Trilogy Martin Silvereye by Matilde Asensi

Author:Matilde Asensi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIX

In early November, when it became public knowledge that King Felipe the Third had decided to default on the Crown's repayments of the twelve million ducados which it owed to Europe's most powerful bankers, the people of Spain discovered to their horror that the Spanish Empire was once again completely bankrupt. Soon a rumor began to spread through the streets of Seville that the Crown wasn't going to pay the wages of the soldiers and sailors in the army and navy or the money it owed to its many suppliers, debts which by that stage had become huge and which were long overdue. At the same time, a serious drought had set in and the farmers had been forced to stop the sowing and planting of their land which they'd started in October. As a result, every sanctimonious blabbermouth and superstitious doomsayer in the city started to look for someone or something to blame for all the trials and tribulations, and a prime candidate soon emerged: a comet which had appeared in the night sky, up in the northwest, halfway through October. When the comet moved and began to be seen in the southwest, the same prophets of doom began to wail and moan about the inevitable string of disasters about to fall on the Empire and all its peoples. They organized religious processions to beg for rain, held masses for the King and for Spain, and endlessly said their rosaries for our poor impoverished regiments, especially those poor souls who were fighting in Flanders and were suffering terribly.

Señor Juan, like the typical Indies man fresh off the boat, didn't understand what the problem was.

'But the Tierra Firme Fleet just sailed in a fortnight ago with more than twelve million pieces of eight on board,' he pointed out. 'How can the Empire possibly be bankrupt? Who the hell walked off with all that money?'

I was so tired by then that I just couldn't face explaining to him the frankly inexplicable, so I left the task in Rodrigo's more than capable hands and went to my bedroom to rest. Rodrigo was much more interested in and much better informed about the complex affairs of the Imperial Treasury than I was and he never tired of criticizing the Crown for having debts of over twenty-two million ducados, a debt which was forever building up because of the interest charges and late payment penalties, and for continually raising the taxes that every city in Spain and most of its citizens were forced to pay, without any say in the matter, in order to finance the King's ever-increasing expenditure.

Over the next few days, while I spent every afternoon with my dressmaker, dreaming up new and ever more imaginative designs for the dresses she made me, Juan and Rodrigo, along with Juanillo, were wandering all over Seville looking for opportunities to make once-in-a-lifetime business deals, or so they told me, anyway. It was clear that Señor Juan didn't stop being a trader just because he'd traveled thousands of leagues from his home to do a favor for a friend.

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