– XLV –

In which their life begins

When he reached Sevilla, Shiro spent three days searching for Diego Molina’s widow, and when he found her he presented himself and told Rocío Sánchez that justice had been done. It was only then that he allowed himself to make his way to Soledad Medina’s palacete. There he was informed that Doña Guada had moved back into her own residence. By the time he arrived there, it was late in the afternoon, almost twilight. Before knocking on the massive door, he stared at the pavement out front where he had been thrown half-dead almost a year earlier.

Admitted within, he saw at once the beginnings of the Biwa trees surrounded by new tiles. A chambermaid accompanied him upstairs to the room where Guada was feeding her newborn. When she saw him standing there, she blushed and quickly covered her breast with a piece of linen, and in doing so covered the head of the child. At first they said nothing. The chambermaid retreated. All that could be heard was a fountain down in the garden and the baby gorging on his mother’s milk.

‘You’ve come,’ she finally said.

‘Here I am,’ he answered.

‘Is Julian alive?’

‘No,’ he said.

She looked away, nodding her head.

‘I do not wish to know anything more about it,’ she said.

He remained silent until she looked back at him.

‘For how long can you stay, here in Sevilla?’ she asked.

‘Until we know a ship has been readied in Sanlúcar,’ he said. ‘A matter of weeks.’

Tears came into her eyes. She did not fight them. Without knowing why, she felt as if her life might be leaving her.

‘Will you stay here?’ she said. ‘With me?’