even looking forward to her mother’s visit, willing to trade the restrictions Doña Inmaculada’s presence would impose, to regain some sense of normalcy. Why had Julian left her side so eagerly?

That afternoon Shiro disappeared into the hills to practice his physical and spiritual ‘regimen.’ But when, upon his return, he invited Guada to accompany him once again on a walk, this time by the sea, she turned him down. Stifling a sensual tremor the invitation provoked, she rechanneled it into a sensation of discomfort she ascribed to an indisposition she blamed on prolonged exposure to the maritime climate. He of course, as she expected, expressed surprise.

‘Where I come from, the sea and its surroundings are among the most salutary to be found.’

‘Nevertheless,’ she said, but she had nothing else with which to further her assertion. After allowing her voice to trail off, she added, as if to bolster the wall between them, ‘It is yet another example, I suppose, of the differences between us.’

Shiro took his walk alone while the Duke slept a long siesta. Rosario was vexed from having to pray a long novena on her knees next to Guada in their tent. The rote succession of Ave Marias spoken to the sandy floor made her sleepy, and it was only her fear of being reprimanded by the all-too-virtuous young lady beside her that kept her rigidly in place.

But with the arrival of night, she was able to relax, even though it seemed the darkness only increased the tension radiating from Guada. Rosario ate the evening meal with gusto, as did the Duke, the foreigner, and everyone else with the exception of Guada. Afterwards it took all the patience Rosario had to wait for Guada to fall asleep so that she could go to the Duke once again. And when she rose to leave, convinced the blonde beauty was finally wrapped in slumber, Guada spoke out.

‘What is it, Rosario?’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Where are you going at such an hour?’

‘To relieve myself ma’am.’ It was a statement not altogether untrue.

‘Go then, but do not tarry. It is not safe out there.’

‘We are surrounded by armed guards, ma’am.’

Frustrated, she entered the Duke’s tent and reported his niece’s sleeplessness.

‘Let her be,’ he said.

‘My Lord?’

‘Stay here with me.’

‘But she will surely come looking for me if I do not return.’

‘I doubt it. And if she does, so be it then.’

She remained standing, trying to understand what felt different in the air.

‘But if she were to say anything,’ she said, ‘back at the finca—my reputation …’

‘What would you say if I asked you to marry me, Rosario?’

The winds were unusually strong that night, and the leather flap at the entrance to the tent made a jarring noise at odds with the stillness within. Next to the wavering taper, the Duke had lit a stick of pomegranate incense that filled the air with a scent she would always identify with him. She came in farther.

‘I am already married, my Lord.’

‘To an individual I do not wish for you to ever return to.’

The statement, uttered with quiet simplicity, shocked her.

‘I am getting on,’ he said, ‘and you are a young woman. But we are good together. Would you not agree?’

She smiled. ‘I would, my Lord.’

‘Spending time away from you no longer amuses me. Solitude, which has served me well this past decade, no longer amuses me. Having to conduct my personal life in secrecy as if I were a criminal or an adolescent does not become me. I find I have a deep affection for you. So would you have me, a gray man who has trouble walking?’

‘I do not know what to say, my Lord.’

‘A simple yes will do,’ he said gently.

‘If I could, my Lord, nothing would please me more.’

‘Do you mean that? Tell me the truth.’

She fell to her knees before him, took his hand, kissed it, and then, still clinging to it, rested her head upon it. It was a narrow hand, but strong in sinew, and the thick gold of the ring on his middle finger was cold and wondrous pushing against her cheek.

‘I mean it from the bottom of my heart,’ she said.

And it was true because her heart was racing.

‘Then I shall have your marriage annulled,’ he said, ‘on the grounds of your husband’s infertility. The Pope is an old friend, and I’m sure Antonio’s honor can be assuaged by a chest of coins emblazoned with the King’s likeness.’

‘A union with me would attract scandal to your reputation. I have no royal blood, my Lord.’

‘I am the Admiral of the High Seas, a Grandee of Spain. I can do as I wish. And as for your lack of “royal blood” as you call it, my own ancestors, without rummaging too far back, were surely sheep herders or oliveros with blood like yours running through their veins. Our children shall have our blood combined.’

She did not return to Guada. Though incensed by the girl’s boldness and by the fact she had been lied to, Guada was too embarrassed to protest. For the guards to observe her storming into her uncle’s tent for the purpose of punishing the girl would be unsightly and unforgiveable. What she found herself thinking about instead was how close the Samurai’s tent was to hers. Was he asleep, or awake like she? As she lay there, she was gripped by a fantasy difficult to control in which sticking her arm out from under her tent, feeling the narrow path of cold sand between them, she slipped her hand into his tent and gently placed her fingers upon his bare shoulder.