The King's Gold

ALSO BY ARTURO PÉREZ-REVERTE

The Flanders Panel

The Club Dumas

The Seville Communion

The Fencing Master

The Nautical Chart

The Queen of the South

Captain Alatriste

Purity of Blood

The Sun over Breda

The king’s gold / Arturo Pérez-Reverte ; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa.

To Antonio Cardenal,

for ten years of friendship, movies, and fencing

What do we gain from it all? A little glory?

Some rich rewards, or merely boredom?

You’ll find out if you read our story.

GARCILASO DE LA VEGA

1. THE HANGED MEN OF CÁDIZ

The reason we are brought so low is that those who should honor us instead conspire against us. Once, it was enough merely to brandish the word “Spaniard” for all to tremble; now, for our sins, that reputation is almost lost.

I closed the book and looked where everyone else was looking. After several hours without a breath of wind, the Jesús Nazareno was finally heading into the bay, driven by the westerly breeze now filling the creaking mainsail. Grouped along the deck of the galleon, in the shadow of the great sails, soldiers and sailors alike were pointing at the corpses of the English, which either adorned the walls of Santa Catalina castle or hung from gallows erected on the shore, along the edge of the vineyards that face out to sea. They resembled bunches of grapes ripe for harvesting, except that these grapes had been harvested already.

“Curs,” growled Curro Garrote, spitting into the sea.

He had greasy, grimy skin, as did we all: soap and water were in scarce supply on board, and after the five-week voyage from Dunkirk via Lisbon, bringing home the soldiers from the war in Flanders, the lice were the size of chickpeas. Garrote bitterly stroked his left arm, rendered almost useless by the English at Terheyden, and gazed in satisfaction at the San Sebastián sandbank, where, opposite the chapel built next to the lighthouse, lay the smoking remains of a ship that the Earl of Leicester himself had ordered to be burned, with as many of his own dead on board as he could find, before reembarking on another ship and fleeing with those who had survived.

“They paid a heavy price,” someone said.

“And would have paid a still heavier one,” said Garrote, “if we’d gotten here in time.”

He would gladly have strung up some of those bunches of grapes himself. The English and the Dutch, as arrogant and full of themselves as ever, had attacked Cádiz the week before, with one hundred fifty warships and ten thousand men, determined to sack the city, set fire to our ships in the bay, and seize the treasure fleet that was due to arrive from Brazil and New Spain. In his play The Girl with the Pitcher, the great Lope de Vega began his famous sonnet thus: The Englishman bold, armed only with trickery, Thinking the lion of Spain asleep in his lair . . .

And that was precisely how the Earl of Leicester had arrived, the typical cunning, cruel, piratical Englishman—however much the people of that nation may hide behind privileges and hypocrisy. He disembarked a great many soldiers and succeeded in taking the Fort of Puntal. At the time, neither the young Charles I nor his minister Buckingham had forgiven the rebuff received when the former had wanted to marry a Spanish infanta, who kept him waiting around in Madrid for so long that he finally lost patience and returned to London with his tail between his legs. I’m referring to the episode, which I’m sure you’ll remember, when Captain Alatriste and Gualterio Malatesta came within an ace of putting a hole in the young king’s doublet. However, unlike the day thirty years before when Cádiz was plundered by the Earl of Essex, God chose otherwise this time: our men were armed and ready, the defense was hard-fought, and the soldiers of the Duque de Fernandina were joined by the inhabitants of Chiclana, Medina Sidonia, and Vejer, as well as by any infantrymen, horses, and old soldiers who happened to be at hand, and thus we Spanish gave the English a sound drubbing, and the English hindered our efforts only by spilling a great deal of their own blood. After much suffering and having advanced not one inch, Leicester hurriedly reembarked when he realized that what he could see hoving into view was not the treasure fleet but our galleons, six large ships and a few smaller vessels, Spanish and Portuguese—for, at the time, thanks to the great King Philip’s inheritance from his mother, Spain and Portugal shared both empire and enemies—each one equipped with good artillery, and carrying veterans coming home on leave and infantrymen from now disbanded regiments, all of them battle-hardened men from the war in Flanders. When our admiral was given the news in Lisbon, he had set off for Cádiz under full sail.

The heretics’ sails, however, were now nothing but tiny white dots on the horizon. We had passed them at a distance the previous evening, limping home after their failed attempt to repeat their good fortune of 1596, when all Cádiz burned and when they had plundered even the libraries. It’s amusing really how the English make such a fuss about the defeat of what they, with heavy irony, refer to as our Invincible Armada, and about Essex and so on, but they never mention the occasions on which they came off worst. Poor Spain may have been an empire in decline, with more than enough enemies eager to dip their bread in the sauce and mop up the gravy, but the old lion still had teeth and claws enough to go down fighting before its lifeless body was shared out amongst the crows and the merchants, whose Lutheran and Anglican duplicity—Devil take them—never seemed to have any problem combining their worship of a very indulgent God with piracy and profit, for, amongst heretics, being a thief had become one of the respected liberal arts. If one were to believe their chroniclers, we Spaniards made war and enslaved people purely out of pride, greed, and fanaticism, while those who murmured about us behind our backs, they, of course, plundered and trafficked and exterminated in the name of liberty, justice, and progress. But that, alas, is the way of the world. What the English left behind them on this occasion were thirty ships lost at Cádiz, many colors brought low, and a large number of dead on land—about a thousand, not counting the stragglers and drunks whom our men mercilessly hanged from the city walls and from the gallows erected in the vineyards. This time their plan blew up in their faces, the whoresons.

Beyond the forts and the vineyards we could see the city with its white houses and turrets tall as watchtowers. As we rounded the bastion of San Felipe, when the port finally came into view, we could already scent the earth of Spain the way donkeys can scent grass. A few salvos of cannon greeted us, and the bronze mouths protruding from our gunports offered a loud response. At the prow of the Jesús Nazareno, the sailors were preparing to drop anchor. And only when the men had scrambled up the yardarms to take in the sails, and the canvas was already flapping loose on the spars, did I put away my copy of Guzmán de Alfarache—bought by Captain Alatriste in Antwerp as reading matter for the voyage—and go to rejoin my master and his comrades on the forecastle. Almost everyone was excited and glad to be once more within reach of land, knowing that all the troubles of the voyage would soon be over: the danger of being hurled onto rocks by contrary winds, the stench of life belowdecks, the vomiting, the damp, the meager daily ration of rank water, the dried beans, and the worm-eaten ship’s biscuits. A soldier’s lot may be a wretched one on land, but it is far worse at sea. If God had intended man to live there, he would have given him fins, not hands and feet.

When I reached Diego Alatriste’s side, he gave a slight smile and placed one hand on my shoulder. He looked thoughtful, his clear green eyes studying the scene before him, and I remember thinking that his was not the expression one would expect on the face of someone arriving home.

“Well, here we are again, my boy.”

He said this in a strange, resigned tone, as if being there were no different from being anywhere else. I, meanwhile, was gazing ahead at Cádiz, fascinated by the play of light on its white houses and the majesty of its vast blue-green expanse of bay, a light so very different from that of my birthplace, Oñate, and yet which I also felt to be mine.

“Spain,” murmured Curro Garrote.

He sneered as he said this, pronouncing the word as if he were spitting it out.

“The ungrateful old bitch,” he added.

He touched his shattered arm again as if in response to a sudden pang of pain, or as if he were trying to remember why it was that he had been prepared to risk both limb and life at Terheyden. He was about to say something else, but Alatriste shot him a stern glance with those piercing eyes of his, which, along with his aquiline nose and bristling mustache, gave him the threatening air of a cruel, dangerous falcon. He looked at him briefly, then at me, and again turned cold eyes on Garrote, who said nothing more.

The sailors had dropped anchor, and our ship stood motionless in the bay. Black smoke from the Fort of Puntal still hung over the strip of sand that joins Cádiz to the mainland, but the city had otherwise barely been touched by the battle. People had gathered near the royal warehouses and the customhouse and were standing on the shore, waving, while feluccas and other smaller boats gathered around us, their crews cheering as if we had been the ones to drive the English from Cádiz. Later, I learned that they had mistaken us for the advance party of the Indies fleet, whose yearly arrival we, like the soundly beaten Earl of Leicester and his Anglican pirates, had anticipated by a matter of days.

And God knows, our voyage, too, had been long and full of incident, especially as far as I was concerned, for this was my first experience of those cold northern seas. From Dunkirk, in a convoy of seven galleons—with various merchant ships and Basque and Flemish privateers bringing our numbers up to seventeen—we broke through the Dutch blockade as we headed north, where no one was expecting us, and fell upon the Dutch herring fleet, of whom we made short work, before continuing around Scotland and Ireland and returning south across the ocean. The merchant ships and one of the galleons left us—at Vigo and at Lisbon, respectively—and the other larger ships sailed on down to Cádiz. As for the privateers, they stayed in the north, prowling the English coast and doing an excellent job of plundering, burning, and generally disrupting the enemy’s maritime activities, just as they regularly did to us in the Antilles and wherever else they could. God, sometimes, is well served, and it’s true what they say: As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

It was on this voyage that I witnessed my first naval battle. We had sailed through the channel between Scotland and the Shetland Islands, a few leagues west of an island called Foul, a black, inhospitable place, like all those gray-skied isles, when we came upon a large flotilla of those herring boats that the Dutch call buizen, under escort by four Lutheran men-of-war, amongst them an urca, a large, impressive storeship. The merchant vessels with us stood aside, keeping well to windward, while the Basque and Flemish privateers fell like vultures on the fishing boats, and our flagship, the Virgen de Azogue, led the rest of us into battle against the Dutch men-of-war. As usual, the heretics made excellent use of their artillery, firing on us from a distance with their forty-pound cannon and their culverins, all thanks to the skillful maneuverings of their crews, so much better adapted to the sea than the Spanish, a skill in which—as the disaster of the Great Armada demonstrated—the English and the Dutch always had the advantage, for their sovereigns and their governments encouraged the nautical sciences, took good care of their sailors, and paid them well, whereas Spain, whose vast empire depended on the sea, merely turned her back on the problem, accustomed as she was to giving more importance to the soldier than to the sailor, so much so that even at a time when common port prostitutes boasted aristocratic names like Guzmán and Mendoza, the army still felt that it had something of the nobility about it, while the navy continued to be considered one of the lowlier professions. The result was that while the enemy had plenty of good artillerymen, skilled crews, and captains experienced at sea and at war, we—despite our excellent admirals and pilots and even better ships—had only valiant infantrymen. At the time, though, we Spaniards were greatly feared when it came to hand-to-hand fighting, and for that reason, during naval battles, the Dutch and the English usually tried to keep us at a distance, to dismast our ships with cannon shot, and to batter us into submission by slaughtering as many men on deck as possible, while we struggled hard to get close enough to board, for that was where the Spanish infantry was at its best and had proved itself to be both ruthless and unbeatable.

So it was during the battle near the isle of Foul, with us, as usual, trying to edge in closer, and the enemy, as was their way, trying to prevent us from doing so with their almost continuous fire. The Azogue, however, despite this onslaught—which brought down half the rigging and left the deck awash with blood—managed valiantly to get in amongst the heretics, so close to the Dutch flagship that we actually rammed their forecastle with our spritsail. From there, grappling irons were thrown, and a horde of Spanish infantrymen boarded, amidst much musket fire and brandishing of pikes and axes. Not long afterward, we on the Jesús Nazareno, now sailing to leeward and firing on the enemy with our harquebuses, saw that our fellow Spaniards had reached the quarterdeck of the Dutch flagship and were brutally repaying the enemy for what they had hurled at us from afar. I need only say that the most fortunate among the heretics were those who jumped into the icy water to avoid having their throats cut. Thus we captured two urcas and sank a third; a fourth, badly damaged, managed to escape, while the privateers—for our Catholic Flemings from Dunkirk did not hold back—gleefully plundered and burned twenty-two herring boats, which desperately tacked this way and that, like chickens when a fox sneaks into the chicken run. And at nightfall, which, in those latitudes, arrives when it is still only midafternoon in Spain, we headed southwest, leaving behind us, on the horizon, a scene of fires, shipwrecks, and desolation.

There were no further incidents apart from the discomforts of the voyage itself, and if we discount the three days of storm halfway between Ireland and Cape Finisterre, which flung us about belowdecks and had us all saying our Paternosters and our Ave Marias—indeed, before it could be resecured, a loose cannon rammed several men against the bulkhead, crushing them like bedbugs—leaving the galleon San Lorenzo so much the worse for wear that in the end she limped off to seek shelter at Vigo. Then came the alarming news that the English were once again attacking Cádiz, something we learned only in Lisbon. And so, while some escort ships detailed to the Indies route headed off for the Azores in order to warn the treasure fleet and provide it with reinforcements, we set sail at once for Cádiz, just in time, as I said, to see the backs of the English.

I made use of the voyage to read, with great delight and profit, Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache, and other books that Captain Alatriste had either brought with him or acquired on board; these were, if I remember rightly, The Life of the Squire, Marcos de Obregón, a volume of Suetonius, and the second part of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote de la Mancha. There was also, as far as I was concerned, a practical aspect to the voyage that would, in time, prove extremely useful, for after my experiences in Flanders, where I had acquired all the skills of war, Captain Alatriste and his colleagues took it upon themselves to train me in swordplay. I was rapidly approaching the age of sixteen; my body had filled out, and the hardships endured in Flanders had strengthened my limbs, tested my mettle, and toughened my resolve. Diego Alatriste knew better than anyone that a steel blade can place the most humble man on the same footing as a monarch, and that when all the cards are stacked against you, knowing how to handle a fine piece of Toledo steel provides a more than decent way of earning one’s daily bread—or, indeed, of defending it. To complete my education, which had had its harsh beginnings in Flanders, he had decided to teach me the secrets of fencing, and to this end, every day, we would seek out an empty part of the deck, where our comrades would make room for us or even form a circle to watch with expert eye, proffering opinions and advice and larding these comments with accounts of feats and exploits sometimes more imagined than real. In that world of connoisseurs and experts—for, as I once said, there is no better fencing master than the man who has felt cold steel in his own flesh—Captain Alatriste and I practiced thrusts, feints, attacks, and retreats, strikes performed with the palm up and with the palm down, wounds inflicted with the point of the sword and with the edge of the blade, and various other techniques at the disposal of the professional swordsman. Thus I learned all the tricks of the trade: how to grab my opponent’s sword and then drive my blade into his chest; how to draw my blade back, slashing his face as I did so; how to slice and to thrust with both sword and dagger; how to use a lantern to dazzle, or even the light of the sun; how to make unashamed use of feet and elbows, or of the many ways of wrapping my cloak around my opponent’s blade and then finishing him off in a trice. In short, I learned everything that goes into making the skilled swordsman. And although we could not know it at the time, I would soon be presented with an opportunity to put all this into practice, for a letter awaited us in Cádiz, along with a friend in Seville and an extraordinary adventure that would take place at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. But all of this I will unfold in the fullness of time.Dear Captain Alatriste,You will perhaps be surprised to receive this letter, which serves, first and foremost, to welcome you on your return to Spain, which I hope has been happily concluded.Thanks to the news you sent me from Antwerp—where your face, bold Spaniard, doubtless made even the River Scheldt grow pale—I have been able to follow your steps, and I hope that, despite cruel Neptune’s traps, you continue safe and well, as, too, our dear Íñigo. If so, you have arrived at precisely the right moment. For if, upon your arrival in Cádiz, the Indies fleet has still not arrived, I must ask you to come at once to Seville by whatever means possible. The king is currently in this city of Betis, on a visit to Andalusia with Her Majesty the queen, and since I am, thankfully, still in favor with Philip IV and with his Atlas, the Conde-Duque de Olivares (although, of course, yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come, and one untimely sonnet or epigram could easily cost me another period of exile in my personal Enxine Sea— Torre de Juan Abad), I am here in his illustrious company, doing a little of everything, and, apparently, a great deal of nothing, at least officially. As to the unofficial, I will tell you about that in detail when I have the pleasure of once more embracing you in Seville. I can say no more until then, only to remark that since the matter requires your participation, it is (naturally) a matter requiring swords.I send you my very warmest regards, and greetings also from the Conde de Guadalmedina, who is here with me, looking as handsome as ever and busily seducing all the ladies of Seville.Your friend, always,Francisco de Quevedo Villegas

Diego Alatriste put the letter away in his doublet and climbed into the skiff beside me amongst the bundles containing our luggage. The boatmen’s voices rang out as they leaned upon the oars, which splashed in the water, and we gradually left behind us the Jesús Nazareno, where it lay motionless in the still water, along with the other galleons, so imposing with their high, pitch-black sides, their red paint and gilt glinting in the daylight, the spars and the tangled rigging rising up into the sky. Shortly afterward, we were back on land, feeling the ground sway beneath our uncertain feet. After weeks confined to the deck of a ship, we found it bewildering to be amongst so many people and with so much space in which to move about. We delighted in the food on display outside the shops: oranges, lemons, raisins, plums, salt meat, and fish, the white bread in the bakeries, the pungent smell of spices, and the familiar voices touting all kinds of unusual goods and merchandise: paper from Genoa, wax from Barbary, wines from Sanlúcar, Jerez, and El Puerto de Santa María, sugar from Motril . . . The captain stopped at a barber’s, who shaved him and trimmed his hair and mustache, and I remained at his side, gazing happily about me. In those days, Cádiz had not yet displaced Seville in importance as regards the route to and from the Indies, and the city was still small, with only four or five inns and taverns, but its streets, frequented by people from Genoa and Portugal, and by black slaves and Moors, were bathed in a dazzling light, the air was transparent, and everything was bright and cheerful and a world away from Flanders. There was barely a trace of the recent battle, although everywhere one saw soldiers and armed civilians, and the Cathedral square, our next stop after the barber’s, was packed with people going to church to give thanks to God that the city had been saved from being plundered and burned. A messenger, a freed black slave sent by don Francisco de Quevedo, was waiting for us there as arranged, and while we took a cool drink at an inn and ate a few slices of tuna with white bread and green beans drizzled with olive oil, he explained the situation. After the alarm provoked by the English attack, every horse in town had been requisitioned, and the safest way, therefore, to reach Seville was to cross over to El Puerto de Santa María, where the king’s galleys were anchored, and there board a galley that was preparing to sail up the Guadalquivir to Seville. He had, he said, arranged for a small boat with a skipper and four sailors to take us to El Puerto, and so we returned to the port and, on the way, were given documents signed by the Duque de Fernandina—a passport granting free passage and embarkation as far as Seville “to Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, one of the king’s soldiers on leave from Flanders, and to his servant Íñigo Balboa Aguirre.”

In the port, where bundles of soldiers’ luggage and equipment were being piled high, we bade farewell to the few comrades still lingering there—as caught up in their card games as they were with the local whores, who, in their distinctive half-capes, were taking full advantage of the recent disembarkation to seize what booty they could. When we said our goodbyes, Curro Garrote was already back on dry land, crouched beside a gaming table that guaranteed more tricks and surprises than spring itself, and playing cards as if his life depended on it, his doublet open and his one good hand resting, just in case, on the pommel of his dagger, while his other hand traveled back and forth between his mug of wine and his cards, which came and went accompanied by curses, oaths, and blasphemies, as he saw half the contents of his purse disappearing into someone else’s. The Malagueño nevertheless interrupted his activities to wish us luck, adding that he would see us again somewhere, here or there.

