underestimated foot soldiers-the soul of chess.
He smiles at Consuela, but she can see it is forced. “Selena,” he says, “came to say good-bye. She came to Palos, to say good-bye.”
Selena has never asked anything of Columbus. Not a promise. Not a conversation. Not even a word about when he might be back. Nothing. They communicated with loving gentleness and soft pleasure. She did not need words, or promises, or pronouncements of love or devotion. Their couplings became candlelit rituals. They moved toward holiness. This holiness was all Selena required of him. She took the sporadic love-making as a small gift to herself whenever he happened to visit the estate where she worked. She took the half-dozen or so postcoital conversations as glimpses-not as a summation of a man. Only the moments mattered. The moments were beautiful. Perhaps this is stupid, she thinks. But I just want to speak my love.
The night before Columbus sails, she waits. She arrives at 8 P.M. and waits. She waits at Starbucks, nursing a coffee for as long as it will go, and then ordering another. Part of her wants to run. Columbus intimidates her-his desire, this dream of his, consumes or pushes everything in its path out of the way. But she is also in awe of his drive and his intelligence. With each hour that passes, she faces her flight instinct. And each time, her need to communicate her feelings wins out. She just wants to ask this one thing of Columbus -she wants him to listen to her love. That’s all. She does not need a return declaration. She only needs him to smile and nod his understanding. She tells herself that if this fails, she will have at least tried. She will at least have tried to tell him what she feels.
At 12:10 A.M., she considers the possibility that he didn’t get her message. She thinks about the last time Columbus visited the estate outside Cordoba. They walked in the fields behind the barns, each step releasing swirls of heady, thick lavender scent around them. He’d passed her a bottle of wine with a cork pushed in just far enough for easy access. She drank and remembers the sweet hint of apple in the wine, the pervading scent of lavender, the clusters of stars and galaxies swirling in the sky, the small jangling sound of bells from a flock of sheep across the road. They sat for a long time in silence. It seemed something was on his mind and he’d turned inward-he seemed to be dancing with a problem or a decision, and Selena honored his silence. She would not ask what was wrong, nor would she ask what he was thinking about.
Perhaps she has no right to ask more than a memory of moments.
In the morning, Consuela looks in the mirror and notices, for the first time, a series of subtle changes in her posture and in the way she looks. Her skin seems smoother than she remembers and her eyes sharper. She has to adjust the small makeup mirror in her bedroom. It’s too low. Either it’s been moved or she’s sitting taller on the stool. But the mirror can’t have been moved because she leans into it every morning without touching it. Something has changed in her.
In the car Consuela realizes she needs to know about Isabella. She has to know what, if anything, happens between Columbus and the queen. But she does not know how to move him in that direction. There are days when she wishes she could be blunt, or even violent. She’d like to shake him-get the remaining stories to fall onto the ground. Then they could stand around and look at the bones of his stories, all haphazard and abstruse on the pebbles. In the clear light of day, they could perhaps make sense of these bones, put them in order, find the end, and more important, find the beginning before the beginning.
At breakfast, Columbus is focused on the contents of his coffee mug and nodding to himself. He seems on the edge of something. Consuela knows better than to make small talk when he’s like this. She’s got a pile of paperwork. It’s the end of the month. So she grabs a mug of coffee and retreats to her office. There is a small gaggle of puzzlers across the room, patiently placing puzzle pieces, rotating, trying again and again to make the picture complete. One patient is standing at the window staring out. Columbus approaches the two-way mirror, drags a chair over, and sits down. This movement in front of her desk catches her attention. He looks directly into the mirror and Consuela feels a prickle at the base of her neck. She inhales. Holds her breath. This was how it began.
Columbus leans forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped.
It’s dangerous to walk on the docks after sundown, but that is what Isabella feels she must do. She closes her bedroom door-moves quickly and silently through the connected room, out the door, into the hallway, and down the back stairs. Her security team is diluted. Some are with Ferdinand and her most trusted security team is watching Columbus. Only a small detail is sitting outside her door, two men and a woman, having a late dinner. On the street, she wraps her cape tightly around her body, pulls the hood up, and heads for the dock.
Perhaps Columbus would never come back from this venture, and this worry motivated Isabella to travel to Palos. He should know that I care about him and wish him success and a safe return, she thinks. I have to try to let him know how I feel. Perhaps he could take this small love of mine with him. This love is nearly weightless, would fit in a pocket, could be carried in a breath. This love could rest, inaudible, on the surface of the skin until it was needed. How does she give him this small thing without saying it out loud? What can she say that he will understand as:
In the harbor are the three ships. She paces. She walks the dock until she begins to know the intimacies of it- the way it creaks, where it groans. At the far end of her route, she hears somebody coming and ducks out of sight behind a pallet of crates. A woman draws a man down the street away from a bar, toward the harbor. They stop perhaps ten meters from Isabella’s hiding spot. The man leans back against the wall, and the woman kneels, moves forward toward his groin. Begins to move in a steady cadence. Isabella watches, fascinated. The man is moaning. This coupling goes on for ten minutes, and then fifteen, then twenty.
“It’s no good,” the man says finally, pulling away and starting to fasten up his pants. “I’ve had too much wine.”
“This way, then,” the woman says. She pulls up her skirts and backs into him-bends forward, hands flat on the wall. They begin to move again. This time the woman’s moans are louder than the man’s. Isabella wishes they’d just hurry up and finish. She is not disgusted but, rather, irritated. This takes her away from her watch. She’s worried she might be at the wrong end of the dock. The woman grunts rhythmically, breathy sounds.
Christ, Isabella thinks. If this goes on much longer I’m going to go down there and help out. They need to be done. For God’s sake!
After another ten minutes, the man again pulls away.
“It’s no good. It’s terrific-you… you are terrific. But I’ve had too much wine… mush too mush wine. I have to sleep. I’m on the
She moves in close and whispers in his ear. The woman smiles. She hikes up her skirts, leans back with her shoulders touching the wall, hips and pubis thrust out. He kneels in front of her and begins to give her pleasure. The woman does not moan right away. She hums. She bites her lips and hums.
Isabella is stuck. She’s embarrassed and doesn’t want to see or hear any more. She does not want this public reminder of what she could have had with Columbus, of what she used to have with Ferdinand. She’s claustrophobic in her tiny space beside the stacked crates. Regardless of the black, star-riddled sky above her, and the expanse of the harbor beyond, and the verisimilitude of wide-open ocean beyond the harbor, Isabella feels encased. She has no idea what time it is. The queen has no need of a watch. It’s got to be getting close to ten o’clock.
I should just walk out into the street, excuse myself, and offer an apology, she thinks. Wish her luck with her orgasm, wish him luck with his voyage, and be on my way. But she’s been here too long, watching. They’ll think she’s twisted. It’s too late. She’s committed for the whole show.
Then the woman begins to really moan and move. Like she’s riding a wave.
“Oh, yes. Yes, yes… Ohhh,
