We wish to make known to Your Mercies that yesterday, Tuesday, which we counted the eleventh, Guzmán came to this town with two hundred musketeers and eight hundred lances, all prepared for war. And certain it is that Don Rodrigo rose no earlier against the Moors of Granada than Don Guzmán against the Christians of Medina. Once at the gates of the town, he told us that he was a captain general and that he had come for artillery. And, as we had not been told that he was captain general, we set ourselves to defend it. So that being unable to reach an agreement by words, we had to determine the matter by arms. Guzmán and his men, as soon as they perceived that we were superior to them in strength of arms, resolved to set fire to our homes and property, because they believed that what we had won by our efforts, we would lose by our greed. Certainly, señores, all the weapons of our enemies, aimed against one point, wounded our flesh, and in addition, the fire destroyed our properties. And above all else, we saw before our eyes that the soldiers were despoiling our women and our sons. But we give thanks to God that, thanks to the good effort of this town of Medina, we sent Guzmán away vanquished, twenty-four years ago I was brought still a child to your house, Felipe, Isabel said to him that night, a young Princess with starched petticoats and corkscrew curls, do you remember?; I arrived on the eve of a terrible slaughter; we celebrated on the same day our wedding and your crime; today I ask you that our separation coincide with this new slaughter that closes so perfectly the circle of your life, my poor Felipe, I believe that I now know all it is possible to know about you, and I about you, Isabel, everything, my poor dear? everything, Isabel, all your secrets, and the worst of them, too, the secret that is a greater crime than all of mine, for now you have seen, my crimes are repeatable but yours are not: the dead would have to be revived before you could again commit your unique crime, I shared Celestina with my father, with Ludovico, and perhaps with Beelzebub himself, I shared Inés with Don Juan; on the other hand, Isabel, I could not share you with your first lover, that is why I never touched you, that is why in my love you will always be that most perfect ideal, untouchable, incorruptible, soiled by no one, for only my mind sustains it and nourishes it and only with me will it die: I will share you only with my life and my death; and knowing this, do you believe, Isabel, that your love affair with the one called Mihail-ben-Sama could matter to me — with what relish I sent him to the stake, never invoking his true crime, only a secondary one — or your love-making with the one they called Don Juan, who is now living forever the hell he so feared and the death he so long postponed with a single female in a prison of mirrors; did you always know the truth, Felipe?; always, Isabel; and even so, you loved me, Felipe, in spite of my first love?; I shall always love you, Isabel; only I, among all living beings, shall have known and loved what you could have been; my love, beloved Isabel, has been the votive temple for that precious child who entertained herself in playing with her dolls, waking drowsy duennas, and hiding peach stones in the gardens: you, my child Isabel, you, my eternal lover, you, what you could have been; what I myself could have been; what we could have been together: the withered sheaf of our possibilities, the shattered shell of our realities; Felipe, my poor dear Felipe, I have harmed you greatly, I shall harm you greatly still, I shall leave in your land deep seeds of rancor, I shall live despising Spain until I purge myself completely of Spain, you will know my evil though I journey far from here; and in spite of everything, Felipe, given what we have been, being what we are, knowing our shared miseries and weaknesses, tell me, Felipe, did we learn at last to love one another?; I have always loved you, Isabel, you answer, have you at last learned to love me?; yes, Felipe, a thousand times yes, my child, my sweet muck-working mole, my little saint, my pitiful chained puppy, my wounded bird, my poor scarred man, conquered equally by humility and pride, my tender, impossible lover, sequestered in the stone of the sacred prison you have constructed, my innocent victim of the power you inherited, how am I not to love you to the very enormity of my hatred, he who hates so intensely, at times without realizing, gives all the intensity of his love to the one he thinks to despise; yes, that is why I love you, for the same reasons you love me: I love what could have been; thank you, Isabel, thank you for coming this night for the first time to my bedchamber, without my asking you, of your own will, thank you, look at it, what a poor naked funereal chamber, thank you for coming to me for the first time and — we know, for the last time, is that not so? no more talk, Felipe, take my hand, take me to your bed, we shall spend this last and first night together, clothed, not touching one another, like a dead brother and sister, like two additional statues lying in the crypt where you have united your ancestors, sleep, sleep, sleep … Do not marvel, señores, at what we have said; marvel at what we have not yet said. Our bodies are fatigued by combat, our houses all burned, our properties all stolen, our children and women with no place of shelter, the temples of God turned into dust; and especially, our hearts