– XL –

In which Guada returns home

Rodrigo left for Sevilla directly from the Alcázar. He did not return to Marta Vélez’s house. He would never return there again. The anger he felt toward the woman who had been his mistress for five years, though aided and abetted by the role she had played in his daughter’s misery, was primarily due to his having discovered, from the King no less, that Marta had continued to lie with his son-in-law. She had sworn to him that the dalliance with her nephew had come to an end; that she had grown bored to tears with the lad. The vigor she displayed, at least at the beginning, when renewing her sympathies for the Grandee had been convincing. But clearly her unseemly lust for Julian had continued. He would not allow her the satisfaction of making a fool of him again.

Riding down through the flatlands of La Mancha and Valdepeñas, down through the vertiginous wilds of Despeñaperros and on to Córdoba, he spent profligately, inviting himself into the best homes, bestowing lavish gifts upon his hosts, eating and imbibing in excess. Stopping at Soledad Medina’s estate, La Moratalla, where Guada and Julian had passed their honeymoon, he lingered for two full days and nights, making repeated and useless attempts to bed down a servant girl. Considering himself to be once again a single man, for Doña Inmaculada did not figure into it, he felt both the power and the dread of his new status. It dizzied him. And he was no longer the man he had been when he first began courting Marta Vélez. He wished to prove something by getting his way with the servant girl and thus was doubly humiliated when she turned down his charms, the power of his station, and finally an exorbitant offer of silver to give in to him. But she had said no and at one moment called him ‘un abuelito.’

He arrived in Sevilla despondent, put out to pasture, feeling gray and unappealing, his run as a Don Juan at an end. He rode directly to Doña Soledad’s palacete, for he was not yet ready to bear the scourge of what would be Inmaculada’s volcanic derision, congratulating herself for having been right about why the King had summoned him. He hoped that by doing the right thing by his daughter, taking the bull by the horns, his wife’s spite might be diluted.

He found Soledad’s residence almost irritatingly superior to his own. It occurred to him that years had passed since his last visit there. The condition of her gardens and carriages, the gravel of the front drive, the magnificent facade, the understatement and luxurious quality of the floor tiles in the entranceway, the paintings, the ferns cleanly and simply planted in plain terracotta pots placed at either side of the stairwells. Was she that much wealthier than he, or worse, simply endowed with better taste and the will to exercise it consistently? He would have to speak with Inmaculada about this once the storm had passed.

He waited in the sitting room, exhausted from the journey, fully aware that he looked unpresentable and in need of a bath. As their footsteps approached, he rose to greet them.

‘Rodrigo,’ said Doña Soledad. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

He found her looking inexplicably fit, beautifully dressed, her white hair perfectly coiffed. What impressed him more was the evidence of his daughter’s advanced state as she curtsied to him, keeping one hand over her swollen abdomen.

The women knew of course that he had been called to Madrid but made no mention of it, nor did they express any misgivings at his semiwild appearance. Salutations were exchanged and refreshments brought. It was only then that Rodrigo came to the point. He took his daughter’s hand and, doing so, felt a stab of emotion that cut him to the quick.

‘Julian has been arrested by the King’s guards in Madrid. The King has stripped him of all his goods and claims and is having them signed over to you. I’ve come to take you home, or to your own home if you so desire, for it is now yours, free and clear as it always should have been, and for that I deeply apologize.’

After sending a message to Inmaculada asking her to meet them, they took Soledad’s finest carriage and proceeded to Guada’s house, where she had not set foot since the fateful evening. The servants still in residence who had joined the household as part of Julian’s retinue were told to return to Valencia. Those who had come with Guada upon her marriage, some of whom had been with her since her birth, were embraced and asked to pack up any- and everything that belonged to her husband. Guada then instructed that the room where the assault upon her had taken place be disassembled, repainted, and used from that day forward exclusively for storage. She also ordered that the entrance patio where Shiro had been wounded be retiled, its lemon and orange trees pulled out, and that the seeds he had given her be planted in their place.

Don Rodrigo and Doña Soledad made a list of the changes and then settled down in a corner to a serious conversation in which he related all he had learned in Madrid. Inmaculada sat with Guada and insisted that she rest. They retired to the library. Guada did feel weary, but she was elated, and sad, and suspicious. Although she wished to feel close to her parents again, a distance had installed itself between them that was new and perhaps insurmountable. She realized that the bulk of her familial affection had been transferred to her aunt.

It was only as the last batch of items pertaining to Julian were being carried down the stairs, to be loaded onto a cart waiting in the street, that Guada suddenly came back to life. She rose and asked the men to halt because she saw something sticking from the gathered gear she knew had nothing to do with her husband. Reaching in carefully as her mother and father and aunt looked on, she removed Shiro’s Daisho, the Tanto that had been used against him to wound his shoulder and cut off his finger, and the prized Katana given to him by Date Masamune.