“And if not there,” he concluded, “then in Hell.”

Next, we said goodbye to Sebastián Copons, who, as you will remember, was an old soldier from Huesca, small, thin, and wiry, and even less given to talking than Captain Alatriste. Copons said that he was thinking of spending a few days’ leave in Cádiz and would then, like us, travel up to Seville. He was fifty, with many campaigns behind him and far too many scars on his body—the latest, earned at the Ruyter mill, had traced a line from his forehead to his ear—and it was, he said, perhaps time to be thinking about going back to Cillas de Ansó, the little village where he’d been born. A young wife and a bit of land of his own would suit him fine, if, that is, he could get used to driving a spade into the earth rather than a sword into the guts of Lutherans. My master and he arranged to meet up again in Seville, at Becerra’s. And when they said goodbye, I noticed that they embraced in silence, with no fuss, but with a stoicism typical of both.

I was sorry to leave Copons and Garrote, even though, despite all we’d been through together, I had never warmed to the latter, with his curly hair, his gold earring, and his disreputable air, but they were the only two comrades from our company in Breda who had traveled back to Cádiz with us. All the others had, in one way or another, been left behind: Llop from Mallorca and Rivas from Galicia were lying six feet under the Flemish earth, one at the Ruyter mill and the other in the barracks at Terheyden. Mendieta from Vizcaya—always assuming he was alive to tell the tale—would be lying in a gloomy military hospital in Brussels, prostrated by the black vomit, and the Olivares brothers, taking with them as page my friend Jaime Correas, had reenlisted for a new campaign in the regiment led by don Francisco de Medina, when our Cartagena regiment, which had suffered so much during the long siege of Breda, was temporarily disbanded. The war in Flanders had been going on for a long time, and it was said that after all the money and lives the last few years had cost, the Conde-Duque de Olivares, minister and favorite of our King Philip IV, had decided to place our army there on a defensive footing only, in order to cut expenses, reducing the fighting force to an indispensable minimum. The fact is that six thousand soldiers had been discharged either voluntarily or by force, which is why the Jesús Nazareno was returning to Spain full of veterans, some of them old and infirm, some having been paid off, either because they’d completed the regulation period of service or because they were being posted on to different regiments and units in Spain itself or around the Mediterranean. Many of them were weary of war and its perils, and might well have agreed with that character in a Lope de Vega play:What have the Lutherans

ever done to me?

The Lord Jesus made them,

And He can slay them—

If He so chooses—

Far more easily than we.

The freed slave sent by don Francisco de Quevedo also took his leave of us in Cádiz, having first shown us to our boat. We climbed aboard and were rowed away from the shore, and after we had again passed our imposing galleons—it was strange to see them from so low down—the skipper, judging that the wind was right, gave orders for the sail to be raised. Thus we crossed the bay, heading for the mouth of the Guadalete, and at evening we joined the Levantina, an elegant galley anchored along with many others in the middle of the river—all with their lateen yards and spars tied up on deck—opposite the great salt mountains that rose like heaps of snow on the left bank. The city, white and tawny, stretched away to the right, with the tall castle tower protecting the mouth of the anchorage. El Puerto de Santa María was the main base for the king’s galleys, and my master knew it from the time when he set sail against the Turks and the Berbers. As for the galleys, those war machines propelled by human blood and muscle, he knew far more about them than most would care to. That is why, after presenting ourselves to the captain of the Levantina, who glanced at our passport and gave us permission to stay on board, Alatriste found us a comfortable place near a crossbow embrasure—having first greased the palm of the galleymaster in charge of the rabble with a silver piece of eight—and remained awake all night, his back resting against our luggage and his dagger at the ready. As he explained in a whisper, a faint smile on his lips, it would take at least three hundred years in Purgatory before even the most honest of galley slaves—from the captain down to the last forced man—was given his discharge papers and allowed into Heaven.

I slept wrapped in my blanket, untroubled by the cockroaches and lice scampering over me, for they were hardly a novelty after my experiences on our long voyage on the Jesús Nazareno. Any ship or vessel is home to gallant legions of rats, bedbugs, fleas, and all manner of creeping things who were quite capable of eating a cabin boy alive and who observed neither Fridays nor Lent. And whenever I woke to scratch myself, I would see close by me Diego Alatriste’s wide eyes, as pale as if they were made of the same light as the moon moving slowly above our heads and above the masts. I thought of his joke about galley slaves being discharged from Purgatory.

The truth is I’d never heard him give a reason why he had asked Captain Bragado for us to be discharged after the Breda campaign, and I couldn’t get a word out of him either then or afterward; however, I sensed that I might have had something to do with the decision. Only years later did I learn that, at one point, Alatriste had considered the possibility, one among many, of traveling with me to the Indies. As I have told you before, the captain had, in his fashion, looked after me ever since my father’s death in battle at Jülich in the year 1621, and had apparently now reached the conclusion that, after my experience with the army in Flanders, useful for a lad born into that particular period and with my particular talents—as long as I did not leave behind me there health, life, and conscience—it was time to prepare for my education and my future by returning to Spain. Alatriste did not believe that a career as soldier was the best choice for the son of his friend Lope Balboa, although I proved him wrong about that, when—after Nördlingen, the defense of Fuenterrabía, and the wars of Portugal and Catalonia—I was made ensign at Rocroi and, after leading a company of two hundred men, was appointed lieutenant of the Royal Mail and, later, captain of the Spanish guard of King Philip IV.

However, such a record only shows how right Diego Alatriste was, for although I fought honorably on many a battlefield, like the good Catholic, Spaniard, and Basque that I am, I gained but little reward, and what advantages and promotions I was given were due less to the military life itself and more to the favor of the king, to my relationship with Angélica de Alquézar, and to the good fortune that has always accompanied me. For Spain, rarely a mother and more often a wicked stepmother, always pays very little for the blood of those who spill it in her service, and others with more merit than I were left to rot in the anterooms of indifferent functionaries, in homes for the old and frail, or in convents, just as they had been abandoned to their fate in many a battle and left to rot in the trenches. I was the exception in enjoying good fortune, for in Alatriste’s and my profession, the normal end to a life spent watching bullets rain down on armor was this:Broken, scarred and crippled,

Carrying, if you’re lucky, a letter,

To present at the door of hospitals

Where no one ever gets better.

Not even asking for a reward, a benefice, the captaincy of a company, or even bread for your children, but merely a little charity for having lost your arm in Lepanto, in Flanders, or in Hell itself, and, instead, seeing the door slammed shut in your face with the words:So you served His Majesty

And lost your arm?

Bad luck, we say!

But why, pray, should we pay

For Flanders’ harm?

And then, of course, Captain Alatriste was growing older. Not old in years, you understand, for at the time—the end of the first quarter of the century—he must have been a little over forty. I mean that he had grown old inside, as was the case with other men like him, who had been fighting for the true religion ever since they were boys, receiving nothing in exchange but scars, travails, and misfortunes. The Breda campaign, in which Alatriste had placed some hopes for himself and for me, had proved hard and unrewarding, with unfair officers, cruel commanders, much sacrifice, and little benefit, and we were all as poor as when we had started two years before, apart from what we had managed to ransack from Oudkerk and from other pillaging expeditions, and not counting the discharge pay—my master’s, that is, for we servants were unpaid—which, in the form of a few silver escudos, would at least allow us to survive for a few months. Despite all this, the captain would go on to fight again, when life obliged us to serve once more under the Spanish flag, until I saw him die as I had seen him live: standing, his hair and mustache now grizzled, sword in hand, his eyes calm and indifferent, at the Battle of Rocroi, on the day when the best infantry in the world allowed themselves to be defeated merely in order to remain faithful to their king, and to their own legend and glory. And thus, exactly as I had always known him, in good times, of which there were few, and in bad, of which there were many, Captain Alatriste died true to himself and to his own silences. Like a soldier.

But let us not anticipate stories or events. Long before that, as I was saying, something was already dying inside the man who was then my master. Something indefinable, but of which I first became truly aware on the voyage that brought us back from Flanders. For all my youthful lucidity, however, I still did not quite understand what that something was, and could only watch as a part of Diego Alatriste slowly died. Later, I decided it was a kind of faith, or the remnants of a faith, perhaps a faith in the human condition, or in what heretical unbelievers call fate and what decent men call God. Or perhaps it was the painful certainty that our poor Spain, and Alatriste with her, was sliding down into a bottomless pit, with no hope of anyone getting her or us out of it, not for a long time, not for centuries. And I still wonder if my presence at his side, my youth, and the adoring way I looked at him—for I worshipped him then—did not force him to maintain his composure, a composure that, in other circumstances, might have drowned like mosquitoes in wine, in those mugs of wine of which he occasionally drank far too many, or might else have found resolution in the black, definitive barrel of his pistol.

2. A MATTER REQUIRING SWORDS

“There’ll be some killing involved,” warned don Francisco de Quevedo. “Possibly a lot.”

“I only have two hands,” responded Alatriste.

“Four,” I said.

The captain kept his eyes trained on his mug of wine. Don Francisco adjusted his spectacles on his nose and studied my face for a moment before turning to a man seated at another table at the far end of the room in a discreet corner of the inn. He had been there when we arrived, and our friend the poet had referred to him as Master Olmedilla, with no further introduction or explanation, except that, later, he added the word “accountant”: the accountant Olmedilla. He was a small, thin man, bald and very pale. He appeared timid and mouselike, despite his black clothes and the little curled mustache that set off a short, sparse beard. He had ink-stained fingers and the look of a pettifogging lawyer or a government official who lives by candlelight, surrounded by files and papers. He gave a prudent nod to the silent question Don Francisco was asking him.

“There are two parts to the task,” Quevedo told the captain. “The first will involve you helping that gentleman over there carry out certain, shall we say, negotiations,” and he indicated the little man, who remained entirely impassive beneath our scrutiny. “For the second part, you can recruit as many men as you think necessary.”

“They’ll require some payment in advance.”

“God will provide.”

“Since when have you involved God in these matters, don Francisco?”

“You’re right, but with or without him, there will be no shortage of gold.”

He lowered his voice, whether at the mention of God or gold I’m not sure. The two long years that had passed since our encounter with the Inquisition—when don Francisco de Quevedo had plucked me from an auto-da-fé by dint of some very fast riding—had placed two more furrows in his forehead. He seemed somewhat weary as he toyed with his inevitable mug of wine, on this occasion a good white wine from Fuente del Maestre. The sunshine coming in through the window simultaneously caught the golden pommel of his sword and my hand resting on the table, and traced a line of light around Captain Alatriste’s profile. Enrique Becerra’s inn, famous for its lamb in honey sauce and stewed pork jowls, was near the public bawdy house in Compás de la Laguna, next to the Puerta del Arenal, and from the top floor, beyond the walls and the flat roof where the whores hung their linen out to dry, could be seen the masts and pennants of ships moored in Triana, on the far side of the river.

“As you see, Captain,” added the poet, “once again, there’s nothing for it but to fight, although this time I will not be coming with you.”

Now he was smiling in a friendly, reassuring fashion, with that singular affection he always reserved for us.

“Well,” muttered Alatriste, “we each have our own fate to follow.”

The captain was dressed entirely in brown, with a suede doublet, a flat Walloon collar, canvas breeches, and military-style gaiters. He had left his last pair of boots, their soles full of holes, on board the Levantina, having swapped them with the sub-galleymaster for some dried mullet roe, some boiled beans, and a wineskin to sustain us on the journey upriver. For that and other reasons, my master did not seem particularly upset to find that the first thing he should meet with when setting foot again on Spanish soil was an invitation to return to his old profession. Perhaps because the commission came from a friend or perhaps because, according to that friend, the commission came from much higher up, but mainly, I suspect, because the money purse we had brought back with us from Flanders made not a sound when shaken. From time to time, the captain would regard me thoughtfully, as if wondering just where my nearly sixteen years and the skills he himself had taught me fit in with all this. I didn’t wear a sword, of course, and only a misericordia, a dagger of mercy, hung from my belt at my back, but I had been tried and tested in the fire of war; I was bright, quick, and brave and very useful when called upon to serve. The question Alatriste was asking himself, I suppose, was whether to include me or to exclude me. Although, given the way things were, he could no longer make that decision alone; for good or ill, our lives were intertwined. And as he himself had just remarked, each man has his own fate to follow. As for don Francisco, to judge by the way he was looking at me, astonished at how I’d shot up and at the fuzz of hair on my upper lip and cheeks, I guessed that he was thinking exactly the same: I had reached the age when a lad is just as capable of dealing out sword thrusts as receiving them.

“And Íñigo goes too,” Queredo said.

I knew my master well enough to know when to keep silent, which is precisely what I did, following his example and staring into my mug of wine on the table before me—for as regards wine, too, I had grown up. Don Francisco’s comment was not a question, merely an affirmation of an obvious fact, and after a silence, Alatriste nodded slowly and resignedly. He did so without even looking at me, and I felt an inner surge of joy, bright and strong, which I concealed by putting the mug of wine to my lips. The wine tasted to me of glory, maturity, adventure.

“So let’s drink to Íñigo,” said Quevedo.

We drank, and the accountant Olmedilla, that small, pale fellow, all in black, joined us not by raising his glass but with another brief nod of the head. As for the captain, don Francisco, and myself, this was not the first toast of the day, since the three of us had embraced at the pontoon bridge connecting Triana and El Arenal, after we had disembarked from the Levantina. The captain and I had sailed along the coast from El Puerto de Santa María, past Rota, before crossing the bar at Sanlúcar and continuing on to Seville, passing first the great pinewoods growing along the sandy banks and then, farther upriver, the dense groves of trees, orchards, and forests on the shores of what the Arabs called Uad el Quevir, the great river. In contrast, what I remember most about that journey is the stink of dirt and sweat, the galleymaster’s whistle marking time, the labored breathing of the galley slaves, and the clink of their chains as the oars entered and left the water with rhythmic precision, driving the galley forward against the current. The galleymaster, sub-galleymaster, and constable walked up and down the gangway, keeping a watchful eye on their parishioners, and every now and then the whip would come down hard on the bare back of some idler and weave him a doublet of lashes. It was painful to watch the oarsmen, one hundred and twenty men seated on twenty-four benches, five to each oar, with their shaved heads and heavily bearded faces, their torsos shining with sweat as they rose and fell and worked the long oars. There were Moorish slaves, former Turkish pirates, and renegades, as well as Christians serving sentences meted out by a justice they had not had gold enough to buy.

Alatriste said to me, “Never let them get you onto one of these ships alive.”

His cold, pale, inscrutable eyes were watching the poor unfortunates row. As I said, my master knew this world well, for he had served as a soldier on the galleys of the Naples regiment during the Battle of La Goleta and in attacks on the Kerkennah Islands; and after fighting Venetians and Berbers, he himself, in 1613, came very close to being forced to serve on a Turkish galley. Later, when I was one of the king’s soldiers, I, too, sailed the Mediterranean on these ships, and I can assure you that few seaborne inventions bear a closer resemblance to Hell. To give a measure of the harshness of a galley slave’s life, suffice it to say that even for the very worst crimes, the term meted out was never more than ten years on the galleys, for they calculated this to be the maximum length of time any man could survive without losing health, reason, and life to hardship and the lash:Take off the man’s shirt,

To wash his soft flesh,

See what’s written by the lash,

Bold and bloody ’neath the dirt.

Thus, by dint of whistle and oar, we had traveled up the Guadalquivir and arrived in the most fascinating city, trading port, and marketplace in the world, a gold and silver galleon anchored between glory and misery, opulence and profligacy, capital of the Ocean Sea and of all the wealth brought by the annual treasure fleet from the Indies; a city populated by nobles, merchants, clerics, rogues, and alluring women; a city so rich, powerful, and beautiful that neither Tyre nor Alexandria in their day could have equaled it. Homeland and home to all who came to her, a place of inexhaustible marvels, a mother to orphans and a cloak for sinners, just like the Spain of those wretched and magnificent times, a place where poverty was everywhere, and yet a place where no one capable of scraping a living need ever be poor. Where everything was wealth, but where it took but a moment’s inattention to lose it all—as easily as one could lose one’s life.

We spent a long time at the inn, talking but without exchanging one word with the accountant Olmedilla; however, as soon as Olmedilla stood up to leave, Quevedo instructed us to go after him, following at a distance. It would be a good thing, he explained, for Captain Alatriste to familiarize himself with the man. We walked along Calle de Tintores, astonished at the number of foreigners frequenting the inns there, then we set off for Plaza de San Francisco and the Cathedral, and from there, through Calle del Aceite, we reached the Mint, near the Torre del Oro, where Olmedilla had some business to attend to. As you can imagine, I, wide-eyed, was busily taking everything in: the newly swept doorways where women were emptying out their washbowls or planting up pots with flowers; the shops selling soap, spices, jewels, and swords; the boxes of fruit outside the fruiterer’s; the gleaming basins that hung above the door of every barber; the street sellers; the ladies accompanied by their duennas; the men haggling; the grave-faced canons mounted on their mules; the black and Moorish slaves; the houses painted in red ocher and whitewash; the churches with their glazed tile roofs; the palaces; the orange and lemon trees; the crosses placed at the corners of streets to commemorate some violent death or simply to discourage passersby from relieving themselves . . . And even though it was still winter, everything glittered beneath a splendid sun that caused my master and don Francisco to fold up their cloaks and wear them slung crosswise over chest and shoulder or else to throw back their capes and undo the loops and buttons on their doublets. The knowledge that the king and queen were both in Seville only added to the natural beauty of the place, and that celebrated city and its more than one hundred thousand inhabitants bubbled with excitement and celebration. Unusually that year, King Philip IV was preparing to honor with his august presence the arrival of the treasure fleet, which would be bringing with it a fortune in gold and silver to be distributed—unfortunately, rather than fortunately, for us—to the rest of Europe and the world. The overseas empire that had been created a century before by Cortés, Pizarro, and other adventurers with few scruples and a great deal of pluck, with nothing to lose but their lives and with everything to gain, now provided a constant flow of wealth that allowed Spain to pay for the wars in which it was embroiled with half the known world, wars waged in defense of our military hegemony and of the one true religion, money that was even more necessary, were that possible in a country like ours, where—as I have said before—absolutely everyone gave himself airs, where work was frowned upon and commerce held in low esteem, and where the dream of every scoundrel was to be granted letters patent of nobility and thus live a life free from taxes and from work. Young men, understandably, preferred to try their fortune in the Indies or in Flanders rather than languish in Spain’s barren fields, at the mercy of an idle clergy, an ignorant, decadent aristocracy, and a corrupt government bureaucracy eager to suck the blood and the life out of them. It is said, and it is very true, that the moment when vice becomes the custom marks the death of a republic, for the dissolute person ceases to be considered loathsome, and all baseness becomes normal. It was thanks to the rich deposits in the Americas that Spain was able, for so long, to maintain an empire based on that abundance of gold and silver and on the quality of its coinage, which served both to pay the armies—when indeed they were paid—and to import foreign goods and products; for although we could send flour, oil, vinegar, and wine to the Indies, everything else came from abroad. This obliged us to go elsewhere for supplies, and our much-valued gold doubloons and our famous silver pieces of eight played a major role. We survived thanks to the vast quantities of coins and bars of gold that traveled from Mexico and Peru to Seville, whence they were immediately scattered throughout all the other countries of Europe and even the Orient, ending up as far away as India and China. The truth is that all this wealth benefitted everyone except the Spanish: since the Crown was always in debt, the money was spent before it even arrived; as soon as it was disembarked, the gold left Spain to be squandered in those lands where we were at war, vanished into the Genoese and Portuguese banks that were our creditors, and even into the hands of our enemies. To quote don Francisco de Quevedo:In the Indies he was born an honest man,

When all the world admired his purity,

But in Spain, he spent both substance and security

And, losing life and interest, died a Genoan.

