During the first assault on Rome, Charles de Bourbon received a fatal musket shot in one eye. Benvenuto Cellini would later boast that he had personally fired the ball that killed him, though in reality he was nowhere near. But who would dare contradict him? Before the captains were able to impose order, the out-of-control troops pounded the defenseless city with iron and gunpowder, taking it within a matter of hours. During the first week, the massacre was so brutal that blood ran through the streets and puddled among the millenary stones. More than forty-five thousand fled the city, and the remainder of the terrorized population were condemned to a living hell. The voracious invaders burned churches, convents, hospitals, palaces, and homes. They killed right and left, madmen and hospital patients and domestic animals; they tortured men to force them to hand over everything they had hidden; they raped every woman and girl they could find; they murdered everyone from nursing babes to the aged and infirm. The looting, an interminable orgy, continued for weeks. Soldiers drunk from blood and alcohol dragged destroyed works of art and religious reliquaries through the streets, decapitated humans and statues alike, stole anything they could stuff into their pouches, and ground the rest to rubble. The famous frescos in the Sistine Chapel were saved because that was where Charles de Bourbon lay in state. Thousands of cadavers floated down the Tiber River, and the odor of decomposing flesh fouled the air. Dogs and crows devoured the corpses strewn throughout the city. Then came the faithful companions of war: hunger and plague, which attacked both ill-fated Romans and their victimizers.
During those apocalyptic days, Pedro de Valdivia went through the streets of Rome with sword in hand, furious, vainly attempting to stop the pillaging and killing and to impose some shred of order among the troops, but the fifteen thousand mercenaries recognized neither superior nor law, and were ready to kill anyone who stood in their way. By chance, Valdivia found himself at the gates of a convent just as it was attacked by a dozen German mercenaries. The nuns knew that no woman escaped being raped, and they had gathered around a cross in the patio and formed a circle around the young novitiates, who stood as frozen as statues, holding one another’s hands, heads low, murmuring a prayer. From a distance, they resembled doves. They were asking God to save them from being stained, and to take pity on them by sending them a speedy death.
“Stand back! Anyone who dares cross this threshold will have to deal with me!” roared Pedro de Valdivia, brandishing his sword in his right hand and a short saber in his left.
Several of the Germans stopped out of surprise, calculating that the prize was not worth having to confront this imposing and determined Spanish officer, and that it might be more sensible to go to the next building, but there were others who rushed to the attack. Valdivia had in his favor that he was the only sober one among them, and with four well-aimed thrusts he incapacitated four Germans, but by then other men in the group had recovered from their initial befuddlement and they, too, were upon him. Even with their minds clouded with alcohol, the Landsknechts were as formidable as Valdivia, and soon they had surrounded him. That might have been the last day of the young Extremaduran’s life had not Francisco de Aguirre happened by.
“Try me, you Teuton whoresons!” the enormous Basque shouted, red with rage and swinging his sword like a club.
The uproar attracted the attention of other Spaniards passing by, and when they saw their compatriots in grave danger, in less time than it takes me to tell it, a great free-for-all ensued. A half hour later the attackers fell back, leaving several of their own bleeding in the street, and allowing the Spanish officers to bolt the convent doors. The Mother Superior asked the nuns of stronger character to collect the ones who had fainted, and they all placed themselves under the orders of Francisco de Aguirre, who had offered to organize the defense by fortifying the walls.
“No one is safe in Rome. For the moment, the mercenaries have withdrawn, but I have no doubt that they will return, and when that happens it will be best for them to find you prepared,” Aguirre advised them.
“I will round up some harquebuses,” Valdivia said, “and Francisco will teach you to fire them.” He had not missed the impish gleam in his friend’s eyes when he imagined himself alone with a score of virgin novitiates and a handful of mature, but grateful, and still attractive, nuns.
Two months later, the horrible sacking of Rome was ended, bringing papal rule to a close. The carnage and destruction would go down in history as a shameful stain on the life of our emperor, Charles V, even though he was far away from the scene of the horror.
