The Empire of Yearning (13 page)

I
T WAS THE EMPEROR.
He’d been stung by a scorpion—Diego was sure of it. He hurried over to help, convinced that it was his fault. He should have warned the emperor to be careful, to inspect his footwear, just as he had done—it was practically an instinct among Mexicans. Without a doubt, the arachnid had crept into the emperor’s boot while they both were swimming in the underground lagoon. Why hadn’t he given a warning? Maximiliano lay prostrate on the parched grass, conscious but disoriented, while Diego and the others knelt around him. His eyes were open, but he seemed dazed and uncomprehending. He did not respond to their voices.

“Is he breathing?” said Salm-Salm.

“Breathing, yes,” Diego said. “Damned scorpions. They’re everywhere.”

He began scouring the parched earth and shrivelled ground cover for some sign of the creature. He advanced on his knees, his eyes fixed on the earth in front of him. He kept thinking he’d spotted the beast, only to realize that what he saw was just a stick or a shadow of some sort. The damned things were well camouflaged. Still, he kept looking. He knew it
was important to identify the scorpion in question, if he could. He kept at it until at last he saw the beast. There it was—its tail curled over its back, its limbs twitching in the faint breeze. Diego darted over, scooped up the scorpion with his hand, and smacked it against a rock. There. Done. He slipped the corpse into the pocket of his blouse.

If he expected congratulations, he got none. In fact, no one seemed to have noticed. Bombelles and several of the hussars had lifted the emperor up and were carrying him toward the horses, evidently meaning to help him onto his mount. Someone had knotted a makeshift tourniquet around his upper leg. With some effort, they heaved the man aloft, and he flopped into the saddle like a raggedy doll. He was still conscious, it seemed, but confused and weak. He hung his head and moaned.

“Hush,” said the empress, who stood by her husband’s horse. “Take deep breaths. Try to relax. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

Her words seemed to have a calming effect. At least, the emperor managed to take up the reins and to keep his balance. Still, his shoulders drooped, his head lolled forward, and his gaze seemed glassy and unfocused. It occurred to Diego that the venom must have worked uncommonly fast.

Carlota took command. She turned to address the party. “All right then. Everybody hurry. We must be quick.”

Once all were mounted and ready, she turned to Diego. “Well?”

“I found the scorpion.”

“You can identify it?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

Her jaw muscles tautened. “Very well,” she said. “Let’s be off.”

They set out along the stream bed, retracing their path in the direction of Cocoyotla. Ashen-faced and silent, the emperor slouched over the pommel of his saddle, clutching the reins with both hands.

“We must ride no faster than this,” said Salm-Salm. He explained that excessive movement would only hasten the spread of the poison through the emperor’s leg and to the rest of his body. He turned to Diego. “You could have prevented this. Why didn’t you warn him? The man is
without an heir!” He narrowed his eyes. “I mean to hold you responsible, whatever happens.”

The party continued along the stream bed for another quarter-hour or so, until Diego sensed a disturbance just ahead. He saw the girl, Beatríz. Astride her bay mare, she rounded a bend in the riverbed, riding toward them at a brisk jog. A jaunty straw hat framed her oval face, and she wore a broad smile. In spite of the urgency of the situation, Diego briefly imagined her as a sort of princess, an Indian princess surveying her private domain. On a long hemp-woven shank, she led one of the donkeys. A pair of twin clay pots of water bobbed against its flanks, one on each side. She drew her horse to a halt.

“You needed water,” she said. She explained that she had guided the others through the more difficult terrain on their return journey and had then left them to make the rest of the trek on their own. She frowned and fell silent as she realized something was wrong. “His Majesty?”

“A scorpion.” Diego eased his horse forward and extracted the creature’s remains from his breast pocket. “Here. Look.”

Beatríz drew closer to inspect the small and misshapen corpse.

“Is it very poisonous?” said the empress.

The girl hesitated. She said she was of the opinion the scorpion belonged to the variety known as
alacrán tartarus
—the scorpion of Tarturus—sometimes known as the underground scorpion. She looked over at the emperor, who seemed barely conscious, his arms dangling at his sides, barely holding onto the reins.

“Very poisonous?” she said. “It
can
be.”

She dismounted and instructed the hussars to lower the emperor from his horse. At her direction, the soldiers bore the ailing man toward the bank, where they laid him down upon a muddle of dried leaves, gnarled tree roots, and loamy soil. Maximiliano seemed wholly delirious now. His head sagged to the side, and his breath came in shallow gasps.