But anyone who claims to be his kinsman,

Howe’er sour-faced, becomes as sweet as honey,

For he remains a powerful gentleman,

Does our Sir Money.

The umbilical cord that kept our poor—and paradoxically rich—Spain breathing was the treasure fleet, which sailed the seas as much at risk from hurricanes as from pirates. This was why its arrival in Seville provoked indescribable celebration, for as well as the gold and silver destined for the king and for certain private individuals, it brought with it, too, cochineal, indigo, logwood, brazil-wood, wool, cotton, hides, sugar, tobacco, and spices, not forgetting chili, ginger, and Chinese silk brought from the Philippines via Acapulco. To this end our galleons sailed in convoy from New Spain and Tierra Firme as far as Cuba, where they formed one gigantic fleet. And it has to be said that during all that time, despite deprivation, disaster, and difficulty, the Spanish sailors carried out their work with great pride. Even at the very worst moments—when, for example, the Dutch captured an entire fleet—our ships continued to cross the sea at the cost of great effort and sacrifice, and except on certain unfortunate occasions, always managed to keep at bay the threat from the French, Dutch, and English pirates, in a struggle in which Spain fought alone against those three powerful nations, all set on having a share of the spoils.

“Not many bluebottles about,” commented Alatriste laconically.

This was true. The fleet was about to arrive, the king in person was honoring Seville with his presence, religious ceremonies and public celebrations were being organized, and yet there was hardly a catchpole or a constable to be seen in the streets. The few we passed were in groups, armed to the teeth, with more steel on them than a Basque foundry, and fearful even of their own shadow.

“There was an incident four days ago,” Quevedo told us. “The law officers tried to arrest a soldier on one of the galleys moored in Triana, but the other soldiers and conscripts went to his aid, and people were being knifed left, right, and center. In the end, the catchpoles managed to drag him off to jail, but the soldiers surrounded the place and threatened to set fire to it if they didn’t give them back their comrade.”

“And how did the matter end?”

“Since the prisoner had killed a constable, they hanged him from the railings before handing him back.” The poet chuckled as he described what had happened. “So now the soldiers are on the hunt for constables, and the constables only dare go about in gangs, and even then only very cautiously.”

“And what does the king have to say about it all?”

While the accountant Olmedilla was sorting out his business at the Mint, we stood in the shadow of the gateway known as the Postigo del Carbón, immediately below the Torre de la Plata. Quevedo pointed to the walls of the ancient Moorish castle that extended as far as the Cathedral’s immensely tall bell tower. The red-and-yellow uniforms of the Spanish guard stood out brightly against the battlements emblazoned with the king’s coat of arms, and little did we imagine that, many years later, I myself would wear that uniform. More sentinels bearing halberds and harquebuses kept watch at the main gate.

“His Sacred, Catholic, Royal Majesty knows what he’s told, nothing more,” said Quevedo. “The great Philip is staying at the Alcázar and only leaves there to go hunting or to a party or for a nighttime visit to some convent. Our friend Guadalmedina, by the way, is acting as escort. They have become close friends.”

The word “convent,” spoken in that tone of voice, brought back grim memories, and I couldn’t help but shudder when I remembered poor Elvira de la Cruz and how close I, too, had come to being burnt at the stake. Don Francisco de Quevedo had meanwhile been distracted by the sight of a rather attractive lady. She was accompanied by her duenna and a Morisco slave girl laden with baskets and packages, and when she lifted the hem of her dress to avoid the trail of dung caking the street, she revealed fashionable cork-soled clogs. When the lady passed us on her way to the mule-drawn coach waiting a little farther on, the poet adjusted his spectacles on his nose and very courteously doffed his hat. “Lisi,” he murmured with a melancholy smile. The lady reciprocated with a slight nod before drawing her cloak more closely about her. Behind her, the aging duenna, clothed in deepest mourning, wearing a crow-black wimple and clutching a rosary, shot him a withering look. Quevedo stuck his tongue out at her. As he watched them depart, he smiled sadly and turned back to us without a word of explanation. He himself was dressed as soberly as ever: black silk stockings and shoes with silver buckles, a somber gray costume, a hat of the same color with a white feather, and the cross of St. James embroidered in red beneath the short cape caught back on his shoulder.

“Convents are his specialty,” he added after that brief, pensive pause, his eyes still fixed on the lady and her companions.

“Guadalmedina’s or the king’s?” Now it was Alatriste who was smiling beneath his soldierly mustache.

Quevedo took a while to respond, then, sighing deeply, said, “Both.”

I positioned myself next to the poet and, with eyes downcast, asked, “And the queen?”

I asked this in a casual, respectful, irreproachable tone, as if it were the mere curiosity of a boy. Don Francisco turned a penetrating eye on me.

“As lovely as ever,” he answered. “She now speaks the language of Spain a little better than she did.” He glanced at Alatriste and then back at me, his eyes glinting merrily behind the lenses of his spectacles. “She practices with her ladies-in-waiting and her mistress of the robes, and with her maids of honor.”

My heart was beating so hard I was afraid it might give me away. “Did they all accompany her on the journey?”

“They did.”

The street was spinning. She was in this fascinating city. I gazed around me: at the empty, sandy area known as El Arenal, one of the most picturesque parts of Seville, which stretched from the city walls down to the Guadalquivir, with Triana on the farther shore; at the sails on the sardine boats and the shrimpers, and at all the other little boats coming and going; at the king’s galleys moored over by Triana, which was crammed with vessels as far as the pontoon; at El Altozano and the sinister castle that was the seat of the Inquisition; at the crowd of great ships on the nearer shore: a forest of masts, spars, lateen yards, sails, and flags; at the swarms of people, the tradesmen’s stalls, the bundles of merchandise; I could hear the hammering of ship’s carpenters, see the smoke from the caulkers’ tar barrels, and the pulleys on the great naval crane at the mouth of the Tagarete that was used to careen the ships’ bottoms.The Basques in the north send us wood,

And cloth and iron and ships true and good,

And the sailor brings from the brave new world

Ambergris, pearls, silver and gold,

And skins and strange exotic dyes,

And everything else that money buys.

Lope de Vega’s play El Arenal de Sevilla, from which these lines came, had remained engraved on my memory ever since I first saw it with Captain Alatriste at the open-air theater of El Príncipe when I was a mere boy, on the famous day when Buckingham and the Prince of Wales fought alongside him. And suddenly, that place, that city that was, in itself, so splendid, was made magical and marvelous. Angélica de Alquézar was there, and I might perhaps see her. I gave a sideways glance at my master, fearful that my inner turbulence might be visible from without. Fortunately, Diego Alatriste had more worrying things on his mind. He was studying the accountant Olmedilla, who had finished his business and was walking toward us, eyeing us about as cordially as if we had come to administer the last rites. Grave-faced and dressed entirely in black, apart from his white ruff, and wearing a narrow-brimmed black hat unadorned by any feather, and with that curious sparse beard that only accentuated his gray, mouselike appearance, he had the pinched air of one plagued by acid humors and bad digestion.

“What do we need with this fool?” muttered the captain, as he watched him approach.

Quevedo shrugged. “He’s been given a mission to fulfill. The count-duke himself is pulling the strings. And Master Olmedilla’s work will discomfit quite a number of people.”

Olmedilla greeted us with a curt nod, and we followed him to the Triana gate. Alatriste was speaking to Quevedo in a low voice: “What exactly does he do?”

The poet responded equally softly: “As I said, he’s an accountant, an expert at balancing books. A man who knows everything there is to know about figures, about customs duties and suchlike. Why, he could outshine the mathematician Juan de Leganés.”

“Has someone been stealing more than he should?”

“There is always someone stealing more than he should.”

The broad brim of Alatriste’s hat cast a mask of shadow over his face, a mask that only emphasized the paleness of his eyes, with the light and the landscape of El Arenal reflected in them. “And where exactly do we fit in with all of this?” he asked.

“I’m only acting as intermediary. I am currently much in favor at court. The king requires me to be witty, and the queen laughs at my jokes. As for the count-duke, I do him the occasional small favor, and he repays me in kind.”

“I’m glad to see that Fortune is finally smiling on you.”

“Don’t speak too loudly. Fortune has played so many tricks on me in the past, I view her very warily indeed.”

Alatriste observed the poet, amused. “Nevertheless, don Francisco, you certainly look every inch the courtier.”

“Oh, please, Captain!” Quevedo was tugging at his ruff where it irritated his skin. “Being an artist and enjoying regular hot meals are two activities that are rarely compatible. I am simply having a run of good luck at the moment: I’m popular and my poetry is being read everywhere. As usual, I even have attributed to me poems I did not write, including some monstrosities by that bugger, that Babylonian, that sodomite Góngora, whose grandparents spurned bacon and worked as cobblers in Córdoba, and whose ‘letters patent’ you’ll find hanging from the Cathedral ceiling, along with the names of other Jews. Indeed, I have just hailed his latest published work with a delicate little poem of my own, which ends thus:“Be not flatulent,

Vilest of sewers,

Through which Parnassus

Purges its excrement!

“But to return to more serious matters. As I was saying, it’s convenient to the count-duke to have me on his side. He flatters me and uses me. As for your involvement in the matter, Captain, that is a mere caprice on the part of the count-duke himself. For some reason, he remembers you. Given that we’re talking about Olivares, that, of course, could be a good thing or a bad. Perhaps, in this instance, it’s good. Besides, you did once offer him the services of your sword if he would help save Íñigo.”

Alatriste darted a glance at me, and then nodded slowly and pensively. “He has a damnably good memory, the count-duke,” he said.

“Yes—when it suits him.”

My master again turned his attention to the accountant Olmedilla, who was walking a few paces ahead through the hustle and bustle of the harbor, his hands behind his back and a sour look on his face. “He’s not much of a talker,” he commented.

“No,” said Quevedo, laughing. “In that respect, you and he should get along famously.”

“Is he a man of consequence?”

“As I said, he is merely an official, but he was put in charge of collating all the evidence when don Rodrigo Calderón was put on trial for embezzlement. Now are you convinced?”

He fell silent to allow the captain to absorb all the implications of this statement. Alatriste whistled through his teeth. The public execution a few years ago of a powerful figure like Calderón had shaken all of Spain.

“And whose trail is he on now?”

The poet declined to answer at first and, for a while, said nothing. Then, at last, he said, “Someone will tell you all about that tonight. As for Olmedilla’s mission and, indirectly, yours, shall we just say that the commission comes from the count-duke, but the impulse behind it comes from the king himself.”

Alatriste shook his head incredulously. “You are joking, aren’t you, don Francisco?”

“On my faith, I am not. Devil take me if I am, or may that little humpbacked playwright Ruiz de Alarcón suck all the talent from my brain.”

“God’s blood!”

“That’s exactly what I said when they asked me to be a third party in the matter. On the positive side, if things turn out well, you’ll have a few escudos to spend.”

“And if things turn out badly?”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll wish you were back in the trenches at Breda.” Quevedo sighed and looked around him like someone hoping to change the subject. “I’m just sorry that, for the moment, I can tell you no more.”

“I don’t need to know much more,” said my master, a mixture of irony and resignation dancing in his gray-green eyes. “I just want to know from which side to expect an attack.”

Quevedo shrugged. “From every side, as per usual,” he replied, still gazing indifferently about him. “You’re not in Flanders now, Captain Alatriste. This is Spain.”

They arranged to meet again that night, at Becerra’s. The accountant Olmedilla, still looking glummer than a butcher’s shop in Lent, withdrew to an inn in Calle de Tintores where he had his lodgings and where there was also a room reserved for us. My master spent the afternoon sorting out his affairs, getting his military license certified, and buying new linen and supplies—as well as a new pair of boots—with the money don Francisco had advanced him for the work ahead. As for me, I was free for a few hours, and went for a stroll into the heart of the city, enjoying the walks around the walls and the atmosphere in the narrow streets, with their low arches, coats of arms, crosses, and retablos depicting Christs, virgins, and saints—streets far too narrow for the carriages and horses that jammed them; a place at once dirty and opulent, seething with life, with knots of people at the doors of taverns and tenements, and women—whom I eyed with new interest since my experiences in Flanders—dark-skinned, neat, and self-assured, who spoke with an accent that lent a special sweetness to their conversation. I saw mansions with magnificent courtyard gardens glimpsed through wrought-iron gates, with chains on the door to show they were immune from ordinary justice, and I sensed that while the Castilian nobility, in their determination not to work, took their stoicism to the point of ruin, the Seville aristocracy had a more relaxed approach and often allowed the words “hidalgo” and “merchant” to be conjoined. Thus the aristocrat did not scorn commerce if it brought him money, and the merchant was prepared to spend a fortune in order to be considered an hidalgo—even tailors required purity of blood from the members of their guild. On the one hand, this gave rise to the spectacle of debased noblemen using their influence and privileges to prosper by underhanded means, and on the other, it meant that the work and commerce so vital to the nation continued to be frowned upon and, consequently, fell into the hands of foreigners. Thus, most of the Seville nobility were rich plebeians who had bought their way into a higher stratum of society through money and advantageous marriages and now felt ashamed of their former trades. A generation of merchants spawned, in turn, a generation of “noble,” entirely parasitic heirs, who denied the origins of their fortune and squandered it without a qualm, thus proving the truth of that old Spanish saying From tradesman to gentleman to gambler to beggar in four generations.

I also visited the Alcaicería, the old silk market, an area full of shops selling rich merchandise and jewels. I was wearing black breeches and soldiers’ gaiters, a leather belt with a dagger stuck in it at the back, a military-style jerkin over my much-darned shirt, and on my head a very elegant cap of Flemish velvet—the spoils of war from what were fast becoming “the old days.” That and my youth both favored me, I think, and adopting the air of a battle-hardened veteran, I idled along past the swordsmiths’ shops in Calle de la Mar and Calle de Vizcaínos, or past the braggarts, doxies, and pimps in Calle de las Sierpes, opposite the famous prison behind whose black walls Mateo Alemán had languished and where good don Miguel de Cervantes had also spent some time. I swaggered past the legendary steps of the Cathedral—that cathedral of villainy—teeming with sellers, idlers, and beggars with signs hanging around their necks and displaying wounds and deformities, each one falser than a Judas kiss, as well as people who had been crippled on the rack but claimed to have been wounded in Flanders and who sported real or fake amputations, which they attributed to days spent fighting in Antwerp or Mamora but which could as easily have been acquired at Roncesvalles or at Numantia, for one had only to look them in the face, these men—who claimed to have won their scars for the sake of the true religion, king, and country—to know that the closest they had come to a heretic or a Turk was from the safety of the audience at the local playhouse.

I ended up outside the Reales Alcázares, staring up at the Hapsburg flag flying above the battlements, and at the imposing soldiers of the king’s guard armed with halberds and standing at attention at the great gate. I wandered around there for a while, amongst the citizens eager to catch a glimpse of the king or queen, should they chance to enter or leave. And when the crowd, and I with them, happened to move too close to the entrance, a sergeant in the Spanish guard came over to tell us very rudely to leave. The other onlookers obeyed at once, but I, being my father’s son, was piqued by the soldier’s bad manners, and so I dawdled and lingered with a haughty look on my face that clearly nettled him. He gave me a shove, and I—for my youth and my recent experience in Flanders had made me prickly on such matters—thought this the act of a scoundrel, and so I rounded on him like a fierce young hound, my hand on the hilt of my dagger. The sergeant, a burly, mustachioed type, roared with laughter.

“Oh, so you fancy yourself a swashbuckler, do you?” he said, looking me up and down. “Aren’t you a little young for that, boy?”

I held his gaze, shamelessly unashamed and with the scorn of a veteran, which despite my youth, I was. This fat fool had spent the last two years eating hot food and strolling about royal palaces and fortresses in his red-and-yellow-checkered uniform, while I had been fighting alongside Captain Alatriste and watching my comrades die in Oudkerk, at the Ruyter mill, in Terheyden, and in the prison cells of Breda, or else foraging for food in enemy territory with the Dutch cavalry at my back. How very unfair it was, I thought, that human beings did not carry their service record written on their face. Then I remembered Captain Alatriste, and I said to myself, by way of consolation, that some people did. Perhaps one day, I thought, people will know or guess what I have done simply by looking at me, and then all these sergeants, fat or thin, whose lives have never depended on their sword, would have to swallow their sarcasm.

“I may be young, but my dagger isn’t,” I said resolutely.

The other man blinked; he had not expected such a riposte. I saw that he was taking a closer look at me. This time he noticed that I had my hand behind me, resting on the damasked hilt of my knife. Then he gazed dumbly into my eyes, incapable of reading what was in them.

“A pox on’t, why I’ll . . . ”

The sergeant was fuming, and it certainly wasn’t incense issuing forth from him. He raised his hand to slap me, which is the most unacceptable of offenses—in the olden days, one could only slap a man who wasn’t dressed in the knightly uniform of helmet and coat of mail—and I said to myself, “I’m done for. Avenging every little slight can all too swiftly lead to death. Here I am in a situation from which there is no escape, and all because my name is Íñigo Balboa Aguirre and I’m from Oñate, and more to the point, because I have just returned from Flanders and my master is Captain Alatriste, and I cannot consider any market too dear where one buys one’s honor with one’s life. Whether I like it or not, every path is blocked, and so when I grasp my dagger, I will have no option but to stab this fat pig in the belly—one thrust and it’s done—and then run like a deer and get myself a hiding place, and just hope that nobody finds me.” In short—as don Francisco de Quevedo would have said—there was, as usual, nothing for it but to fight. And so I held my breath and with the fatalistic resignation of the veteran—a recently acquired characteristic—prepared myself for what would follow. It seems, however, that God spends his spare moments protecting arrogant young men, because just then a bugle sounded, the palace gates were flung wide, and there came the sound of wheels and hooves on gravel. The sergeant, mindful of his duty, immediately forgot all about me and ran to marshal his men, and I stayed where I was, greatly relieved, and thinking that I’d had a very lucky escape.

Carriages were leaving the palace, and when I saw the insignia on the coach and saw the cavalry escort, I realized that it was our queen, accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting and her mistress of the robes. And my heart, which, during the episode with the sergeant, had remained steady and firm, suddenly bolted as if it had been given its head. Everything around me was spinning. The carriages rolled past to the sound of cheering and hallooing from the crowd, which rushed forward to greet them, and one pale royal hand, lovely and bejeweled, waved elegantly at one of the windows, in genteel response to this tribute from the people. I, though, had other interests, and in each of the carriages that passed, I eagerly sought the source of my unease. As I did so, I took off my cap and drew myself up, standing hatless and motionless before the fleeting vision of lace, satin, and furbelows, of female heads with coiffed and ringleted hair, of faces covered by fans, and of hands waving. In the last coach I glimpsed a fair head and a pair of blue eyes that saw me as they passed, recognizing me with startled intensity, before the vision moved off, and I was left there, overwhelmed, watching the hunched back of the footman at the rear of the carriage and the dust covering the rumps of the guards’ horses.