His holiness the pope was allowed to leave his refuge in Sant’Angelo castle, but he was arrested, and received the same treatment as a common prisoner. His pontifical ring was taken from him, and soldiers guffawed as he was given a kick in the seat that drove him to his knees.
Benvenuto Cellini could be accused of many things, but he was not one to forget a favor, which is why when the Mother Superior of the convent visited him to tell how a young Spanish officer had saved her congregation and had stayed on for weeks in the building to defend them, the renowned artist had wanted to meet him. Hours later, the nun accompanied Francisco de Aguirre to the palace. Cellini received him in one of the salons in the Vatican, amid piles of debris and furniture gutted by the marauding mercenaries. The two men exchanged brief, courteous greetings.
Then Cellini, who never beat about the bush, asked point blank, “What would you like, signor, in exchange for your courageous intervention?”
Red with anger, Aguirre instinctively put his hand to the grip of his sword. “You insult me, señor!” he exclaimed.
The Mother Superior stepped between them with all the weight of her authority, and separated them with a contemptuous gesture. This was no time for posturing. She was a member of the family of the Genoese condottiere Andrea Doria; the Mother Superior was a woman of fortune and breeding, accustomed to command.
“Enough! I beg you to forgive this unintentional offense, Don Francisco. We are living in bad times; blood has flowed and terrible sins have been committed; it is not strange that good manners have been relegated to a secondary importance. Signor Cellini knows that you did not defend our convent out of any thought of reward but, rather, because you have a righteous heart. The last thing he wishes is to insult you. We would consider it a privilege if you would accept a sign of our appreciation and gratitude.”
The Mother Superior gestured to the sculptor to stand back, took Aguirre by his sleeve, and led him to the far end of the salon. Cellini could hear them whispering for a long time. When his limited patience was wearing thin, they returned, and the Mother Superior presented the request as the young officer, with his eyes on the tips of his boots, sweated.
And that is why Benvenuto Cellini obtained authorization from Pope Clement VII—before he was sent into exile—for Francisco de Aguirre to marry his first cousin. The stunned young Basque ran to his friend Pedro de Valdivia to tell him the news. His eyes were moist and his giant’s voice was trembling; he could not believe such a miracle.
“I am not sure that this is such great news, Francisco,” Valdivia protested. “You collect conquests the way our holy emperor collects clocks. I cannot imagine you as a husband.”
“My cousin is the only woman I have ever loved! The others are faceless creatures who exist only for a moment, and only to satisfy the appetite the Devil placed in me.”
“The Devil is responsible for many different appetites in all of us, but God gives us the moral fiber to control them. That is what makes us different from animals.”
“You’ve been a soldier all these years, Pedro, and you still believe we are different from animals,” Aguirre joked.
“I have no doubt at all. Man’s destiny is to rise above the beasts, to lead his life according to noble ideals, and save his soul.”
“You frighten me, Pedro. You talk like a priest. If I did not know you for the man you are, I would think that you lack the primordial instinct that drives all males.”
“I have no shortage of that instinct, I assure you, but I do not allow it to determine my behavior.”
“I am not as noble as you, but I am redeemed by the chaste and pure love I feel for my cousin.”
“I would say you have a small problem there, which is that you are going to marry the woman you have idealized. How will you reconcile that love with your ‘primordial instincts’?” A sly smile crossed Valdivia’s lips.
“That will not be a problem, Pedro. I will shower my cousin with kisses and lower her from her saintly altar, then make love to her with consuming passion,” Aguirre replied, rolling with laughter.
“And faithfulness?”
“She will be the faithful one in our marriage, but I will not be able to renounce women, just as I cannot give up wine or the sword.”
Francisco de Aguirre hastened to Spain to marry before the indecisive pontiff could change his mind. He must have somehow reconciled his Platonic feelings for his cousin and his unquenchable sensuality, and she must have responded without a trace of timidity, because the ardor of that couple came to be legendary. They say that neighbors gathered in the street before their house to wonder at the raucous sounds of revelry, and to make bets about the number of amorous assaults there would be that night.