“Dear God, no,” said Salm-Salm. He got down on his knees.

The girl crouched above the emperor and inspected his bare foot. She soon found the site of the sting, located in the hollow between his left
heel and ankle. Without hesitation or ceremony, she pressed her lips to the wound and sucked out what fluid she could, discreetly spat it away, then wiped her lips on the sleeve of her blouse. She announced that the venom had probably already dispersed too widely into the emperor’s bloodstream for it to be withdrawn effectively. She thought it would be best if they all proceeded as quickly as possible, not to Cocoyotla but to a town located in the opposite direction. Taxco was its name. The parish priest there, Padre Buendía, was well known to her. Moreover, she was also acquainted with another gentleman there who was singularly adept at treating ailments of diverse descriptions, including those resulting from encounters with vipers and arachnids of all descriptions.

“He is a doctor?” said the empress.

“Of a sort.”

Carlota frowned.

“
Un curandero
,” said the girl. A healer.

“
A
healer?
” said Salm-Salm. He turned toward Diego. “How could you let this happen?”

“Please,” said the girl. “It would be best to go quickly.”

No one had a better plan, and so they reversed direction and set out for Taxco. Everyone seemed apprehensive, but Salm-Salm was especially fretful. Periodically, he conferred in whispers with his wife, but Diego found it impossible to make out what was being said. He recalled his last conversation with Baldemar, who had exhorted him to seek out this very priest in this very town. He glanced over at the girl, who caught and held his gaze with those eerily static eyes of hers.

It seemed she meant to convey something—something about the emperor and the scorpion. But what? He was about to ask when she placed a finger against her lips.

He held his tongue, and the party continued on its way toward Taxco. All he knew was that the shadows were growing longer, the heat had at last begun to fade, and the emperor of Mexico had been rendered all but unconscious by a scorpion sting that he, Diego Serrano, should have anticipated and warned against.

It was twilight by the time the riders reached the town, a modest settlement of adobe houses clinging to the slopes of a large hill rising above a broad green plain. Barefoot Indian women padded through the shadows of dusk, tracing a series of rutted earthen lanes with infants clasped to their backs by handwoven shawls or with large cargos of firewood or other necessaries balanced atop their heads. Beatríz led the way to a small presbytery by the local church, an ornate baroque structure called the Templo de Santa Prisca. They were met by the priest, who strode out into the murky light with arms outstretched, greeting Beatríz warmly. A large, bald-pated fellow with twin fringes of greying hair, the priest wore a voluminous black cassock that was gathered at the waist by a hand-tooled leather belt, in which he carried a long-barrelled revolving pistol.

“Dangerous times, firm measures,” he said, placing a hand upon the weapon. “Behold, Mexico—a land where even the clergy must bear arms.”

So this was Padre Buendía.

“His Majesty is not well,” said Beatríz. “He has been stung by a scorpion.”

If Buendía was surprised to learn that his unexpected visitors included the emperor of the land, he managed not to show it.

“A scorpion?” he said. “Bring him inside at once.”

Again the girl glanced at Diego, and again her expression seemed to express some secret they shared. But what was it? Diego had no idea. He watched as Bombelles and his men carried the emperor inside. Then he swung down from his saddle and hurried after them.

T
HE HUSSARS BORE THE
emperor into the presbytery and upstairs to a vacant room, where they set him down on a bed. Others crowded into the room, and Diego found a place for himself just inside the door. Someone handed him a tallow candle in a tin holder. He held it up, casting a narrow dome of light.

Padre Buendía dispatched a servant to fetch a certain don Plutarco. This, it turned out, was the curandero whom Beatríz had spoken of. Within a matter of minutes, the healer shuffled into the room, a thin, elderly fellow with a narrow, grizzled face and a deep bronze complexion. He wore a frayed old coat over a collarless cotton shirt, loose cotton pants, and rawhide sandals.

The Indian looked around at the gathering, nodding at each individual in turn, as if he had encountered this very set of circumstances before and was in no way surprised by what he saw. “Does anyone have the animal?” he said.

“I do.” Diego took a step forward.

“Come,” said the man, and he led Diego back out into the cramped hallway. “Let me see.”

Beatríz joined them, and Diego handed her the candle. From his breast pocket, he slowly eased out the scorpion’s crumpled remains, holding them up to the light.

“Tarturus?” she said in a whisper.

The old man nodded.
“Sí. Alacrán tarturus. No cabe duda.”

