The Empire of Yearning (17 page)

D
IEGO SPENT THE REST
of that day and all that night in the walled city, but he found no trace of Baldemar Peralta. He made his way on foot through the hordes of eccentrics, derelicts, and crones that inhabited the city, eyeing each of them warily, as if this one or that one might suddenly break into laughter, remove a hairpiece or toss away a makeshift crutch, clap him on the back, and join him for jars of pulque at Memorias del Futuro. But no one did. If Baldemar was in Mexico City, he did not reveal himself to Diego.

The following afternoon, clad once again in gabardine trousers and a cutaway jacket, Diego guided his roan back to Chapultepec. He found the castle in a torpid state. It was the hour of the siesta, and most of the courtiers and servants were sound asleep. He was intent on following suit, but a palace factotum approached to say that
el señor
had a visitor—a woman who awaited him in an anteroom, one of numerous such chambers on the ground floor of the castle.

What Diego wanted was a bath, a change of clothes, and a long rest. He had barely slept the previous night and had consumed far too much
raw
aguardiente.
He was tired, hungry, and sore. His head pounded. At the same time, he was curious to know who this visitor was, and so he followed the servant to the anteroom in question, where he found a young, dark-skinned woman in a white blouse and a long blue skirt, with a brightly woven Indian
falda
wrapped around her waist. He was in such a bleary, muddled state that for a moment he failed to recognize her—but only for a moment. Then he remembered. She was the daughter of the chief gardener at the emperor’s house in Cuernavaca—
la india bonita.
He cast about for her name. Sedano? Beatríz Sedano? He had not set eyes upon her since their journey to the shining caves and on to Taxco. Months had passed by since then.

“Señor Serrano,” she said.

“You haven’t been here long, I hope.”

“Only since last night.”

“Last night? Here?”

“Where else?”

Diego took a seat opposite the woman. She seemed remarkably fresh given the circumstances. He imagined his own eyes must be bloodshot, his hair askew, his clothing rumpled and creased. Worse, he was wearing an English suit, which probably seemed ridiculous to her. He brushed his hair back with his one hand and tried to set his jacket to rights, smoothing one lapel and then the other. He sat up straight and sought to focus his gaze.

He said, “You came all this way alone?”

She smiled. “My father accompanied me. We rode.”

“I see. And your father is …?”

“In the stable. He prefers it there, closer to the horses.”

“Ah.” Diego inclined his head. “Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, but the emperor does not at present find himself at Chapultepec.”

“I know.”

Ah, of course. The emperor was in Cuernavaca, after all. She had just come from there. He frowned. “I don’t understand. If the emperor is in Cuernavaca, why are you here?”

She coloured, and put a gloved hand to her lips. “I know of no one else I can trust. I …” Her voice trailed off. She seemed ill at ease.

It took a few moments, but then Diego understood. “Here.” He got up, shut a pair of French doors, turned the latch, and returned to his seat. “Go on,” he said.

She nodded and swallowed. “I have come to tell you,” she said, hesitating before going on, “that I know the whereabouts of Ángela Peralta. She—”

“You what?”

She repeated what she had just said and then proceeded to explain. When she had finished telling her story, Beatríz folded her hands on her lap, cleared her throat, and looked at Diego.

She said, “We thought somebody should know, somebody in a position to do something. It isn’t right.”

Diego pondered what he had just heard. Ángela was no longer under the power of Labastida or the Church. She was under the authority of Maximiliano. In Cuernavaca. At a second house he had had constructed there. La Casa del Olvido—this was the name it had been given by some. The House of Forgetfulness. It was so called because it was said to contain only a single bedchamber, as if its owner had forgotten to construct a second.

It was Padre Buendía who had told Beatríz of the woman’s whereabouts. He had got word through channels of his own, a network of liberal priests. Ángela was effectively a prisoner, and yet it was not difficult to gain access to the house. Beatríz had done so, on the pretext of running an errand. She had been granted entry and had fallen into conversation with Ángela. The singer was unwell. She barely ate and never went out, wasn’t permitted to. Guards were stationed at intervals around the place. A captive in everything but name, Ángela had little to do but mope and fret all day, agonizing over what had become of her son. And, of course, she spent time, both during the day and during the night, with the emperor—and that particular aspect of her confinement was not, it seemed, entirely contrary to her will.

“You know this?” Diego said.

The girl nodded. “She confessed as much.”

“To being his mistress?”

Beatríz lowered her head and nodded.

Diego tasted a thread of bile in his throat. He swallowed with difficulty and rubbed his forehead. He looked up. “What about the boy? Where is he?”

“No one knows,” she said. “Ángela doesn’t know. Neither does the emperor. She told me this herself. He torments her constantly on the subject.”

“I can imagine. He wants the child as his heir.”

