– XLVIII –

In which Shiro makes a promise

Soledad Medina watched as he bathed her niece, kissed her goodbye, tied the shroud about her. They buried her next to the Roman ruin in the woods near a bluff overlooking the river where the baby was baptized a week later. Following Guada’s wishes, the child was christened Soledad María.

Before returning to Sevilla, Shiro visited the gravesite to plant what was left of the Biwa seeds. In Japanese, he copied the poem his mother had left upon her first husband’s grave, one he had memorized from his youth. He wrote it on a plain piece of paper and weighed it down upon the grass with a stone.

When snow falls my eyes sting

In winter I saw you

When the hashidoi blooms my breast rises

In spring I embraced you

When cicadas sing my limbs grow heavy

In summer I loved you

When leaves die my breath deserts me

In autumn you left me

Upon learning how his daughter had succumbed to a Florentine fever, Don Rodrigo began to weep. Doña Inmaculada fainted. The little boy was given to them. Doña Soledad decided to remain silent for a time about the little girl.

Shiro gathered his belongings and moved into the palacete with his baby daughter. A wet nurse came to the mansion and lived there for four months. Shiro encouraged the six Samurai who had stayed behind to settle in Coria del Río, where he had been so well attended. He gave them names and a letter of introduction and told them there was a good living to be had harvesting caviar from the sturgeon in the river there so close to the sea. Though he never went back to the village, the other Samurai prospered there and in time took Spanish wives.

After a year had passed, Doña Soledad sensed what was coming and unable to bear the silence any further called Shiro to her sitting room one morning after breakfast. Both of them still wore black.

‘I wish to reiterate how welcome you are to live here until your dying day,’ she said. ‘You are young and may at some point wish to remarry, and were that to happen, I would still embrace your company.’

He bowed to her.

‘I am leaving all of my possessions to the little one,’ she said, ‘all of my estates and income and savings. It will be for you to share in and to administer until she is grown into a young woman, something I doubt I shall live long enough to see.’

They both knew what she was doing, trying whatever she could to get him to stay.

‘I must return to my country,’ he said. ‘And I must take my daughter with me. I cannot be sure how people here will react as she grows older. I hope you can forgive me.’

‘Your daughter will one day be the envy of Sevilla,’ she said, not giving in. ‘She will be exquisitely beautiful and belong to its finest family. And if you will excuse the vulgarity, she will be extremely rich, as you too shall be. I know you have come to feel affection for this country, and you have powerful friends here. I beg of you to stay, or to leave her with me.’

He rose and walked to a window, looking down at the garden where a path lined with boxwood ended at a stone bench flanked by two palm trees. Birds were flittering about. He tried to imagine this woman when she was young and in love with the Duke, and the image softened him. He closed his eyes, then opened them and turned to her.

‘We shall have to go,’ he said. ‘I have a solemn promise to keep. My honor demands it. But we could return afterwards.’

This was something, she thought. It was not a lot. And only God knew what might befall them on such an infernal journey, or how the young man might feel when reacquainted with his own. Life, she knew, had a way of branching forward. It rarely doubled back.

‘Then perhaps you might make a solemn promise to me,’ she said. ‘Promise you will return her to me, so that she can see what she has here, what will be waiting for her, for as long as necessary. Promise me you will give her the chance to choose for herself.’

He saw no way out of it. Not only that, but his broken heart filled with gratitude. He came up to her, bowed, and then knelt before her to kiss her fragile hand. ‘I promise I shall bring her back to you,’ he said.

‘Then do not tarry, Shiro-San,’ she said through her tears, ‘for I shall not live forever, and if I die before seeing her again, mine will be the cruelest death ever recorded.’

‘We shall return in four years’ time,’ he said, ‘and remain long enough for her to reach an age of reason.’ And he meant it, even though he had little idea how he might make it so.

‘Take good care of her,’ she said, grabbing on to him.

‘I shall protect her with my life,’ he said.

The ship sailed from Sanlúcar three months later, bound for Santa Cruz de Tenerife and La Habana. The Samurai stood on the forecastle holding little Soledad María in his arms. She was wrapped in a shawl that had been Guada’s. Father and daughter looked back at the receding coast of Spain. Shiro recalled the first time he had seen it from the deck of the San José, unaware of what awaited him and how he had remained on board an extra night before setting foot on Spanish soil.

Despite the pain and misfortune that beset him there, it had entered his heart and changed him. When he arrived he was a callow lad still pretending to be a warrior. He was leaving it a man, a Samurai of his own making. Would they reach Japan safely? Would his Lord be cross with him? Would Sendai still feel like home? Would his mother still be alive? He remembered the last thing she said to him, ‘Love your loneliness. Do not let it go. Treasure it with all your heart.’ The word for lonliness in Spanish was soledad. With Guada gone, this was now his task.

The ship moved upon the sea. His little girl breathed easily. It was good to be alive.