Without a doubt.

“What is it?” said Diego.

Don Plutarco stroked his slender chin and, leaning close, spoke in a whisper. “It lives in caves,” he said. “Its poison is weak.”

“Not dangerous?”

“For an adult, no. Not very dangerous.”

“But His Majesty—?”

“Shh.” It was the girl.

“What are you scheming at out there? What are you plotting? Tell me.” Salm-Salm called from where he stood at the foot of the bed.

The healer seemed to recognize trouble and told the prince that hot water was needed, the hotter, the better. “At once,” he said. “Please. It is vital.”

Salm-Salm heaved a sigh of impatience, but he did as instructed. He marched downstairs and soon could be heard calling for water.

Don Plutarco turned to Diego. He asked if the emperor’s fragile state might not be complicated by some underlying condition. A mental upset, perhaps?

Diego briefly described the experience he had shared with Maximiliano that afternoon, the episode he not yet mentioned to any of the others—the pile of human bones heaped beyond the lagoon, deep in the shining caves. He spoke in a whisper.

The curandero nodded and gazed at the girl. She glanced up at Diego with a look that seemed to say she had suspected something of the kind all along, that she had known the poison was weak and had thought the emperor’s distress must have some other cause.

“What is going on?” The empress called from the bedroom. “What does the man say? This is madness. I demand a proper physician.”

Padre Buendía was at the stair landing. He assured the empress that he would send for a conventional doctor the instant it proved necessary, but he believed it might be as well to bear with don Plutarco for a time. He had never known the man to fail.

“I don’t understand,” said Carlota. She put a hand to her forehead and stared at the floor.

“In any case,” said the priest, “there is no doctor within easy travelling distance. It would take a day at least, perhaps two, to summon a physician here.”

Carlota gasped at this news. She took one of Maximiliano’s hands in both of hers. “There, there. Be calm, my love. Be brave.”

The emperor made a sound of acknowledgment, a low sort of moan.

Don Plutarco gazed back toward the room. “Poison or no poison,” he said to Diego and the girl, “the cure is the same.”

He began at once. He turned and shuffled into the bedroom, knelt beside the emperor, and murmured a series of incantations in his Indian tongue, Nahuatl, the ancient language of the central Mexican highlands.

Salm-Salm marched back up the stairs and settled himself in a low bench in a corner of the room by the window. “The water’s on its way,” he said to no one in particular. He fidgeted with his hands. Suddenly, he sprang to his feet and pushed the bench aside. He confronted Diego in the doorway, stabbing at him with a single outstretched finger.

“This is all your fault,” he said, his voice strained with anger. “You have placed the empire in the gravest peril.” He looked around at the small gathering. “Pray God he survives. Meanwhile, I must return to Mexico City without delay. The question of an heir must be resolved.”

He said he meant to ride to the hacienda at Cocoyotla immediately. He would inform those at the hacienda of the misfortune that had befallen the emperor. “Otherwise, they will think we have been attacked by highwaymen, robbed and murdered.”

Following a brief conference with his wife in the hallway, Salm-Salm gave a nod of farewell, turned, and bounded down the stairs, two at a time. The princess returned to the bedroom and perched on
the bench just vacated by her husband. She seemed the embodiment of sang-froid.

“He’ll stop at Cuernavaca and then continue straight on to Mexico City,” she said.

The Count Kollonitz whistled. “That’s a three-day ride.”

“Then he will ride for three days,” said the princess. “He’s that stubborn. Besides, he’s terrified the emperor will die.”

Carlota turned and glared at the woman. “Max is not going to die.”

“I know that. It would take more than a little scorpion sting to kill a Hapsburg. But try telling that to Felix.”

“He certainly seemed upset,” said Diego.

“It’s just as I say. He’s scared out of his mind that Max will perish without an heir. It’s an obsession. It’s all he thinks about.”

“But why rush back to Mexico City?” said the count. “What can he do there?”

“Talk to the archbishop,” the princess replied in her usual matter-of-fact tone. “They’ve become great friends, you know.”

Diego would have liked to continue the conversation, but don Plutarco interrupted them.

“Bring me brandy,” he said, addressing Diego. “And where is the water? We need boiling water, bolts of silk, and pine gum.”

Apart from incantations in Nahuatl, the emperor’s treatment seemed mainly to involve the frequent and copious administration of brandy. The curandero poured each draft from a crystal decanter that Diego had retrieved from the dining room.