Then behind me I heard a whistle, one that I would have recognized in Hell itself. Ti-ri-tu, ta-ta. And when I turned, I found myself face to face with a ghost.

“You’ve grown, boy.”

Gualterio Malatesta was looking straight into my eyes, and I was sure that he could read my every thought. He was, as ever, all dressed in black, and wearing a black hat with a very broad brim and, hanging from his leather baldric, the usual threatening sword with the long cross-guard. He was still very tall and thin, with that face of his devastated by pockmarks and scars, which gave him such a cadaverous, tortured appearance that even the smile he directed at me, far from softening that appearance, only emphasized it.

“You’ve grown,” he said again. He seemed about to add “since the last time,” but he did not. The “last time” had been on the road to Toledo, when he drove me in a closed carriage to the dungeons of the Inquisition. For very different reasons, the memory of that adventure was as unpalatable to him as it was to me.

“And how is Captain Alatriste?”

I didn’t answer, I merely held his gaze, which was as dark and fixed as that of a snake. When he spoke the name of my master, the smile beneath his fine, Italian-style mustache grew more dangerous.

“You remain a boy of few words, I see.”

He was resting his left hand, gloved in black, on the guard of his sword, and he kept turning this way and that, as if distracted. I heard him utter a soft sigh, almost of annoyance.

“So, in Seville too,” he said, and then he fell silent before I could fathom what it was he meant. After a while, with a glance and a lift of his chin, he indicated the sergeant of the Spanish guard, who was some way off, occupied with organizing his men by the palace gate.

“I saw what happened between you and him. I was watching from the crowd.” He was studying me thoughtfully, as if assessing the changes that had taken place in me since the last time we had met. “I see you are as punctilious as ever in matters of honor.”

“I’ve been in Flanders,” I blurted out. “With the captain.”

He nodded. I noticed that there were a few gray hairs now in his mustache and in the side-whiskers visible beneath the black brim of his hat, as well as a few new lines or scars on his face. The years pass for everyone, I thought. Even for hired swordsmen with no heart.

“I know,” he said, “but regardless of whether you’ve been in Flanders or not, you would do well to remember one thing: honor is a very complicated thing to acquire, difficult to preserve, and dangerous to sustain. Ask your friend Alatriste.”

I stood up to him with all the firmness I could muster. “Ask him yourself, if you’ve got the spunk.”

My sarcasm elicited not a flicker of response from his impassive face. “I know the answer already,” he replied, unmoved. “I have other less rhetorical matters pending with him.”

He was still looking pensively in the direction of the guards at the gate. Then he chuckled to himself, as if at a joke he preferred not to share with anyone else. “Some fools never learn,” he said suddenly. “Like that imbecile who raised his hand to you without a thought for what you might do with yours.” The hard black snake eyes fixed on me again. “If it had been me, I would never even have given you the chance to take that dagger out.”

I turned to observe the sergeant. He was strutting about, keeping an eye on his soldiers while they closed the palace gates. And it was true: he was completely unaware how close he had come to having a span of steel in his guts and how close I had come to being hanged for his sake.

“Remember that next time,” said the Italian.

When I turned back, Gualterio Malatesta was no longer there. He had disappeared into the crowd, and all I could see was a black hat moving off past the orange trees, beneath the bell tower of the Cathedral.

3. CONSTABLES AND CATCHPOLES

That night would prove to be a long and busy one, but first there was time for supper and some interesting talk. There was also the unexpected arrival of a friend. Don Francisco de Quevedo had not told Captain Alatriste that the person he would be sharing supper with was none other than Álvaro de la Marca, the Conde de Guadalmedina. To Alatriste’s surprise, and to mine, the count appeared at Becerra’s inn just after sunset, as cordial and self-assured as ever. He embraced the captain, patted me affectionately on the cheek, and called loudly for good wine, a decent meal, and a comfortable room in which he could converse with his companions.

“Now tell me all about Breda.”

Apart from the buff coat he was wearing, he was dressed very much in the style favored by our king. His clothes were otherwise expensive but discreet, with no embroidery and no gold; he wore military boots, pale amber gloves, a hat, and a long cloak; and tucked in his belt, as well as a sword and a dagger, were a pair of pistols. Don Álvaro’s night would doubtless last long beyond his conversation with us, and, toward dawn, some husband or abbess would have good reason to keep one eye open as he or she slept. I remembered what Quevedo had said about the count’s role as companion to the king on the latter’s nocturnal sorties.

“You look very well, Alatriste.”

“So do you, Count.”

“Oh, I take good care of myself, but make no mistake, my friend, at court not working is very hard work indeed.”

He was still the same: handsome, elegant, and with exquisite manners that were not in the least at odds with the easy, slightly rough, almost soldierly spontaneity with which he had always treated my master ever since the latter had saved his life during a disastrous Spanish attack on the Kerkennah Islands. He toasted Breda, Alatriste, and even me; he argued with don Francisco about the syllables in a sonnet, dispatched with an excellent appetite the lamb in honey sauce served up in good Triana earthenware, called for a clay pipe and tobacco, and sat back in his chair, wreathed in pipe smoke, with his buff coat unfastened and a contented look on his face.

“Now let’s get down to serious matters,” he said.

Then, in between drawing on his pipe and taking sips of Aracena wine, he studied me for a moment as if calculating whether or not I should be listening to what he was about to say, and then, at last, he laid the facts before us. He began by explaining that the system of fleets to transport the gold and silver, Seville’s commercial monopoly, the strict controls imposed on who could and could not travel to the Indies had all been devised to prevent foreign interference and smuggling and to ensure the smooth running of the vast machinery of taxes, duties, and tariffs on which the monarchy and its many parasites depended. That was the reason for the almojarifazgo: the customs cordon around Seville, Cádiz, and its bay, which was the only port from which ships could embark for the Indies and disembark on their return. The royal coffers drew a large income from this, although it should be noted that in a corrupt administration like Spain’s, it was in the crown’s interest to let agents and other people in authority pay a fixed rate for their positions and then surreptitiously line their own pockets, stealing money hand over fist. In lean times, however, there was nothing to prevent the king from occasionally imposing an exemplary fine or ordering the seizure of goods from private individuals who were traveling with the fleets.

“The problem,” said the count, taking a couple of puffs on his pipe, “is that all these taxes, which are intended to pay for the defense of our trade with the Indies, devour the very thing they’re supposed to defend. A lot of gold and silver goes toward paying not only for the war in Flanders but also for the widespread corruption and general apathy. And so merchants have to choose between two evils: being bled dry by the Royal Treasury or else indulging in a little contraband, all of which breeds a thriving criminal class.” He looked at Quevedo, smiling, soliciting his agreement. “Isn’t that so, don Francisco?”

“Oh, yes,” agreed the poet. “Here, even the fools are clever.”

“Or busily putting gold in their purses.”

“Very true.” Quevedo took a long drink of wine, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He remains a powerful gentleman, does our Sir Money.”

Guadalmedina looked at him, surprised. “Very well put. You should write a poem about it.”

“I have.”

“Really? Well, I’m pleased.”

“In the Indies he was born an honest man . . .” don Francisco began, taking another sip of wine and reciting in a resonant voice.

“Oh, that,” said the count, winking at Alatriste. “I thought that was by Góngora.”

The poet choked on his wine. “God’s teeth and blood!”

“All right, my friend, all right . . .”

“No, Devil take it, it’s not all right. Not even a Lutheran could come up with a worse insult. What have I to do with poetasters and versifiers like him who, in one bound, go from being Jews or Moors to playing at being shepherds?”

“It was only a joke.”

“I’ve had duels before now over jokes like that, Count.”

“Well, don’t even consider such a possibility with me,” said the count, smiling, conciliatory and good-natured, stroking his curled mustache and his goatee. “I still remember the fencing lesson you gave to Pacheco de Narváez.” He gracefully raised his right hand and very politely doffed an imaginary hat. “My apologies, don Francisco.”

“Hm.”

“What do you mean, ‘Hm’? I’m a grandee of Spain, damn it! At least be so kind as to acknowledge my gesture.”

“Hm.”

Once the poet’s wounded feelings had, despite all, been soothed, Guadalmedina continued to provide more details, to which Captain Alatriste listened intently, his mug of wine in his hand, and his reddish profile half lit by the flames of the candles on the table. War is at least clean, he had said once, some time ago. And at that moment, I understood precisely what he meant. Foreigners, Guadalmedina was saying, get around the monopoly by using local intermediaries and third parties—they were called “dodgers,” a word that said it all—thus diverting the merchandise, the gold and the silver, which they would never have been able to obtain directly. More to the point, the idea that the galleons left Seville and returned there was a legal fiction; they almost always remained moored in Cádiz, in El Puerto de Santa María or Barra de Sanlúcar, where the cargo was loaded onto another ship. This encouraged many merchants to move into that area, where it was easier to elude the guards.

“They’ve even built ships with an official declared tonnage but whose real tonnage is quite different. Everyone knows that while they happily own up to carrying five tons, in fact they can carry ten. Bribery and corruption, however, keep people’s mouths shut and their willingness to cooperate open. A great many people have made their fortune that way.” He studied the bowl of his pipe, as if its contents merited his particular attention. “And that includes certain high royal officials.”

Guadalmedina continued his account. Made lethargic by the benefits of overseas trade, Seville, like the rest of Spain, had become incapable of sustaining any industry of its own. Many people from other lands had managed to set up businesses there, and thanks to hard work and tenacity, had made themselves indispensable. This put them in a privileged position as intermediaries between Spain and the parts of Europe with which we were at war. The paradox was that while we were locked in battle with England, France, and Denmark, as well as with the Turk and the rebel provinces, we were, at the same time, through those intermediaries, buying all kinds of merchandise from them: rigging, tar, sails, and other goods that were essential both in the Peninsula and across the Atlantic. Thus the gold from the Indies slipped away to finance the armies and navies that were fighting us. It was an open secret, but no one put a stop to this traffic because everyone was profiting from it. Including the king.

“The result is obvious: Spain is going to the dogs. Everyone steals, cheats, and lies and no one pays his debts.”

“They even boast about it,” added Quevedo.

“They do.”

The smuggling of gold and silver, Guadalmedina went on, was crucial to this state of affairs. With the frequent connivance of customs officers and officials at the Casa de Contratación, only half the real value of any treasure imported by individuals was declared. Each fleet brought with it a fortune that disappeared into private pockets or ended up in London, Amsterdam, Paris, or Genoa. This smuggling was enthusiastically embraced by foreigners and Spaniards alike, by merchants, government officials, captains of fleets, admirals, passengers, sailors, soldiers, and clerics. An example of the last was the scandal surrounding Bishop Pérez de Espinosa, who, when he died in Seville a couple of years earlier, had left five hundred thousand reales and sixty-two gold ingots, which were immediately seized by the Crown when it was discovered that all this wealth had come from the Indies without having passed through customs.

“It’s estimated,” Guadalmedina went on, “that, taking into account the king’s treasure and that brought by private individuals, the treasure fleet which is about to arrive is carrying—along with sundry other merchandise—twenty million silver reales from Zacatecas and Potosí, as well as eighty quintals of gold in bars.”

“And that’s only the official amount,” said Quevedo.

“Exactly. They reckon that, of the silver, a quarter more is arriving as contraband. As for the gold, it almost all belongs to the Royal Treasury, but one of the galleons is carrying a secret cargo of ingots, a cargo no one has declared.”

The count paused and took a long drink so as to allow Captain Alatriste to absorb these facts. Quevedo had taken out a small box containing powdered tobacco. He took a pinch and, after sneezing discreetly, wiped his nose on the crumpled handkerchief he kept up his sleeve.

“The ship is called the Virgen de Regla,” Guadalmedina continued at last. “It’s a sixteen-cannon galleon, the property of the Duque de Medina Sidonia, and hired by a Genoese merchant based in Seville called Jerónimo Garaffa. On the voyage out, it transports a variety of goods, from Almadén mercury for the silver mines to papal bulls, and on the return voyage it carries everything and anything it can. And it can carry a great deal, because while its official capacity is nine hundred barrels of twenty-seven arrobas each, in reality it has been so built that its actual capacity is one thousand four hundred barrels.”

The Virgen de Regla, he went on, was traveling with the treasure fleet, and its declared cargo included liquid amber, cochineal, wool, and skins intended for the merchants of Cádiz and Seville. There were also five million silver reales—two-thirds of which were the property of private individuals—and one thousand five hundred gold ingots destined for the Royal Treasury.

“A fine booty for pirates,” commented Quevedo.

“Especially when you consider that this year’s fleet comprises another four ships with similar cargo.” Guadalmedina studied the captain through his pipe smoke. “Now do you understand why the English were so interested in Cádiz?”

“And how did the English know?”

“Damn it, Alatriste. We know, don’t we? If you can buy the salvation of your soul with money, imagine what else you can buy. You seem a touch ingenuous tonight. Where have you spent the last few years? In Flanders or in Limbo?”

Alatriste poured himself more wine and said nothing. His eyes rested on Quevedo, who gave a faint smile and shrugged. That’s the way it is, said the gesture. And always has been.

“At any rate,” Guadalmedina was saying, “it doesn’t much matter what they claim the official cargo to be. We know that the galleon is carrying contraband silver too, at an estimated value of one million reales. The silver, however, is the least of it. The Virgen de Regla is carrying in its hold another two thousand gold bars—undeclared.” The count pointed with the stem of his pipe at the captain. “Do you know how much that secret cargo is worth, at the very lowest estimate?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Well, it’s worth two hundred thousand gold escudos.”

The captain was studying his hands, which lay motionless on the table. He was silently calculating.

“That’s one hundred million maravedís,” he murmured.

“Exactly.” Guadalmedina was laughing. “Everyone knows how much an escudo is worth.”

Alatriste looked up and stared hard at the count. “You’re mistaken there,” he said. “Not everyone knows it as well as I do.”

Guadalmedina opened his mouth, doubtless intending to make some new joke, but the icy expression on my master’s face immediately dissuaded him. We knew that Captain Alatriste had killed men for a tiny fraction of that amount. He was doubtless imagining, as was I, how many armies could be bought for such a sum. How many harquebuses, how many lives and how many deaths. How many minds and how many consciences.

Quevedo cleared his throat and then recited in a low voice:“Life and stealing are the same,

Thieving is no deadly vice,

All that’s worldly has a price,

So take it, filch it, that’s the game.

None is ever stripped and whipped

For stealing silver, gold, or cash;

The poor, alone, deserve the lash.”

This was followed by an awkward silence. The count was studying his pipe. Finally, he put it down on the table.

“In order to carry those forty quintals of extra gold, as well as the undeclared silver,” he went on, “the captain of the Virgen de Regla has removed eight of the galleon’s cannon. They say that even so, she’s still very heavily laden.”

“Who does the gold belong to?”

“That’s a delicate matter. On the one hand, there’s the Duque de Medina Sidonia, who is organizing the whole operation, providing the ship, and creaming off the largest profits. There’s also a banker in Lisbon and another in Antwerp, and a few people at court. One of them, it seems, is the royal secretary Luis de Alquézar.”

The captain shot me a glance. I had, of course, told him of my encounter with Gualterio Malatesta outside the royal palace, although I had made no mention of the carriage and the blue eyes I thought I had glimpsed in the queen’s retinue. Guadalmedina and Quevedo, who were, in turn, studying the captain, exchanged a look.

“The plan,” said the count, “is this: Before unloading officially in Cádiz or Seville, the Virgen de Regla will anchor at Barra de Sanlúcar. The captain and the admiral of the fleet have both been bribed to anchor the ships there for at least one night on the pretext of bad weather or the English or whatever. Then the contraband gold will be transferred to another galleon waiting there—the Niklaasbergen , a Flemish urca from Ostend, with an irreproachably Catholic captain, crew, and owner, which is free to come and go between Spain and Flanders under the protection of our king’s flag.”

“Where will the gold be taken?”

“Medina Sidonia’s share and that of the others will go to Lisbon, where the Portuguese banker will keep it in a safe place. The rest will be sent straight to the rebel provinces.”

“That’s treason,” said Alatriste. His voice was quite calm, and the hand that raised his mug to his lips, wetting his mustache with wine, remained perfectly steady, but I saw his pale eyes grow strangely dark.

“Treason,” he said again.

The tone in which he said the word revived recent memories. The ranks of the Spanish infantry standing undaunted on the plain surrounding the Ruyter mill, with the drums beating at our backs, awakening a nostalgia for Spain in those about to die. The good Gallego Rivas and the ensign Chacón, who had died trying to save the blue-and-white-checkered flag beside the Terheyden redoubt. The cry from a hundred men as they emerged at dawn from the canals for the assault on Oudkerk. The men whose eyes were gritty with dirt after fighting hand-to-hand in the narrow mining and antimining tunnels. Suddenly, I, too, felt a desire to drink, and I emptied my mug of wine in one gulp.

Quevedo and Guadalmedina exchanged another look.

“That’s how Spain is, Captain Alatriste,” said don Francisco. “You seem to have forgotten during your time in Flanders.”

“It’s a purely commercial matter,” explained Guadalmedina. “And this certainly isn’t the first time it’s happened. The only difference now is that the king and, even more so, Olivares both distrust Medina Sidonia. The welcome they received two years ago on his estate in Doña Ana, and the lavish hospitality bestowed on them during this present visit, make it clear that don Manuel de Guzmán, the eighth duke, has become a little king of Andalusia. From Huelva to Málaga to Seville, his word is law, and that, with the Moor just across the water, and with Catalonia and Portugal held together with pins, makes for a highly dangerous situation. Olivares fears that Medina Sidonia and his son Gaspar, the Conde de Niebla, are preparing a move that will give the Crown a real fright. Normally, these things would be resolved by holding a trial in keeping with their social status and then slitting their throats. The Medina Sidonia family, however, is very high up the scale indeed, and Olivares—who, despite being a relative of theirs, loathes them—would never dare involve their name in a public scandal without solid proof.”

“And what about Alquézar?”

“Not even the royal secretary is easy prey now. He has prospered at court, he has the support of the Inquisitor Bocanegra and of the Council of Aragon. Besides, Olivares, with his dangerous taste for double-dealing, considers him to be useful.” Guadalmedina gave a scornful shrug. “And so he has opted for a discreet and effective solution that will please everyone.”

“He is to be taught a lesson,” said Quevedo.

“Exactly. This includes snatching the contraband gold from underneath Medina Sidonia’s nose and placing it instead in the royal coffers. Olivares himself has planned it all with the approval of the king, and that is the reason behind this royal visit to Seville. Our fourth Philip wishes to see the show himself, and then, with his usual impassivity, to bid farewell to the old duke by folding him in an embrace, tight enough for him to be able to hear the duke’s teeth grinding. The problem is that the plan Olivares has come up with has two parts, one semiofficial and somewhat delicate, and the other official and more . . . difficult.”

“The precise word is ‘dangerous,’” said Quevedo, always exact when it came to language.

Guadalmedina leaned across the table toward the captain.

“As you will have gathered, the accountant Olmedilla is involved in the first part.”

My master nodded slowly. Now all the pieces were slotting into place.

“And I,” he said, “am involved in the second.”

Guadalmedina calmly stroked his mustache. He was smiling. “That’s what I like about you, Alatriste, there’s never any need to explain things twice.”

