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The Cervantes Trinity: A short story

31-03-04

INTRODUCTION

Like two rivers meandering to attain conflux, and the anticipated creation of a swift flow, the realms of history and fiction sometime meet as if searching for a greater, combined wisdom that can bring together reality and dreams, blending them and setting them in a universe of its own.

This is a story about three crusaders, two fictional and one real, who meet in real time while spanning thirty-two generations… from the time of the First Crusade (1099 A.D.) to the American Occupation of Iraq (2003 A.D.).

In this story, the real crusader, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, encounters at the aftermath of the Battle of Lepanto, atop La Marquesa, two other Cervantes crusaders… one, an ancestor from the First Crusade, and sixteen generations past; another, a progeny, from the Last Crusade, and sixteen generations into the future.

This year, as we celebrate the quadricentennial of Cervantes’ first publication of his Ingenioso Hidalgo (Don Quixote), we cannot help but marvel at both the universality and time-proofing of his genius. Perhaps… just perhaps those two fictional crusaders, persons sharing in his trinity, did contribute in some fictional measure to that genius.

Ben Tanosborn
February 2005

The Cervantes Trinity

One thousand leagues from Toulouse

Closer than three hundred feet from an anchored qarib at the docks of Joppa lies a shaking, moribund young man with his hands over his chest barricading a flat leather pouch from streams of blood spurting out, then submerging in, several locations of the mail hauberk that covers three-quarters of his body.

Scattered about him amidst small pools of blood are a badly dented conical helmet, a bronze cross and a wooden mace which does not appear to have seen much use. A betrayed noble crusader lanced more than a dozen times, not by Saracens but by men of his faith… just as he was about to give Alphonse a letter for his son.

Not yet twenty-five, he is dying one thousand leagues away from Toulouse, just three months after the capture of Jerusalem and what he’d hoped would bring him an early return home. He is dying… dying while brushing his thick vermilion over the canvas of the Holy Land, the soil of Palestine.

How lonely it must be… to die without being able to take a last glance, feel the warm touch, or hear the consoling voice of those you so love: Fernan and Marguerite, his beloved parents; Benedict and Elena, cherished uncle and aunt, inspirational mentors; and his offspring, Rodrigo. He cannot bring himself to think of the muse-goddess, Dulcia, the mother of his child. She had died giving birth with not yet sixteen Aprils, departing from his life with the serene face of a cherub, miraculously showing no pain.

Pictures from his past, and even some predating such past, are now vividly clear, as if the full moon over the empty docks were illuminating with greater brightness than that of the mid-summer sun. Everything is so perfectly, sequentially clear. Starting with the picture of his father, Fernan Cervantez, a Castilian knight who had accompanied El Cid’ army in its march towards Toulouse to defend the honor of King Ferdinand I of Castile against the German emperor. Fernan found good reason not to cross back the Pyrenees. After meeting the beautiful and noble Marguerite, with her golden ringlets and a sweet disposition, he would marry her and make Toulouse his home.

Miquel had always felt a great filial respect for Fernan, yet it was his mother that gave life to his senses, the true recipient of his love. From the earliest time he could remember, he understood her better than any of his siblings, and she found solace in that. But it was Benedict and Elena who provided the guidance and the inspiration he so much needed. Benedict, a cleric working in Toulouse’s great project, the construction of the church of St. Sernin, was Miquel’s source of counsel from the time he could remember, especially during his adolescent years. Priest, architect, man of letters, poet, and teacher nonpareil, Benedict had taught him just about everything he knew… and more important, he had instilled in him what he claimed to be the supreme virtue, one which God held in greater esteem than even faith itself, “that no one should follow what he considers to be good for himself, but rather what seems good to another.” That was, his uncle had told him, the essence of the rule of St. Benedict, the founder of monastic life six centuries earlier.

His uncle, growing up as Gilabert, had changed his name to Benedict when he joined the monastic order. Prior to that, he had studied under learned men in Paris, and at a very early age, because of his clear and disciplined mind, had been made abbot of one of the largest abbeys in Provence. Then he met Elena, his equal in mind, knowledge and diversity of interests; a woman at odds with both the times and the social order of things. Since celibacy and monastic life needed to go hand in hand, Benedict left the abbey and married Elena, setting up house in Toulouse, where he had been working on the St. Sernin project since Miquel was eight. Although his uncle had been concerned for Elena since the Synod of Melfi- where Urban II had contemplated imposing slavery on the wives of priests, deep inside Benedict knew he could weather any storm, for he was much needed at St. Sernin… if Toulouse were to be the focal point for pilgrimages choosing the southern route to Santiago.

