Free Cervantes Street by Jaime Manrique

could join us. I had seen de Sigura around; he was an engineer who had arrived in Madrid to work for the court, building new roads. De Sigura lost a considerable amount of money quickly, then Miguel refused to keep playing. The inevitable insult came, Miguel wounded de Sigura, and he became a fugitive. My plan had worked! The way he was living his life, it would not be long before Miguel was a dead man.
    I left for Toledo at dawn the day after Miguel escaped from Madrid; tumultuous emotions raging inside me. As the golden rays of the rising sun began to warm me up, I felt myself slowly returning to my own life. Sunlight intensified the starkness of the rocky soil of Castile, which spread endlessly toward the south. It made me think of the corrugated skin of a monstrous dragon left out to dry in the open. Flocks of partridges flew above the woods in thick brown clouds, then disappeared in the thicket of low encinas. An intoxicating smell infused the air, as if the earth released it to awaken all the creatures of La Mancha. It was the same smell of rosemary and sweet marjoram from my grandmother’s herb garden in Toledo.
    Though now I hated Miguel, my most fervent wish was not that he would get caught, but that he would manage to escape to the Indies, that he would settle in a foreign land, far away from Castile, and from Mercedes. It would be even better if he died on the other side of the world.
    As Toledo appeared in the distance, I held back the reins and sat still atop my horse. The pale morning light spilling upon the hills and fields of La Mancha painted them terra-cotta. It was a sight that only a painter could capture. It wouldn’t be until many years later, when El Greco settled among us, that an artist existed who could do justice to those skies.
    The windmills in the distance, crowning the hills of reddish soil and limestone, resembled giants awakening, rotating their arms to shake off the morning stiffness, preparing to guard La Mancha for the rest of the day, ready to hold back any invading hordes from the wild, unchristian world that lay to the south—where Miguel was heading, and where he truly belonged, because in Castile he would always be an interloper, never one of us.
    By providing Miguel with ample funds for his escape, I had done the honorable thing—even though he didn’t deserve it. Fray Luis de León’s verses, which I had read in a copy of a manuscript that circulated in Madrid among poetry lovers, echoed in my mind:
     
    I want to live by myself
    to enjoy alone, without witnesses,
    the blessings heaven bestows on me
    free from false love, from jealousy
    from hatred, suspicion, and illusive hopes . . .
     
    Realizing my happiness with Mercedes would forever be in jeopardy as long as Miguel was around, I made a promise to myself: If Miguel de Cervantes ever again returns to Castile, I swear to destroy him.

Chapter 3
    Lepanto
    1571
    Once we had crossed the Pyrenees, where they taper off at the shoreline of the Mediterranean, I felt optimistic that I could make it to Italy. I put all my hopes on an invitation Cardinal Giulio Acquaviva had extended to me to visit him in Rome. Perhaps he would help me out of respect for his friendship with my professor. It had been a defining stroke of luck to become the protégé of Professor López de Hoyos, a man of personal integrity who seemed to have read all the great books. His belief in my talent gave wings to my ambition. “Reach for the highest stars in the literary firmament, Miguel. Aim for no less!” he had said to me on a number of occasions.
    At the recommendation of my professor, Cardinal Acquaviva had asked to see some of my poems. He was only a few years older than me, but his tall, aristocratic presence; his aura of power; his worldly manners; the precision and elegance of his speech; his white, soft hands and elongated musician’s fingers garnished with impressive blood-red stones that matched the hue of the princely vestments he wore—it all