It was already dark when we set off along the narrow, ill-lit streets. The waning moon filled the hallways of the houses with a lovely milky light, bright enough for us to be able to see one another silhouetted beneath the eaves and the shady tops of the orange trees. Occasionally, we passed dark shapes, which scurried away when they saw us, for at that hour of night, Seville was as dangerous as any other city. As we emerged into a small square, a figure swathed in a cloak and leaning at a window, whispering, suddenly drew back and the window slammed shut, and as well as that black, male shadow, we saw a precautionary glint of steel. Guadalmedina gave a reassuring laugh and bade the motionless figure good night, and we continued on our way. The sound of our footsteps preceded us down alleyways and along the paths around the city walls. Now and then, the light from an oil lamp could be seen through the shutters behind the grilles at windows, and candles or cheap tin lanterns burned at the corners of certain streets, beneath an image, made from glazed tiles, of Our Lady, or of Christ in torment.

As we walked, Guadalmedina explained that the accountant Olmedilla might be a mere faceless official, a creature of figures and files, but he had a real talent for his job. He enjoyed the complete confidence of the Conde-Duque de Olivares, whom he advised on all accounting matters. And just so that we could get an idea of his character, he added that Olmedilla had acted not only in the investigation that had led Rodrigo Calderón to the scaffold, but also in the cases brought against the Duques de Lerma and Osuna. More than that, he was held to be an honest man, something almost unheard of in his profession. His sole passions were addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and the one goal of his life was to make the books balance. All the information they had received about the contraband gold came from reports compiled by the count-duke’s spies, and these had been confirmed by several months of patient research by Olmedilla in the relevant offices, cabinets, and archives.

“All that remains for us now is to ascertain the final details,” concluded the count. “The fleet has been sighted, and so we do not have much time. Everything has to be resolved tomorrow during a visit that Olmedilla will pay Garaffa, the man who chartered the galleon, so that he can clarify certain points concerning the transfer of the gold to the Niklaasbergen. The visit, of course, is an unofficial one, and Olmedilla has no document or letter of authority.” Guadalmedina raised his eyebrows ironically. “So Garaffa will probably refuse to talk.”

We passed a tavern. The window was lit and from inside came the strumming of a guitar. A gust of laughter and singing emerged as the door opened. On the threshold, a man vomited loudly before staggering homeward to sleep off the wine he had drunk. Between retches, we heard his hoarse cries invoking God, although not exactly prayerfully.

“Why don’t you just arrest this Garaffa?” asked Alatriste. “A dungeon, a scribe, and a bit of strappado can work wonders. All you have to do is call on the king’s authority.”

“It’s not that easy. There’s a dispute over who holds sway in Seville, whether the Audiencia Real or the Cabildo, and the archbishop has a finger in every pie. Garaffa is well connected with the Church and with Medina Sidonia. There would be a huge scandal, and meanwhile the gold would have vanished. No, everything must be done as discreetly as possible. And once Garaffa has told us what he knows, he will have to disappear for a few days. He lives alone with just the one servant, so no one would mind very much if he disappeared forever.” He paused significantly. “Not even the king.”

After saying this, Guadalmedina walked a little way in silence. Quevedo was lagging slightly behind me, limping along in dignified fashion, one hand on my shoulder as if, in a way, he was trying to keep me out of the whole business.

“In short, Alatriste, it’s up to you how you play the cards.”

I couldn’t see the captain’s face, only his dark silhouette ahead of me, his hat, and the tip of his sword, which glinted in the rectangles of moonlight that slipped through the gaps between the eaves. After a moment, I heard him say, “Getting rid of the Genoese gentleman is easy enough, but as for the other business . . .”

He paused, then stood still. We caught up with him. He had his head slightly bowed, and when he looked up, his pale eyes glittered in the darkness.

“I don’t like torturing people.”

He said this quite simply, bluntly, and undramatically. It was an objective fact spoken out loud. He didn’t like sour wine either, or stew with too much salt in it, or men who were incapable of sticking to the rules, even if those rules were personal, individual, and apparently unimportant. There was a silence, and Quevedo removed his hand from my shoulder. Guadalmedina gave an awkward little cough.

“That’s not my business,” he said at last, somewhat embarrassed. “Nor do I wish to know anything about it. How you get the information we need is a matter for Olmedilla and for you. He does his job and you get paid for helping him.”

“Besides, dealing with Garaffa is the easy part,” said Quevedo, in a placatory tone.

“It is,” agreed Guadalmedina, “because once Garaffa has given us the final details of the plan, there is another minor matter, Alatriste.”

He was standing opposite the captain, and any awkwardness he may have felt before had vanished. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I’m sure he was smiling.

“The accountant Olmedilla will provide you with money to recruit a select group of men, old friends and so on—professional swordsmen, to put it bluntly. The best you can find.”

There came the singsong voice of a beggar standing at the end of the street, an oil lamp in his hand, calling on us to pray for the souls in Purgatory. “Remember the dead,” he was saying. “Remember.” Guadalmedina watched the light from the lamp until it was swallowed up by the darkness, and then he turned again to my master.

“Then you will have to board that wretched Flemish ship.”

Still talking, we reached the part of the city wall near El Arenal, by the little archway known as El Golpe, with its image of the Virgin of Atocha on the whitewashed wall above. El Golpe provided access to the famous Compás de la Laguna bawdy house. When the gates of Triana and El Arenal were closed, that archway and the bawdy house were the easiest way to slip out of the city. And as he hinted to us, Guadalmedina had an important appointment in Triana, at La Gamarra tavern, on the other side of the pontoon bridge that linked the two banks of the river. La Gamarra stood next to a convent whose nuns had all reputedly been sent there against their will. The Sunday-morning mass attracted even larger crowds than the latest play at the playhouse; it positively seethed with people; there were wimples and white hands on one side of the grille and young men sighing on the other. And, or so they said, such was the fervor of certain gentlemen from the best society—including distinguished strangers to the city, such as our king—they even came to worship there during the hours of darkness.

As for the bawdy house, a popular expression of the day, más puta que la Méndez—more of a whore than La Méndez herself—referred to a real woman called Méndez, whose name was used by don Francisco de Quevedo in his famous ballads about a celebrated figure from the criminal classes called Escarramán, as well as by other men of letters. She had worked as a prostitute in the bawdy house, which offered to the travelers and merchants staying in nearby Calle de Tintores and in other city inns—as well as to locals—gaming, music, and women of the kind described by the great Lope de Vega thus:How foolish, how mad of a silly young man

To chase, helter-skelter (how he pants and drools),

After one of those women who’ve already been

Bait to a thousand other young fools.

And which the no less great don Francisco finished off in his own inimitable style:Stupid the man who trusts in whores

And stupid the man who wants them;

Stupid the money handed over

To pay for whorish flotsam.

Stupid the desire, stupid the delight

The whorish moment imparts,

And stupid the man who doesn’t believe—

Madam—you’ re the queen of tarts!

The bawdy house was run by one Garciposadas, from a family notorious in Seville for two of its brothers: one was a poet at court—a friend of Góngora’s, as it happens—who had been burned that very year for sodomizing a mulatto, Pepillo Infante, also a poet and a servant of the Admiral of Castile, and the other had been burnt three years before in Málaga as a Judaizer; and since misfortunes always come in threes, these antecedents had earned Garciposadas the nickname of El Tostao, or Garciposadas the Scorched. This worthy fellow performed the duties of pimp or father of the bawdy house with great aplomb: he kept the authorities suitably lubricated to ensure that his business ran smoothly; and so as not to contravene the regulations laid down by the city’s corregidor, or governor, he always ensured that weapons of any kind were deposited in the hallway and he forbade entry to any customers under the age of fourteen. The said Garciposadas was also on good terms with the constables and catchpoles, who quite blatantly protected him and his business, a situation that can be aptly summed up in these words: I am both innocent and devious,

Naïve and promiscuous;

Rile me, yet my wrath is soothed

With a small reward, however lewd.

The reward in question was, of course, a nice fat purse. The place was always packed with petty criminals—rogues who swore upon the soul of Escamilla; scoundrels and rascals from La Heria; dealers in lives and purveyors of stab wounds. It was a picturesque pot, spiced with ruined aristocrats, idle New World nabobs, bourgeois gentlemen with plenty of cash, clerics in disguise, gamblers, pimps, common informers, swindlers, and individuals of every kind, some who had noses so keen they could smell a stranger a harquebus shot away and who were often perfectly safe from a justice of which don Francisco de Quevedo himself wrote:Sevillean justice can prove scarce,

For the length of sentence handed out

Depends on the size of your purse.

Thus each night, under the protection of the authorities, El Compás was a constant flow of people, a secular feast, where only the finest wines were served, and those who went in as sober friends came out as wine-soaked sots. There they danced the lascivious zarabanda, guitar strings were plucked and so were clients, and everyone did as he pleased. The bawdy house was home to thirty sirens whose singing emptied men’s purses. Each of these sirens had her own room, and every Saturday morning—for the people of quality visited El Compás on Saturday night—a constable would visit to make sure that none of the girls was infected with the French disease and would not, therefore, give their clients cause to curse and swear, and leave them wondering why God didn’t give to the Turk and the Lutheran what He had given to them. They say the archbishop was in despair, for as one can read in a memoir of the time, “What one finds most in Seville are men and women living in sin, false witnesses, rogues, murderers, and opportunists. There are more than three hundred gaming dens and three thousand prostitutes.”

But to return to our story—which does not involve a very long journey—the fact is that, as ill luck would have it, just as Guadalmedina was about to bid farewell to us underneath the archway of El Golpe, almost at the entrance to the bawdy house, a patrol of catchpoles led by a constable with his staff of office passed by. You will recall that the incident of the hanged soldier days before had caused hostilities to break out between the law and the soldiers from the galleys, and both parties were looking for ways to have their revenge, which is why, during the day, there wasn’t a law officer to be seen on the streets and why, at night, the soldiers took care to stay outside the city, in Triana.

“Well, well, well,” said the constable when he saw us.

Guadalmedina, Quevedo, the captain, and I exchanged bewildered glances. It was equally ill luck that, of all the riffraff coming and going in the shadow of the bawdy house, that particular brooch and all his pins should have alighted on us as a pin cushion in which to stick themselves.

“Out taking the cool, are we, gentlemen?” added the constable scornfully.

His scornful bravado was backed up by his four men, who were armed with swords, shields, and black looks that the dim light made blacker still. Then I understood. By the light of the lantern of the Virgin of Atocha, the clothes worn by Captain Alatriste and Guadalmedina, and even by me, made us look like soldiers. Guadalmedina’s buff coat was forbidden in time of peace—ironically enough, he had probably worn it that night in his role as the king’s escort—and Captain Alatriste, of course, was the very image of the military man. Quevedo, as quick-thinking as ever, saw the problem coming and tried to put things right.

“Forgive me, sir,” he said very courteously to the constable, “but I can assure you that we are all honorable men.”

A few curious onlookers gathered around to see what was happening: a couple of whores, a rogue or two, and a drunk who was already several sheets to the wind. Even Garciposadas himself peered out from beneath the arch. This small crowd emboldened the constable.

“And who asked you to tell us something we can find out for ourselves?”

I heard Guadalmedina tut-tutting impatiently.

“Don’t back down now,” said an encouraging voice from among the shadows and the throng of inquisitive onlookers. There was laughter too. More people were gathering underneath the arch. Some took the side of the law and others, the majority, urged us to catch as many catchpoles as we could.

“I arrest you in the name of the king.”

This did not augur well at all. Guadalmedina and Quevedo looked at each other, and I saw the count wrap his cloak around his body and over his shoulder, revealing his sword arm and his sword but taking care to cover his face.

“It is not the custom of the well-born to suffer such outrages,” he said.

“I don’t care two figs whether it is or not,” retorted the constable in surly tones.

With this refined remark, the scene was set. As for my master, he remained very still and quiet, studying the constable and his companions, the catchpoles. He cut an imposing figure in the half-light, with his aquiline profile and his bushy mustache beneath the broad brim of his hat. Or rather, so it seemed to me, who knew him well. I touched the hilt of my dagger. I would have given anything for a sword, because there were five of them and we were only four. I immediately and regretfully corrected myself. With my few inches of steel, we were really only three and a half.

“Hand over your swords,” said the constable, “and be so good as to come with us.”

“These are important people,” Quevedo said, in one last attempt to save the situation.

“Right, and I’m the Duque de Alba.”

It was clear that the constable was determined to have his way, and to make two and two add up to five if necessary. This was his parish, and he was being watched by his parishioners. The four catchpoles unsheathed their swords and spread out to form a wide semicircle around us.

“If we get out of this alive and no one identifies us,” Guadalmedina whispered coolly, his voice muffled behind his cloak, “that will be that, but if not, gentlemen, the nearest church in which to seek sanctuary is the San Francisco.”

The constable and his men were getting ever closer. In their black clothes, the catchpoles merged with the shadows. Underneath the arch, the onlookers encouraged them with mocking applause. “Go on, teach ’em a lesson, Sánchez,” someone said to the constable in a bantering tone. Unhurriedly, confidently, and boldly, the said Sánchez stuck his staff of office in his belt and grasped his sword in his right hand and a huge pistol in his left.

“I’ll count up to three,” he said, coming closer. “One . . .”

Don Francisco de Quevedo pushed me gently behind him, interposing himself between the catchpoles and me. Guadalmedina was watching Captain Alatriste, who was still standing impassively in the same place, judging distances and turning his body very slowly so as not to lose sight of the face of the catchpole nearest to him but still keeping an eye on the others. I noticed that Guadalmedina was checking to see who my master was looking at, and then, turning away, he fixed on another, as if satisfied that my master would deal with the first man.

“Two . . .”

Quevedo was removing his short cape. “There’s nothing for it et cetera, et cetera,” he muttered as he undid the fastening on his cape and wrapped the cloth around his left arm. Guadalmedina, for his part, had arranged his cloak so as to protect his torso from the knife thrusts that were about to rain down upon him. I stepped away from Quevedo and went to stand next to the captain. His right hand was moving toward the guard of his sword and the left was resting on the hilt of his dagger. I could hear his slow, steady breathing. I realized suddenly that I had not seen him kill a man for several months, not since Breda.

“Three,” said the constable, raising his pistol and glancing back at the onlookers. “In the name of the king, and of the law . . .”

He had not even finished speaking when Guadalmedina fired one of his pistols at point-blank range, which sent the constable reeling backward, his face still turned away. A woman underneath the archway screamed, and an expectant murmur ran through the shadows, for the spectacle of fellow Spaniards quarreling and knifing one another has long been a popular Spanish sport. And then, as one, Quevedo, Alatriste, and Guadalmedina reached for their blades; seven bare lengths of steel glinted in the street; and then everything happened with diabolical speed: cling, clang, sparks flying, catchpoles shouting, “Stop in the name of the king!” and more cries and murmurs from the spectators. I, too, had unsheathed my dagger, though I did nothing with it, for in less time than it takes to say an Ave Maria, Guadalmedina had skewered the upper arm of one catchpole, Quevedo had slashed the face of another, leaving him leaning against the wall, hands pressed to the wound, and bleeding like a stuck pig, and Alatriste, sword in one hand and dagger in the other, wielding both as if they were bolts of lightning, had put two spans of Toledan steel through the chest of a third, who cried out, “Holy Mother of God,” before detaching himself from the blade and falling to the ground, vomiting gobbets of blood as dark as black ink. It all happened so fast that the fourth catchpole didn’t think twice and took to his heels when my master suddenly rounded on him as his next victim. At that point, I sheathed my dagger and went over to pick up one of the swords lying on the ground, the constable’s sword, and as I did so, two or three of the onlookers, who had misread the situation at the start, stepping forward to come to the aid of the catchpoles, stopped short when they saw how quickly everything had been resolved, and stood very still and circumspect, watching the captain, Guadalmedina, and Quevedo, who turned on them with their naked blades, ready to continue their harvest. I took up a position beside my companions and placed myself on guard; and the hand that held the sword was trembling not with anxiety but with excitement: I would have given anything to have contributed a sword thrust of my own to the fight. However, the would-be combatants from the small crowd were fast losing their desire to join in. They hung back prudently, muttering this and that, let’s just wait and see, eh, while the other onlookers jeered at them and we walked slowly backward away from the scene, leaving the street bathed in blood: one catchpole dead, the constable with his pistol shot more dead than alive and with not even enough breath to call for a confessor, the one with the cut to his arm stanching the wound the best he could, and the man with the slashed face kneeling by the wall, moaning behind a mask of blood.

“They’ll tell you where to find us on the king’s galleys!” cried Guadalmedina in a suitably defiant tone, while we dodged around the nearest corner. This was a clever ploy on his part, for it would place the blame for that night’s fighting on the soldiers whom the constable had, to his cost, believed us to be.The constable and his catchpoles

Were eager for the kill,

But I taught those turds a lesson

And one was sent to Hell.

As we strolled along Calle de Harinas, toward the gate of El Arenal, don Francisco de Quevedo was making up a few more scatological lines of poetry, all the while on the lookout for a tavern where he could toast both his poetry and us with some good wine. Guadalmedina was laughing, delighted with the whole business. An excellent move and very well played, damn it! Captain Alatriste, meanwhile, had cleaned the blade of his sword with a kerchief he kept in his pouch, and when he had replaced his sword in its sheath, he walked on in silence, occupied in thoughts impossible to penetrate. And I walked along beside him, carrying the constable’s sword and feeling as proud as don Quixote.

4. THE QUEEN’S MAID OF HONOR

Diego Alatriste was waiting, leaning against a wall, amongst pots of geraniums and basil, in the shade of a porchway in Calle del Mesón del Moro. Without his cloak, but with his hat on, his sword and dagger in his belt, and his doublet open over a clean, neatly darned shirt, he was intently watching the house of the Genoese merchant Garaffa. The house was almost at the gates of the old Jewish quarter in Seville, near the convent of the Discalced Carmelites and the old Doña Elvira playhouse, and it was very quiet at that hour, with few passersby and only the occasional woman sweeping the entrance to her house or watering her plants. In earlier days, when he was serving as a soldier on the king’s galleys, Alatriste had often visited that quarter, never imagining that, later on, when he returned from Italy in the year sixteen hundred sixteen, he would spend a long time there, most of it in the company of ruffians and other people quick to draw their swords, in the famous Cathedral courtyard, the Patio de los Naranjos, which was a meeting place for the boldest and most cunning of Seville’s criminal class. After the repression of the Moriscos in Valencia, as you may perhaps remember, the captain had asked to leave his regiment in order to enlist as a soldier in Naples—“where,” he reasoned, “if I have to slit the throats of infidels, they will at least be able to defend themselves”—and he remained embarked until the naval battle of sixteen hundred fifteen, when, after a devastating raid on the Turkish coast with five galleys and more than a thousand comrades, he and his fellow soldiers returned to Italy with plenty of plunder and he led a life of pleasure in Naples. This ended as such things tend to end in youth, with a woman and another man, with a mark on the face for the woman and a sword thrust for the man, and Diego Alatriste fleeing Naples thanks to the help of his old friend Captain don Alonso de Contreras, who stowed him away on a galley bound for Sanlúcar and Seville. And that was how, before he moved on to Madrid, this former soldier came to earn his living as a paid swordsman in Seville, that Babylon and breeding ground for all vices, taking refuge by day among ruffians and scoundrels in the famous Cathedral courtyard and by night sallying forth to carry out the duties of his profession, one in which any man with courage and a good sword, and with sufficient luck and skill, could easily earn his daily bread. Such legendary ruffians as Gonzalo Xeniz, Gayoso, Ahumada, and the great Pedro Vázquez de Escamilla—who recognized only one kind of king, the king in the deck of cards—they were all long gone, undone by a knife thrust or by the disease of the noose, for in work such as theirs, finding oneself strung up by the neck was a highly contagious complaint. However, in the Patio de los Naranjos and in the royal prison, where he also took up temporary residence with some regularity, Alatriste had met many a worthy successor to such historic rogues, experts in how to stab, cut, and slash, although he, too, soon made a name for himself in that illustrious brotherhood, skilled as he was in the sword thrust perfected by the celebrated ruffian Gayona, as well as in many others proper to his art.

