– XLVI –

In which Shiro makes a decision

When they touched each other, when they held hands, when they fell asleep naked in her bed, culture disappeared. When clothed and facing the world, her worried aunt, scandalized servants, her horrified parents, the world returned to them.

She told him how she’d wished her arm had reached under his tent that night in Baelo Claudia. She described the intimate effect he had caused when his knees pressed against hers in the carriage from Medina-Sidonia to Sevilla. At night with the household asleep, they would take the baby and lie out on the upper balcony, staring at the heavens. He told her all he could remember about Japan. They compared memories of childhood summers, his within the gardens of the castle in Sendai, hers amongst the rolling plains surrounding Carmona.

He believed she was made for him, her scent, her skin, the feel of her, the back of her neck, the way she looked at him. Nothing they said or did shamed them. Every posture and every word was a source of pleasure.

And when the time arrived, he went to speak with Hasekura Tsunenaga. He returned the sword the older Samurai had lent to him, and they both admired anew Shiro’s recovered blade that had once been a point of contention between them. They walked conversing along the bank of the Guadalquivir toward the Compás del río, not far from where Guada had been baptized, not far from where Shiro had thrown himself from the bridge and drifted away, but keeping clear from the zone where thieves and men of ill repute lived in muddy hovels.

‘I shall not be leaving with you,’ Shiro said. ‘I have decided to stay for a time. Please convey my respects and apologies to the Lord and assure him of my fealty. Tell him my heart has been compromised and I must see to it. Tell my mother not to fret, to be patient, that I shall keep my promise to her.’

‘I am saddened to hear this, Shiro-San,’ Hasekura Tsunenaga replied, ‘for the journey is long and treacherous, and your company shall be missed. Despite my warnings about what might happen to him if he returns to Sendai, the Friar will be aboard. Months more of him at close quarters … I do not know how I shall stand it.’

‘Save the Shogun some firewood,’ Shiro said, ‘and toss him into the sea.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ said Hasekura Tsunenaga. ‘What is more galling still is that six of the remaining Samurai from Edo, the ones who have taken their conversion too seriously, have chosen to remain here, as well, for fear of persecution back home. But not the priest!’

They approached the Torre de Oro, built by the Moors with mud and limestone in the early 13th century.

‘I shall try and convince them otherwise, Hasekura-San, and if I am unable, I will help them get settled here.’

By the time Shiro and Guada travelled with the Delegation to Sanlúcar in order to see the ship off, most of the nobility in Sevilla had turned against them. Their only allies, significant ones but sympathetic to Guada only, were Don Rodrigo and Doña Soledad.

In the newborn grandson that Guada named Rodrigo, her father had his heir. Neither the shameful demise of Julian, nor the manner in which the child had been conceived, nor the scandalous nature of his daughter’s relationship with the foreigner mattered to him when compared with the joy he felt at seeing his line continue.

And there were other considerations. He knew from the Duke of Lerma that Shiro, for some reason, had become a favorite of the King, and the King himself had told Rodrigo in what high esteem he regarded Guada. Adding his own dose of slander to the rest, including that of his wife who blathered on about nothing else, would only diminish his stature at court.

After the Delegation’s ship sailed, they made the trip once again to Medina-Sidonia and stayed for a time with Rosario. Returning to the Duke’s ancestral home, a place he thought he would never see again, moved Shiro in a way he could not explain. They watched the two baby boys play upon a large Alpujarreño coverlet spread out in the garden where Guada and Shiro had first met. Rosario was discrete and kind to them. The young women who had once been so far apart in many respects found themselves sharing a great deal, not only widowhood and motherhood, but public censure. An excursion was planned to Baelo Claudia for sentimental reasons, but the young women decided the winds might have an untoward effect upon the little boys. After Semana Santa, Shiro and Guada set out for Sevilla again, this time by way of Ronda.

In that gentle mountain town and sporting the quiver and arrows given to him by the King, Shiro gave an exhibition one day for the Hermandad del Santo Espíritu of archery from horseback. The local nobles, more impressed with his skill than suspicious of his relation with the daughter of a Grandee of Spain, feted him.

That night, from a room that had a ceiling decorated with calligraphy quoting the Koran, that looked across to distant hills rising above the Río Guadiaro, they could see the occasional cortijo lit by firelight.