After a long period of war, blood, gunpowder, and mud, Pedro de Valdivia, too, returned to his native land, preceded by word of his military campaigns. He brought with him hard-earned experience and a pouchful of gold, which he intended to use to restore his depleted patrimony. Marina was waiting for him, transformed into a woman; she had left her childish ways behind. She was sixteen, and her ethereal and serene beauty invited comparison with a work of art. She went about with the distracted air of a sleepwalker, as if she had foreseen that her life was to be an eternal waiting. On the first night they were together, the couple repeated the actions and silences of old. In the darkness of their bedchamber, their bodies were joined, but joylessly: he feared he would frighten her and she feared she would sin; he wanted to make her love him and she wanted the night to end.
During the day they assumed their assigned roles; they inhabited the same space but never touched. Marina treated her husband with an eager and solicitous affection that annoyed more than flattered him. He did not need such attentions, he needed a little passion, but he did not dare tell her that because he supposed that passion was not a proper emotion for a decent and religious woman. He felt as if Marina were watching him, and as if he were a prisoner in the invisible bonds of an emotion he did not know how to return. He was repelled by her beseeching gaze as she followed him around the house, by her unvoiced sadness when she said good-bye, by her expression of veiled reproach when she welcomed him home after a brief absence. He felt that he could not touch Marina, that he could enjoy being with her only by observing her from a distance as she embroidered, absorbed in her thoughts and prayers, and in the golden light from the window resembling one of the saints in the cathedral.
Their encounters behind the heavy, dusty hangings on their conjugal bed, which had served three generations of Valdivias, lost their attraction for Pedro. Marina refused to substitute a less intimidating garment for the gown with the cross-shaped opening. Pedro suggested that she talk with other women, but Marina was unable to discuss such matters with anyone. After every embrace she knelt for hours, praying, on the stone floor of that large, drafty house, motionless, humiliated, suffering because she did not satisfy her husband. Secretly, however, she took pleasure in the suffering that distinguished her from ordinary women and brought her closer to saintliness. Pedro had explained that lust cannot be a sin between husband and wife, since the purpose of copulation was to conceive children, but Marina could not help it that she turned to ice when he touched her. Her confessor had been too busy filling her head with the fear of hell and shame about her body. In all the years Pedro had known her, he had seen nothing more than her face, her hands, and, once in a while, her feet. He was tempted to tear off the accursed nightgown, rip it to shreds, but he was stopped by the terror in his wife’s eyes when he turned toward her, a terror that contrasted with the tenderness of her gaze during the day, when both were clothed. Marina did not take any initiative in making love, or in any other part of their life together. She never changed expression or mood; she was a quiet sheep. Her submission irritated Pedro, despite his belief that docility was a female virtue. He did not even understand his own feelings. When he had married her, and she was still a girl, he had wanted to keep her in the state of innocence and purity that had first seduced him, and now all he wanted was for her to rebel and defy him.
Valdivia had very quickly risen to the rank of captain because of his exceptional courage and his ability to command but, despite his brilliant career, he was not proud of his past. After the sacking of Rome, he had been tormented by recurrent nightmares in which a young mother embracing her children was preparing to leap from a bridge into a river of blood. He had witnessed the extent of human degradation and the dark depths of the soul. He had learned that men exposed to the brutality of war are capable of terrible acts, and he felt that he was no different from the rest. He went to confession, of course, and the priest always absolved him, giving him a minimal penance. Faults committed in the name of Spain and the church were not sins. Hadn’t he been following his superiors’ orders? Did the enemy not deserve the worst? Ego te absolvo ab omnibus censuris, et peccatis, in nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritis Sanctis, amen.
