About this story
Exile runs through a Seville indenture and shipwreck to Tenochtitlan, where you sweep a god's temple and stand before the captive Montezuma. At the sacrifice stone the princess Otomie claims you for a husband, and the drums change to the marriage measure. Thirty-eight chapters carry you through the empire's fall to a Norfolk font, marriage to Lily, and a window seat in old age.
How it opens
News of the Armada's defeat moved old Thomas Wingfield to record the youth behind his scars.
I must begin where vengeance entered our house if this record is to instruct anyone.
In memory you were nineteen again, learning medicine and planning a meeting beneath hawthorns.
Lily's Sunday hint named Wednesday and the early hawthorn blossom at Grubswell.
Juan de GarciaYou speak Castilian with a face that might have belonged to my country.
Juan de GarciaYour answer uses her language; now I must look more closely at your face.