He was recalling all this now with a pang of nostalgia, less perhaps for the past than for his lost youth, and he was doing so not a stone’s throw from the very playhouse where, as a young man, he had grown to love the plays of Lope, Tirso de Molina, and others—there he saw for the first time The Dog in the Manger and The Shy Man at the Palace—on nights that opened with poetry and staged fights and closed with taverns, wine, complaisant whores, jolly companions, and knives. This dangerous, fascinating Seville still existed, and any change was to be sought not in the city but in himself. Time does not pass in vain, he thought, as he stood leaning in the shady porchway. And a man grows old inside, just as his heart does.

“Death and damnation, Captain Alatriste, but it’s a small world!”

The captain spun around in surprise to see who it was who had spoken his name. It was strange to see Sebastián Copons so far from a Flemish trench and uttering more than eight words together. It took the captain a few seconds to return to the very recent past: the sea voyage, his recent farewell to Copons in Cádiz, the latter’s intention to spend a few days’ leave there and then to travel up to Seville on his way north.

“It’s good to see you, Sebastián.”

This was both true and not true. It was not, in fact, good to see him at that precise moment, and while they clasped each other’s arms with the sober affection of two old comrades, he glanced over Copons’s shoulder at the far end of the street. Fortunately, Copons could be relied on. He could get rid of Copons without causing offense, knowing that he would understand. That, after all, was the good thing about a real friend: he trusted you to deal the cards fairly and never insisted on checking the deck.

“Are you stopping in Seville?” he asked.

“For a while.”

Copons, small, thin, and wiry, was dressed, as ever, in soldier’s garb, in jerkin, baldric, sword, and boots. Beneath his hat, on his left temple, was the scar left by the gash that Alatriste himself had bandaged a year ago, during the battle at the Ruyter mill.

“How about a drink to celebrate, Diego?”

“Later.”

Copons looked at him, surprised and intrigued, before half turning to follow the direction of his gaze.

“You’re busy.”

“Something like that.”

Copons again inspected the street, searching for clues as to what was keeping his comrade there. Then, instinctively, he touched the hilt of his sword.

“Do you need me?” he asked phlegmatically.

“Not right now,” replied Alatriste with a warm smile that wrinkled his weathered face. “But there might be something for you before you leave Seville. Would you be interested?”

“Are you in on it?”

“Yes, and it’s well paid too.”

“I’d do it even if it weren’t.”

At this point, Alatriste spotted the accountant Olmedilla at the end of the street. He was dressed, as always, entirely in black, tightly buttoned up to his ruff, wearing a narrow-brimmed hat and the air of an anonymous government official come straight from the Real Audiencia.

“I have to go, but meet me later at Becerra’s.”

Placing one hand on his friend’s shoulder, he said nothing more, but with apparent unconcern, crossed the street to join the accountant by the house on the corner: a two-story brick building with a discreet gateway leading to an inner courtyard. They went in without knocking and without speaking to each other, exchanging only a brief, knowing glance. Alatriste had his hand on the hilt of his sword and Olmedilla remained as sour-faced as ever. An elderly servant came out, wiping his hands on his apron and looking anxious and inquisitive.

“We are here in the name of the Holy Office of the Inquisition,” said Olmedilla with terrible coldness.

The servant’s expression changed, for in Garaffa’s house and indeed in the whole of Seville, these were not words to be taken lightly. And so when Alatriste, one hand still on the hilt of his sword, indicated a room, the servant entered it as meekly as a lamb, allowing himself, without a murmur of protest, to be bound and gagged and locked in. When Alatriste came back out into the courtyard, he found Olmedilla waiting behind an enormous potted fern and twiddling his thumbs impatiently. There was another silent exchange of glances, and the two men went across the courtyard to a closed door. Then Alatriste unsheathed his sword, flung open the door, and strode into a spacious study furnished with a desk, a cupboard, a copper brazier, and a few leather chairs. The light from a high, barred window, half covered by latticework shutters, cast innumerable tiny luminous squares onto the head and shoulders of a stout, middle-aged man in silk robe and slippers, who started to his feet. This time Olmedilla did not invoke the Holy Office or anything else, he merely followed Alatriste into the room, and after a quick look around, his eye alighted with professional satisfaction on the open cupboard stuffed with papers. Just the way a cat, thought the captain, would have licked its lips at the sight of a sardine placed half an inch from its whiskers. As for the owner of the house, Jerónimo Garaffa, all the blood seemed to have drained from his face; he stood very quietly, mouth agape, both hands resting on the table on which a sealing-wax candle was burning. When he stood up, he spilled half an inkwell over the paper on which he had been writing when the intruders burst in. His dyed hair was covered by a snood and his waxed mustache by a net. He continued to hold the pen between his fingers as if he had forgotten it was there, transfixed in horror by the sword Captain Alatriste was pressing to his throat.

“So you have no idea what we’re talking about.”

The accountant Olmedilla, as comfortably esconced behind the desk as if he were in his own office, briefly raised his eyes from the papers to see Jerónimo Garaffa, still with his snood on, anxiously shaking his head. He was sitting on a chair, his hands tied to the chair back. It was not particularly warm in the room, but large beads of sweat were already running from his hair into his side-whiskers, and his face smelled of gum arabic, collyria, and barber’s lotions.

“I swear to you, sir . . .”

Olmedilla interrupted this protest with an abrupt wave of his hand and resumed his scrutiny of the documents before him. Above the mustache net, which gave his face the grotesque appearance of a Carnival mask, Garaffa’s eyes turned to rest on Diego Alatriste, who was listening in silence, leaning against the wall, sword sheathed, arms folded. He must have found Alatriste’s icy eyes more troubling even than Olmedilla’s abrupt manner, for he turned back to the accountant like someone forced to choose the lesser of two evils. After a long, oppressive silence, the accountant abandoned the documents he was studying, sat back in his chair, hands clasped, and, again twiddling his thumbs, stared at Garaffa. It seemed to Alatriste that he looked even more the part of the gray government-office mouse, except that now his expression was that of a mouse with very bad indigestion who keeps swallowing bile.

“Let’s get this quite straight now,” said Olmedilla very coldly and deliberately. “You know what I’m talking about and we know that you know. Everything else is a pure waste of time.”

Garaffa’s mouth was so dry that it took him three attempts before he could articulate a word.

“I swear by Christ Our Lord,” he said in a hoarse voice, his foreign accent made more marked by fear, “that I know nothing about this Flemish ship.”

“Christ has nothing to do with it!”

“This is an outrage. I demand that the law . . .”

Garaffa’s final attempt to give some substance to his protest ended in a sob. The mere sight of Diego Alatriste’s face told him that the law to which he was referring—and which he was doubtless accustomed to buying with a few lovely pieces of eight—only existed somewhere very far from that room and that there was no help to be had.

“Where will the Virgen de Regla anchor?” asked Olmedilla very quietly.

“I don’t know. Holy Mother of God, I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The accountant scratched his nose indifferently. He gave Alatriste a significant look, and the captain thought to himself that Olmedilla really was the very image of Hapsburg officialdom, always so meticulous and implacable with the unfortunate. He could as easily have been a judge, a scribe, a constable, a lawyer, or any of the other insect life that lived and prospered under the protection of the monarchy. Guadalmedina and Quevedo had told him that Olmedilla was honest, and Alatriste believed them. As to his other qualities and attitudes, he was, Alatriste concluded, no different from the rabble of ruthless, avaricious magpies that populated the courts and offices of lawyers and procurators, and where—not even in one’s dreams—would one find more arrogant Lucifers, more thievish Cacuses, or more honor-greedy Tantaluses; no blasphemy uttered by an infidel could ever equal their decrees, which, unfailingly, favored the powerful and damned the humble. They were, in short, loathsome bloodsuckers who lacked all charity and decorum, but who brimmed with intemperance, acquisitiveness, and the fanatical zeal of the hypocrite, so much so that the very people who should be protecting the poor and the destitute were precisely the ones voraciously tearing them apart with their greedy talons. However, the man in their grasp today did not quite fit that image. He was neither poor nor destitute, but he was certainly wretched.

“I see,” concluded Olmedilla.

He was tidying the papers on the desk, his eyes still trained on Alatriste, as if signaling that he had nothing more to say. A few seconds passed, during which Olmedilla and the captain continued to observe each other in silence. Then the latter uncrossed his arms, abandoned his position by the wall, and went over to Garaffa. When he reached Garaffa’s side, the expression of terror on the merchant’s face was indescribable. Alatriste stood in front of him, leaning slightly forward in order to fix his gaze more intensely. That man and what he represented did not stir his reserves of pity in the least. Beneath the snood, the dyed hair was leaving trails of dark sweat on Garaffa’s forehead and neck. Now, despite all the creams and pomades, he gave off a sour smell—of perspiration and fear.

“Jerónimo,” whispered Alatriste.

When he heard his name pronounced barely three inches from his face, Garaffa flinched as if he had been slapped. The captain did not draw back but remained for a few moments motionless and silent, regarding him from close up. His mustache was almost touching the prisoner’s nose.

“I’ve seen a lot of men tortured,” he said at last, very slowly. “With their arms and legs dislocated by the pulley, I’ve seen them betray their own children. I’ve seen renegades flayed alive, screaming and begging to be killed. In Valencia, I saw poor Moorish converts having the soles of their feet burned to make them reveal where they’d hidden their gold, while, in the background, they could hear the cries of their twelve-year-old daughters as they were raped by soldiers.”

He fell silent, as if he could go on listing such incidents indefinitely and as if there were, therefore, no point in continuing. Garaffa’s face was as pale as if the hand of death had just passed over it. He had suddenly stopped sweating, as though, beneath his skin, yellow with terror, not one drop of blood flowed.

“Everyone talks sooner or later,” concluded the captain, “or nearly everyone. Sometimes, if the torturer proves clumsy, the person dies first, but that wouldn’t be the case with you.”

He remained for a while longer staring at him, almost nose to nose, then went over to the desk. Standing there with his back to the prisoner, he rolled up the shirtsleeve on his left arm. While he was doing so, his eye caught that of Olmedilla, who was watching intently, slightly perplexed. Then he picked up the sealing-wax candle and went back over to Garaffa. When he showed it to him, lifting it up a little, the light from the flame picked out the gray-green of his eyes, once more fixed on Garaffa, like two slivers of ice.

“Watch,” he said.

He showed him his brown forearm and the long, slender scar visible amongst the hairs, running from wrist to elbow. And then, right under the nose of the horrified Genoese, Captain Alatriste held the flame to his own bare skin. The flame crackled and there arose a smell of burnt flesh, while the captain clenched his jaw and fist, and the tendons and muscles of his forearm grew as hard as vine shoots carved in stone. The captain’s eyes remained green and impassive, but Garaffa’s bulged in horror. This lasted for one long, seemingly interminable moment. Then, very calmly, Alatriste put the candlestick down on the desk, returned to the prisoner, and showed him his arm. A hideous burn, the size of a silver piece of eight, was reddening the scorched skin along the edges of the old wound.

“Jerónimo,” he said.

He again brought his face very close to Garaffa’s, and spoke to him in that same soft, almost confiding tone:

“If I can do this to myself, imagine what I would be capable of doing to you.”

A yellowish liquid, emanating from the prisoner, began to form a puddle around the legs of the chair. Garaffa started to moan and shake and did so for some time. When he finally recovered the power of speech, he let out a prodigious, torrential stream of words, while Olmedilla diligently dipped his pen in the inkwell and made what notes he deemed necessary. Alatriste went into the kitchen in search of some lard or grease or oil to apply to the burn. When he returned, bandaging his forearm with a clean piece of cloth, Olmedilla gave him a look that, in a man of a different humor, would have been one of enormous respect. As for Garaffa, oblivious to everything but his own feelings of terror, he continued to gabble on and on, giving names, places, dates, details of Portuguese banks and gold bars.

At this same hour, I was walking under the long vaulted passageway that leads from the Patio de Banderas into Callejón de la Aljama, in what had once been the Jewish quarter. And, albeit for very different reasons from those of Jerónimo Garaffa, I, too, felt as if I had not one drop of blood in my veins. I stopped at the designated place and, fearing that my legs might give way beneath me, placed one hand on the wall to support myself. My instinct for self-preservation, however, had developed over the previous few years and so, despite everything, I remained clearheaded enough to study the situation carefully—the two exits and those troubling little doors set in the walls. I touched the handle of my dagger, which I wore, as always, tucked into my belt at my back, and then I touched the pouch containing the note that had brought me there. It was worthy of a scene in a play by Tirso de Molina or by Lope de Vega:If you still care for me, now is the moment to prove it. I would like to meet you at eleven o’clock in the passageway leading into the Jewish quarter.

I had received this note at nine o’clock, from a boy who came to the inn in Calle de Tintores, where I was awaiting the captain’s return, seated on the little ledge by the door, watching the people go by. There was no signature, but the name of the sender was as clear to me as the deep wounds in my heart and in my memory. You can imagine the conflicting feelings that troubled me following the receipt of that note, and the delicious anxiety that guided my steps. I will not describe in detail all the anxieties of the lover, which would shame me and bore you, the reader. I will say only that I was then sixteen years old and had never loved a girl, or a woman—nor did I ever love anyone afterward—as I loved Angélica de Alquézar.

It really was most odd. I knew that the note could only be another episode in the dangerous game that Angélica had been playing with me ever since we first met outside the Tavern of the Turk in Madrid. A game that had almost cost me my honor and my life and which, many times more over the years, would cause me to walk along the very brink of the abyss, along the deadly edge of the most delicious blade a woman was capable of creating for the man who, throughout her life, and even at the very moment of her early death, would be both lover and enemy. That moment, however, was still far off, and there I was, on that mild winter morning in Seville, striding along with all the vigor and audacity of my youth, to keep an appointment with the girl—perhaps not so much of a girl now, I thought—who, once, almost three years before, at the Fuente del Acero, had responded to my heartfelt “I would die for you” with a sweet, enigmatic smile and the words “Perhaps you will.”

The Arco de la Aljama was deserted. Leaving behind me the Cathedral tower, which was silhouetted against the sky above the tops of the orange trees, I walked farther along, until I turned the corner and emerged on the other side, where the water in a fountain was singing softly to itself and where the thick, twining branches of creepers hung down from the battlements of the Alcázares, the Royal Palace. There was no one there either. Perhaps it was all a joke, I thought, retracing my steps and plunging back into the shadows of the passageway. That was when I heard a noise behind me, and as I turned, I put my hand on my dagger. One of the doors stood open, and a burly blond soldier in the German guard was observing me in silence. He gestured to me and I approached very cautiously, fearing some trick, but the German appeared to be friendly. He was examining me with professional curiosity, and when I reached his side, he gestured again, this time indicating that I should surrender my dagger. Beneath the enormous fair side-whiskers and mustache he wore a good-natured smile. Then he said something like Komensi herein, which I—having seen more than enough Germans, alive and dead, in Flanders—knew to mean “Come along” or “Come in” or something of the sort. I had no choice, and so I handed him my dagger and went in through the door. “Good morning, soldier.”

Anyone familiar with the portrait of Angélica de Alquézar painted by Diego Velázquez can easily imagine her just a few years younger. The royal secretary’s niece, our queen’s maid of honor, was fifteen years old, and her beauty was much more now than a mere promise. She had matured a great deal since the last time I saw her: the laced bodice of her dress with its silver and coral edgings, matching the full brocade skirt held out stiffly around her hips by a farthingale, suggested curves that had not been there before. Ringlets, of a purer gold than any Araucanian could have found in his mines, still framed those blue eyes, complemented by her smooth, white skin, which I imagined—and would one day find to be so—would have the same texture as silk.

“It’s been a long time,” she said.

She was so beautiful it was painful to look at her. The room, with its Moorish columns, gave onto a small garden in the palace, and the sun behind her created a white halo about her hair. Her smile was the same: mysterious and provocative, with a hint of irony and mischief on her perfect lips.

“Yes, a long time,” I said at last.

The German had withdrawn to the garden, where I glimpsed the wimpled head of a duenna. Angélica sat down on a carved wooden chair and indicated that I should sit on the footstool in front of her. I did as she asked, not fully aware of what I was doing. She was studying me very intently, her hands folded on her lap; from beneath the skirt of her dress emerged one slender satin slipper, and suddenly I was very conscious of my rough sleeveless doublet and darned shirt, my coarse trousers and military gaiters. “Oh, dear God,” I murmured. I imagined the court peacocks and fops of good blood and even better purses, dressed in all their finery, paying amorous compliments to Angélica at galas and gatherings. A jealous shiver pierced my soul.

“I hope,” she said very softly, “that you bear me no malice.”

I remembered—and it took little effort—the humiliation, the prisons of the Inquisition in Toledo, the auto-da-fé in the Plaza Mayor, and the role that Luis de Alquézar’s niece had played in my misfortune. This thought had the virtue of restoring to me the coldness I so needed.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

She took just a second longer than necessary to reply. She was examining me closely, with the same smile on her lips. She seemed pleased by what she saw.

“I don’t want anything,” she said. “I was simply curious to see you again. I recognized you in the square.”

She fell silent for a moment. She looked at my hands and then, again, at my face.

“You’ve grown, sir.”

“So have you.”

She bit her lip slightly and nodded very slowly. The ringlets gently brushed the pale skin of her cheeks, and I adored her.

“You’ve been fighting in Flanders.”

This was neither a statement nor a question. She appeared to be thinking out loud.

“I believe I love you,” she said suddenly.

I sprang to my feet. Angélica was no longer smiling. She was watching me from her chair, gazing up at me with eyes as blue as the sky, as the sea, as life itself. I swear she was lovely enough to drive a man insane.

“Great God,” I murmured.

I was trembling like the leaves on a tree. She remained motionless and silent for a long time. Finally, she gave a slight shrug.

“I want you to know,” she said, “that you have some very unfortunate friends. Such as that Captain Batiste or Triste or whatever his name is. Friends who are the enemies of my friends. And I want you to know that this could perhaps cost you your life.”

“It already nearly did,” I retorted.

“And it will again soon.”

Her smile had returned; it was the same smile as before, thoughtful and enigmatic.

“This evening,” she went on, “the Duque and Duquesa de Medina Sidonia are giving a party for the king and queen. On the way back, my carriage will stop for a while in the Alameda. With its beautiful fountains and gardens, it’s a delightful place to walk in.”

I frowned. This was all far too good and far too easy.

“Isn’t that a little late for a walk?”

“We’re in Seville. The nights here are warm.”

The irony of her words did not escape me. I glanced across at the courtyard, at the duenna still pacing up and down. Angélica understood my glance.

“She’s not the same one who was with me at the Fuente del Acero. This one turns dumb and blind whenever I want her to. And I thought you might like to be at the Alameda tonight at ten, Íñigo Balboa.”