With life stretching its last moments, memories are coming to Miquel of warm late summer evenings when he would accompany Elena to the gathering of grape pickers at Pere de Remi… and how they celebrated the end of the day sitting around the pebbled courtyard eating hard loaves of barley bread, dipped in a thick pottage, and drinking ale. Elena, as a reincarnate muse, always radiant, birthing magical sounds out of her viola and lute, and he, Miquel, consenting to requests for elocutions of poetry from Ovid and Catullus learned from his uncle Benedict. How he had felt as a troubadour under the protecting smile of Elena, and the admiring glances of those peasant girls… and their mothers!

Barely thirteen, he was then experiencing a change within him. Time of discovery, his uncle had told him. Not of sin, as most of his peers were describing it, but an awakening of the heart where concupiscence can cleanse itself in a virtuous person, unveiling the magic of love… love of life, love of women.

All those pleasant moments growing up had added to life without remorse or self-deprecation. His body, mind and spirit had walked in Roman military cadence, as his uncle would say. And that had been good, even if his dream of becoming a troubadour had met an end discouraged by Fernan and others in the family. Instead, at fourteen, his uncle had recommended him for an apprenticeship with an artist friend who had been commissioned to do ambulatory sculptures for St. Sernin.

A poet at heart, a minstrel in desire and then a worker of stone… that he had been… and now, approaching death, just a poet once again, composing this time the verses in mentis for his epitaph in Joppa.

Again, for a moment, the beautiful face of Dulcia, the enchantress daughter of an itinerant minstrel from Brindisi, reappears. The hypnotizing princess-child who had captured his heart the moment he saw her, the one he had made his bride a few days later. Then, the sorrowful pictures of how he had lost her nine months later giving birth to their son Rodrigo.

There were countless sad and lonely days after losing Dulcia, and at twenty he had felt denied and helpless before the Divine Providence. Fortunately, Benedict and Elena, childless in their union, were delighted to take Rodrigo as their own child, while Miquel entered service as a squire to Count Raymond of St. Gilles. He was to be in charge of the well-being of Lady Elvira, the Count’s wife.

Memories of the Count’s commitment to pope Urban II at Clermont four years before, and the preparations that took place in getting ready to follow this most prestigious baron on this first crusade, displayed themselves on the walls of Miquel’s mind as multicolored tapestries. Then, their departure from Provence with Deus vult (God wills it) becoming the marching song, the siren’s cry for landlubber mariners. He was leaving with the Count on the loftiest of quests, notwithstanding a personal desire to bring some pecuniary reward to his life so that upon his return he could give Rodrigo a better life than he could possibly give him now. That was the promise he had made to his son… he would be back before century’s end to renew their bond, and the prospect of a good life.

Image after image, in the hundreds, of that penurious trek covering more than one-thousand leagues and lasting three years, appear before him. At the end, the siege of Jerusalem, then its capture. Pictures of pillaging, suffering women and children, pestilence, famine, depravation, fear, anguish and self-gratification… that is all he sees, obscuring any moments that might bring triumph or glory for the soul. Christians were proving to be less humane, less charitable than the worst of Saracens, and hate had taken yoke with intolerance to the point where even the priests accompanying the crusaders preyed on the infidels as if they were beasts, instead of praying for their redemption. He can hear Raymond d’Aguiliers, the Count’s chaplain, glorifying the knee-deep blood and the killing that had taken place in the Temple and porch of Solomon. There would be no quarter to the unbelievers. “Saracens and Jews, all blasphemers, worse than wild animals” was the characterization in everyone’s lips… but not in Miquel’s. God would not accept such cruelty among his children. The rule of St. Benedict will stay with him until this his last day.

Still fresh in these dying moments is Hasdai’s picture, the old scholarly man who is the Jewish reflection of his uncle Benedict. He is now on his way back to Cordova. Miquel had saved the old man’s life when entering Jerusalem, a siege forcing a pause in Hasdai’s travels to Al-Andalus from Damascus, where he had learned new eastern ways of papermaking that he expected to introduce in Muslim-conquered Iberian lands.

