Lazaro Torres of Estrémadure seeks fame & fortune in the New World.
The opening section of a story, called Spanish Farm, written in 2007 but still incomplete. The description of the full story was this:
Ben McLeod is adjusting to rural life alone in the Shropshire hills after his divorce. For him, the countryside offers the promise of quiet withdrawal. A Spanish burglar caught red-handed in the cupboard under the stairs, a drunken hill farmer with imaginary squatters in his barn, and the ghost of an Irish poet are set to make life a little less retiring than he had intended.
Here, Lazaro Torres, an unreliable narrator and colleague of the Spanish burgler, describes his youth, some six hundred years ago.
∞
It is true that I was acquainted with the famous swineherd and conqueror of Peru, Francisco Pizarro, in my youth. It is true also that he was an illiterate and belligerent fellow, even then. He wrestled pigs and smelled like a sow, my mother often said of him. For my part, I avoided him where I could, he being older, bigger, and angrier than I. His three younger half-brothers were my contemporaries, each of them a fool and a brute enough for me, so that I avoided them when I could. But whereas I could match Gonzalo, Juan, and even Hernando The Screamer in boyish combat, Francisco I would run from, or get a beating every time. In Trujillo these days they have a statue of him, and call themselves the Cradle of the Conquests, but the day the Pizarros packed up and went South, the whole town made bunting and the festival of Chivirí was inaugurated. Some said they went off with the Turks to Cadix, in Sevilla, to try their fortunes in the economics of slavery. My mother rather fancied the debt to their landlords was long overdue, and their leaving but a flight from the indignity of a good whipping.
In any case that was my doing with the Pizarro boys, in those distant days. My mother enquired of me often as to the the nature of my encounters with Francisco, and his infernal wrestling, and seemed glad that the boy limited his attentions to a good hard punch whenever he could catch me. His going to Sevilla was “not a day too soon,” said she, “but too late for many a good pig’s innocence, and not a few pretty boys either.” Our paths were to cross again, in the Americas, many years later, but the nature of his wrestling that bothered my mother so I never did get to the bottom of, and perhaps that is a good thing.
In Estrémadure there were plenty of rogues to worry about, and wrestlers the least of them. The whole wide and fair country of Castille, indeed, and probably Aragon too, was awash with bandits at that time; not to mention murderers, and turks, and conjurers of dark arts, and, let me tell you, men of the cloth – all to be feared and avoided wherever convenient. Trujillo was quite the worst of places in all Spain, it seemed to me at the time, though Valencia, Cartajena and all the Spanish coast was accursed, according the lore of my mother, and now that the Pizzaros had gone to Cadix, well, that was no place to be, either. But I was not content with the life of a peasant, and when I was a young man, there was a new world in the west to dream of. Word came to us from Seville of lands to be won, fortunes to be made; reputations to build and cities of unimaginable riches to plunder. In the hills about the town, attending to my business as expected of any good young man, I imagined the Spanish Indies, waiting for me, Lazaro Torres of Estrémadure.
Now it so happened the greatest bandit of the day came to Trujillo at this time. Greater than all the Pizzaros put together – half brothers, cousins and second-cousins all. Not Hernán Cortés, that duplicitous rogue, nor Hernando de Luque, the false prophet, nor even the ill-starred Diego, more stupid brother of the most inept sailor ever to discover a continent – Cristóbal Colón of Genoa. Put them all together and add a steaming cauldron of pitch, still you have nothing so dark as the holy Tomás de Torquemada, the First Grand Inquisitor of Spain. And so comes he, all dressed in the red vestige of the Papacy, and with a retinue of armed fighters fit for the wars in Navarre, all the way from Léon or Toledo or Madrid just to be sure that the young boys of Trujillo are faithful and true to the word of Heaven.
I watched from the distance as Torquemada proceeded reverently toward the town, unhurried. Like all supreme bullies, his power lay in his predisposition to take his time. Father Aluar de Baeça, the young priest, would be crossing himself now, consumed by doubt and fear. Not so the Alcalde, our grizzled pious old mayor, Señor Mexia. For him, playing Torquemada for his political ends would present an opportunity to rid himself a few indebted tenants (Pizarros notwithstanding) and the odd liberal fly-in-the-ointment – like Father de Baeça. Good Señor Mexia, a veteran hero at the courts of Castille and Aragon, had nothing to fear from the Grand Inquisitor. Almost everyone else did.
For my part, I was not inclined to piety. Indeed I had grave doubts about the word of Heaven and my time in the hills, when not devoted to daydreaming about the west or fooling around with the lovely Teresa of Çalamea, was largely given to the consideration of atheism – not at all a fashionable pursuit in those days. Rumour had it that the Grand Inquisitor could see directly into your soul, and if the view was clouded, he had means to light the way. If he found there anything lacking or contaminated, his purification was cruel and scorching and final. I fancied my utter lack of conviction held me at a disadvantage with the Holy Inquisition, and made off. Without preparation, and not even clearly knowing the way, I resolved on a path to Cadix and the New World. Torquemada, and Teresa, and my mother, would have to wait.