so disquieted we fear we shall become mad. We cannot believe that Guzmán and his men sought only artillery; for if this were so, it was not possible that eight hundred lances and five hundred soldiers would cease, as they ceased, to do battle in the plazas and turn to robbing our homes. The damage in sad Medina done by fire, you will want to know, all the gold, silver, brocades, silks, jewels, pearls, tapestries, and riches that were burned, is beyond the power of tongue to tell, there is not a quill that can record it, nor is there heart that can think on it, or mind that can consider it, there are no eyes that can see it without tears; in burning our unfortunate Medina the tyrants did no less harm than the Greeks in burning powerful Troy. We have such justice in our demands, señores, that we must never desist in our undertaking. And if it is necessary, we shall send more men into the country, and aid them with more money and artillery, for it would be no small affront to Medina if this so just war were not carried to a conclusion. We seek first a compromise: Guzmán provoked the encounter of arms. What he did in Medina he will repeat, if we permit it, in Cuenca, Burgos, Avila, and Toledo. To the bearer of the present notice give your entire faith in what he tells you in our behalves and belief, damp walls of Galicia tapestried with ivy, dead leaves, the ground icy cold; as the brigantine put out to sea from the port of La Coruña, La Señora looked at the Spanish coasts for the last time; El Señor lacked the will to oppose the annulment, he acquiesced in the fact that he had never touched Isabel, and it did not matter to him now that this truth be known in all the circles in St. Peter’s; some dim-witted cardinal spoke of canonizing him, believing that chastity was a requisite of sanctity; El Señor commissioned Julián, the friar, to go to Rome to initiate the process before the Sacred Roman Rota; no one wanted to accompany La Señora in her English exile, which for her was only a return to the land of her father; the maid Azucena wept and explained and made excuses, you are returning to England, my mistress? and what language do they speak there? how could a muddlehead like me get around there without either understanding or being understood? I, La Azucena, speak English? Jehosaphat, not even if it were God’s will, and remember, mistress, I know that little men like yours are born beneath gallows, gibbets, pillories, and racks, are engendered by the tears of the tortured, ay, poor Jerónimo, cut to pieces like a hunted stag, ay, poor Nuño, left to bleed to death and rot, his flesh stripped away by a goat’s tongue! at the feet of both, my Señora, there must be two other little men like yours, two mandrakes, mistress, waiting for me to go by the light of the moon, cut off a strand of my hair, tie it to a black dog’s tail, the other end to the mandrake root, and pull, cover my ears, and amid cries so terrible they cannot be heard, our little men will be yanked from their dank cradles of mud and tears; I shall put in cherries for their eyes, and they will see, radishes for their mouths, and they will speak, wheat on their little heads, and their hair will grow, and a great carrot between their legs, my mistress, tee-hee-hee, and I shall have a great dingalingdong to entertain myself with while I grow old, for I am nothing but an argumentative old whore, and may God keep me so, although without La Lolilla, my mistress, who do I have to argue with or play ruff and honors with? for that scrawny old Lola has disappeared on us, I don’t know where she’s got to, and I scare myself to death thinking that in all the slaughter they may have confused her with the English whore, begging your pardon, mistress, Your Mercy, and chopped the bawd in two with an ax, and besides, if the Devil is to carry us off, it will be the same either here or there, but better a known Devil than a Devil still to know, and the scrubbing maid wept and made her goodbyes, and the little dwarf said no, he wouldn’t go either, for who would be left to look after the true monarch, the mummy seated on the Gothic throne in the gallery of paintings, columns, and plaster ornaments, who would listen to what he said, applaud the strange movements of his arms, his harsh and trembling gestures, celebrate his witticisms, so clumsy and difficult with that ancient, livid tongue, look after his tidiness, attend to dressing him, change his clothing according to the time, the mode, changing fashions, for that King, the true King, would in truth remain on the throne for centuries and centuries to come, and the little dwarf would be his only page, his buffoon, his confidant, counselor, and executor, and only Julián agreed to accompany Isabel, but he only to an English port, and from there he would continue on to Rome to carry out El Señor’s charge, and then, Friar, and then? Brother Julián leaned on the port railing, watching the deep inlets of the sheer coasts of Galicia fade into the distance, and said to her, Señora, as soon as the kingdom is again at peace, the rebellion of the city communities put down, all the riches confiscated from the insurgents, the Jews expelled and the Moors conquered, everyone will be employed in navigation and discoveries; the new world must exist, because the vanquished desire it so they can flee to it, and the conquerors as well, in order to channel into virgin lands all the energies and discontent that have flowered since the middle of the