Hasdai… may God afford him a safe trip! Prior to his clandestine departure for Cairo three days before, Hasdai had scribed for him on a special paper, coated on both sides with starch paste, a letter which he composed for his son. Not only did Hasdai know Arabic and Hebrew, but also Latin and Castilian; using the latter in the writing since it resembled so much the Occitan dialects. Miquel knew that Benedict would marvel at the rare and fine appearance of the paper, and to its excellent writing properties. It was his intention to give the letter to Alphonse, the Count’s son, who was to sail on the first leg of his trip to join his family in Provence.

That letter is still dry in the flat leather pouch over his chest. If only Alphonse could see him from the qarib and take it from his hands!

In the moving fog of these last moments of his life, the image of his assailants makes its way back. They are the same four crusaders that he had confronted a day after entering Jerusalem, as they tried to burn the bodies of several Jews in hopes they could retrieve some byzants, or other coins, perhaps even small jewels, from their stomachs and intestines. The crusaders had found the occasion to pay him back for his meddling, the price being death.

The full moon can no longer break through the thick fog that veils his eyes… Miquel is looking in the direction of the qarib, but it seems to have disappeared. In its place, a much larger, two-mast ship is making a regal entrance. It is time for his soul to leave the body, to ascend sixteen generations to the top deck of a ship named La Marquesa. A spirit, leather pouch in hand, began its brief, yet distant journey, escaping the closing of a century about to end, the eleventh of the Christian era.

[Thirty-two generations later, 500 miles away there is another soldier dying…]

A latter-day crusader

Mike’s eyes are closed and his writing fingers are empty, motionless… cooling as if a winter’s night was approaching at double time. Alone, in a crowded ICU bay at a military hospital in Baghdad, he deduces… but there is no sound, no voice to be heard… all five senses, at unison, have stopped working… gone, as is his pain. But his awareness is vivid, fully awake, opening the curtains to a memory in full regalia taking center stage.

Strangely to him, Mike recalls being brought in an ambulance brandishing a crescent moon. Clearly he remembers being shot several times while engaging in crowd control… friendly fire had been his initial assessment, but that is unimportant. In the card game that is war, friend and foe have the same dealer passing out the cards, and at the end only the house, death, comes through as the holder of the best odds. In his case, he has been dealt a final hand, for all his chips are on the table. After this, he is definitely going back to the States… either to recuperate from his wounds or be buried. The cards will render the verdict as they face up.

His senses are still, in optimal stupor; but his mind runs animated as if trying to tell him that time and life owe each other their existence. And Mike’s life replays itself one more time, giving time present a gift from time past.

Mike is the fourth of seven children born to an immigrant couple from somewhere in Mexico ’s heartland. Mike remembers his father telling him, and his siblings, how he had struggled as a civil servant for a short while but succumbed to the unmet basic economic needs that his homeland offered. How one day, he took his brand new bride on a two-week honeymoon to “Disneyland.” A very special Disneyland where there was no Fantasy Land, nor Magic Kingdom… only a distant, unfamiliar place of hope with a booth at its entrance dispensing only tickets to Opportunity Land. A two-week honeymoon touring the unwelcome sights through a border crossing and what seemed as an endless desert. That had been the only price of admission his father could afford to pay.

Attractive, perhaps handsome to some, Mike wears well his mother’s bronze skin and his father’s proud and clean airs. Ever since he can remember, growing up in the outskirts of Fresno, his hand has always held a pen, a sixth finger as his mother would call it, and both mind and six-fingered hand had performed as a melodic, never ending duet. From the time he was ten there had been poems to write, lyrics to accompany songs, stories to tell, messages to pass on to girls, and fleeting thoughts to trap and record… that is, when there was a pause in the family agrarian activities which Mike had coined as “pickfests.” Yes, a dedicated hand that would not tire but remain willfully enslaved to a fertile mind.

But as productive as his mind was, it was eclipsed by a bejeweled heart with a beat that traveled from a deep sense of compassion to a need for social justice… yet, never showing anger but equanimity. Mike understood people and loved them… sometimes for what they had, most often in spite of what they lacked.

