Ines of My Soul Read Online Free PDF Page A

recognizing each other. Neither that sturdy soldier, hardened by worldly travails, nor I, a young seamstress, could have divined all that fate held in store for us.
    Pedro came from a family of military men, noble but without means, whose exploits went back as far as battles against the Roman army in the years before Christ, continued for seven hundred years against the Saracens, and kept producing males of great character for the endless wars among Christian monarchs. His ancestors had come down from the mountains to settle in Extremadura. He grew up listening to his mother tell of the feats of the seven brothers of the Valle de Ibia, the Valdivias, who once engaged an awesome monster in bloody combat. According to this inspired señora, it was not an ordinary dragon—body of a lizard, wings of a bat, and two or three serpents’ heads—like the one Saint George slayed. This was a beast ten times larger and more ferocious, an ancient of centuries, which embodied all the evil of the enemies of Spain, from Romans and Arabs to the fiendish French, who in recent times had dared dispute the rights of our sovereign.
    â€œImagine, son! Us speaking French!” the good woman always interposed in her tale.
    One by one the brothers Valdivia fell, scorched by the flames the monster spewed from its gaping jaws, or mauled by its tiger claws. When six of the clan had perished and the battle was lost, the youngest of the brothers, the only one left standing, cut a heavy branch from a tree, sharpened it on both ends, and drove it into the beast’s maws. The dragon began to thrash about, mad with pain, and its formidable tail split the earth, raising a cloud of dust that reached to Africa. Then the hero took his sword in both hands and drove it into the dragon’s heart, thus liberating Spain.
    Pedro was descended in a direct maternal line from that youth, valiant among valiants, and as proof had two trophies: the sword, which had remained in the family, and the coat of arms on which two serpents on a field of gold were biting a tree trunk. The family motto was A Death Less Feared Gives More Life. With such ancestors, it was only natural that Pedro answered the call to arms at an early age. His mother squandered what remained of her dowry to outfit him for the undertaking: coat of mail and complete armor, a caballero’s weapons, a page, and two horses. The legendary sword of the Valdivias was a length of oxidized iron, heavy as a club, its only value decorative and historical, so she bought Pedro another of fine Toledo steel, flexible and light. With that sword, Pedro would fight in the armies of Spain under the banners of Carlos V; with it he would conquer the most remote kingdom in the New World; and with it, broken and bloody, he would die.
    Young Pedro de Valdivia, brought up by a doting mother, among books, went off to war with the enthusiasm of one who has seen nothing more gory than hogs butchered in the plaza, a brutal spectacle that attracted the entire town. His innocence lasted about as long as the brand-new pennant bearing his family coat of arms, which was shredded in the first battle.
    Among the tercios of Spain, Spain’s legendary infantry regiments, was another daring hidalgo, Francisco de Aguirre, who immediately became Pedro’s best friend. The former was as blustering and bellicose as the second was serious, although both were equally courageous. Francisco’s family was Basque in origin, but they had settled in Talavera de la Reina, near Toledo. From his earliest years, the young man showed signs of a suicidal boldness. He sought danger because he felt he was protected by his mother’s gold cross, which he wore around his neck. Hanging from the same thin chain he wore a reliquary containing a lock of chestnut hair belonging to the young beauty he had loved since childhood, a love that was forbidden because they were first cousins. Since he could not marry his true love, Francisco