God Carlos by Anthony C. Winkler

Author:Anthony C. Winkler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, book, General Fiction
ISBN: 9781617751394
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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The alcade, an official roughly equivalent to a governor, was responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of a new colony as well as for ensuring that the Crown received its share of any discovered wealth.

At the time of the arrival of the Santa Inez in 1520, the appointed alcade of Sevilla la Nueva was one Juan Caro, a brownnoser from Castile who had lobbied hard for an administrative position in a colony of the New World. He had done so in the mistaken belief that to be an alcade in the Indies would shower him with glory and renown. Wild rumors about the vast wealth of the Indies were then in circulation throughout Spain, and every young man with an adventurous heart hungered for a colonial posting.

A lanky man with a potbelly incongruous for one of his build, Juan Caro had gotten his position in a way commonplace for the times—through his connections to the court of Charles I, grandson of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, the original sponsors of Columbus’s explorations.

Juan Caro had said a word about his ambition to an important uncle who was owed a large sum of money by a spendthrift grandee highly placed among the brilliant courtiers who kept the twenty-year-old Charles I amused. The uncle murmured to the indebted courtier, who whispered to his mistress, who breathed the name of Juan Caro to the wife of the official on the board in charge of employing the alcades, and through this capillary seepage of influence, the appointment was secured.

It was an act that Caro bitterly regretted. He had been at the post now for eighteen months and had never detested a country or people more passionately. He was not enchanted by the lush green fields or the rolling hills or the loveliness of the clear blue ocean. The gentleness of the Indians he regarded as laziness and weakness. Nothing about his position interested him, and he had already begun the reverse process of having himself recalled through the same uncle’s influence.

De la Serena found the alcade squatting morosely behind a desk made of rough-hewn lumber, his office little more than a dark burrow in a building that seemed to slump against the hillside. Caro knew the name and reputation of de la Serena, for like every brownnoser then or now, he had a keen nose for the smell of money and could tell that the elderly man sitting before him was rich. Trying his best to disguise his hatred of his present life, the alcade struggled to be cordial.

“You mean to tell me, señor, that you sailed all the way from Spain to this godforsaken island for no other reason but sightseeing?” Caro exclaimed with astonishment after listening to de la Serena’s jumbled tale about having the desire to see the New World before he died.

De la Serena glanced around the empty room as if he suspected that eavesdroppers lurked nearby.

“No, señor,” he whispered as though he told a shameful secret, “I do have another reason.

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