After completing two years at a local community college, and barely twenty, Mike had made the decision to join the Army. “Be all you can be!” That was for Mike. By enlisting, he’d hoped to save enough money to allow him not only to complete his undergraduate studies, but also carry him through a doctoral program that would enable him to realize a two-pronged dream of teaching literature and writing… yes, writing! A passion which he felt was encased in a gene. His Cervantes gene from that great ancestor that was his, he would jokingly tell his friends… something that he so deeply wished to be true. Six years in the Army, he thought. Perhaps, just perhaps, he could even complete his Bachelor’s while in the service, expediting matters after his discharge from the military.

The world was going to be his, even if he had to take the longer path. So he settled into the task at hand. If soldiering was going to be the role in his life-play, then he was going to be the very best American soldier in uniform. Thrice in his first two years in the military he had been selected as “soldier of the month.” A record, he had been told. He was proud to be an exemplary man-of-arms, a disciplined footman to his officers, and to his commander-in-chief.

But all that happened during his first hitch, and now he was completing the first year of his reenlistment with scant savings- after taking care of some financial emergencies at home, and what was much worse, a distaste for the military… for the reality which first appeared as a beautiful white marble monument with the words God, Honor and Country inscribed with solid 24-karat gold letters right in front, had now become a mausoleum opening before his eyes, showing the inside of a sepulcher filled with decaying bones giving a stench of injustice and hypocrisy. It took this time in the front lines of Iraq to see the irrationality of it all.

He liked his fellow soldiers, for more often than not they were but mirrors where he could see himself in bi-cephalic images of fear and anguish… or perhaps it was anguish and fear. Not so sure that his respect and comradeship extended to his officers any more, and certainly not to those scoundrels in Washington who had willfully placed American forces there for what he felt were invalid, perhaps even amoral, reasons and not the noble patriotism that he had experienced when first enlisting.

It took some agonizing moments for Mike to realize that joining the Army had been a horrible, dehumanizing experience. But there was nothing he could do, it was forever too late. “One can find pride and honor in being a patriot, but never a mercenary,” he would keep telling himself time and again. More than once he had wondered if people back home had a clue as to what was going on in Iraq … and whether anyone had thought of putting up signs in the windows of those small shops of his Fresno barrio reading, “We Support Our Mercenary Troops.” Yet, he had never told his family how he felt, not wanting to disgrace them, and kept all the pain to himself. This pain was his down-payment to the United States for his parents’ illegal border crossing… and if full payment was demanded, he was ready to cancel the debt with his life.

Such was the way he felt eight thousand miles from his home in California.

As if in a last lament, Mike’s hearing makes an entrance to an almost inaudible penumbra… “Sergeant Cervantes is dead, proceed with notifications.” The Texas Hold’em five cards are now up spelling Dover. But that can not be really true, life cannot end this way. There are too many poems, essays, plays yet to be written… and that great novel! Don’t they know that vital signs cannot be read solely with the eyes? That the spirit is plugged only to emotions and feelings, not electronic boxes with judgmental numbers peering through their windows?

Mike’s spirit cannot become a deserter to his body, not yet. Perhaps the senses are all taking leave, their missions accomplished; and the organs are calling on a strike. Perhaps the body is about to answer earth’s call to dust conversion… but Mike’s soul stands fast by a body that had been, knowing that its end must not be like that of a Nubian slave buried alive with his dead king… that there is a new beginning yet to come for him.

As the plane carrying Mike’s body flies over the Peloponnesos en-route to Dover, a time warp helps parachute Mike’s spirit from the aerial caisson amid early twenty-first century clouds, crossing in its descent sixteen generations by the time it reaches the deck of La Marquesa, a galley sailing past the Gulf of Corinth on the night of October 7th.

[The Gulf of Lepanto awaits the arrival of Miquel and Mike]

Vermilion waters of Corinth

Hours after the battle had ended in Lepanto, over 400 ships, Christian and Turk, remain afloat spilling the monochromatic liquid from their thousands dead and wounded, rivulets of blood shaping paths along the decks, meeting the channels flowing to the waters of Corinth. The cool, bluish waters of early October 7 had, in but a few hours, reverted to their summer warmth, giving an eerie panorama as they changed in hue from the vermilion wide fringe at the waterline of the ships to the ochre waters in the distance as late afternoon sunrays filter through clouds of detonated gunpowder that had settled over the gulf.

