Nevertheless, Guzmán pretended he understood; he nodded obsequiously, led his master to the bed, removed his cape and slippers, loosened his doublet, and unfastened his ruff.
El Señor, his mouth agape, looked about the room; he was lying upon black sheets beneath a black canopy in a chamber whose three walls were covered by black drapes and the fourth by an enormous map of dark and ocher hues; the only light was that of a chandelier so high that to light and extinguish it one needed a long pole with a crook on the end. Guzmán approached with a flask of vinegar in one hand and a small coffer in the other. El Señor caught himself with his mouth open; he tried to close it. He felt as if he were choking; Guzmán rubbed El Señor’s hairless white chest with vinegar, rattling the pouch of holy relics tied around El Señor’s neck; El Señor tried to breathe with his lips closed and to open his hand and move his fingers to reach out for the coffer. Guzmán would not speak another word; he never spoke except when absolutely necessary. At the back of El Señor’s palate, the adenoids were atrophying and hardening more every day. Again his lips parted, and he tried to move his fingers.
With vinegar-damp hands, Guzmán prized open his master’s fist; then he chose one ring after another from the coffer, placing on El Señor’s ring finger the gold-set stone intended to prevent bleeding, and on the other fingers and thumb English bone rings to ward off cramps and spasms, and again on the ring finger, above the first ring, the most miraculous of alclass="underline" a diamond ring in which was embedded a hair and a tooth of St. Peter; in the palm of that crippled hand he placed the blue stone that was supposed to cure gout; in the other he placed the green stone that would eventually cure the French malady.
The painting: And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. But, behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table, and dippeth with me in the dish.
For almost an hour El Señor gasped and trembled while his servant discreetly stood in the farthest and darkest part of the room. The dog had stretched out beneath the bed. Perhaps El Señor’s repose was like that of an overly active dream; perhaps a waking nightmare is more fatiguing than all the happy and cruel activity of a war, either mercenary or holy; perhaps … I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in my father’s kingdom. El Señor spoke in dead nasal tones; he demanded something to eat, immediately. Guzmán halved a melon lying upon a copper platter. El Señor sat up and began to devour it; Guzmán, after bowing with obeisance, rested one knee against the edge of the bed.
Their glances met. El Señor spit the seeds on the floor; Guzmán’s nimble fingers searched through his master’s thin oily hair; occasionally the fingers found what they sought, the louse was cracked between his fingernails and thrown on the cool tile floor as the master had thrown the melon seeds.
The palace: Patios would be added to patios, rooms for monks, servants, and troops would be added to the bedchambers of the original rectangle. A granite quadrangle, as wide as it was long, would be the center of the palace, conceived of as a Roman camp, severe and symmetrical; and in that center would rise the great basilica; the exterior would be a straight, severe castle with a bastion on each corner; within there would be a single nave, enormous, empty; and all four sides would be enclosed by a strong wall, so that from a distance the palace would look like a fortress, its straight lines fading into the plain and the infinite horizon without a single concession to caprice, carved like one solid piece of gray granite and set upon a polished stone base whose snow-white contrast would lend an even more somber air to the whole.
She could envision it from the double window that would someday overlook the palace garden, but which for the time being overlooked only the expanse of heavy, distant plains bound by granite mountains whitened like the bones of a bull beneath the double assault of deforestation and sun; like a mountain, this palace would be wrested from the mountain. And as she envisioned it, she repeated what El Señor had said on one occasion when he stated his wishes; he had never again had to repeat the words: with all haste construct a palace and monastery that will be both a Fortress of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist and the Necropolis of Princes. No ostentation, no celebration, no swerving from that implacably austere project. He had conceived it; now the army of workmen were executing his concept.
La Señora, staring at the monotonous plain from her room, was imagining with some alarm that her husband’s wishes finally would be fulfilled; and she confessed to herself that secretly she had always believed, the world being what it is, that some chance, some unpredictable whim, or a very predictable weakening of will, would impose upon El Señor’s master plan a few — not many, but all the more delectable for being few — concessions to the pleasures of the senses.
“Señor, may the shepherds come beneath my windows to shear their sheep, and perhaps to sing me a few songs?”
“We are not conducting a fair here, but a perpetual Mass for the Dead that will last until the end of time.”
“Some baths, then, Señor…”
“The bath is an Arabic custom and will have no place in my palace. Follow the example of my grandmother, who wore the same footwear for so long that when she died it had to be pried off forcibly.”
“Señor, the greatest of the Catholic kings, Charlemagne, accepted from the infidel Caliph Harun al-Rashid, without diminution of his Christian faith, gifts of silk, candelabra, perfume, slaves, balms, a marble chess set, an enormous campaign tent with multicolored curtains, and a clepsydra that marked the hours by dropping little bronze pellets into a basin…”
“Well, here there shall be no treasures but the relics of Our Saviour I have ordered to be brought here: a hair from His most holy head, or perhaps His beard, within a rich inlay, for if He said He loved the hairs of our heads, we should die for one hair of His; and eleven thorns from His crown, a treasure that would enrich eleven worlds; just to hear of such treasures pierces the soul, what will the actual seeing of them be! God’s goodness, He who suffered thorns for me, and I not one for Him; and a piece of the rope that bound the hands or throat of that most innocent Lamb.”
“Señor, I cannot imagine power without luxury, and the Byzantine court would be forgotten were it not for its artificial lions, its trilling mechanical birds, and its throne that rose into the air; and the Emperor Frederick was not in the least impious when he accepted from the Sultan of Damascus a gift of bejeweled astral bodies, moved by hidden mechanisms, that described their course upon a background of black velvet…”
“When one begins in that direction, Señora, he ends like Pope John, converting the pontifical palace into a brothel, castrating a cardinal, toasting the health of the Devil, and invoking the aid of Jupiter and Venus in a night spent playing at dice.”
“A great King always wishes to be the wonder of the world.”
“My asceticism will be the wonder of this age, Señora, and of ages to come, for when we are dead this palace will be dedicated throughout the ages to a perpetual Mass for the Dead, and every moment of the day and night there will be a pair of priests before the Most Sacred Sacrament of the altar, praying to God for my soul and the souls of my dead, two different priests every two hours every day; twenty-four priests daily executing a task as savory as prayer is not a heavy burden. This will be the disposition of my testament. The wonder of the world, Señora? Simon, that famous prince of the Maccabeans, wished to make eternal the memory of his dead brother, the prince Jonathan; to do this he ordered a sepulcher to be built beside the sea, so prominent that its funereal memorials could be seen from every ship, for it seemed to him that whatever he could tell of his brother’s excellent virtues would be less than what strangers would learn, or what that mausoleum might mutely preach. Thus, I, Señora; except that it will not be sailors who see this funereal sepulcher, but pilgrims who venture to our high plain; and always, from Heaven, God and His angels. I want, I ask no other testimony.”