For anyone who has tasted the excitement of killing, there is no escape or absolution, Pedro thought. He had acquired a taste for violence. That was every soldier’s secret vice, otherwise it would be impossible to wage war. The crude camaraderie of the barracks, the chorus of visceral roars the men uttered as they rushed into battle, the shared indifference to pain and fear, made him feel alive. The savage thrill of running a man through with his sword, the satanic power of cutting short another’s life, the fascination of gushing blood were very powerful addictions. One began killing as a duty and ended up using violence as a way to satisfy one’s penchant for cruelty. Nothing could compare to it. Once unleashed, the instinct to kill was stronger than the instinct to live, even in Pedro, who feared God and prided himself on being able to control his appetites. Eating, fornicating, killing—that was what life was all about, according to his friend Francisco de Aguirre. The only way to save his soul was to avoid the temptation of the sword. On his knees before the main altar of the cathedral, he swore to dedicate the rest of his life to doing good, to serve the Church and Spain, not to indulge his hungers, and to rule his life by strict moral principles. He had been on the verge of dying more than once, and God had allowed him to live in order that he might expiate his sins. He hung his Toledo sword beside the ancient sword of his ancestor, and prepared to live a quiet life.
The captain became a peaceful citizen, concerned with everyday matters: his cattle and harvest, droughts and freezes, the intrigues and jealousies of the townsfolk, and masses and more masses. As he was interested in law, people consulted him about legal matters, and even judicial authorities sought his counsel. His greatest pleasure was books, especially chronicles of journeys, and maps, which he scrutinized in detail. He had memorized the poem of the Cid, and he had drawn pleasure from the fantasy chronicles of Solino and the imaginary voyages of John Mandeville, but his true passion lay in the stories published in Spain about the New World. The feats of Columbus, Magellan, Vespucci, Cortés, and many others kept him awake at night, staring at the brocade canopy over his bed, dreaming while awake. Oh, to explore the far corners of the planet, conquer them, found cities, carry the cross to barbaric countries for the glory of God, and to engrave his name with fire and steel in the annals of history. In the meantime, his wife embroidered chasubles with gold thread and prayed rosary after rosary in a never-ending litany. Even though Pedro ventured several times a week through the humiliating opening in Marina’s nightgown, the desired children did not appear. And so the slow and tedious year
s went by in the stupor of burning summer and in the sheltering by the fire of winter. Extreme harshness, Extremadura.
Several years later, when Pedro de Valdivia had resigned himself to growing old with his wife in the silent house in Castuera and never knowing glory, a traveler stopped by one day to deliver a letter from Francisco de Aguirre. The stranger’s name was Jerónimo de Alderete, and he was a native of Olmedo. His agreeable face was framed by a thatch of honey-colored curls, the pomaded tips of his Turkish mustache turned upward, and he had the burning eyes of a dreamer. Valdivia received him with the hospitality that is the obligation of every good Spaniard, and offered him the welcome of his house, which had no luxuries but was safer and more comfortable than the inns. It was winter, and Marina had ordered a fire in the fireplace of the main room, though the flames did not mitigate either the drafts or the shadows. In that Spartan room, nearly empty of furniture and adornments, the couple passed their lives; it was there he read and she worked at her embroidery, there they ate, and there, before the altar set against the wall, they prayed on two prie-dieus. Marina served sausage, cheese, and bread, and the harsh wine of the house, then retired to a corner to sew by the light of a candelabrum as the men talked.
Jerónimo de Alderete was traveling around Spain recruiting volunteers to take to the Indies, and to tempt them he would exhibit in the taverns and plazas a necklace of heavy gold beads strung on fine silver. The letter Francisco de Aguirre had sent his friend Pedro was about the New World. Ebullient, Alderete told his host about the breathtaking possibilities of that continent that by now were common knowledge. He said that there was no longer any room for noble endeavors in a corrupt and war-weary Europe torn by political conspiracies, court intrigue, and heretical doctrines like those of the Lutherans, who were dividing Christianity. The future lay on the other side of the ocean, he assured Pedro. There was work to be done in the Americas—a name given those lands by a German cartographer in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, a swaggering sailor from Florence who had not been the one to discover them. That honor belonged to Columbus, known to the Spanish as Cristóbal Colón. According to Alderete, the new lands should have been called the Cristobals, or the Colonias. Ah well, what was done was done, and that was not the point, he added. What was most needed in the New World were hidalgos of indomitable heart, with a sword in one hand and the cross in the other, eager to discover and conquer.