I stood there, perplexed, analyzing everything she had said.

“It’s a trap,” I concluded, “another ambush.”

“Possibly.” She held my gaze, her face inscrutable. “It’s up to you whether you’re brave enough to fall into it or not.”

“The captain . . .” I began, but stopped at once. Angélica stared at me with terrible perspicuity. It was as if she had read my thoughts.

“This captain fellow is your friend. You will doubtless have to tell him this little secret, and no friend would allow you to walk alone into an ambush.”

She paused to allow the idea to penetrate.

“They say,” she added at last, “that he, too, is a brave man.”

“Who says so?”

She did not reply, merely smiling more broadly. And I understood then what she had just said to me. This certainty came with such astonishing clarity that I shuddered at the calculated way in which she was throwing this challenge in my face. The black shape of Gualterio Malatesta, like a dark ghost, interposed itself between us. It was all so obvious and so terrible: the old quarrel involved not only Alatriste now. I was of an age to answer for the consequences of my own actions; I knew too much, and as far as our enemies were concerned, I was as troublesome an adversary as the captain. Since I was the pretext for the rendezvous, and since I had, perversely, been warned of the certain danger involved, I couldn’t possibly go where Angélica was asking me to go, and yet neither could I not go. The words “You’ve been fighting in Flanders,” spoken only a moment before, now took on a cruelly ironic tone. Ultimately, though, the message was intended for the captain. And I should not, in that case, keep it from him. However, if I told him, he either would forbid me to go to the Alameda or would forbid me to go alone. The letter of challenge was, inevitably, being issued to us both. It came down to a choice between my shame and certain danger. My conscience thrashed around like a fish caught in a net. Suddenly, Gualterio Malatesta’s words surfaced in my memory with a sinister new meaning. Honor, he had said, is a dangerous thing to sustain.

“I wish to know,” said Angélica, “if you are still prepared to die for me.”

I stared at her in bewilderment, incapable of saying a word. It was as if her gaze were free to walk around inside my mind.

“If you don’t come,” she added, “I will know that, despite your time spent in Flanders, you are a coward. If you do come, whatever happens, I want you to remember what I said before.”

The silk brocade of her dress rustled as she stood up. She was standing close to me now. Very close.

“And that I may well always love you.”

She looked across at the garden, where the duenna was walking up and down. Then she came still closer.

“Always remember that—to the very end. Whenever that should come.”

“You’re lying,” I said.

The blood seemed suddenly to have drained from my heart and my veins. Angélica continued studying me intently for what seemed an eternity. And then she did something unexpected, by which I mean that she raised one small, white, perfect hand and placed her fingers on my lips as softly as a kiss.

“Go,” she said.

She turned and went out into the garden. I was so shaken that I took a few steps after her, as if intending to follow her up to the royal apartments and into the queen’s private chambers. The German with the bushy side-whiskers stopped me and smilingly showed me the door, at the same time returning my dagger to me.

I went and sat on the steps of the Casa Lonja, next to the Cathedral, and stayed there for a long time, sunk in gloomy thoughts. I was filled by conflicting feelings, and my love for Angélica, revived by that disquieting interview, was locked in battle with the certain knowledge of the sinister trap closing around us. At first, I considered saying nothing and making some excuse to slip away that night and go alone to the rendezvous and thus confront my destiny, with, as my only companions, my dagger and the constable’s sword, a good blade made by the swordsmith Juanes—I kept it wrapped in old rags, hidden in our room at the inn. But even if I did that, the venture was doomed. The shadowy figure of Malatesta took shape in my imagination like a dark omen. I would have no chance against him. And that, of course, was in the unlikely event that the Italian would come to the rendezvous alone.

I felt like weeping with rage and impotence. I was a Basque and an hidalgo, the son of the soldier Lope Balboa, who had died in Flanders for the king and for the true religion. My honor and the life of the man I respected most in the world hung in the balance, as did my life, but at that point in my existence—brought up, as I had been, from the age of twelve in the harsh worlds of criminality and of war—I had already too often staked my life on the throw of a die and possessed the fatalism of one who takes a breath knowing how very easy it is to stop breathing altogether. I had seen too many men die, some uttering curses or weeping, some praying or silent, some despairing, and others resigned, and dying did not seem to me anything very extraordinary or terrible. Besides, I believed that there was another life beyond, where God, my own good father, and all my old comrades would be waiting for me with open arms. And regardless of whether there was a life to come or not, I had learned that men like Captain Alatriste know that they can die at any moment, and death, in the end, always proves them right.

Such were my thoughts as I sat on the steps outside the Casa Lonja when, in the distance, I spotted the captain and the accountant Olmedilla. They were walking past the palace wall, toward the Casa de Contratación. My first impulse was to run to meet them, but I stopped myself in time and, instead, merely observed the slender, silent figure of my master, the broad brim of his hat shading his face, his sword bobbing at his side, and, next to him, the funereal presence of the accountant.

I watched them disappear around a corner, then remained sitting motionless where I was, my arms around my knees. After all, I concluded, it was a simple enough matter. That night I merely had to decide between getting killed alone or getting killed alongside Captain Alatriste.

It was Olmedilla who proposed calling in at a tavern, and Diego Alatriste agreed, although the suggestion took him by surprise. This was the first time Olmedilla had ever proved talkative or sociable. They went into the Seisdedos tavern, behind the building known as Las Atarazanas—the arsenal—and sat down at a table outside the door, underneath the porch and the awning that gave shelter from the sun. Alatriste removed his hat and placed it on a stool. A girl brought them a jug of Cazalla de la Sierra wine and a dish of purple olives, and Olmedilla drank with the captain. True, he barely tasted the wine, taking only a sip from his mug, but before doing so, he took a long look at the man beside him. His brow unfurrowed slightly.

“Well played,” he said.

The captain studied the accountant’s gaunt features, his sparse beard, his sallow, parchment-like skin, which seemed to have been contaminated by the candles used to light gloomy government offices. He said nothing, however, but simply raised the wine to his lips and, unlike Olmedilla, drained the mug to the lees. His companion continued to study him with interest.

“They weren’t exaggerating when they told me about you,” he said at last.

“That business with the Genoese fellow was easy,” replied Alatriste grimly, and said no more, but the ensuing silence said, “I’ve done other far more unsavory things.” That, at least, is how Olmedilla appeared to interpret it, because he nodded slowly, with the grave look of someone who understands and is too polite to ask further questions. As for Garaffa and his servant, they were, at that moment, sitting bound and gagged in a carriage driving them out of Seville to some destination unknown to the captain—he neither knew nor cared to know—with an escort of sinister-looking constables, whom Olmedilla had clearly alerted beforehand, for they appeared in Calle del Mesón del Moro as if by magic (the neighbors’ natural curiosity having been dampened by the fateful words “Holy Office of the Inquisition”), then vanished very discreetly with their prisoners in the direction of the Puerta de Carmona.

Olmedilla unbuttoned his doublet and took out a folded piece of paper bearing a seal. After holding it in his hand for a moment, as if overcoming a few final scruples, he placed it on the table before the captain.

“It’s an order of payment,” he said. “To the bearer it’s worth fifty old gold doubloons, double-headed. You can convert it into cash at the house of don Joseph Arenzana, in Plaza de San Salvador. No questions asked.”

Alatriste looked at the piece of paper but did not touch it. A double-headed doubloon was the most coveted coin of the day. They had been minted from fine gold over a century before, in the reign of the Catholic kings, and no one doubted their value when you slammed them down on the table. He knew men who would knife their own mother for a single one of those doubloons.

“There’ll be six times that amount,” added Olmedilla, “when it’s all over.”

“That’s good to know.”

The accountant gazed thoughtfully into his mug of wine. A fly was swimming about in it, making desperate attempts to clamber out.

“The fleet arrives in three days’ time,” he said, watching the dying fly.

“How many men will I need?”

Olmedilla pointed with an ink-stained finger at the order of payment. “That’s up to you. According to the Genoese fellow, the Niklaasbergen is carrying twenty or so sailors, a captain, and a pilot, all of them, apart from the pilot, Flemish or Dutch. In Sanlúcar, a few Spaniards might come on board with the cargo. And we only have one night.”

Alatriste made a rapid calculation. “Twelve or fifteen, then. With that amount of gold I can get all the men I need for the job.”

Olmedilla made a chary gesture with his hand, making it clear that Alatriste’s “job” was no business of his. He said, “You should have them ready the night before. The plan is to go down the river and reach Sanlúcar by evening.” He sank his chin in his ruff, as if thinking hard to make sure he had forgotten nothing. “I’ll be coming too.”

“All the way?”

“We’ll see.”

The captain made no attempt to conceal his surprise. “It won’t be a paper-and-ink affair.”

“That doesn’t matter. Once the ship is in our hands, I have a duty to check the cargo and organize its transfer.”

Alatriste had to suppress a smile. He couldn’t imagine the accountant mixing with the kind of people he was considering as recruits, but he could understand that one could never be too careful in such matters. So vast a quantity of gold was a temptation, and the odd ingot could easily get lost along the way.

“Needless to say,” added Olmedilla, “any theft will be punished by hanging.”

“Does that apply to you as well?”

“Perhaps, yes.”

Alatriste smoothed his mustache with one finger, then said drily, “I shouldn’t think they pay you enough for such alarming eventualities.”

“They pay me sufficient for me to do my duty.”

The fly had ceased struggling, but Olmedilla continued to stare at it. The captain poured more wine into his own mug. While he was drinking, he noticed that his companion had looked up again and was studying, with some interest, first the two scars on his forehead and then his left arm where his shirtsleeve concealed the burn beneath the bandage. The burn, by the way, stung like the very devil. Finally, Olmedilla frowned, as if he had been pondering a question he was afraid to ask out loud. “I was just wondering,” he said, “what you would have done if Garaffa had been less easily intimidated.”

Alatriste glanced up and down the street; the dazzle of sun on the opposite wall made him half close his eyes, so that he appeared even more inscrutable. Then he looked at the drowned fly in Olmedilla’s wine, took another sip from his own mug, and said nothing.

5. THE FIGHT

At the entrance to the Alameda, the pillars of Hercules stood in the moonlight like two halberds. The tops of elm trees stretched out behind them as far as the eye could see, making the night seem still darker beneath the arbor of their branches. At that hour, there were no carriages filled with elegant ladies and no Sevillian gentlemen on horse-back, capering and caracoling amongst the bushes, fountains, and pools. All I could hear was the sound of water and, sometimes, in the distance, a dog barking anxiously somewhere over near the chapel of La Cruz del Rodeo.

I stopped beside one of the thick stone pillars and listened, holding my breath. My throat was as dry as if it had been dusted with sand, and my pulses were pounding so hard in my wrists and my temples that if, at that moment, someone had cut open my heart, they would have found not a drop of blood in it. As I fearfully scanned the Alameda, I pushed back my short cape to uncover the hilt of the sword I was wearing tucked in my leather belt. In such a deserted place, the weight of the sword, along with that of my dagger, was a great comfort to me. Then I checked the lacing on the buff coat protecting my torso. The coat belonged to Captain Alatriste, and I had “borrowed” it from him while he was downstairs with don Francisco de Quevedo and Sebastián Copons, eating and drinking and talking about Flanders. I had pretended to be feeling unwell and retired early in order to carry out the plan I had been mulling over all day. To this end, I gave my face and hair a thorough wash and then put on a clean shirt, in case, at the end of the night, a scrap of that shirt should end up buried in my flesh. The captain’s buff coat was rather too large for me, and so I had padded it out by wearing my old doublet underneath, stuffed with tow. I completed this outfit with a pair of much-patched chamois leather breeches that had survived the siege of Breda—and which would protect my thighs from any possible knife thrusts—a pair of buskins with esparto soles, some gaiters, and a cap. Not exactly the attire to go courting in, I thought, when I saw my reflection in the copper bottom of a saucepan, but better a live ruffian than a dead fop.

I crept out, with my buff coat and my sword concealed beneath my cape. Only don Francisco spotted me briefly from afar, but he merely smiled and went on talking to the captain and to Copons, who, fortunately, both had their backs to the door. Once in the street, I adjusted my clothing as best I could as I walked toward the Plaza de San Francisco, and from there, avoiding the busier thoroughfares, I kept as close as I could to Calle de las Sierpes and Calle del Puerco until I emerged into the deserted Alameda.

It was not, as it turned out, entirely deserted. A mule whinnied from beneath the elms. Frightened, I took a closer look, and when my eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom of that small wood, I could just make out the shape of a carriage standing next to one of the stone fountains. I moved forward very cautiously, my hand resting on the hilt of my sword, until I could see the interior of the carriage, dimly lit by a covered lantern. And step by step, ever more slowly, I reached the running board.

“Good evening, soldier.”

That voice stole mine away and made the hand resting on my sword hilt tremble. Perhaps it wasn’t a trap after all. Perhaps it was true that she loved me and was there, just as she had promised, waiting for me. I saw a male figure up aloft on the driver’s seat, and another at the rear: two silent servants watching over the queen’s maid of honor.

“I’m pleased to know you’re not a coward,” whispered Angélica.

I took off my cap. In the dim lantern glow I could make out only vague shapes in the shadows, but it was enough to light the upholstered interior, the golden glint of her hair, and the satin of her dress when she shifted in her seat. I threw caution to the wind. The door was open, and I stepped up onto the running board. A delicious perfume wrapped about me like a caress. This, I thought, is the very perfume of her skin, and it’s worth risking one’s life for the mere bliss of being able to breathe it in.

“Have you come alone?”

“Yes.”

There was a long silence. When she spoke again, she sounded surprised. “You’re very stupid,” she said, “and very noble.”

I did not respond. I was too happy to spoil the moment with words. In the half-dark I could see her eyes shining. She was looking at me without saying a word. I touched the satin of her skirt and finally managed to murmur, “You said you loved me.”

There was an even longer silence, interrupted by the impatient whinnying of the mules. I heard the driver up above quiet them with a flick of the reins. The servant at the back was still only a dark, motionless smudge.

“Did I?”

She paused, as if struggling to remember what it was we had talked about that morning at the Palace. “Perhaps I do,” she concluded.

“I love you,” I declared.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Yes.”

She bent her face toward mine. I swear I felt her hair brush my cheek.

“In that case,” she whispered, “you deserve a reward.”

She placed one hand on my face with infinite tenderness, and suddenly I felt her lips pressed to mine. For a moment they remained there, soft and cool. Then she withdrew into the carriage.

“That is just an advance payment on my debt to you,” she said. “If you survive, you can claim the rest.”

She gave an order to the coachman, and he cracked his whip. The carriage moved off. I stood there, dumb-struck, clutching my cap in one hand and with the fingers of my other hand incredulously touching the mouth that Angélica de Alquézar had just kissed. The universe was spinning crazily, and it took me a while to recover my sanity.

Then I looked about me and saw the shadows.

They were emerging out of the darkness, from amongst the trees. Seven dark shapes, men with faces obscured by cloaks and hats. They approached as slowly as if they had all the time in the world, and I felt the skin beneath my buff coat prickle.

“Damnation!” said a voice. “It’s the boy, and he’s come alone!”

This time there was no ti-ri-tu, ta-ta, but I immediately recognized the harsh, hoarse, cracked tone. It came from the shadow nearest to me, which seemed very tall and very black. They were standing around me, not moving, as if uncertain what to do with me.

“Such a very big net,” added the voice, “to catch one sardine.”

The scorn with which this was spoken had the virtue of heating my blood and restoring my composure. The panic that had begun to fill me vanished. Those faceless men might not know what to do with the sardine, but the sardine had spent all day deliberating and preparing himself for precisely this situation. Every outcome, even the very worst, had been weighed and pondered and considered a hundred times in my imagination, and I was ready. My only regret was that I had no time to perform a proper Act of Contrition, but there was nothing to be done about it. And so I undid my cape, took a deep breath, made the sign of the cross, and unsheathed my sword. What a shame, I thought, that Captain Alatriste cannot see me now. He would have been pleased to know that the son of his friend Lope Balboa also knew how to die.

“Well, well . . .” said Malatesta.

Sheer surprise meant that his comment remained unfinished as I adopted a proper fencing stance and made a lunge that went straight through his cloak, missing his body by an inch. He stepped back to avoid me, and I still had time to deliver a back-edged cut before he had even put hand to sword. That sword, however, now left its sheath with a sinister whisper, and I saw the blade glitter as the Italian moved away to take off his cape and assume the en garde position. Feeling that my one opportunity was slipping away, I steadied myself and closed on him again, and despite my fear, I remained in control, abruptly raised my arm to make a feint to his head, changed sides, and with the same back-edged cut, lunged forward as I had before, with such verve that, if my enemy had not been wearing a hat, his soul would have been sent straight down to Hell.

Gualterio Malatesta stumbled backward, blaspheming loudly in Italian. And then, convinced that any initial advantage I might have had ended there, I swung around, describing a circle with the point of my sword, to confront the others who, taken by surprise at first, had finally unsheathed their weapons and surrounded me, with no consideration for my solitary state. The sentence was clear, as clear as the light of day that I would never see again. The rapid thought crossed my mind that for a boy from Oñate, this wasn’t such a bad way to end, and taking my dagger in my left hand, I prepared to defend myself. One against seven.

“Leave him to me,” Malatesta said to his companions.

He had recovered from his initial shock and came toward me confidently, sword at the ready, and I knew that I had only a few more seconds of life left. And so instead of waiting for him in the en garde stance, as prescribed in the true art of swordplay, I half crouched down, then sprang up like a hare and aimed straight at his chest. My blade, however, pierced only air. Inexplicably, Malatesta was behind me, and I could feel his knife pressing into one shoulder, in the gap between buff coat and shirt from which protruded the tow from the doublet I was wearing underneath.

“You’re going to die like a man, boy,” said Malatesta.

There was both anger and admiration in his voice, but I had passed that point of no return where words are of no interest, and I didn’t give a fig for his admiration, his anger, or his scorn. And so, without a word, I turned, as I had so often seen Captain Alatriste do: knees bent, dagger in one hand and sword in the other, reserving my breath for the final attack. I had once heard the captain say that the thing that helps a man to die well is knowing that he has done all he can to avoid death.

Then, from the encircling gloom came a pistol shot, and my enemies were briefly lit up by the glare. One of them had not yet hit the ground when the Alameda was lit by another flash, and in that burst of light I saw Captain Alatriste, Copons, and don Francisco de Quevedo rushing toward us, swords in hand, as if they had sprung from the bowels of the earth.

Thank God they came when they did. The night became a storm of knives, clanging steel, sparks, and shouts. There were two bodies on the ground and eight men fighting—a confusion of shadows who could only occasionally be recognized by their voices—all furiously fencing, shoving, and stumbling. I took my sword in my hand and went straight over to the man nearest to me and, in the melee, with an ease that surprised me, I stuck a good quarter of my blade into his back. I drove it in and pulled it out, and, with a howl, the wounded man spun around—which is how I knew it was not Malatesta—and made a ferocious lunge at me, which I managed to parry with my dagger, although he broke its guard, bruising the fingers of my left hand. I hurled myself at him, drawing back my arm, sword point foremost; I felt his knife graze my buff coat, but I did not jump back; instead, I trapped the blade between my elbow and my side and meanwhile ran him through again, plunging my sword right in this time, so that we both fell to the ground. I raised my dagger to finish him off right there and then, but he was no longer moving and from his throat came the hoarse, stertorous rattle of someone drowning in his own blood. I placed my knee on his chest so as to remove my sword and then returned to the fray.