summer, all done in the name of the unity of Spain, proof of its unique power and evangelizing mission; a thousand ambitions palpitate beneath these reasons, those who can be Nothing here, can be Somebody there; you will see that in leaving their land all the Spanish will become Princes and luminaries, and in the new world the swineherd and smith and laborer will be able to achieve the lineage that being Spanish in Spain he could never achieve; the treasures of the new world will attract both conquerors and vanquished in the Spanish fratricide, and those conquerors, having subdued Spain, will have energy to spare for subduing idolaters; I shall go with them; I have something to do there; together they gazed at the green and golden coast of Galician autumn, La Señora recalled the smoke and flames of pyres consuming cadavers of the two slaughters, one in today’s palace, one in yesterday’s castle, on reaching Spain, on leaving Spain; then she turned her back to the land and looked at the tossing, slate-gray sea opening in stony waves before the brigantine’s advance; England, her country, she had left so late, she told Julián, the friar, she was returning so late, no, it was not too late, it would not be too late, there would still be time, a virgin Queen, humiliated, burdened with vengeance and anguish, thus she would return, thus she would present herself, the home of her uncles, the Boleyns, awaited her, from those forgotten fields of Wiltshire she could plot her revenge, no one knew the Spanish land and its men as well as she, no one would know as well as she how to counsel her own race, reveal the secrets and weaknesses of terrible Spain, Isabel, virgin Queen, returning to her fatherland, filling the seas separating La Coruña from Portsmouth with powerful squadrons of vengeance, English fleets, English pennons, English cannons, and then toward the west, toward the new world, sons of Albion, so the new world would belong not only to Spain, she, Elizabeth again, as she was baptized, would take charge of instigating, pressing, intriguing, harassing, enlightening England so that its men also would set foot on the new lands and there forever confront the sons of Spain, challenging them, as cruel as they, and more, as covetous as they, and more, as criminal as they, and more, but without holy justification, without dreams of becoming gentlemen, without the temptations of the flesh, considering the new world a challenge, not a prize, like the Spanish, exterminators of natives, but without joining their bodies, or living the torments of that divided blood, seekers of treasures they would never find, they would have to wrest the fruits from the hostile land with their sweat and calluses, leisure for the Spaniard, industry for the Englishman, enervation of feelings for the Spaniard, the discipline of strength for the Englishman, illusion of luxury for the former, frugal reality for the latter, oh, yes, orders would be inverted, for the Spaniard — abandoning penitence, scarcity, sadness, and doors closed to ascent in his own land — would find too much leisure, too much opulence, and too great ease for personal grandeur in the new world, and he would sink into a swamp of golden softness, confusing reality with his person, and the Englishman abandoning the same problems in his world, oppression, war, and hunger, would find in the new world no leisure, no opulence, no ease, only the challenge of a new and virgin land that would give him nothing in compensation for his flight but what he conquered with his bare hands, working from nothing; Spain: conquer cities of gold; England: conquer virgin forests, untouched land, solitary rivers, plow furrows where Spain digs mines, build wood cabins where Spain raises palaces of quarried stone, paint white what Spain covers with silver, decide to be, where Spain contents itself with appearing, demand results, where Spain proclaims desires, commit yourself to actions where Spain dreams illusions, sacrifice to work what Spain sacrifices to honor, live the consensus of the hour where Spain lives the expectation of destiny, live forever disabused while Spain passes from illusion to disillusion and from disillusion to new illusion, let England prosper in the hard calculation of efficiency while Spain exhausts herself maintaining dignity, heroic appearances, and the self-gratification of commendation by others, yes, England asked everything that negated her, the dream of pleasure and luxury would not be for her, she sacrificed those dreams gladly so that Spain could swell to bursting, poisoned first from the excess the new world offered her famished austerity, and then from the disenchantments that sense of satiety produced; Spain: on the docks at La Coruña, Julián, I offered a gold ducat to a mendicant; it was my parting gift; and do you know what he said to me: “Look for some other poor man, Señora”; I shall give that same ducat to a beggar in London, and I shall tell him how to multiply it, invest it, reinvest it, lend it on interest and with conditions, attract partners, money-changers, contractors, the Jewish intelligentsia expelled from Spain, fleets of pirates, provocations against Hispanic dignity, all the measures, all of them, Julián: the gold of the new world will pass like water through Spain’s hands into England’s coffers: I swear it; and for yourself, Isabel, what do you want for yourself, Señora? this autumn morning, sailing back to my English fatherland, Julián? Elizabeth want