Free The Empire of Yearning by Oakland Ross

antechamber with cracked plaster mouldings. The carpets were badly worn, and a dark gelatinous substance clung to the ceiling in one corner, dripping a viscous liquid onto the floor. Diego took a seat in a wobbly ladder-back chair. He sniffed suspiciously at the air.
    “Black mould,” said Salm-Salm. “I’m surprised the place is still standing.”
    Diego shrugged. No wonder the Europeans were desperate to leave.
    “You have spoken to Ángela Peralta, I take it,” said Salm-Salm.
    Diego frowned. “Why do you say that?”
    “To judge by the condition of your hand.”
    “Ah yes. Yes, I have.”
    “I fear you must be in some pain.”
    “A subjective notion.”
    “Not in my experience.”
    Diego took a deep breath and, without additional formalities, he recited all that he had learned from Ángela. He focused especially on Salm-Salm’s desire that she renounce her son. “Is it true?”
    The prince settled back into his creaking swivel chair. He set the heels of his shoes atop an ancient wooden desk, crossing his legs at the ankles. He exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke that coiled into the murky light. He smiled at Diego for what seemed an inordinately long time. Only then did he speak. It was, of course, well known, he said, that Maximilian and Charlotte were without offspring, despite seven years of marriage. Naturally, the empress craved a child, and for all the usual reasons,having nothing to do with establishing a line of succession and everything to do with what many a woman in the prime of her child-bearing years might reasonably feel.
    Diego tried to remain quiet. What he really wanted was a shouting match, not a civilized conversation, but he understood that a shouting match would accomplish little, as gratifying as it might be. “They cannot produce a child on their own?” he said.
    “Well, they haven’t managed it yet, after seven years. Make of that what you will.”
    “What do you make of it?”
    The prince gazed about the room, then looked back at Diego. He lowered his feet to the floor. He leaned closer, his complexion seeming paler than ever. Did the man not go out in the sun?
    “Most people believe that Max is the party at fault,” he said in what was almost a whisper. He explained that Maximilian had made a journey to Brazil several years earlier to visit his cousin, Dom Pedro II, who was emperor of that distant and mysterious land. It was rumoured that, while there, Max had conducted an amorous affair with a Brazilian woman of a certain station, a woman who frequented the court. He had thereby contracted an unidentified infirmity that had left him sterile, or so it was said.
    “Tit for tat,” said Salm-Salm. He sat back. “We gave you smallpox. You give us syphilis.”
    When Diego failed to react, he smiled.
    “A joke.”
    Still Diego said nothing.
    The prince briefly contemplated his cigarette. Whatever its cause, he said, the condition seemed to be of a permanent nature, and it imperilled the future of what Salm-Salm now grandly referred to as the Second Mexican Empire. The first Mexican empire had of course consisted of the brief reign of Agustín de Iturbide, grandfather of Ángela’s son.
    “Bastard son,” said Diego. “The child is a bastard.”
    “Not at all.” Salm-Salm rose to his feet and began to pace about theroom. “Nothing of the sort. The couple are married. All perfectly legal. Who knows what Iturbide was thinking? A moment of weakness? An attack of remorse? Maybe he was drunk. But he and Ángela Peralta were married in New York City. I possess an affidavit sworn out by an attorney of the firm Tweed, Bascombe, attesting to this fact. It is all quite in order.”
    Diego waved dismissively, as if this were nothing to him now. “Where is Iturbide?”
    “Oh, God knows.” Salm-Salm gestured in the air with his cigarette. “Still out whoring with showgirls, I imagine, in New York or Madrid. The marriage with Ángela Peralta was a deceit from the beginning. Still,