Lying over a makeshift bed atop La Marquesa, is Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. He sees himself earlier that day, during the battle, watching Captain San Pedro at a raised fighting platform over the bow fall victim to an early salvo from an approaching enemy ship, leaving the fighting crew adrift of badly needed leadership. Delirious, feverish with malaria, Miguel continues fighting a battle already fought, haranguing once again the harquebusiers to fight on for Christianity and King Philip of Spain. It matters little that both his chest and left hand have been sprinkled with lead and iron shrapnel. He still fights from the center of the arrumbada with the fervor of those who had given their all for the defense and glory of Christendom. The last crusade might have ended almost three centuries before, but Miguel feels Lepanto to be another crusade, with himself as a self-anointed crusader, a defender of the faith and an infantryman for Hispania.

As night engulfs La Marquesa, the moans from the wounded on deck begin to abate, as if pain could be soothed by darkness, or was taking a pause, perhaps to come back with greater force in the morning. For Miguel, the night had lifted his fever some, bringing him to a state of consciousness where he can sense that the Turk had been beaten, and that he had given a good account of himself.

It had been two years since he left Spain running away from the law. His offense should not have been any more than a youth’s indiscretion, and Miguel felt that the two-year exile, combined with his bravery in battle, should have made amends. For the first time in a very long while, he appears to be in peace with himself. After the healing of his wounds in Messina, he is sure that Don John of Austria, the victorious young admiral, exactly his age, will give him a recommendation that he can take to the Court of Madrid… a passport, perhaps, to find his fortune in the Indies. At twenty-four, his future might be taking a lucky turn; an uncommon thing in his family… his thoughts now reliving the penuries experienced by his physician father, Rodrigo. The middle child among seven, Miguel sees himself tapping into luck that could exceed that reserved only for primogeniture.

His poetry, his writings… they all seem so far away. His still feverish lips move as if trying to recite that sonnet that he had written and dedicated to the Queen years before. Isabel de Valois had been dead now for two years, but the lines in his sonnet had made a permanent path between his heart and his lips. Lady Isabel will forever be his queen… exhausted, Miguel falls sleep.

Apparitions at La Marquesa

Not yet midnight on that memorable October 7, 1571 in the Julian calendar, and Miguel has entered into another round of his bout with high fever and delirium. His makeshift bed fastened to the foremast, the mainsail taking on wind in unannounced gusts, and a chorus of unceasing wailing being directed in almost total darkness, sets a ghostly stage atop La Marquesa.

Riding consciousness and unconsciousness in a teeter-totter of serene dreams and phantasmagoric apparitions, Miguel’s youthful body fights the infections from the wounds received earlier that day in battle, only the unyielding sharp pain restraining him from losing his sanity.

Both Dante’s inferno and Mount Parnassus are visited by Miguel’s mind as if they were one and the same place, a revolving door leading, either to a chamber full of suffering and endless expiation, or to a valley of serenity carved atop a mountain… with sounds of paradisiacal poetry to nurse the mind, and the rapturous awakening of the senses.

Miguel’s half-opened eyelids persist in censuring life around him, brushing both reality and dream into a picture that while being neither is both. But then, his eyelids seem to telescope his pupils to the center of the sail. The figure of a Maltese cross appears adorning the canvas… no; it could not be his galley!

But it is not a Maltese cross that is getting nearer and nearer to him… it is a bronze cross slowly marching towards him with the silhouette of a long-ago crusader behind it, without helmet, hauberk, sword or mace… only a flat leather pouch anchored to the blood-tainted palms of two supplicant hands. As if an offering were being made.

“A letter for my son Rodrigo,” comes as a whisper to Miguel’s ear, spoken in a strange yet understandable language that resembles Valencian or Catalan. A crusader lost in time… a soul in penance perhaps? Miguel searches for and finds the strength to reach for the pouch, extracting three folded parchments destined for someone bearing his father’s name, Rodrigo.

The darkness in the night skies breaks in two with a silent snap, and a full moon appears with all its light condensing into a laser which becomes a cursor for Miguel’s eyes as they travel the lines of eleventh century Castilian in a message of love and erudite counsel written almost five-hundred years earlier. It reads:

Beloved Rodrigo, my son:

You had yet to take your first steps, or utter your first words when I left you thirty-nine full moons ago.