In a time before, my father had gone away never to return, and his father before him, so it was not unprecedented for a Torres of Estrémadure to go missing. I dare say my mother, guessing me for a faithless heathen and daydreamer – I fancy she may even have harboured suspicions about Teresa – was unsurprised and even relieved of my going, as Tomás de Torquemada set up Holy Court in the house of the Alcalde. But of this I cannot accurately speak, as I did not explain myself to my mother, but set off hastily from my starting point in the hills, and avoided the town altogether. Thus Trujillo passes out of my story, and I heard no more of Teresa of Çalamea, nor indeed my mother, God rest her weary soul. Torquemada, of course, was less easily dispensed of, and running away to Cadix when I did not rightly know the direction in which it lay would not put an end to my dealings with the Inquisition. But that, my friend, is a story for another day.
Here let me tell you first that though I might not know the way, I soon picked up the South Road into Sevilla, which leads to Cadix. In this I was, in a manner of speaking, a little fortunate. For in the hills above Trujillo I fell in with rogues and gypsies and turks, who called themselves the Maro Caló, and were no more than itinerant rustlers and bandits. Presently this rabble were spending their days avoiding the nearby Grand Inquisitor and his holy brigands, who were no more holy than the Maro Caló, but did ostensibly have the advantage of God, and the law, being on their side. It must have been a fortuitously starred day for me when I ran across these villains – or, to be more accurate, they ran across me. For not only was I lost and uncertain of the way to Cadix, in which they instructed me, and offered assistance, but also, usually, it was their custom to rob and kill even the lowliest of hill shepherds. Though I do not rightly know why, I was spared, and through certain rites and rituals best left undescribed, I was inducted into the Maro Caló, and they set me on the road to Seville.
Perhaps having nothing better to do at that time, or because the outriders and scouts for the Grand Inquisitor were all about the Province espying the route to Heaven, the Maro Caló decided it profitable to join me on the South Road, and I was beneficiary of their company all the way to Esquivel. Had I the time, or you the patience, I would tell you all my adventures on the South Road. Another day I will explain in detail my liaison in Zafra with voluptuous Costança Gil; the why and wherefore of the sacking of Fuente De Cantos; how we met Satan himself on the high road outside Cala and drove him off; how we were lost in the woods at Santa Olalla and found again at El Ronquillo; took useful advice from a vagabond at Las Nieves; and how I saw into the distant future, right to this time now, here, with you, when I succumbed to a fever at Guillena, but survived to tell the tale.
Unquestionably, it was the busiest week of my life.
When the Maro Caló announced, in our camp outside Esquivel, that they had business with Bartolome, King of the Gitano, in Córdoba, and that as a consequence our ways must part, I feigned regret, but secretly I could not be more pleased. I am quite sure, to this day, the fever was merely an exhaustion of my vital vapours after such strenuous banditry. Once I was recovered, we had a great feast of parting, and there were guests from King Bartolome, and from the underworlds, and overworlds, and other worlds. There I met the monster Diego Saldera, then appearing in the form of a lowly Spanish peasant, who said he had travelled with us on the road from Trujillo, though truly I could not remember him. Any suspicions of his character I may have had at that time went quickly out of my head, when he told me he had been to the Spanish Indies with Cristóbal Colón of Genoa. Eager for stories and bewitched by dreams of the New World, I was quickly in his sway, and delighted when he agreed to accompany me to Cadix. The next day, I took my leave of the Maro Caló, though not for all time, and resumed my way on the South Road.
Thence the road to Cadix was less troubled, without the attendant misadventures of the Maro Caló. Between Seville and El Cuervo I had only Saldera and his tales of the New World for company, and he was not inclined, at that time, to banditry, but rather set upon making the port and gaining passage back to the Indies. (On parting with the Maro Caló at Esquivel, the mystic Luys de Cañete had words with me, and broke the spell Saldera had laid upon me at the feast, so that I could see his truths and his lies, and his poison arts, and not be deceived). But he was useful in his way, for still I was not sure of the road, and map-reading was never my thing. By and by we came to El Cuervo and were joined by Mero and Zabarro (with whom you will speak soon enough) though this was not much to the liking of Saldera.
And so it is time for strong coffee and a break, and I need not tell you much more for now, save that we came to Cadix presently and unmolested, and found passage to Hispaniola in the Spanish Indies. We sailed from Cadix on a summer’s morning; Mero, Zabarro and Saldera were with me, and on that voyage I met Trutin, who is another of my present company. Torquemada was behind me, and not yet looking for me, though he may already have known my name. Certainly he would’ve met my mother by then, and what he made of her I do not know, though I can guess what she made of him, and I doubt very much it was complimentary. I had also heard no more of those gangrel brothers that had left Trujillo a few years before, so I was not yet aware that the Pizarros were ahead of me, raiding the great country of Bíru, with an extraordinary prize in their vice-like, leathered fighting hands.
