Ashes of the Peacock

Posted on Mon Jun 2nd, 2025 @ 7:33am by Rear Admiral Rebecca Talon
Edited on on Mon Jun 2nd, 2025 @ 7:36am

1,709 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Legacies
Location: Spain
Timeline: March and June 1621

Rain pelted the windows of the study. Francisco de Sandoval y Rojas, the 1st Duke of Lerma, sat in silence with another man sharing a bottle of wine. The study was dim, and shadows fell over the shelves of leather-bound volumes of Seneca, Tacitus, and decrees of the Council of Trent, lining the walls. The firelight from the hearth danced across gold-leaf titles and the polished wood of the carved writing desk, a gift from Philip III himself.

“What needs to be said is not fitting for the ears of our retainers or servants,” the other man said softly, glancing toward the tapestried door where two liveried guards stood.

Lerma stared at his guest with a raised eyebrow over his silver chalice embellished with the Cross of Santiago. After a long moment of consideration, he sighed. “Leave us.”

The retainers of both men glanced at their patrons, and at last they turned and filed out of the study, their boots clumping heavily on the wooden floor. The only sound was the crackling of the fire.

“You have gotten old, Lerma,” the other man said, breaking the silence. “But I remember how you used to strut the halls of the palace like a peacock.”

A low chuckle followed. “You were just a boy back then. We are both a long way from Philip III’s court.”

“But you had his favor.”

“And you,” Lerma replied, his tone dry and sharp, “seem to have earned the new king’s.” He paused, then added with a hint of venom, “Don’t pretend your motives are altruistic, Olivares. I may have lost Madrid’s favor, but I still know how the game of chess is played.”

Olivares grunted and sipped his wine. He stroked the point of his beard as he considered Lerma, whose mustache and beard were graying. This was a man of excess who was now past his prime and a continued embarrassment for Spain.

“Why are you here?” Lerma demanded his voice heavy with suspicion.

Olevares leaned in, his voice smooth like silk and cutting like a dagger. “It’s about your son… The Bastard, not Uceda. However, Cristóbal is probably a bastard, too, given your proclivities.”

Lerma bit the inside of his lip. Olivares was trying to get under his skin, and he would not give the boy the satisfaction. He drained the chalice in one slow pull, already regretting he'd offered the good wine. His station demanded it, but some men weren’t worth a cup of piss in a chamber pot.

“I assume you are speaking of Juan Francisco,” Lerma said at last.

“It’s curious that you gave him your name,” Olivares observed, helping himself to more wine and filling Lerma’s as well.

“He is my son. There are few things in the world I can give him, a name is one, a military commission is the other.” Lerma stood and paused at the window, staring into the rainy spring night. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the growing fields of grain.

“A display of arrogance, and of the power you once had. A lesser man would never dare to risk it. Your old patron is gone, not that he’d protect you now. You’ve fallen hard, Lerma. And I intend to make sure you don’t rise like a phoenix. But I have my own interests to protect.”

Lerma turned to face Olevaris, his eyes locked on the other man like a knight in a joust. “Which are?”

“The Bastard is making a name for himself. Instead of dying, like I’m sure you hoped, he helped secure our victory at White Mountain. His name is being spoken in Madrid and in Vienna as a hero of the faith.

He let his words hang in the air as the fire crackled, ignorant of the political intrigue being played out. “A name that resurrects old rumors. Ones involving you and a certain Austrian princess.”

Lerma turned back to the window, sadness and pain etched into his aging features. Juan’s mother had been a kind soul, beautiful and gentle in a way court life seldom allowed. He had never truly loved his wife; an arrangement forged in the cold, calculating world of politics. And though it did not justify his betrayal, he could not bring himself to regret Maria Anna. Not even now.

“What does that have to do with me?” Lerma asked at last. “I’m already disgraced, what’s one more scandal?”

Olivares gave a careless shrug. “Did you know your bastard married a camp follower? A nurse, apparently. Some woman who pulled him from death’s door. It’s all very romantic, if you're writing a play. Less so if you're preserving dynasties.” He sipped his wine. “Your position is precarious, Lerma. Every rumor, every misstep; each one adds another arrow to your son’s quiver.”

Lerma grunted, but said nothing.