She nodded, then tilted her head. “Perhaps the Prince of Salm-Salm knows about the boy, where he is.”

“Salm-Salm? What’s he got to do with this?”

She shrugged. “I can’t explain it. It’s very mysterious. He visits her, dressed as a priest.”

“You’ve seen him?”

She nodded. “Once. He said his name was Father Fischer. I suppose he thought I wouldn’t recognize him. But I did. What is he up to?”

“Whatever works to his benefit,” said Diego. “That seems to be the sum of it.”

The girl’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What should we do?”

Diego had no idea. “What does Padre Buendía suggest?”

It turned out the priest had a proposal, and she quickly outlined its main elements. Diego listened without saying a word. It sounded sensible to him—in fact, the only course possible. When she was done explaining, Beatríz smiled briefly and then declared that Padre Buendía wanted someone else’s authority for his actions. “Your authority,” she said. “He said it was up to you.”

“Tell him to go ahead,” said Diego. He realized it was unusual for him to be so decisive, but he had been deeply disturbed by what she had told him—Ángela a prisoner, serving as the emperor’s concubine, with Salm-Salm’s complicity. “Tell Padre Buendía I agree.”

“Very well,” she said.

He stood up. “In the meantime, let me see about arranging some accommodation for you and your father.”

“Thank you, don Diego,” she said.

A week later, a letter arrived from Cuernavaca, sent by the emperor and addressed to Salm-Salm. Somehow, the missive found its way into Diego’s mail. At once, he set off for the office occupied by the prince. The errand provided him with an excuse for a conversation with the man. Salm-Salm had recently returned from Cuernavaca, but they had barely spoken.

The prince waved Diego in.

“Dear Lord,” he said. “What a relief to be away from that place. So remote. So provincial. I miss the city.”

Diego held out the errant letter. “Here. I have brought you this.”

Salm-Salm glanced at the wax seal and must have recognized the emperor’s crest. But he merely nodded and tossed the document onto his desk.

Diego took a seat. “I want to speak to you about Ángela Peralta.”

“Really?”

“And her son.”

But Salm-Salm would not be drawn out on the subject. Had Ángela taken up residence at a house in Cuernavaca? Was she under guard there? Was the emperor in the habit of visiting the place at all hours? Salm-Salm declined to speak about any of these matters. Nor would he own up to having played any role in any of the events now unfolding in Cuernavaca.

“You know,” said the prince, “you seem to have got hold of a fairy tale. It must be the poet in you. As for the woman’s son, as far as I know, he remains under the care of the Church.”

“On what grounds?”

“Something to do with the registration of his birth, I believe. Some irregularity there.”

“But he was born in New York—as you well know.”

“Ah,” said Salm-Salm. “That might explain it.”

It was clear to Diego that he had little to gain here. He rose to his feet. As he did so, Salm-Salm reached for the letter from the emperor and opened it. Almost immediately, his face fell.

“Dear God,” he said. “She’s gone.” He looked up, apparently so shocked by the revelation that he was unaware he was speaking out loud.

“You mean Ángela?” said Diego. “Gone where?”

“I have no idea.”

Diego turned to leave, smiling as he did so. He would have made a large wager that Ángela Peralta was safely installed in the presbytery by the parish church in the silver-mining town of Taxco.

W
ITHIN A WEEK
, the emperor returned to Mexico City and promptly sent word to Diego proposing that they resume their normal schedule the next morning at shortly after four o’clock. Precisely at that hour, the bell rang in Diego’s apartment, as it always did when Maximiliano was at Chapultepec. He splashed water onto his face from the ceramic bowl on the dresser, smoothed back his hair, and stumbled out into the darkened, open-air corridor. A half moon peered down from the dark sky, and he shivered in the familiar early morning chill.

Even so, he still felt the heat rise at his collar when he thought of Ángela, of her treatment by the emperor. He stopped and gazed out at the shadowy view, took a deep breath, followed by another, trying to calm himself. Along the walkway below, the pineapple palms glimmered in the moonlight, as though fashioned of tarnished silver. The fronds shifted in the cool breeze. When he thought he was ready, he continued on his way to the emperor’s study. At the door, he knocked and then entered.

Maximiliano was pacing the floor in his dressing gown, silhouetted by
candlelight, sipping a cup of hot chocolate. He stopped, and his face lit up, as if Diego’s arrival had taken him completely by surprise.

“Ah, Serrano. Good to see you.”

He seemed unusually excited, his high spirits evident from the staccato tone of his voice. By now, Diego thought he could gauge the state of the emperor’s mood with just a glance, and it seemed Maximiliano was bursting with news, with revelations he was eager to share. Diego half expected him to speak of Ángela, of the House of Forgetfulness, and of her mysterious disappearance. But if the emperor was distressed by recent events in Cuernavaca, he did not speak of them now.

