One thing Melody had learned since she had returned to Spain the previous year was that the two Royal Courts were rarely in step, the one often frustrating the will of the other in a ludicrous, Ruritanian farce that many foreign diplomats had condemned as ‘an accident waiting to happen’ for much of the last decade. The miracle was that the Queen somehow contrived to regularly produce additional princes and princesses◦– five to date◦– all of whom Ferdinand had acknowledged, and apparently, for they were seen in public very rarely, tended to actually look a little like him◦– long of jaw and wide-eyed◦– despite the fact he and his wife seemed to be constantly at odds over, well, practically everything.
Melody had questioned Alonso on this more than once, including on the day after their coupling.
He had been maddeningly vague.
‘In your country, New England and in the British Isles there is a certain constructive tension between opposing political parties and organs of your governmental institutions◦– for example, between the Houses of Commons and of the Lords in Whitehall, and between the Office of the Governor of the Commonwealth of New England and the various colonial administrations and their internal legislative councils◦– which you elect to call a system of checks and balances. Here in Spain and throughout the Empire there is no similar separation of the judiciary from the executive branches of the Imperial Government. That would be impossible given the existence and nature of the various organs of the Inquisition, and the fact of infallible sovereign rule by the King-Emperor. However, that does not mean that the Monarchy, the Church or anybody else is actually in control of all things. Regional governors have great power and factions within both Royal Courts are supreme in some things, weak in others. Of course, a cynic might say that the checks and balances in the Spanish system are, like those in the British Empire, in reality closely related to who holds the real power rather than they are to any fig leaf of democracy, the fiction of a supposedly independent judiciary, or the primacy of Parliament.’
Melody had not been ready to concede that the democratic principles which had, and were continually trickling down through the fabric of the British Empire, bore any comparison with the dictatorial, theocratic chaos of its Spanish counterpart.
In fact, this was a point she had made at length and with no little indignation. Her host, and lover, had clearly found the entire debate… immensely stimulating.
‘In any event, our system,’ the man had concluded, smiling one of those smiles that had very nearly charmed her knickers off, again, ‘requires that the wheels of governance be oiled, lubricated in a different fashion. Which is where neutral go-betweens, emissaries, legates, call us what you will, who are respected by all the parties, come in. Presently, I serve Her Majesty, one day I might serve the King-Emperor, or even the colleges of Cardinals in Seville and Toledo. We live in strange and interesting times, do we not?’
Discreetly overseen by their ever-present minders◦– large men dressed in the green and grey of the Medina Sidonia family◦– Melody and Henrietta had explored the fascinating old-world charms of Chinchón, visited vineyards and wineries on the Plain of Tajuña, and shamelessly gorged themselves on the fresh breads, cheeses, olives and cold, preserved meats of the district.
They had been a little surprised to discover that they were by no means the only ‘outsiders’ in the town. There were visitors from France and Germany, several people from England, adventurous travellers brought to the wilds of the Mountains of Madrid in search of a traditional world that was fast disappearing elsewhere in Western Europe. Unlike Melody and Henrietta, the ‘foreigners’ they encountered were careless of the alleged watchfulness of the Inquisition, and thoroughly disinterested in the medieval, positively Byzantine politics of the Spanish Empire. Instead, they were bewitched by the atmosphere and tranquility of the rural landscapes through which they moved, far removed from the hustle, bustle, noise and complexity of their lives ‘back home’.
The two women were happy to pass themselves off as fellow travellers, tourists subtly absorbing the endless contradictions of the country around them.
Most Englishmen and women, and New Englanders◦– if they thought about it at all◦– assumed that the average Spaniard lived in constant fear of the Inquisition in a society under the unrelenting merciless heel of the Catholic Church. Which, of course, was a nonsense. The majority of Spaniards were in any case religiously◦– Catholically, obviously◦– unquestioningly devout and far from viewing the Church as a burden on their backs, took immense succour and no little joy in their faith. Given that Spanish society was still over fifty percent agrarian, in most places the Church was invariably as much a welfare as a spiritual overseer; local priests, the monks and the nuns of a plethora of ancient religious orders and houses ran the hospitals, organised the soup kitchens when crops failed and lobbied local, district and national civil authorities to relieve hardships and to fearlessly appeal against injustices both large and small.
In the cities the Church of Rome was less concerned with the temporal, an integral major constituent of the body politic with its fingers in every aspect of government; but out in the country an argument could be made that it was ‘the government’, albeit in its most benign ‘suffer the children to me’ incarnation.
Here in the mountains, in places like Chinchón imperial power politics and the machinations of the rival factions in the Royal Palaces of Madrid might have been happening on the surface of some alien, distant planet. Dressed in the fashion of better off local women Melody and Henrietta almost but not quite blended into the milieu of the town, unselfconsciously wandering hand in hand and sitting, as they did now, outside an old taverna which catered in the main for visitors, drinking rich coffee from Colombia, and nibbling biscuits chipped through with cocoa from the Indies.
“This must be a horrible place when they hold their twice-yearly bull fights in the square?” Henrietta remarked, enjoying the cool spring sunshine bathing her face. She had let her long hair down in the fashion of Spanish women in the country. “I suppose? You told me once that you’d been to the great bullring in Madrid?”
Melody wrinkled her nose.
“Yes, it was horrible,” she remembered, ‘yet beautiful in its tragedy. It’s really hard to describe. One side of me was disgusted, ashamed to be watching it at and the other, was, well, fascinated by the drama of it all. A lot of the ‘bull fight’ was really like an intricate, very dangerous ballet played out in a huge sandy arena, scene after scene until in the final acts the matadors’ swords stab and the gladiatorial circus comes to a tumultuous end…”
Melody still felt conflicted, guilty and defiant about sleeping with Alonso. She wondered if she would have felt half so conflicted if she had fallen into his bed on an impulse, suffered some kind of rush of blood. That she had planned to be seduced, or to seduce him◦– she had no idea which clause applied even in hindsight◦– for several weeks before the event, tugged persistently at her conscience even though Henrietta had forgiven her.
The last two nights they had abandoned pretence, wrapped each other in their arms and slept curled, clinging together in Henrietta’s room, slowly healing.
“Do you think Alonso is one of the Queen’s lovers?” The younger woman asked, so lowly that Melody had to piece together the interrogative before she could consider it.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” she whispered, quirking a very wan smile. And then, spontaneously, giggling like a girl and almost spilling her coffee.