Olivares leaned forward, setting his silver cup on the nearby table, firelight gleaming on the polished silver surface.“You want to know why I’m here?” he said, voice low. “I cannot cleanse the court of the old king’s rot while your bastard’s name echoes through its halls. I cannot kill him, not with Habsburg blood in his veins and whispers that he is kin to the king himself. But I also cannot allow him to rise, married to some common strumpet, as if he belongs among us.”

Lerma narrowed his eyes, studying his foe. “I'm not getting any younger.”

Olivares laughed and stood up, digging into his fine silk tunic to remove a scroll of paper with a wax seal. “The Bastard must go. The King will honor his heroism with exile to the farthest reaches of our realm.”

Lerma swallowed, taking the scroll and flicking off the royal seal with his thumb. He read the decree, lips pressed into a thin line. “The New World.”

Olivares smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It was as fake as his loyalty. Lerma wanted to reach out and wrap his fingers around the other man’s neck. To see the life drain from the man whom he couldn’t trust any farther than he could throw him. He was a manipulator and only loyal to one man, Olivares.

“It’s a generous grant of land near the northern frontier village of Santa Fe. Remote. Untamed. A place fitting for a man of his... ambiguous station.” He turned slightly, as if admiring the fire. “And who knows? The savages may yet do what politics and war could not. Oh, and one more thing—” He glanced back over his shoulder. “You will fund his journey. Not the crown. He’s your bastard, Lerma, not Spain’s burden.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wind swept through golden wheat stalks, carrying the scent of damp earth and ripening grain. These rolling fields had fed the people of Iberia long before Rome’s legions marched across them. The soil had drunk the blood of Spanish defenders and Moorish invaders alike. Birds black against a cloudless sky soared over the Spanish Road.

Two figures appeared over a bend in the road astride magnificent horses. One was glossy black with a white blaze, the other white and spotted with black. Astride the black was a young man with a wide-brimmed hat and a gleaming curass, lacy white collar, and puffy red trousers. A sword hung from his belt, and a cumbersome matchlock musket rested across the pommel of his saddle.

Beside him rode a young woman, also in her early twenties, with blonde hair poking out from beneath a simple linen cap. She wore a plain homespun dress of deep brown and a linen apron that had once been white, now dulled by long use. Though she bobbed with the horse’s motion, her posture was proud, back straight, and piercing blue eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead.

Juan Francisco de Sandoval glanced over at the woman and smiled at her, then reached across between them with his free hand, his tanned fingers intertwining with hers, which were lighter and calloused. “We are almost there, mi amor.”

She smiled and spoke in broken Spanish, her words thickly accented in the Germanic tongue. “How are your wounds?”

Juan sighed and shifted in his saddle, a grunt of pain escaping his lips. “They pain me greatly, but I will endure. It is my father who troubles me.”

He paused, frowning at the horizon. Then, in German, he added, “My father has never shown true concern for me. I was always a problem. A scandal that shadowed his name. The bastard son of a Spanish duke and an Austrian princess... My death would be more convenient than my return.”

“And yet he calls for you,” Sarah said.

“It’s no coincidence he summons me now, after hearing of our vows. To wed a common camp follower?” Juan scoffed, shaking his head. “It’s one final insult to a proud man who once held the King’s favor. He was a man who wielded nearly as much power with the stroke of a pen as with His Majesty’s ear. But he’s fallen, disgraced in Madrid these past few years, and I see no path back for him under Philip IV.”

“That’s when men like him often look to the past and try to rectify their mistakes,” Sarah observed.

Juan grunted. She was right, of course. He had planned to rejoin the army that summer, after convalescing through the winter with the Müllers. When his duty was done, he had no intention of returning to Spain. He meant to make a life in his mother’s homeland, perhaps as a farmer. It didn’t matter what he did, so long as Sarah was with him.

They crested a hill, and below them, nestled along the banks of a narrow river, lay the city of Lerma. Its white walls and terracotta roofs glowed faintly beneath a beautiful cloudless sky, surrounded by fields of green and amber. The Ducal Palace loomed over the northern edge, still and imposing.

“Whatever his motivations are,” Juan said at last, with a mixture of resignation and dread, “we’ll soon find out.”

 

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