Instead, he recounted the details of his journey through the Bajío, especially his visit to the town of Dolores, famous throughout Mexico as the birthplace of the country’s struggle for freedom from Spanish rule. It was there more than four decades earlier that the renegade priest Miguel Hidalgo first uttered
el grito de la independencia
—the cry of independence. Maximiliano was evidently galvanized by the tale. He said he had walked in Hidalgo’s footsteps. He had addressed a crowd from the same balcony where Hidalgo had appeared. He, too, had issued the cry of independence.

The emperor stopped his pacing and set down his cup of chocolate. He put back his head and shivered, as if reliving the sensations of that night.

“I’ve never known anything like it,” he said. “It was like an explosion. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

There was, of course, much work to be done that did not bear on the Bajío or on the emperor’s journey there, but he seemed to have trouble concentrating on anything else. He listened impatiently as Diego recounted his journey to Washington—a heavily censored version. When Diego was done, Maximiliano merely shrugged. He had been giving the matter much consideration, he said, and had concluded that it made little difference which side won the war now dividing the American states. He possessed a treaty—the Treaty of Miramar—that both he and Napoleon had signed. It provided firm guarantees of French
support for the imperial cause in Mexico, without any reference whatsoever to events in other lands. What mattered was what happened in Mexico. And Mexico had a war of its own. That was the conflict that required his attention.

“Speaking of which,” he said, “I don’t suppose there has been any word as yet from Juárez?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“We must keep up our hopes.” Maximiliano lit a cigarette. “Meanwhile, we have no choice but to fight on. I think it would be wise to summon Bazaine for an update on the state of battle. See to it, will you?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Now.” He clapped his hands. “Let us proceed to the mail.”

Among the morning’s correspondence was a letter that had arrived by diplomatic pouch from Franz Josef, Maximiliano’s older brother. The emperor’s manner changed at once. Diego could see the muscles tighten in his neck.

The emperor stubbed out his cigarette. “Read it,” he said.

Diego did as he was told. After the usual pleasantries, Franz Josef reminded his younger brother of an agreement they had both reached in private—specifically, that “Maxi” formally renounced his place in the line of succession to the Austrian Crown in exchange for Franz Josef’s approval of “this Mexican adventure,” as he described it.

The emperor’s expression darkened and he furrowed his brow, as if anticipating what would come next.

For reasons too complicated to explain, Franz Josef went on, he had lately found himself obliged to make this arrangement public—

“Make this arrangement
what
?” Suddenly the emperor buckled, splattering hot chocolate onto his robe and across the floor. He barely seemed to notice as he turned to Diego, livid. “
Public?
” he said. “An agreement that was reached in strict confidence? How dare he break my trust? My God, he goes too far.”

With Grill’s assistance, the emperor changed into a fresh dressing gown. He insisted that a reply be dispatched immediately, under diplomatic
seal. It might still be possible to limit the harm caused by Franz Josef’s reckless presumption.

Diego had paper, a quill, and a pot of ink at the ready. “But is it true?” he said.

“Is what true?”

“That you renounced your place in the line of succession?”

“No,” said the emperor. “I mean, technically, yes. I had to. Franz Josef insisted upon it. A quid pro quo. In exchange, he supported my acceptance of the Mexican throne.”

“And you agreed?”

“In a way. It was in private, and I had no choice. What kind of agreement is that? Franz is grasping at straws.” He swore beneath his breath. “Ready your pen, Serrano. I mean to set that sheet of vellum on fire.”

“But, forgive me, Your Majesty.” Diego reached for a sheet of stationery. He knew he should let the matter drop. What difference did it make? But he was curious. Why was Maximiliano so tormented about losing the Austrian throne? Wasn’t one empire sufficient? Wasn’t he satisfied with Mexico? “Forgive me, Your Majesty,” he said, “but do you want to be the emperor of Austria?”

“That possibility will never arise.”

“Then what does it matter?”

“It … I … There is a principle here, a principle of confidence and trust. Take down my words.”

And Diego complied, scribbling as the emperor fulminated. Later, he affixed Maximiliano’s seal to the letter and had it placed in a secure diplomatic container. He dispatched the epistle to Veracruz by means of a special messenger under a guard of hussars. But what did it mean? Why did Maximiliano care whether he occupied a place in the Austrian line of succession? He was the emperor of Mexico. What more did he need?

That evening, Maximiliano encountered his wife for the first time since his return from Cuernavaca. They met formally in the Red Room, amid the scarlet paper, the oriental vases, the delicate wooden furniture. Carlota greeted her husband coolly. She cleared her throat. He cleared
his. She smoothed the folds of her skirt and asked him about his travels. Had they gone well? He replied that they had. He felt he had learned much and looked forward to learning more.

