– XVII –

In which youth is scorned

Marta Vélez tired of her nephew. Julian’s conversation was limited to little more than opportunities to speak well of himself. She had stayed too long in Sanlúcar. The damp sea air drained her and made her hair unruly. She longed for the mountainous, dry climate of Madrid. She missed her own house and servants. She missed the lazy grandeur of court with its fierce rivalries cloaked in faux religiosity.

Waiting for Julian to return each afternoon, invariably drunk after frittering away the morning hours with rich and rancid provincial friends who never seemed to tire of the same stories told in one of two taverns, had become unbearable. The only thing keeping her there was the discomfort and angst she felt at being alone. But after last night’s debilitating argument, she was ready to go. Once back in Madrid, she would renew her dinner parties and be kinder to Don Rodrigo during his visits to court. Perhaps a new admirer might be found less related to her by blood and more interesting to share her bed with.

Feigning sleep until Julian left one morning to find his friends, she made haste with her toilette, ordering a servant to pack and hire a carriage. When he returned for the midday meal holding a large bouquet of mimosa, he hoped her ill humor might have passed, that he might get her to laugh and undress for him again. A comely young serving girl he and his mates had bantered with earlier in the day had put him in the mood for a siesta amorosa.

But after slapping the servant for obeying Marta’s commands and ransacking their suite of rooms in fruitless search for a note of explanation, throwing the sprigs of mimosa to the floor, he collapsed in a corner and cried. As a small boy, his mother left him often when she would go to be with his father in distant castles and provinces, abandoning him to fend for himself. She would go off without a second thought, eager to give her body to his revolting sire.

Marta’s departure coincided with the only event Julian truly had to attend that very afternoon, as the Duke of Medina-Sidonia’s personal emissary. Since the arrival of the Japanese Delegation, he had largely ignored his official obligations. He had taken it upon himself to decide that the Duke’s attitude toward the foreigners should be one of condescension. Wrapped in a flag of aristocratic snobbery, he’d been able to justify his inclination to avoid almost every opportunity for improving relations with the Japanese, while giving ample rein to his debaucheries. It did not go unnoticed by local officials with ties to the Duke, and his bragging about it to Marta Vélez had only diminished his stature in her eyes.

The meeting taking place that afternoon would finalize the arrangements and protocol for how the Japanese Delegation would enter Sevilla: the route, security, who should be present, when and where. Input from the Duke, due to his close relations with the King and as a singular representative of Sevilla’s high society, was considered crucial. Julian, in his own way, had actually cobbled together a program that, whenever possible, looked to limit public contact and popular enthusiasm for the exotic guests. Leaving his friends late that morning, he had counted on a meal, an assignation with Marta after regaining her sympathies, and a rest before dressing suitably and arriving sober at the appointed chamber where Hasekura Tsunenaga and Father Sotelo would be present.

But Marta had fled. Grief overwhelmed him. The thought of having to go on without the affections of his aunt was unbearable. A relationship he had often seemed cavalier about and that he had often assured himself he could walk away from was now something he could not live without. He had managed to imagine it as being only a satellite about his marriage to Guada, but now it meant more to him than anything in the world. He saddled his horse and went after her.

Three hours later, he caught up with her carriage between Lebrija and Las Cabezas de San Juan. The carriage came to a halt by a stand of azaleas near a farm where goats grazed in an adjacent field. The goats were minded by a youth who leaned upon a walking stick to watch the novel encounter. The carriage was green and gold and drawn by four black horses. The young nobleman who had implored it to stop was dressed in sky-blue silken finery and rode an Arabian stallion.

Marta Vélez refused to step down from the cabin, preferring to conduct the conversation through the lowered window with a veil covering her face. Upon accepting the fact she would not deign to leave the carriage, Julian dismounted and asked, ‘Why? Why have you done this? Where are you going?’

‘I’m going home where I belong,’ she said.

‘But what’s happened?’

‘I’m tired, Julian.’

‘Tired.’

‘Of many things.’

‘Tired of me?’

‘Once again you disappoint me. A real man would not have come after me. A real man would have fulfilled his responsibility attending the meeting that was scheduled for an hour ago. Only a spoiled boy, a hapless scrounger unworthy of his title and inheritance, would have shamed himself by following me instead of doing his duty.’

A sword driven through his heart would not have pained him more.

‘You mock my affection for you.’

‘The affection of which you speak has run its course and come to an end. It was there, once upon a time, we embraced it, unwisely I’m sure, but now it’s been used up.’

‘Not for me.’

‘You must grow up, Julian. Abandon your boring, illiterate, unattractive friends. Return to your wife and give her children. Take care of your estates. Honor the King.’

‘I cannot face my wife unless I have you.’

‘Then find another, or another me. There are many of us, I fear.’

‘There is someone else, isn’t there?’

‘Julian,’ she said, attempting to inject a tone of kindness into her voice, which only made him more desperate, ‘let us end on a better note.’

She knocked upon the carriage wall to signal for the driver to proceed.

‘Who is it?’ he said to her in a fury.

‘No one,’ she said. ‘And in any case, it is no longer your concern.’

As the carriage pulled away, he filled with rage, the rage of humiliation, self-abasement, and pain. He drew his dagger and threw it at the rear of the carriage. He hoped to at least hear the stinging thud of its impalement into the fragile wood, hoped that she too would hear it and see it upon her arrival. But it missed its mark and disappeared into a rut of mud and grass. Julian swung up into the saddle and crudely spurred his horse, turning it around to return to Sanlúcar, where he had no intention of spending another night in all his life.

Once the aristocrats had gone, the goatherd boy descended the hill and made his way onto the road that had been traced by Roman legions centuries earlier. He found the dagger easily and marveled at its quality. He stuck it in his belt as a trophy and proof for the tale he would tell that evening to his father and brothers.