Dreams bring you to me when my waking thoughts, where you are always present, come to their daily repose. There I see you as a sprouting, healthy child with all the doting virtues of an angel sent by God to take the place here on earth of your mother, Dulcia. You are forever in my company as is the bronze cross gracing my hauberk.

I pray that I will get to hold you in my arms before another ten full moons come to pass; before the next harvest of grapes at Pere de Remi; before the yellow clover over your mother’s tomb surrenders its gold to the cold of autumn.

I miss all of you so much… the love, the companionship, the belonging. And in my loneliness, when my heart is ailing, I miss the wisdom of Uncle Benedict where my soul always found refuge.

Many are the times when I shiver, afraid that I might not be able to cover the thousand leagues to Toulouse, afraid there will be a thousand demons setting traps along the way. It is this fear that brings me to send you this letter with Alphonse. A letter which I pray will herald my homecoming… but if God does not wish it to be so, let it be my last will and testament for you.

There are few worldly things in my possession that on my passing could ease your life as you grow up, but I am thankful that Elena and Benedict will see that both your body and your mind will receive the sustenance owed the noblest prince. I am in peace with the thought that your needs will be provided for, and for that I thank the Lord.

As you grow, I pray that you listen to your heart first, and never allow lust, envy, or personal desires to rule any of your actions. Welcome the admonitions of men of good will, but let your heart and mind determine who in God’s eyes such men might be. Let Uncle Benedict be your guide, the eyes and ears for your soul. Ask him about the rule of St. Benedict, the path to peace and brotherhood.

Beware of men who claim to be bearers of compassion, for those who truly love their fellow man will speak only with good works and be meek in composure, hiding from recognition or gratitude from others.

Refuse to pay homage to hypocrites quick in defining good and evil, usurping the right of God with arrogance equal to that of Lucifer and his band of dark angels.

Be what your heart demands and make good use of your talents, always sharing them with everyone so that others may drink from that fountain and quench their thirst. Give all that is in you and take little, only what you must.

After this long pilgrimage through distant lands, I have found, my son… that only those with a pure heart can claim to be victors in battle. Neither my sword, nor my mace, nor my fervor as a Christian gave me the strength which I needed to win the unending battle being fought inside of me. It was always the constant renewal of vows to live by the rule of St. Benedict which gave me peace, allowing me to endure the many sins against God and man that surrounded me.

Uncle Benedict will tell you that I am not a heretic when I consider Saracens and Jews brothers all, and not sons of Lucifer. My son, these people, so different from us in beliefs and in the way they carry their lives, are not evil but creatures of God just like us, deserving of love and respect. Those who in power proclaim otherwise, emperors they or princes of the church, represent but our demonic instincts, not righteousness, and are the true heretics before the Lord.

It is my hope that Lady Elvira will wish to leave soon for Toulouse. I pray that it will be so, and find comfort in the thought that your prayers will also be for our early departure so that we may all embrace and feast on a long-awaited reunion. So many stories to tell and such eagerness in my desire to tell them to you!

I beg of you, Benedict, my confessor and teacher, to take care of my son, help him keep a clear mind and a pure heart.

God be with you, my son… and with the family I so deeply love and honor. It is in His power that I might see you soon… scribed by Hasdai as recited by Miquel Cervantez on the 75th day after the capture of Jerusalem, Year of the Lord 1099.

Miguel takes his eyes off the parchment and searches for a face over the cross that had guided the messenger… but sees nothing as the skies suddenly close, making the full moon a point of darkness. The parchments in his hands are no more, nor are cross or silhouette to confirm the moment… even the wind had ceased to be without mustering the slightest murmur upon its retreat.

A messenger-crusader from almost five centuries before has, by the grace of God, found reincarnation in a Cervantez progeny who can give life to his poems, and put a face of wisdom to a minstrel’s soul.

Wide awake now, if only for a moment, Miguel realizes he is surrounded by wounded comrades-at-arms whose moans resound fore-and-aft in the pitch-dark of the night with crisp and clear tones. As if sight and sound were intertwined in such a way that the absence of one increases proportionately the presence of the other.

The wind becomes animated as if answering a call to relieve the decimated crew of soldier-oarsmen manning only nine of the twenty pairs of rowing benches… allowing the sails to take charge, giving the oarsmen a much-needed rest.