“I am glad to hear it,” she said. She declared that she was troubled by their present circumstances. These past several weeks, which she had spent in a position of responsibility at Chapultepec, had only deepened her concerns.

“Yes,” said Maximiliano. He gazed indulgently at his wife.

“We face many grave threats,” she said. “With the passage of time they grow only more dangerous. We rule a country we do not control. The treasury is bankrupt. We are beholden to Napoleon for our army. We have few allies within Mexico and even fewer outside. The Church opposes us, and now it seems the landowners do as well.”

She said she had received angry reports from diverse sources concerning events that had taken place during the emperor’s excursion in the Bajío. Was it true, for example, that he had given a speech in a town called Dolores, honouring the father of Mexico’s independence?

“Hidalgo?” said the emperor. “You know, I believe I did. He is considered a great hero.”

“Or a rabble-rouser and murderer. He massacred hundreds in Guanajuato.”

“So say the conservatives.”

“It was the conservatives who brought us here. We must build bridges.”

“Bridges?” Maximiliano pounded his armrest with his fist. “
Bridges
? We have
built
bridges. Dear God, I have lost track of the balls, the banquets, and the galas at which our sole purpose has been the befriending of these bloody conservatives. We have bestowed titles of nobility upon practically every petitioner in the land. And what do we have to show?” With his cigarette, Maximiliano drew a large zero in the air. “All for nothing. They still oppose us. The Mexican conservative will never be satisfied until he again possesses every jot and tittle of wealth and power in Mexico. You might as well establish cordial relations with a den of bears. God in heaven, you would think the Enlightenment had never
occurred. You would think Victor Hugo had never taken up a pen. Mention Charles Darwin, and the oafs stare back at you, blank as donkeys. I don’t mind that they’re stupid. What I can’t stand is the pride they take in their stupidity. You know, my dear, I do not regard myself as the emperor of a few rich land owners who care for nothing in the world but their precious titles of nobility. I am the emperor of all Mexicans. This is the year 1865. This is the modern world.”

Maximiliano fell silent. At first, Diego marvelled at the power and conviction of his words—not just their sound but their meaning, too. He wished he had said these very words himself. He then began to wonder if, just possibly, he had. Something wasn’t quite right. It took him a few moments to recall what it was. In fact, he had heard this speech before, almost word for word. These were almost the exact sentiments Ángela had expressed to him that day, a year earlier, when he had visited her in the Hospital de Jesús Nazareno. He realized that Maximiliano was only repeating what Ángela must have said to him on some other occasion, the same thoughts she had expressed to Diego and no doubt to others.

The empress heard her husband out. When he was done, she nodded her head. “I agree, my dove. But we have to forge alliances, at least for the present, at least until we have consolidated our position. We must cooperate with many different interests.”

“I hope you don’t count Labastida and his bishops among them.”

Carlota frowned. “As you know, an emissary is still on his way from Rome. Perhaps he will prove more amenable to reason than Labastida.”

“A cactus would prove more amenable to reason than Labastida.”

Carlota produced a thin smile. “That may be so. Nonetheless, if we must deal with cacti, then we must equip ourselves with gloves. We require alliances. The survival of the throne depends upon it.”

“They are holding us to ransom, you know—the Church, Labastida, all of them. They’ve got that boy, the son of … you know. Peralta.”

Diego winced. The man spoke as if Ángela were a complete stranger to him. He thought how easy it is to lie and remembered the countless lies he himself had told.

“Well,” said Carlota. “We shall simply have to await the arrival of this Meglia.” She eased forward toward her husband. “Max?” she said. “Are you listening to me?”

The emperor was peering at the ceiling. “I have heard from Franz Josef,” he said.

“What news does he send?”

“Alarming news. He has publicly declared that I have renounced my right of succession to the Austrian throne.”

“But I thought you had. Otherwise, you would not have received his permission to serve as emperor in Mexico.”

Maximiliano fidgeted with an unlit cigarette. “It is one thing to reach an agreement in private, quite another for all the world to hear of it.”

“Well, I don’t see that it matters now what the world does. Do you
want
to be the emperor of Austria?”

“Of course not. It’s the principle. Franz Josef has no right to betray a private arrangement arrived at in confidence.”

“I see.” Carlota let a few moments pass in silence. “What do you propose to do?”

“Oh, it’s already done.”

Maximiliano explained that he had composed a protest that very morning. Two months would pass before he could hope to receive a reply, but he was prepared to wait. The truth was that he and his brother were
both
emperors now, and Franz Josef could not abide the fact.

“As for me, I am feeling worn out.” Maximiliano stood up. He bid Carlota a good night and nodded at Diego. “Tomorrow morning?” he said. “At the usual hour? We have much to do.”

He turned and left the room.