Things were more evenhanded now. Copons, whom I could identify by his short stature, was locked in combat with an opponent who, between blows, kept uttering the most terrible oaths, until, suddenly, his curses were replaced by groans. Don Francisco was limping back and forth between two adversaries—both far less skilled than he—and fighting with his usual panache. Meanwhile, Captain Alatriste, who had sought Malatesta out in the midst of the skirmish, was doing battle with him a little way off, next to one of the stone fountains. They and their swords stood out against the shimmer of moonlight on water, as they lunged and drew back, performing feints and body feints and terrifying thrusts. I noticed that the Italian had abandoned both his loquacity and his wretched whistling. It was not a night to waste one’s breath on fripperies.

A shadow came between me and them. My arm was aching now from so much movement, and I was beginning to feel tired. Lunges and slices began to rain down on me, and I retreated, covering myself as best I could, which I did pretty successfully. I was afraid I might fall into one of the ponds, which I knew were somewhere behind me, although, of course, a soaking is always preferable to a stabbing. I was rescued from this dilemma by Copons, who, having rid himself of his adversary, now confronted mine, forcing him to deal with attacks from two fronts. Copons fought like a machine, closing on the other man and forcing him to pay more attention to him than to me. I decided to slip around to his side and knife the man as soon as Copons got in his next blow, and was just about to do so when, from the direction of the Hospital del Amor de Dios, beyond the stone pillars, came lights and voices crying, “Halt!” and “Stop in the name of the king’s justice!”

“The bluebottles are here!” muttered Quevedo in between sword thrusts.

The first one to take to his heels was the man under attack by Copons and me, and before you could say knife, don Francisco found himself alone as well. Of our opponents, three lay on the ground, and a fourth was crawling away into the bushes, moaning. We went over to join the captain, and when we reached the fountain, found him, sword in hand, staring into the shadows into which Gualterio Malatesta had disappeared.

“Let’s go,” said Quevedo.

The lights and voices of the constables were getting ever closer. They were still calling out in the name of the king and of justice, but they were in no hurry to arrive, fearful of the situation they might find themselves in.

“What about Íñigo?” asked the captain, still gazing after his vanished enemy.

“Íñigo’s fine.”

That was when Alatriste turned to look at me. In the faint glow of moonlight, I thought I could see his eyes fixed on me.

“Never do that again,” he said.

I swore that I never would. Then we picked up our hats and cloaks and ran off into the shadows under the elm trees.

Many years have passed since then. Now, whenever I go back to Seville, I visit the Alameda—which has barely changed since I first saw it—and there, time and again, I let my mind fill up with memories. There are certain places that mark the geography of a man’s life, and that was one of them, as was the Portillo de las Ánimas, as were the dungeons of Toledo, the plains of Breda, and the fields of Rocroi. The Alameda de Hércules, however, occupies a special place. During my time in Flanders, I had, without noticing it, matured, but I only knew this on that night in Seville, when I found myself alone, face to face with the Italian and his henchmen and wielding a sword. Angélica de Alquézar and Gualterio Malatesta had unwittingly done me the great favor of making me realize that. And thus I learned that it is easy to fight when your comrades are near or when the woman you love is watching you, giving you vigor and courage. The hard thing is to fight alone in the dark, with no other witnesses but your honor and your conscience. With no reward and no hope.

By God, it’s been a long road. All the people in this story—the captain, Quevedo, Gualterio Malatesta, Angélica de Alquézar—died a long time ago, and only in these pages can I make them live again and recapture them exactly as they were. Their ghosts, some loved, some loathed, remain intact in my memory, along with that whole harsh, violent, fascinating time that, for me, will always be the Spain of my youth, and the Spain of Captain Alatriste. Now my hair is gray, and my memories are as bittersweet as all clear-sighted memories are, and I share the same weariness with which they all seemed to be burdened. With the passing years I have learned that one pays for clear-sightedness with despair, and that the life we Spaniards lead has always been a slow road to nowhere. While traveling my section of that road I have lost many things and gained a few more. Now, on this apparently interminable journey—it even occurs to me sometimes that perhaps I, Íñigo Balboa, will never die—I can at least enjoy the resignation of memories and silence. And now, at last, I understand why all the heroes I admired then were so very weary.

I hardly slept that night. Lying on my mattress, I could hear the captain’s steady breathing while I watched the moon slip behind one corner of the open window. My head was as hot as if I were suffering from the ague and my sheets were drenched in sweat. From the nearby bawdy house came the occasional sound of a woman laughing or the chords of a guitar.

Feverish and unable to sleep, I left my bed, went over to the window in my bare feet, and leaned on the sill. In the moonlight, the rooftops looked unreal and the clothes hung out to dry on the flat roofs resembled white shrouds. I was, of course, thinking about Angélica.

I didn’t hear Captain Alatriste until he was by my side. He was wearing only his nightshirt and was, like me, bare-foot. He, too, stood gazing into the darkness, saying nothing, and out of the corner of my eye I could see his aquiline nose, his pale eyes absorbed in the strange light from outside, and the bushy mustache that only emphasized his formidable soldier’s profile.

“She is loyal to her own,” he said at last.

That “she” in his mouth made me tremble. Then I nodded, still without saying a word. I was at an age when I would have argued with anything else he might have had to say on the subject, but not with that unexpected comment. It was something I could understand.

“It’s only natural,” he added.

I didn’t know whether he was referring to Angélica or to my own warring emotions. Suddenly I felt a feeling of unease rising up inside me, a strange sadness.

“I love her,” I murmured.

No sooner had I spoken these words than I felt intensely ashamed, but the captain did not make fun of me, nor did he offer me any trite words of advice. He simply stood there, not moving, contemplating the night.

“We all love once,” he said. “Or, indeed, several times.”

“Several times?”

My question seemed to catch him off guard. He paused for a moment, as if he thought it his duty to say something more but didn’t quite know what. He cleared his throat. I noticed him shifting uncomfortably.

“One day it stops,” he said at last. “That’s all.”

“I’ll always love her.”

The captain hesitated before responding. “Of course,” he said.

He remained silent for a moment, then said again very softly, “Of course.”

I felt him raising one hand to place it on my shoulder, just as he had in Flanders on the day that Sebastián Copons slit the throat of that wounded Dutchman after the battle of the Ruyter mill. This time, however, he did not complete his gesture.

“Your father . . .”

Again, he left these words hanging inconclusively in the air. Perhaps, I thought, he wanted to tell me that his friend Lope Balboa would have been proud to see me that night, sword and dagger in hand, alone against seven men, and only sixteen years old. Or to hear his son saying that he was in love with a woman.

“You did very well in the Alameda just now.”

I blushed with pride. In Captain Alatriste’s mouth these words were worth a Genoese banker’s ransom. It was the equivalent of a king commanding a subject to don his hat in his presence.

“I knew it was a trap,” I said. The last thing I wanted was for him to think that I had fallen into the trap like some novice.

The captain nodded reassuringly. “I know you did. And I know that it wasn’t intended for you.”

“Angélica de Alquézar,” I said as steadily as I could, “is entirely my affair.”

Now he remained silent for a long time. I was staring obstinately out of the window and the captain was watching me.

“Of course,” he said again at last.

The scenes of that day kept crowding into my mind. I touched my mouth, where she had placed her lips. “If you survive,” she had said, “you can claim the rest.” Then I turned pale at the thought of those seven shadows emerging out of the darkness beneath the trees. My shoulder still hurt from the knife thrust stopped by the captain’s buff coat and my tow-stuffed doublet.

“One day,” I muttered, almost thinking out loud, “I’ll kill Gualterio Malatesta.”

I heard the captain chuckle. There was no mockery in that laughter, no scorn for my young man’s arrogance. It was a gentle laugh, warm and affectionate.

“Possibly,” he said, “but first, I must have a go at killing him myself.”

The next day, we planted our imaginary flag and started recruiting. We did so as discreetly as possible, with no ensigns, no drumroll, and no sergeants. And Seville was the ideal place to provide the kind of men we required. If you bear in mind that man’s first father was a thief, his first mother a liar, and their first son a murderer—for there’s nothing new under the sun—this was all confirmed in that rich and turbulent city, where the Ten Commandments weren’t so much broken as hacked to pieces with a knife. Seville, with its taverns, bawdy houses, and gaming dens, with the Patio de Los Naranjos and even the royal prison—which quite rightly bore the title of the Spanish Empire’s capital of crime—abounded in purveyors of stranglings and dealers in sword thrusts; and this was only natural in a city populated by gentlemen of fortune, hidalgos of thievery, caballeros who appeared to live on air and with not a thought for the morrow, and monks of the Holy Order of Intrigue, where judges and constables could be silenced with a gag of silver. It was, in short, a university for the biggest rogues God ever created, full of churches offering sanctuary, and a place where men would kill on credit for a maravedí, for a woman, or for a word.Remember Gonzalo Xeniz,

Gayoso and Ahumada,

Those butchers of bodies

And scarrers of faces . . .

The problem was that in a city like Seville and, indeed, in the whole of Spain, where all was bravado and effrontery, many of these self-proclaimed killers were nothing but talk, young ruffians full of valiant oaths, who, in their cups, claimed to have dispatched between twenty and thirty men, boasting of murders they hadn’t committed and of wars in which they hadn’t served, of how they were as happy to kill with their bare hands as with a knife or a sword, strutting and swaggering, in buff coats and hats as large as parasols, and sporting black looks, goatees, and mustaches that resembled the guard on a dagger; however, come the moment of truth, twenty of them together wouldn’t have been capable of seeing off one drunk constable, and if tortured on the rack, they would have confessed everything at the first turn of the screw. If you were not to be dazzled by such an apparent abundance of fine swordsmen, you had to know who you were dealing with, as Captain Alatriste certainly did. Thus, trusting to the captain’s keen eye, we began our levy in the taverns of La Heria and Triana, in search of old acquaintances who were men of few words but had a ready hand with the sword, who were not stage villains but genuine ruffians, men who would kill without giving their victims time to confess, so that no one afterward could go telling tales to the law. The kind of man who, when questioned under pain of death, and when the torturer turned the screw, would offer as guarantors only his own throat and spine, and remain entirely dumb, except to say naught or “My name’s Nobody” or to call on the Church itself for aid, but otherwise offer no information, not even if someone promised to dub him a Knight of Calatrava.Alonso Fierro, fencing master

Skilled with sword and dagger,

Slit many a throat in old Seville,

One doubloon per funeral.

Calling on the Church wasn’t, in fact, such a bad idea, for Seville boasted the most famous rogues’ refuge in the world—the Cathedral’s Patio de los Naranjos, whose renown and usefulness is captured in these lines:I ran away from Córdoba

And reached Seville a tired man.

There I became a gardener

In the Corral de los Naranjos.

This was one of the courtyards in the Cathedral, or Iglesia Mayor, which had been built on the site of a former Moorish mosque, just as the Giralda tower had been modeled on a minaret. It was a pleasant, spacious area with a fountain in the middle and was shaded by the orange trees from which it took its name; the main door of this famous courtyard opened onto the Cathedral square and the surrounding steps, which, during the day, like the steps of San Felipe in Madrid, were the favored place for idlers and rogues to meet and talk. Because of the courtyard’s role as sanctuary, it became the chosen place of asylum for desperados and scoundrels and criminals on the run from justice, and there they lived freely and well, visited both day and night by their whores and companions; and those men whom the law was most eager to apprehend only ventured forth into the city in large gangs, so that even the constables themselves dared not confront them. The place has been described by the sharpest quills of Spanish letters, from the great don Miguel de Cervantes to don Francisco de Quevedo, so I need not provide much detail. No picaresque novel, no soldier’s tale or rogue’s story is complete without a mention of Seville and the Patio de los Naranjos. Simply try to imagine the atmosphere of that legendary place, close by the Casa Lonja and the shops selling silk, a place where fugitives from justice and the whole criminal world were as thick as thieves and as snug as bugs in a rug.

I accompanied the captain on his recruiting campaign, and we visited the Patio during the day, when the light was still good and it was easy to recognize faces. On the steps up to the main entrance beat the pulse of that multifarious and sometimes cruel city of Seville. At that hour, the steps were seething with idlers, sellers of cheap trinkets, strollers, rogues, streetwalkers with their faces half veiled, girl pickpockets disguised as innocent maids accompanied by ancient chaperones and little pages, with light-fingered thieves, beggars, and blades for hire. In the midst of them all, a blind man was selling ballad sheets and singing about the death of Escamilla:Brave, bold Escamilla,

Glory and pride of all Sevilla . . .

Half a dozen ruffians were gathered beneath the arch of the main doorway and nodded approvingly as they listened to the turbulent story of that legendary swordsman and hired assassin, the very cream of the local villainry. We passed them as we went into the courtyard, and I couldn’t help noticing that the whole group turned to watch Captain Alatriste. Inside, thirty or so fellows, identical in appearance to those at the entrance, were lounging in the shade of the orange trees next to the pleasant fountain. In this market of death, contracts to kill were regularly drawn up and agreed upon. This was the refuge of those who had sliced open someone’s face or relieved many a soul of its corruptible matter. They had more steel about their persons than a Toledo swordsmith, and they all sported Córdoba leather jerkins, turned-down boots, broad-brimmed hats, large mustaches, and a swaggering, bowlegged gait. Otherwise, the Patio resembled a Gypsy encampment, with pots being heated over fires, blankets spread on the ground, bundles of clothing, a few mats on which men were dozing, and a couple of gaming tables, one for cards and the other for dice, where a jug of wine was doing the rounds amongst gamblers intent on wagering their very souls, even though the latter had been in hock to the Devil ever since their owners were weaned. A few ruffians were in close conversation with their women, some of whom were young and others less so, but who all conformed to the same whorish pattern, hard-faced and hardworking, accounting to their pimps for the money they had earned on the street corners of Seville.

Alatriste stopped by the fountain and looked quickly around. I was right behind him, fascinated by everything I saw. One bold doxy, her cloak folded and draped across her chest as if she were ready for a knife fight, casually and brazenly accosted him, and when they heard her do this, two cutthroats playing dice at one of the tables got up very slowly, giving us a mean, appraising look. They were dressed in typical ruffian style: open-necked shirts with wide Walloon collars, colored hose, and baldrics about a span wide, and equipped with all kinds of swords and daggers. The younger of the two men was carrying on his belt a pistol instead of a dagger and a light cork shield.

“What can we do for you, sir?” asked one.

The captain turned to them calmly, his thumbs in his belt, his hat down over his eyes.

“Nothing, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m looking for a friend.”

“Perhaps we know him,” said the other man.

“Perhaps,” replied the captain, again looking around him.

The two fellows exchanged a glance. A third man who had been watching came over, curious to know what was going on. I shot a sideways look at the captain and saw that he was entirely unruffled. After all, this was his world too, and he knew it like the back of his hand.

“You probably want—” began one.

Alatriste ignored him and walked on. I went behind, keeping my eye on the two cutthroats, who were discussing in low voices whether the captain’s behavior constituted an affront and, if so, whether or not they should knife him in the back. They were clearly unable to reach an agreement, for nothing happened. The captain was now studying a group sitting in the shade by the wall, three men and two women apparently engaged in animated conversation as they swigged from a capacious leather wineskin. Then I saw that he was smiling.

He went over to the group, and I followed. When they saw us approaching, the conversation gradually petered out, and the various members of the group eyed us warily. One of the men had very dark skin and hair and huge side-whiskers that reached right down to his jaw. He had a couple of marks on his face, which had clearly not been there since birth, and large, blunt-nailed hands. He was dressed almost entirely in leather and had a short, broad Toledo sword—the blade of which bore its maker’s unusual mark: the engraving of a puppy—and his coarse canvas breeches were adorned with strange green and yellow bows. He sat staring at my master as the latter came toward him, and his words died on his lips.

“Well, I’ll be hanged,” he said at last, openmouthed, “if it isn’t Captain Alatriste.”

“The only thing that surprises me, Señor don Juan Jaqueta, is that they haven’t hanged you already.”

The man uttered a couple of oaths and a loud guffaw and then stood up, brushing off his breeches.

“So where have you sprung from?” he asked, shaking the captain’s proffered hand.

“Here and there.”

“Are you in hiding too?”

“No, just visiting.”

“By my faith, I’m pleased to see you!”

Jaqueta cheerily demanded the wineskin from his companions, and this was duly passed around, and even I drank my share. After exchanging memories of mutual friends and of the odd shared experience—which is how I learned that Jaqueta had also been in Naples as a soldier, and one of the best too, and that, years before, Alatriste had himself taken refuge in that very place—Jaqueta, my master, and I moved away from the group. The captain came straight to the point and told Jaqueta that he had some work for him, his kind of work, and with a promise of gold paid in advance.

“Here?”

“In Sanlúcar.”

Jaqueta made a despairing gesture.

“If it was something easy and at night,” he explained, “that would be fine. But I can’t stray very far at the moment. A week ago, I knifed a merchant, the brother-in-law of a Cathedral canon, and the law are after me.”

“That can be sorted out.”

Jaqueta gave my master a keen look.

“Blind me, have you got a letter from the archbishop or something?”

“Better than that,” said the captain, patting his doublet. “I have a document authorizing me to recruit whatever friends I can and to place them beyond the reach of the law.”

“Are you serious?”

“I certainly am.”

“Things are obviously going well for you.” Jaqueta spoke more respectfully now. “I imagine the job will involve some, shall we say, hand work.”

“You imagine correctly.”

“Just you and me?”

“Plus a few others.”

Jaqueta was scratching his side-whiskers. He glanced over at his companions and lowered his voice.

“And there’s pelf aplenty to be had, is there?”

“There is.”

“And part payment in advance?”

“Three double-headed doubloons.”

Jaqueta let out an admiring whistle. “Well, I could certainly do with them, because the wages for our kind of work have gone right down, Captain. Only yesterday, someone came to see me about doing away with his good lady’s lover and all he was offering was twenty ducados. What do you think to that?”

“Shameful.”

“Too true,” agreed Jaqueta, his fist on his hip, every inch the ruffian now. “So I told him that all he could get for that price was a cut to the face that would require ten stitches, or, at most, twelve. We argued, got nowhere, and I very nearly knifed him there and then, and I’d have done it for free too.”

Alatriste was once more looking around him. “I need men I can trust, good swordsmen, not playhouse villains. And I want no talebearers either.”

Jaqueta nodded authoritatively. “How many?”

“A good dozen.”

“It’s a big job, then.”

“You don’t think I’d be looking for such a rabble of rogues just to knife an old lady, do you?”

“No, of course not. Is it dangerous work?”

“Fairly.”

Jaqueta frowned thoughtfully. “Most of the men here are pure dross,” he said, “no good for anything but cutting the ears off cripples or giving their whores a good belting when they bring back four reales less than they should after a day’s work.” He discreetly indicated one man in his group. “He might be all right. His name’s Sangonera and he’s been a soldier too. He’s a nasty piece of work, but good with his hands and fast on his feet. And I know a mulatto who’s in hiding at San Salvador church at the moment. His name’s Campuzano. He’s as strong as an ox and knows how to hold his tongue. Why, only six months ago, they tried to pin a murder on him, which him and another lad had, in fact, done, but he survived four bouts of strappado like a pure-bred hidalgo, because he knows that you pay for any slip of the tongue with your throat.”