Meanwhile, a pair of kitchen servants ferried boiling water into the bedroom in a succession of pots. They set the steaming containers on the bedroom floor and added resin of pine gum to the water before covering the vessels with bolts of silk. Soon, clouds of aromatic vapour swirled through the room, redolent of the high Mexican hills and of evergreen.

Don Plutarco asked everyone to leave so that he might be alone with the emperor for a time. Carlota resisted at first, but Padre Buendía assured her that all would be well, and so she trekked downstairs
along with the others. The company huddled in the main salon, where they could hear muffled snatches of conversation from the bedroom upstairs. It was evident that don Plutarco and the emperor were involved in intense conversation, but it was impossible to determine what was being said.

Half an hour passed before the Indian healer appeared on the landing to say the treatment had been completed. Carlota hurried back upstairs, followed by a few of the others. The emperor was sufficiently revived that he was able to acknowledge each of them in turn, holding eye contact and nodding. He seemed both calm and self-possessed and was even able to speak, albeit in brief snatches. Whatever don Plutarco had done while the two men were alone, it had evidently worked.

The empress ran her hand across her husband’s forehead and caressed his hair, but Maximiliano no longer responded, and for good reason. It seemed he had fallen asleep. Don Plutarco said there was no longer any danger and His Majesty would pass the night in peace.

The following morning, the emperor was well enough to take a turn in the garden. He asked Diego to join him, and the two strolled among the mulberry shrubs and citrus trees. Maximiliano apologized for the events of the previous day.

“There is no need,” said Diego. “Your Majesty—”

“I always worry when you remember to call me that.”

Maximiliano said there was something he wished to say. He eased closer to Diego, lowering his voice, and Diego sensed a warmth in his chest, at once strange and familiar, the return of a welcome but long-absent feeling—it seemed they were confederates again. The emperor explained in a whisper that he had long suffered a horror of bones, and he thought he understood why. His older brother, Franz Josef, now ruler of the Austrian Empire, had tormented him when they both were young, telling him all sorts of lurid stories involving corpses, disfigured faces, and mutilated limbs. Limbs and bones. Those experiences had marked him deeply and must have played some role in his behaviour the previous day.

“I know the scorpion bite was harmless,” he said. “Or at least I know it now. It was all those terrible bones. They made me think of my brother’s stories.” He shuddered. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved. You must be disappointed.”

Diego began to deny it, but the emperor waved him off.

“You may think me a weakling, but I assure you I am not.”

Diego looked down at the grass. He had been considered a weakling himself once and, now that he had just one arm, he was a weakling. A weakling, squared.

Maximiliano said he was greatly in the debt of the Indian man who had ministered to him the evening before. “He told me things. He made me understand what was going on. The bones. My brother. The scorpion. They are all of a piece. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Diego said he thought he did. In a way, the emperor was merely confirming what Diego already knew. Every man has his weaknesses, and there is no shame in it, or not necessarily. What is important is to face up to weakness and not back down. It seemed the emperor was doing that. Diego smiled.

“You can forgive me?” said Maximiliano.

“Yes, of course. There’s no—”

“Friends?” His Majesty offered his hand.

“Friends,” said Diego.

They shook hands and then embraced, a Mexican
abrazo.

The travellers spent that day and the ensuing night in Taxco. By the second morning of their stay, the emperor was almost fully restored, and the entire party set out early for the return journey to the hacienda at Cocoyotla.

As for Beatríz, she said she was mystified about the boneyard Diego and Maximiliano had found at the edge of the subterranean lagoon. She’d had no knowledge of its existence, and Diego had no trouble believing her. She wanted to convey her apologies to the emperor, but he suggested it was unlikely that Maximiliano needed reminding.

“Very well,” she said. “I have faith in your judgment.”

Before leaving Taxco, Diego spoke privately with Padre Buendía. The priest said he had no information about Ángela Peralta or her whereabouts, or those of her son, but he thought he might be able to acquire some intelligence on both counts. There was within the Church a network of priests who subscribed to liberal principles and were unhappy with the present hierarchy. He would make inquiries and report to Diego in the strictest confidence.

They shook hands, and Diego strode out into the stable yard, where his horse was waiting along with the rest of the party. The priest gave him a leg up and handed him the reins. Almost at once, the emperor guided his horse alongside Diego’s.

“Ride with me, Serrano,” he said. “Let us speak of happy things.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Diego’s heart seemed to swell.

“Let us be off, then,” said Bombelles. The Austrian officer reined his horse around and began the long journey home. The others all followed.