Portside, at the distance, bonfires begin to appear long before La Marquesa reaches the longitude of Patrai. Turk survivors, no doubt, searching for and finding safe harbor after their defeat. The waters in the channel, now clear of martial flotsam and blood dye, begin to reflect the reappearing full moon. Lepanto has been left behind but both pain and memories are continuing ahead, at the speed of the sails, in an illuminated, ghostly galley walking the waters of the Peloponnesian coast towards the Ionian Sea.

A strong wind which pays in full for the oarsmen’s rest brings to Miguel’s feverish mind the forceful reminder of a sentence given to him in absentia for the wounding of a rival in a senseless dispute. The reading of the judgment in default against him two years before in Spain is now being shouted to the four winds, right in front of him, by a herald from the high seas recounting the stern sentence: “That publicly, in shame, the right hand be cut away, and be exiled for ten years.” Agitated, in cold sweat, Miguel asks for mercy: “I have just lost the use of my left hand defending Christendom, how can I be asked to give up my right one, Lord? Is my punishment eternal, never to write anymore?”

An answer to Miguel’’s question is received… not from the heavens above, but from a young man in strange attire who has just landed softly from the skies above, placing himself right next to his bed wearing a placid smile over a handsome, copper-tinted face.

“I will give you my right hand, if such punishment must be met,” speaks Miguel’s bedside companion in a strange, yet understandable Castilian dialect. “I am Mike Cervantes, perhaps a progeny of yours from sixteen generations into the future… I come from a place you call the Indies and, like you, it is my desire to become a writer, a painter of human feelings and emotions,” the stranger proclaims as an introduction.

Now, the apparition of Miquel before does not seem so far-fetched. Perhaps past and present can meet with the aid of some divine intervention… but someone coming to him from the futu to the past, why couldn’t there be a future for you that is past or present for me?” inquisitively reasons Mike, guessing Miguel’s thoughts by the expression on his face.

“I am a crusader from what I pray to have been the very last crusade,” Mike continues, “a crusade where I lost my life and, more important, my willingness to do unnecessary battle against my fellow man.

“I come to you from the twenty-first century. Like you, I am a soldier. Like you, I serve a king of sorts. Like you, I have found that bearing arms may be the means to attain an unpopular end. But, unlike you, I have not been allowed to continue on, to fulfill both my dreams and my obligations. That is why I must entrust my spirit to you, so that I may live and contribute from a little corner inside your mind where I can be granted abode,” explains the Mike-apparition to a bewildered Miguel.

“There is much I can offer since, as your future, I have walked your on-going present by way of history books, aware of many imaginative nooks and crannies, able to guide you there. And there is much you can do to fulfill my dreams…,…” the voice pronounces as it disappears into the increasing darkness as both the moon and the bonfires slowly begin to fade.

In total sensory disconnect, Miguel doesn’t know how to cope with this Icarus who has landed so far from the Aegean. The spirit of a crusader from the Indies is asking him for shelter, just like the spirit of the Provencal crusader before. Confused and delirious, Miguel loses all ties to his surroundings in La Marquesa and to anything that has happened to him; real or hallucinatory… all to become erased, an irremediably, hermetically sealed dream never to be remembered.

While his body is fighting to stay alive, Miguel’s recondite mind comes to a spiritual heat ready to be impregnated by the Cervantes’ semen thirty-two generations in the making. An orgasmic moment was taking place atop La Marquesa, that would bear incredible fruit for over two score.

The Cervantes genius-torch has been lit, able to illuminate beyond the confines of cultures or the limitations imposed by time and epochs. Miguel has engendered within him the talent of a master painter of life; one who can transfix past, present and future on a literary canvas, doing it with every touch of the genial brush, irrespective of color, shape or magical thrust necessary to give the required human dimension.

The journey continues for three days and nights towards Sicily with Miguel submitting to an almost continual state of unconsciousness, unaware of his surroundings or the Cervantes trinity within him.

It is late-morning in a cloudy mid-October day when La Marquesa sets anchor in Messina with dozens of wounded soldiers, crusaders all from the Battle of Lepanto. Among them is a proud young Spaniard, a yet-to-be recognized prodigious son of that great Complutum, who is being carried ashore escorted by the spirits of two past crusaders… from the First and Last crusades.

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